(Jewish Group) Meet the Jewish Parents of Superman and Wonder Woman
Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster
A scrawny, unpopular, bespectacled high school student in Cleveland, Jerry Siegel thought up Superman one night in 1934 as a solution to a problem common to so many high school boys—girls. As he said in an interview 40 years later, he thought he’d have better luck if he could do things like jump over buildings and throw cars. Enter Superman. A journalist by day, superhero by night, and a character on which Siegel could place both Lois Lane’s yearning and apathy. She was drawn to Superman, but ignored Clark Kent—her coworker at The Daily Planet—failing to see him for the hero he really was. Siegel and his friend, comic partner and illustrator Joe Shuster spent a few years searching for a buyer for their hero, when in 1938 they sold all rights for Superman to DC Comics…for $130—$10 for each of the 13 pages. The pair continued writing and illustrating Superman for nearly a decade, but when they sued for a share of profits in 1946, DC Comics refused and fired them, instead settling for a one-time $94,000 payment. Siegel wrote again for DC Comics for a few years in the 1960s, but the company eventually let him go, later restoring Siegel’s and Shuster’s bylines—after the former launched a public relations campaign—paying them each a lifetime annuity of $20,000, which was eventually raised to $30,000. In 2013, the original check that DC Comics wrote to Siegel and Shuster (it was $130 for the rights and $282 for their first actual comic) sold at auction for $160,000.
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