- Person
- Joe Shuster
- Lived
- 1914–1992
- Field
- Comic art
- From
- Canadian-American
The story
Joe Shuster, born in Toronto in 1914 to Jewish parents who had fled antisemitic violence in Europe, grew up in Cleveland, where he and the writer Jerry Siegel began making comics together as teenagers. In the mid-1930s comic books were a brand new kind of publication. By 1935 Shuster and Siegel were consistently selling their work to National Allied Publications, the small company that would become DC Comics.
Their first contributions to the company, in New Fun #6, included a feature called Henri Duval and Doctor Occult, a detective of the supernatural, whose debut in that issue came in October 1935. Shuster drew him, and the pair signed the strip with a playful anagram of their names. Doctor Occult is described as the earliest recurring, original character still used in the DC Universe, and the comics historian Les Daniels saw him as a prototype for Superman. In a 1936 story he was even shown flying in a long cape.
In March 1937 Shuster and Siegel developed Slam Bradley, a tough private detective, for the first issue of Detective Comics, the new anthology magazine from the same publisher. Slam Bradley appeared a year before Superman and two years before Batman became that magazine's lead feature, making him one of the first ever DC characters. He has since been revived by later writers and artists, most recently as the lead of a 2022 series.
This early work helped show that comic books could offer fresh characters and continuing stories created for the page. It also gave Shuster and Siegel the experience and the publishing relationship that led to Superman in 1938.
Several of the characters Shuster first drew are still being used by DC's writers and artists nearly ninety years later, part of the vast library of original comic book stories that readers around the world enjoy today.
Why it matters
The original features Shuster drew in the 1930s helped establish the comic book as a medium for new stories, an art form now read and created worldwide.
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
- Doctor Occult Wikipedia
- Slam Bradley Wikipedia
- Shuster, Joseph Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, Case Western Reserve University
- Joe Shuster Wikipedia
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