Comic
books were just a few years old when the red-caped figure, lifting a
2-ton car as if it were lawn furniture, graced the cover of Action
Comics No. 1. Superman was the creation of Cleveland teenagers Jerry
Siegel (writer) and Joe Shuster (illustrator). They envisioned him in
1932 and for six fruitless years tried to get him into print. In early
1938, comics publisher Max Gaines (whose son Bill would publish Tales
from the Crypt and Mad in the '50s) recommended the lads to
DC Comics. Finally someone said yes. From that first issue, the
character was fully formed: he could "hurdle a 20-story building ... run
faster than an express train ..." and still, as Clark Kent, never
impress newsgal Lois Lane.
The final panel seemed
boastful—"Superman is destined to reshape the destiny of a
world!"—but was simply prophetic. To Americans deep in an economic
Depression and hearing the drumbeats of European war, the Man of Steel
offered both escape and hope. Readers loved him, and, in a trice, gaudy
imitations (Batman, Wonder Woman, Captain America) were clogging the
racks. Superman spun off into half a dozen TV series and several
generations of movies; his example inspired the Daredevils and
Spider-Men of a later era. Yet Siegel and Shuster saw little of the
profit DC made from their character. Not until 1975 did the company
agree to pay a modest annuity to the men who had created the comics'
first and most enduring superhero.
TIME Cover
Collection: Click
here to see covers from 1938
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