20 joe shuster biography

Comic book artist, co-creator of Superman (–)

Joe Shuster
Shuster in
Born	Joseph Shuster ()July 10, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Died	July 30, () (aged&#;78) Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Nationality	Canadian American
Area(s)	Penciller, Artist
Pseudonym(s)	Reuths[1]
Notable works	Superman, Action Comics #1
Awards	Inkpot Award ()[2] Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame, Jack Kirby Hall of Fame, Joe Shuster Canadian Comic Book Creator Hall of Fame,

Joseph Shuster (SHOO-stər; July 10, – July 30, )^[3][4][5] was a Canadian-Americancomic book designer best known for co-creating the DC Comics character Superman, with Jerry Siegel, in Action Comics #1 (cover-dated June ).

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 mids, 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 and the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in In , the Canadian Comic Publication 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 Kyiv, Russian Empire (now Ukraine).^[9][10] His family, including his sister, Jean, lived on Bathurst, Oxford, and Borden Streets. In Julius Shuster was listed as living at 48 Major Street,^[11] and in and at Oxford Street.^[12][13] Joe attended Ryerson and Lansdowne Public Schools (now Ryerson Community School and Lord Lansdowne Junior Public Educational facility with the Toronto District University Board).^[9] One of his cousins was comedian Frank Shuster of the Canadian comedy team Wayne and Shuster.^[14][15] He also had a brother named Frank.^[16]

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 ,

I would depart from store to store in Toronto and pick up whatever they threw out. One date, I was lucky enough to find a bunch of wallpaper rolls that were unused and left over from some career. 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 drawn-out time.^[9]

Sometime in ,^[9] when Shuster was 9^[15] or 10,^[17] his family moved to Cleveland, Ohio.^[15] There Shuster attended Glenville Steep School and befriended his later collaborator, writer Jerry Siegel, with whom he began publishing a science fiction fanzine called Science Fiction.

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 imaginative material rather than using any reprinted newspaper comic strips—debuting with the musketeer swashbuckler "Henri Duval" and the supernatural crime-fighter strip Doctor Occult, both in New Fun #6 (Oct.

).^[18] In a 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 sheet 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 utter , 'We like your ideas, we like your scripts and we like your drawings. But please, copy over the stories in pen and ink on superb paper.' So I got my mother and father to give me the money to travel out and buy some decent paper, the first drawing manuscript I ever had, in direct 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 fanzineScience Fiction #3.^[19] The story was not successful, and the character was not used again.

The obeying year, Siegel re-used the identify The Superman to develop a new character that 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][20] and Shuster himself, with the name "Clark Kent" derived from movie stars Clark Gable and Kent Taylor.^[9]Lois Lane was modeled on Joanne Carter, a model hired by Shuster.

(She later married co-creator Jerry Siegel in )^[9] Siegel and Shuster's origins as children of Jewish immigrants is also thought to own influenced their work. Timothy Aaron Pevey argued that they designed "an immigrant figure whose want was to fit into American culture as an American", something which Pevey feels taps into an important aspect of American identity.^[21]

Siegel and Shuster then began a four-year quest to discover a publisher.

Titling the ethics The Superman, Siegel and Shuster offered it to Consolidated Manual Publishing, who had published a page black-and-white comic book entitled Detective Dan: Secret Operative # Siegel and Shuster each compared this character to Slam Bradley, an adventurer the pair had created for Detective Comics #1 (March ).^[22] Although the duo received an encouraging letter, Consolidated never again published comic books.

Shuster was distraught over the rejection, and, by varying accounts, either burned every page of the story, with the cover surviving only because Siegel saved it from the fire,^[23] or he tore the story to shreds, with only two cover sketches remaining.^[24]

In , the suggestion was languishing among others at More Fun Comics, published by National Allied Publications, the first precursor of DC Comics.

Editor Vin Sullivan chose it as the cover feature for National's Action Comics #1 (June ). The following year, Siegel & Shuster initiated the syndicatedSuperman comic strip.^[5]

When Superman first appeared, Superman's alter ego Clark Kent worked for the Daily Star newspaper, named by Shuster after the Toronto Daily Star, his aged employer in Toronto.

When the comic strip received international distribution, the company permanently changed the name to the Daily Planet.^[25] Shuster said he modeled the cityscape of Superman's home municipality, Metropolis, on that of his old hometown.^[15]

As part of the deal which saw Superman published in Action Comics, Siegel and Shuster sold the rights to the character in return for $ and a contract to supply the publisher with material.^[26][27][28]

Due to financial difficulties, Wheeler-Nicholson had formed a corporation with Harry Donenfeld and Jack Liebowitz called Detective Comics, Inc.

