- Person
- Jerry Siegel
- Lived
- 1914–1996
- Field
- Comic books
- From
- American
The story
Jerry Siegel was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1914, the youngest of six children of Jewish immigrants from Lithuania who ran a small clothing store. A science fiction fan from boyhood, he met the artist Joe Shuster at Glenville High School, and in 1933 he published a story called The Reign of the Superman in a magazine he produced himself. Over the following years he reworked the idea into a hero who would use his strength to help people.
Superman made his debut in Action Comics #1 in 1938, and Siegel's early stories made clear whose side he was on. Known as the Champion of the Oppressed, he saved an innocent man from the electric chair, stopped a man beating his wife, and confronted a lobbyist pushing the country towards war for the benefit of arms makers. In other early issues he trapped a greedy mine owner in his own unsafe mine to teach him about workers' safety, and knocked down slum housing so that the government would build better homes for the poor.
This was a hero shaped by the Great Depression, fighting the everyday injustices that his readers could not fight themselves. Over time the publisher toned down the violence and social crusading of the early stories, but the core idea, a powerful being who protects the weak, remained.
Superman is regarded as the archetypal superhero: it was Superman who popularised the genre and established its conventions. The costumed heroes who followed in comics, and later in film and television, all grew from the template Siegel and Shuster created.
Today Superman is one of the best known fictional characters in the world, and his creators are credited on every Superman product. The values Siegel wrote into him at the start, standing up for the vulnerable and against the powerful who abuse them, are still what readers around the world associate with a hero.
Why it matters
Siegel's idea of a hero who defends ordinary people created the superhero genre that entertains and inspires hundreds of millions of readers and viewers today.
About Jerry Siegel
Cleveland-born son of Lithuanian Jewish immigrants who, with artist Joe Shuster, created Superman in 1938, launching the superhero, then fought for decades for credit.
More about Jerry Siegel
Sources
- Superman Wikipedia
- From Champion of the Oppressed to Truth, Justice, and the American Way Cosmonaut Magazine
- Siegel, Jerome Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, Case Western Reserve University
- Jerry Siegel Wikipedia
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.