The Angel is Full of Forests

Jerome Siegel and Joseph Shuster, the 61-year-old men who at the age of 17 created Superman, finally settled their decades-old dispute this past December with the publisher of Superman comics, currently owned by Warner Communications. The story that remains to be told is how that settlement came about and what it means to the multimillion dollar comics industry based in New York.

In 1938, with their first publication of a Superman story, Siegel and Shuster turned what had been a medium-fair idea—the comic book—into a vast enterprise employing thousands and extending its merchandising arms into paperback series, television shows, feature films, film serials, and promotional gimmicks for magazine ads and for private enterprises from gas stations to hamburger chains.

Because I am one of the current writers of Superman, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster gave me, among other things, a graduate school education and an audience for my writing that would not be equaled in size if someday I were to write a best-selling novel.

Mr. Siegel, Mr. Shuster, thank you.

Warner Communications has agreed to pay Siegel and Shuster $20,000 each per year for life, or for a minimum of 10 years should they die before that time. Warner has also agreed to provide them with unlimited medical coverage and to provide an annual stipend for their wives (Shuster is not married) and children after their deaths.

But possibly the most significant aspect of the settlement, beyond the fact that two men will now be able to grow old with dignity and security, is the return of the words, “Created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster,” to the Superman logo.

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Siegel and Shuster are both slight, soft-spoken and hardly assertive gentlemen. In 42 years of trying, they were unable to secure any significant hold on a child whose popularity took off faster than a speeding bullet. Over recent years their attorneys have cautioned them against discussing their lingering case in public for fear of hurting chances of a settlement. This past October, with news that National Periodicals, Superman’s publisher, had been paid $3 million for rights to a Superman movie, Siegel and Shuster’s patience was at an end.

Siegel sent a nine-page, single-spaced letter to newspapers, magazines, and everyone in the comics field he could think of who was associated with his character. The letter accused Jack Liebowitz—then the owner of what was successively called Detective Comics, Superman Inc., Superman-DC Publications, and National Periodical Publications—of misrepresentation and bad faith. For years, according to Siegel, Liebowitz paid Siegel and Shuster the highest page rate in town and withheld from them any information on circulation and profits. He discouraged loose talk of radio and television rights to the character, and when Siegel got upset enough to demand a raise, Liebowitz threatened to fire him and Shuster.

Toward the close of the 1940′s, they left, at the start of a succession of court cases which eventually determined that Siegel and Shuster did in fact create Superman, but that National Periodicals owned him.

Years later, when a desperate Joe Shuster took a job as a hand-delivery messenger, he happened to deliver a package to National Periodicals’ offices. Liebowitz called his former employee into his office, closed the door and told him that it was embarrassing to have the creator of their top money-maker doing menial tasks in plain view. Liewbowitz gave Shuster $100, bought him an overcoat, and ordered him to quit his job, which he did.

When Warner Communications bought National Periodicals in the mid-’60s Liebowitz became a member of the big corporation’s board of directors, where he still sits.

Jay Emmett, the Warner vice president in charge of the Siegel and Shuster matter, began his career as a licensing agent employed by the company owned by his uncle, Jack Liebowitz. It was one of young Emmett’s jobs to sell the Superman character and insignia to toy manufacturers, animation studios, advertising agencies, anyone who thought a profit could be made from this particular symbol of American popular culture. According to one early associate, when Emmett suffered a heart attack in his thirties, a psychologist told him to stop working for his uncle. Emmett is now earning, by one account, $195,000 a year at Warner, and in light of his handling of this highly publicized matter, his future is even brighter than it was a month ago.

The principal in the Siegel and Shuster problem who is probably most responsible for its coming to a head, however, is an extraordinarily talented commercial artist named Neal Adams. Adams began his rise in the cartooning field at 21 years of age 13 years ago as the artist for the syndicated Ben Casey comic strip. He has served as president of the Academy of Comic Book Arts and he has won at least once every annual award given by that organization for which an artist is eligible. He can draw as well as anyone in town. He is president of Continuity Associates, a studio which employs, among others, a great number of promising young commercial artists who land in New York looking for work. Adams is very good at finding it for them.

In October, soon after reading the letter from Siegel, Adams flamoyantly called to attention the 10 or so artists, clients and hangers-out in his studio at the time and said, “Three months from today this Siegel and Shuster thing is going to be resolved once and for all.” Then he called Jerry Siegel in California.

On December 23 I rode with Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster up the elevator to the office of their new attorney, Edmund Preiss. Both were obviously flushed with the sudden security of which hard-working men in their sixties dream. Siegel said, “I suppose this sort of thing couldn’t happen now. They must give rights to characters people create in the comics these days.” Both men were startled to learn that with regard to artists and writers, the comic book business has not changed significantly since they left it. The current setup of the comic book industry would do King John of England proud. Recognition of one or two of the vassals could change that.

There has never been a well organized guild for comic book writers or artists. Work is done on a freelance basis, and freelancers are paid—quickly and reasonably well—at a rate determined for each of them individually. Neal Adams is one of the few people associated with the comic book industry who can afford to buck the status quo. He’s in demand by advertising companies for story boards, by production companies for film posters, by slick magazines for illustrations. So for a few weeks Adams regularly missed deadlines to talk on the phone about Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.