It was under the DC label that Action Comics #1 (cover-dated June ) was published. A series of mergers and name changes resulted in the publisher becoming National Periodical Publications, and then, in , DC Comics (which had been its nickname since ).^[29]

Legal issues

In , near the end of their ten-year reduce to produce Superman stories, Siegel and Shuster sued Detective Comics, Inc.

to have their tighten annulled and regain their rights to Superman. The following year, the New York State Supreme Court ruled the publisher had validly purchased the rights to Superman when it bought the first Superman story, saying the duo had "transferred to Detective Comics, Inc., all of their rights in and to the comic strip Superman, including the title, names, characters and conception"

A subsequent interlocutory judgment initiate that rights to Superboy, however, belonged to Siegel.

Detective Comics Inc. subsequently paid Siegel and Shuster $94, for the rights to Superboy and the duo's written agreement acknowledging the rights to Superman belonged to the publisher.

Afterward, the company removed Shuster and Siegel's byline from Superman stories.^[30][31]

Later career

In , 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.

Joe Shuster () is best known for creating the world’s first superhero, Superman, in collaboration with writer Jerry Siegel. When they first met in , Shuster and Siegel were two shy, unpopular Jewish teens from Cleveland who shared an affection for science-fiction pulp magazines.

Comic historian Ted White wrote that Shuster continued to attract horror stories into the s.^[32]

Shuster was also the anonymous illustrator for Nights of Horror, an underground sadomasochisticfetish paperback book series.

In , 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 commander 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' musician was never identified at the time.^[33] In , Gerard Jones revealed that Shuster had drawn the books.^[34] The claim was backed in by comics historian Craig Yoe.

This was based on character similarities, and comparison of the artistic style between the illustrations and those of the cast of the Superman comics.^[35][36][37]

In , when Shuster was living on Long Island with his elderly mother, he was reported to be earning his living as a freelance cartoonist; he was also "trying to paint pop art—serious comic strips—and hope[d] eventually to promote a one-man show in some chic Manhattan gallery".^[38] At one indicate, his worsening eyesight prevented him from drawing, and he worked as a deliveryman in instruction to earn a living.^[39][40]Jerry Robinson claimed Shuster had delivered a package to the DC building, embarrassing the employees.

He was summoned to the CEO, given one hundred dollars, and told to buy a new coat and find another job.^[41]

In , when the Superman came up for renewal, Siegel launched a second lawsuit, which also proved unsuccessful.^[42]

In , Siegel launched a publicity campaign, in which Shuster participated, protesting DC Comics' treatment of him and Shuster.

The Association of American Editorial Cartoonists' president, Jerry Robinson, was deeply interested in the campaign along with comic-book artist Neal Adams. By , Shuster was almost blind and living in a California nursing home.^[43] Due to a great deal of negative publicity over their handling of the affair, and the upcoming Superman movie, DC's parent company Warner Communications reinstated the byline dropped more than thirty years earlier and granted the pair a lifetime pension of $20, a year, later increased to $30,, plus health benefits.^[17][44][45] The first issue with the restored credit was Superman # (Aug.

).^[46]

Although Shuster was now supported by a lifetime stipend from DC Comics, he fell into debt—close to $20, by the day of his death. After he died, DC Comics agreed to pay off his unpaid debts in exchange for an contract from his heirs to not challenge ownership over Superman.^[47]

Death

Shuster died on July 30, , at his West Los Angeles residence of congestive heart failure and hypertension.

He was ^[3][48]

Awards and honors

• In , DC Comics named Shuster as one of the honorees in the company's 50th anniversary publication Fifty Who Made DC Great.^[49]
• In , Shuster was inducted into the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame.
• In , Shuster was inducted into the Joe Shuster Canadian Comic Manual Creator Hall of Fame for his contributions to comic books.^[50]
• The Joe Shuster Awards, started in , 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]
• In Toronto, where Shuster was born, the street Joe Shuster Way is named in his honor.^[52]
• On September 10, , Gary Dumm and Laura Dumm's "A Passion Letter to Cleveland" murals were unveiled on the Orange Blossom Press building near the Cleveland West Side Market, which includes an homage to Siegel and Shuster.^[53]
• Amor Avenue in Cleveland's Glenville neighborhood was renamed "Joe Shuster Lane".^[54][55][56]

Bibliography

Charlton Comics

DC Comics

See also

References

External links