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Chapter three supergolem THE GOLDEN AGE: SUPERGOLEM 9 Siegel and Shuster while they were still in high school, Superman was the first comic-book character to successfully cross over into other media. The 1942 George Lowther book The Adventures of Superman, illustrated by Joe Shuster and his Cleveland studio, marked the first time a comic-book character was the protagonist of a novel. And Harold Prince’s 1966 musical It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s Superman was the first—and as of this writing, the only—time a comic book character has served as the title character of a Broadway stage production. This is in addition to the various movie serials, feature films, radio shows, animated cartoons, and Internet comics that have featured the Man of Steel’s exploits. Superman has even influenced popular music, as shown by recording artists such as the rapper Eminem, who has a song called “Superman” on his 2002 album The Eminem Show, wherein he compares himself to the Man of Steel. Every generation since the early 1940s has had a film, stage, or television adaptation of Superman to which they can look forward. And the Jewish community has taken pride in the character’s Jewish origins: Superman’s writer/co-creator Jerry Siegel is listed in the book Jewish 100 as one of the 100 most influential Jews of all time, alongside Moses, Steven Spielberg, and Henry Kissinger. But Superman didn’t spring to life fully formed, like the Greek God Zeus. Rather, his creation was one of fits and starts, of revisions and rewrites. And it all started with two poor kids just trying to find their niche. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were both born in 1914. They met in 1931 while students at Cleveland’s Glenville High School. Shuster, a Toronto native, had recently moved into the neighborhood, and Siegel, upon hearing that the new kid in school was a cartoonist, rabidly sought him out, looking for an artist to illustrate his scripts. The two were ardent science-fiction fans with a shared love of magazines like Amazing Stories and Weird Tales, as well as newspaper strips like Dick Calkins’s Buck Rogers and Hal Foster’s version of Tarzan. The pulpy tales of space fantasy and jungle intrigue fueled the young duo’s Conceived by Conceived by Superman was the first comic-book character to cross over into other media and, to date, he’s the only character to appear in his own Broadway musical. imagination, and they hoped to use their artistic talents to rise above their unfortunate economic status. Bespectacled, nerdy kids who were slight of build and shy around girls, Siegel and Shuster clung to each other as blood brothers. To this end, the duo began collaborating on various ideas, most of them for the high school paper, The Glenville Torch. Jerry wrote a series of humorous short stories about a Tarzan parody character called “Goober the Mighty,” aided by Shuster’s wacky illustrations. “Goober” was their first attempt to create a musclebound alpha male, even if the character was tongue-in-cheek. They would revisit the theme of a superstrong hero many times before they stumbled onto their famed redand -blue-clad creation. The first time the duo named a character Superman was in the pages of their self-published magazine Science Fiction, subtitled “The Advance Guard of Future Civilization,” edited by Jerry Siegel and art directed by Joe Shuster. The third issue of Science Fiction, dated January 1933, contained a prose story called “The Reign of Superman,” written by Siegel with illustrations by Shuster. The story concerned Bill Dunn, a homeless man who had been turned into a bald, megalomaniacal villain (a physical conceptualization that foreshadowed Superman’s future foe Lex Luthor). After being taken into the home of the mad professor Earnest Smalley, Dunn is given food and clothing, then drugged. Smalley has slipped a strange substance into Dunn’s coffee, a chemical extracted from an outer space meteor (foreshadowing kryptonite, the alien rock that robs Superman of his strength). A groggy Dunn immediately jumps out into the city streets, where he realizes that he can suddenly hear people’s thoughts! Then he finds he can hear and see battles going on in outer space. Experiencing sensory overload, he passes out, and when he wakes up he finds that he has become … something else. Henceforth calling himself “The Superman,” Dunn’s mental powers increase exponentially , and he plans to use...

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