Once he found out, in October, that Siegel and Shuster would be satisfied with a financial settlement—rather than ownership of their character for which they gave up their financial arrangement years ago—Adams went about drumming up public opinion in favor of the pair. Adams once told me that his greatest talent, one he has tried very hard to suppress on occasion, is for finding the weakest point in an individual’s psyche and exploiting it. He seems to have known instinctively that the most vulnerable aspect of a major corporation like Warner is its public image.

At some point he discussed a hypothetical settlement for $30,000 with Jay Emmett. A few days later he finagled a ride from California to New York for Jerry Siegel from ABC so that Siegel could appear with Shuster, who lives in Queens, on Howard Cosell’s Saturday Night Live show. While Siegel was in town, Adams scared up appearances for the pair on other television shows including interviews by CBS News and for the local news of all three network affiliates. On the Tomorrow Show Siegel and Shuster insisted that Adams appear with them and on the air Siegel declared that Adams was their official spokesman. The television stations took turns paying Siegel’s hotel bills. After a week, when Siegel returned home, National Periodical Publications was no longer answering mail from the Academy of Comic Book Arts on the ground that Adams had once been president of it, and Jay Emmett was anxious to settle.

Getting the creators’ names back on the character was the hardest part of the settlement. By the middle of December Emmett was willing to put Siegel and Shuster’s names on Superman and Action Comics, but not on the movie, on any other comic books, or magazines on which the character is featured, or on any media use of Superman. Siegel and Shuster were willing to settle for that, and for their sakes, Adams declined to push further. The Monday a week before Christmas an agreement was made, in a conference call among all the principals, which did not include Siegel and Shuster’s byline.

That Tuesday Adams wrote up a press release explaining that as a creator and speaking as a past president of the Comics Academy, he was annoyed. Jerry Robinson, a former president of the Cartoonists’ Society and one of the earliest artists on Batman, agreed to lend his name to the statement, That day Adams read his statement over the phone to everyone he talked to, including CBS News, the Toronto Star, and 10 or 15 newspeople. The next morning Adams left for Florida and left no phone number at which he could be reached.

Adams told everyone to whom he talked to ask Jay Emmett for an explanation as to why Siegel and Shuster’s names would not be coupled with their character. For the next several days Emmett was swamped with calls which left him convinced that any favorable publicity for Warner would be soured by the exclusion of the creators’ byline. By the time Adams got home on Monday Siegel and Shuster’s names were permanently linked with the name of Superman.

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Those of us associated with the comic book industry have known for a long time that Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were involved in a legal battle for rights to the character they created. A year ago, before I met them, I wrote a story for National Periodicals about a man named Joey Jerome, stranded on a desert island for 30 years, who created a superhero in his own mind, not realizing that in the course of that time Superman had come to earth and grown up. When I wanted to dedicate the story to Siegel and Shuster I was told that National does not publish their names.

For the past several years Jerry Siegel has been earning $7000 a year as a mail clerk in Los Angeles. During that same time Joe Shuster has gone legally blind, and has not held a job. When they were signing their contract with Warner Communications in Edmund Preiss’s law office, Shuster realized it was the first time in 15 years anyone had asked for his social security number. Several years ago, when a policeman offered to buy Shuster lunch because he looked emaciated, the officer found out that he had just walked into a coffee shop with one of the creators of Superman. He asked Shuster for a sketch and Shuster obliged. Then he did the same for the waitress, and for each of 10 or 15 kids who walked into the shop. Joe Shuster sat hungry in the coffee shop sketching pictures of Superman for two hours before someone realized he had not eaten in days.

Watching him walk out of Preiss’s office, Neal Adams said of Shuster, “He’s such an incredibly kind man.”

“Kindness hasn’t done well by him,” I answered in my punkiest tone. “Maybe he should’ve been more like us.”

CBS took pictures of Siegel and Shuster signing their agreement in Preiss’s office, and the next day NBC took pictures of Shuster depositing his check for $17,500 which Warner gave each of them to pay off their debts. The night before Christmas Eve, Jerry Robinson gave a party in their honor. Years of silence about their case kept them from attending comics fans’ conventions, from wandering into publishers’ offices and running into old friends and associates, from joining the Academy of Comic Book Arts or the Cartoonists’ Society. Robinson’s party reintroduced them to their past.

Unfortunately, people in creative fields tend to have characters more like Joe Shuster’s than Neal Adams’s. Those of us who heard of Siegel and Shuster before Adams pushed them to celebrity always supposed that their case would go on forever or until they both died, and then maybe they would be recognized for their contribution to American popular culture. By an interesting twist of fate they are able to enjoy that recognition now, and someday someone with an advanced degree might even call them great men.

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Meanwhile it has taken the pitiable condition of two men of this stature to bring attention to the fact that an industry based in New York City has been allowed to remain in such an antediluvian state. A writer or artist creating a character or a concept for a comic book publisher has no rights to his concept once he accepts a check for it. It says so on the backs of the checks. A publisher can and does reprint stories written in previous years without any compensation to the writer or artist of those stories. Artwork submitted as part of a story for a specific purpose can even be lifted by the publisher to be used and reused for promotional or merchandising purposes.

Maybe the disposition of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster’s problem will bring about a change in some of these areas. Maybe not.