A BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE: Superman (of course)! The Spectre! Slam Bradley! MORE! By PAUL KUPPERBERG Who’s to say if Jerry Siegel (October 17, 1914 – January 28, 1996) and Joe Shuster hadn’t created Superman, some other creator(s) wouldn’t have come along with some other character that would have captured the public imagination and kickstarted the fledging comic book industry. But the fact is, some other creator(s) didn’t, and Siegel and Shuster and Superman are the reason we’re all gathered here today! For having co-created one of the most successful characters in popular literature, there are few figures in comic book history whose careers illustrate both the possibilities and the pitfalls of the business quite as clearly as Jerry Siegel. In 1938, Siegel and artist Joe Shuster, his friend and collaborator, introduced Superman in Action Comics #1, a character whose success helped launch the superhero genre. The two young Clevelanders had been trying for years to sell their creation and were ecstatic when Detective Comics Inc., a forerunner of today’s DC Comics, finally agreed to publish the feature. But they signed away the rights for a modest sum — only $130 for that first 13-page story. The comic book business then and now ran on a “work-made-for-hire” basis, that is, the contracted writers and artists did the actual work but the corporate entities that paid them were its legally acknowledged creators and owners. Siegel and Shuster had no way of knowing that the Man of Steel would become one of the most valuable fictional properties in history. For most of the 1940s, the duo did well. Exhibits filed in their 1947 lawsuit against National Periodical Publications (another DC Comics forerunner) to reclaim rights to their creation revealed that in 1942 they had earned more than $60,000, or around $1.3 million today, adjusted for inflation. Siegel and Shuster were fired by DC following their lawsuit over Superman’s ownership, but Siegel didn’t abandon comics or the hope of creating another successful character. He wrote Funnyman, tried his hand at newspaper strips, worked for Ziff-Davis, and continued freelancing for various publishers. In 1959, he was rehired by DC to write Superman stories, along with adventures starring Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes. There was, however, a humiliating condition attached to his return: He couldn’t publicly acknowledge that he was the man who had created...