Joseph Shuster (July 10, 1914 – July 30, 1992)[3][4][5] was a Canadian-American comic book artist best known for co-creating the DC Comics character Superman, with Jerry Siegel, in Action Comics #1 (cover-dated June 1938).
Shuster was involved in a number of legal battles over ownership of the Superman character. His comic book career after Superman was relatively unsuccessful, and by the mid-1970s, Shuster had left the field completely due to partial blindness.
He and Siegel were inducted into both the comic book industry's Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 1992 and the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1993. In 2005, the Canadian Comic Book Creator Awards Association instituted the Joe Shuster Awards, named to honor the Canada-born artist.
Early life and career
Joseph Shuster was born in Toronto, Ontario, to a Jewish family.[6][7][8] His father, Julius Shuster (originally Shusterowich), an immigrant from Rotterdam, had a tailor shop in Toronto's garment district. His mother, Ida (Katharske), had come from Kiev, Russian Empire (now Kyiv, Ukraine).[9][10] His family, including his sister, Jean, lived on Bathurst, Oxford, and Borden Streets. In 1922 Julius Shuster was listed as living at 48 Major Street,[11] and in 1923 and 1924 at 101 Oxford Street.[12]
As a youngster, Shuster worked as a newspaper boy for the Toronto Daily Star.[9] The family barely made ends meet, and the budding young artist would scrounge for paper, which the family could not afford. He recalled in 1992,
"I would go from store to store in Toronto and pick up whatever they threw out. One day, I was lucky enough to find a bunch of wallpaper rolls that were unused and left over from some job. The backs were blank, naturally. So it was a goldmine for me, and I went home with every roll I could carry. I kept using that wallpaper for a long time.[9]"
Sometime in 1924,[9] when Shuster was 9[15] or 10, his family moved to Cleveland, Ohio.[15] There Shuster attended Glenville High School and befriended his later collaborator, writer Jerry Siegel, with whom he began publishing a science fiction fanzine called Science Fiction: The Advance Guard of Future Civilization. Siegel described his friendship with the similarly shy and bespectacled Shuster: "When Joe and I first met, it was like the right chemicals coming together."[5]
The duo broke into comics at Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson's National Allied Publications, the future DC Comics, working on the landmark New Fun—the first comic-book series to consist solely of original material rather than using any reprinted newspaper comic strips—debuting with the musketeer swashbuckler "Henri Duval" and the occult detective Doctor Occult, both in New Fun #6 (Oct. 1935).[17] In a 1992 interview, in which he used the fledgling publisher's future name, he said the two sample strips were not the ones eventually published:
"One was drawn on brown wrapping paper and the other was drawn on the back of wallpaper from Toronto. And DC approved them, just like that! It's incredible! But DC did say, 'We like your ideas, we like your scripts and we like your drawings. But please, copy over the stories in pen and ink on good paper.' So I got my mother and father to lend me the money to go out and buy some decent paper, the first drawing paper I ever had, in order to submit these stories properly to DC Comics.[9]"
Creation of Superman
Siegel and Shuster created a bald telepathic villain, bent on dominating the world, as the title character in the short story "The Reign of the Superman", published in Siegel's 1932 fanzine Science Fiction: The Advance Guard of Future Civilization #3.[18] The story was not successful, and the character was not used again.
The following year, Siegel re-used the name The Superman to develop a new character who became one of the most famous superheroes of all time. Shuster modelled the hero on Douglas Fairbanks Sr., and modelled his bespectacled alter ego, Clark Kent, on a combination of Harold Lloyd[5][19] and Shuster himself, with the name "Clark Kent" derived from movie stars Clark Gable and Kent Taylor.[9] Lois Lane
Later career
In 1947, the team rejoined editor Sullivan, by then the founder and publisher of the comic-book company Magazine Enterprises where they created the short-lived comical crime-fighter Funnyman. Shuster continued to draw comics after the failure of Funnyman, although exactly what he drew is uncertain. Comic historian Ted White wrote that Shuster continued to draw horror stories into the 1950s.[31]
Shuster was also the anonymous illustrator for Nights of Horror, an underground sadomasochistic fetish paperback book series. In 1954, Nights of Horror garnered controversy because of its involvement in the trial of the Brooklyn Thrill Killers, where it was alleged by psychiatric expert and anti-comics crusader Fredric Wertham that the gang's leader had read the books and that they were responsible for his crimes. The Nights of Horror series was seized and banned in the State of New York, and the case eventually went to the Supreme Court. However, the books' artist was never identified at the time.[32] In 2004, Gerard Jones revealed that Shuster had drawn the books.[33]
Death
Shuster died on July 30, 1992, at his West Los Angeles home of congestive heart failure and hypertension. He was 78.[3][48]
Awards and honors
- In 1985, DC Comics named Shuster as one of the honorees in the company's 50th anniversary publication Fifty Who Made DC Great.[49]
- In 1991 Shuster was the subject of a Heritage Minute short film Superman about the creation of the comic book hero.
- In 1992, Shuster was inducted into the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame.
- In 2005, Shuster was inducted into the Joe Shuster Canadian Comic Book Creator Hall of Fame for his contributions to comic books.[50]
- The Joe Shuster Awards, started in 2005, were named in honor of the Canadian-born Shuster, and honor achievements in the field of comic book publishing by Canadian creators, publishers and retailers.[51]
Bibliography
Charlton Comics
- Crime and Justice #19–21 (1954)
- Hot Rods and Racing Cars #20 (1955)
- Space Adventures #11–13 (1954)
- Strange Suspense Stories #19, 21–22 (1954)
- This Magazine is Haunted #18–20 (1954)
DC Comics
- Action Comics #1–24 (1938–1940)
- Adventure Comics #32–41, 103–109 (1938–1946)
- Detective Comics
See also
- Boys of Steel, a picture book biography of Siegel and Shuster by Marc Tyler Nobleman and Ross MacDonald
- The Joe Shuster Story: The Artist Behind Superman, a nonfiction graphic novel by Julian Voloj and Thomas Campi
- Copyright lawsuits by Superman's creators
External links
- Comic Art & Graffix Gallery – Artist Biography
- Portrait (2014) by illustrator Drew Friedman of Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel creating Superman
- Additional [ WebCitation archive], August 13, 2008.
References
- Douglas Wolk. 75 Years of the First Comic Book Superhero (It's Not Who You Think) Time, 5 July 2010, retrieved 23 April 2016^
- Inkpot Awards Comic-Con International, retrieved 2023-12-06^
- Burt A. Folkart. Joe Shuster, Co-Creator of Superman, Dead at 78