- Person
- Joe Shuster
- Lived
- 1914–1992
- Field
- Comic art
- From
- Canadian-American
The story
Joe Shuster was born in Toronto in 1914 to Jewish parents who had left Europe to escape antisemitic violence. As a boy he sold the Toronto Daily Star on the streets, and when he was nine his family moved to Cleveland, Ohio. He studied art in Cleveland and, at Glenville High School, formed a lifelong partnership with the writer Jerry Siegel.
Siegel supplied the stories, and Shuster gave the characters their look. When Superman appeared in Action Comics #1 in 1938, it was Shuster who had designed the now familiar costume. The tight suit and shorts drew on the costumes of wrestlers, boxers and strongmen, and the swashbuckling film star Douglas Fairbanks Sr was another influence. For mild-mannered Clark Kent, Shuster drew partly on the comic actor Harold Lloyd and partly on himself, and he based Lois Lane on the model Joanne Carter. The Canadian Encyclopedia sums up his early drawings as rudimentary but well conceived: simple, bold images that readers could take in at a glance.
Shuster also brought his Canadian hometown into the story. Clark Kent's newspaper was first called the Daily Star, after the Toronto paper Shuster had once sold, before it became the Daily Planet, and Toronto helped inspire his drawings of Metropolis.
The result was something new: a hero instantly recognisable from his bright costume, cape and chest emblem, with a secret identity hidden behind ordinary glasses. That combination became the visual language of the superhero comic. Superman is regarded as the archetype from which the genre's conventions were set, and the costumed heroes who followed, on paper and on screen, all owe something to the way Shuster first drew him.
Shuster's eyesight later failed and he lived much of his life in hardship, but in his final interview he spoke of immense pride in leaving behind a cultural symbol like Superman. His drawings continue to shape how the world pictures a hero.
Why it matters
The superhero look Shuster created, from costume and cape to the hero's everyday alter ego, still defines comics, films and games enjoyed by people around the world.
About Joe Shuster
Toronto-born son of Jewish immigrants who drew Superman into being with Jerry Siegel in 1938, giving the world the look of the superhero and modelling Metropolis on his home city.
More about Joe Shuster
Sources
- Joe Shuster Wikipedia
- Superman Wikipedia
- Joe Shuster The Canadian Encyclopedia
- Shuster, Joseph Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, Case Western Reserve University
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.