Notes on Jerry and Joe – Episode 2

The main sources for the episode included:

• Brad Ricca, Super Boys – The Amazing Adventures of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the Creators of Superman (2013, St. Martin’s Press)
• Gerard Jones, Men of Tomorrow – Geeks, Gangsters and the Birth of the Comic Book (2004, Basic Books)
• Detective Comics, Inc. v. Bruns Publications, Inc., 111 F.2d 432 (2d Cir. 1940)
• Jerry Siegel, “Happy 45th Anniversary, Superman!”, Action Comics issue 544 (June, 1983)
• Jerry Siegel, Creation of a Superhero (unpublished autobiography, circa 1980)
• John Kobler, “Up, up, and awa-ay! The Rise of Superman Inc.”, Saturday Evening Post, June 21, 1941
• Tom Andrae, Geoffrey Blum and Gary Coddington, “Of Superman and kids with dreams” (interview with Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster and Joanne Siegel), Nemo, The Classic Comics Library, April 1983
• “The Funny Papers”, Fortune, April 1933 issue

The Siegel/Keaton version of Superman has been widely circulated online since they first really came to light during the Siegel’s litigation with DC, but they’re all collected on Tom Brevoort’s website, which is essential reading when new posts come to it every weekend.

The story of what happened to the 1933 cover to The Superman by Joe Shuster — and how Max Gaines held onto it before his son Bill (the publisher of Mad) found it in Max’s desk in the late 1960s and then sold it– is chronicled by the Robert Beerbohm, the person who eventually owned it and restored it.

Another shout-out for Daniel Best’s simply incredible bibliography of Jerry Siegel on his Substack. Here’s 1930-1934.