For the student paper, they collaborated on a Tarzan takeoff called “Goober the Mighty,” and a Buck Rogers takeoff called “Interplanetary Police.” Much of the interest of Ricca’s book comes from his detailed trawl through the pair’s early efforts, and the illustrations he reproduces. Neither had money for college, but tailoring didn’t appeal, and Siegel had read in Fortune that “some twenty comic strip headliners are paid at least $1,000 a week.” He couldn’t draw, but Shuster was amenable. They were both sons of Jewish immigrants who worked in the garment trade. Jerome Siegel wrote for the student newspaper, and Joe Shuster was one of its cartoonists. They met in high school in Cleveland, during the Depression. It’s a portrait of the artists as nebbishes, Clark Kents who conjured their longings into a bankable fantasy but signed away their rights to it. Martin’s), a dual biography of Siegel, who wrote the first “Superman” stories, and of Joe Shuster, who first drew them. The episode forms the climax of Brad Ricca’s “Superboys” (St. Now he was sixty-one years old, destitute, and in poor health.

But Siegel wrote that “the people who exploit and profit from Superman are greedy and selfish,” and had cheated him out of the rights to his creation. I hope the whole world, becoming aware of the stench that surrounds Superman, will avoid the movie like a plague.” In comics and on television, Superman stood for “truth, justice, and the American way”-as his famous catchphrase has it. I hope loyal Superman fans stay away from it in droves. “I, Jerry Siegel, the co-originator of Superman, put a curse on the Superman movie!” the letter said. In 1975, when trade magazines reported that the first Superman movie was in development, a thousand news outlets across the country received a peculiar letter, single-spaced and ten pages long. Joe Shuster (seated) and Jerry Siegel at work on Superman, in their studio, in 1942.

Jerry superman