"The Spider", collected from Lion, 1966-69
Jerome "Jerry" Siegel was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on 17 October 1914, son of Lithuanian Jewish immigrants Mitchell Siegel, a sign painter and haberdasher, and his wife Sarah, née Fine. His father died of a heart attack following a robbery at his haberdasher's shop while Jerry was still in high school.
Siegel wrote for his school's weekly newspaper, The Torch, and became a fan of science fiction, publishing possibly the first science fiction fanzine, Cosmic Sto
ies, in 1929. Around the same time, he met Joe Shuster, and in the mid-1930s the pair began working in American comics, Siegel writing and Shuster drawing on strips such as "Claude Duval" and "Doctor Occult" in New Fun and "Slam Bradley" in Detective Comics. But their most popular creation was "Superman", who first appeared in Action Comics in 1938.
Siegel and Shuster later sued the publisher, National Periodical Publications, over the rights to "Superman", and lost all control of the character. Siegel continued writing comics until the 1980s, for Marvel, Archie, Charlton and Western Publishing in the USA, Mondadori Editori in Italy, and Fleetway's Lion in the UK, where he scripted the adventures of "The Spider" in 1966-69.
In 1976 he and Shuster launched a publicity campaign, in advance of the release of the Superman movie in 1978, protesting about the way they had been treated. DC Comics responded by crediting the pair as Superman's creators, and awarding them a lifetime pension of $20,000 a year plus healthcare benefits. Siegel died on 28 January 1996. The rights to Superman are still disputed by his family.
References[]
- Steven Thompson, Jerry Siegel and The Spider, BookSteve's Library, 8 July 2007
