hide

Superman

Article
Talk

Appearancehide

Text

SmallStandardLarge

Width

StandardWide

Color

AutomaticLightDark

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sorry to interrupt, but only a fraction of readers will see this.This Wednesday, we ask you to join the 2% of readers who give. If everyone reading this right now gave just $2.75, we’d reach our goal quickly. $2.75 is all we ask.Give $2.75 Maybe later

July 15: Wikipedia still can’t be sold

We’re sorry we’ve made several attempts to reach you. It’s Wednesday, July 15, and Wikipedia is seeing fewer readers this year so your visit means a lot. If everyone reading this gave $2.75 today, we’d hit our goal quickly. Most readers don’t donate; only 2% do. Wikipedia is run by a nonprofit, not by a billionaire. So if Wikipedia has given you $2.75 worth of knowledge, please give. Any contribution helps, whether it’s $2.75 or $25.Give $2.75Give a different amountMaybe later I already donatedClose

This article is about the superhero. For other uses, see Superman (disambiguation).

“Man of tomorrow” redirects here. For other uses, see Man of tomorrow (disambiguation).

Clark Kent / Kal-El Superman
Superman on a variant cover of Action Comics #1000 (April 2018) Art by Jason Fabok.
Publication information
Publisher	DC Comics
First appearance	Action Comics #1 (cover-dated June 1938; published April 18, 1938)
Created by	Jerry Siegel (writer) Joe Shuster (artist)
In-story information
Alter ego	Kal-El (birth name; Krypton identity) Clark Kent (adopted name; civilian identity)
Species	Kryptonian
Place of origin	Krypton
Team affiliations	Justice League Legion of Super-Heroes Superman Family
Partnerships	Supergirl (various)Superboy (various)Batman Wonder Woman
Notable aliases	SuperboyThe Man of SteelThe Last Son of KryptonThe Man of TomorrowThe Big Blue Boy ScoutThe Metropolis MarvelThe Champion of the Oppressed
Abilities	See list

Superman is a superhero created by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster, first appearing in issue #1 of Action Comics, published in the United States on April 18, 1938.^[1] Superman has been regularly published in American comic books published by DC Comics since then, and has been adapted to other media including radio serials, novels, films, television shows, theater, and video games. Superman is the archetypal superhero: he wears an outlandish costume, uses a codename, and fights evil and averts disasters with the aid of extraordinary abilities. Although there are earlier characters who arguably fit this definition, it was Superman who popularized the superhero genre and established its conventions. He was the best-selling superhero in American comic books up until the 1980s^[2] and remains the highest grossing superhero if one considers the entire history of the genre (starting in 1938).^[3]

Superman was born Kal-El, on the fictional planet Krypton. As a baby, his parents Jor-El and Lara sent him to Earth in a small spaceship shortly before Krypton was destroyed in an apocalyptic cataclysm. His ship landed in the American countryside near the fictional town of Smallville, Kansas, where he was found and adopted by farmers Jonathan and Martha Kent, who named him Clark Kent. The Kents quickly realized he was superhuman; all of his physical and sensory abilities are far beyond those of a human, and he is nearly impervious to harm and capable of unassisted flight. His adoptive parents having instilled him with strong morals, he chooses to use his powers to benefit humanity, and to fight crime as a vigilante. To protect his personal life, he changes into a primary-colored costume and uses the alias “Superman” when fighting crime. Clark resides in the fictional American city of Metropolis, where he works as a journalist for the Daily Planet alongside supporting characters including his love interest and fellow journalist Lois Lane, photographer Jimmy Olsen, and editor-in-chief Perry White. His enemies include Brainiac, General Zod, and archenemy Lex Luthor.

Since 1939, Superman has been featured in both Action Comics and his own Superman comic. He exists within the DC Universe, where he interacts with other heroes including fellow Justice League members like Wonder Woman and Batman, and appears in various titles based on the team. Different versions of the character exist in alternative universes; the Superman from the Golden Age of comic books was later labeled as the Earth-Two version while the version appearing in Silver Age and Bronze Age comics has been labeled the Earth-One Superman. His persona has also inspired the creation of characters such as Supergirl, Superboy and Krypto the Superdog.

Superman has been adapted outside of comics. The radio series The Adventures of Superman ran from 1940 to 1951 and would feature Bud Collyer as the voice of Superman. Collyer would also voice the character in a series of animated shorts produced by Fleischer/Famous Studios and released between 1941 and 1943. Superman also appeared in film serials in 1948 and 1950, played by Kirk Alyn. Christopher Reeve would portray Superman in the 1978 film and its sequels, and define the character in cinema for generations. Superman would continue to appear in feature films, including a series starring Henry Cavill and a 2025 film starring David Corenswet. The character has also appeared in numerous television series, including Adventures of Superman, played by George Reeves, and Superman: The Animated Series, voiced by Tim Daly.

Development

Jerry Siegel, writer

Joe Shuster, illustrator

Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster met in 1932 while attending Glenville High School in Cleveland and bonded over their admiration of fiction. Siegel aspired to become a writer and Shuster aspired to become an illustrator. Siegel wrote amateur science fiction stories, which he self-published as a magazine called Science Fiction: The Advance Guard of Future Civilization. His friend Shuster often provided illustrations for his work.^[4] In January 1933, Siegel published a short story in his magazine titled “The Reign of the Super-Man“. The titular character is a homeless man named Bill Dunn who is tricked by an evil scientist into consuming an experimental drug. The drug gives Dunn the powers of mind-reading, mind-control, and clairvoyance. He uses these powers maliciously for profit and amusement, but then the drug wears off, leaving him a powerless vagrant again. Shuster provided illustrations, depicting Dunn as a bald man.^[5]

Siegel and Shuster shifted to making comic strips, with a focus on adventure and comedy. They wanted to become syndicated newspaper strip authors, so they showed their ideas to various newspaper editors. However, the newspaper editors were not impressed, and told them that if they wanted to make a successful comic strip, it had to be something more sensational than anything else on the market. This prompted Siegel to revisit Superman as a comic strip character.^[6]^[7] Siegel modified Superman’s powers to make him even more sensational. Like Bill Dunn, the second prototype of Superman is given powers against his will by an unscrupulous scientist, but instead of psychic abilities, he acquires superhuman strength and bullet-proof skin.^[8]^[9] Additionally, this new Superman was a crime-fighting hero instead of a villain, because Siegel noted that comic strips with heroic protagonists tended to be more successful.^[10] In later years, Siegel once recalled that this Superman wore a “bat-like” cape in some panels, but typically he and Shuster agreed there was no costume yet, and there is none apparent in the surviving artwork.^[11]^[12]

Siegel and Shuster showed this second concept of Superman to Consolidated Book Publishers, based in Chicago.^[13]^[a] In May 1933, Consolidated had published a comic book titled Detective Dan: Secret Operative 48.^[14] It contained all-original stories as opposed to reprints of newspaper strips, which was a novelty at the time.^[15] Siegel and Shuster put together a comic book in a similar format called The Superman. A delegation from Consolidated visited Cleveland that summer on a business trip and Siegel and Shuster took the opportunity to present their work in person.^[16]^[17] Although Consolidated expressed interest, they later pulled out of the comics business without ever offering a book deal because the sales of Detective Dan were disappointing.^[18]^[19]

Cover of an unpublished comic book, 1933

Siegel believed publishers kept rejecting them because he and Shuster were young and unknown, so he looked for an established artist to replace Shuster.^[20] When Siegel told Shuster what he was doing, Shuster reacted by burning their rejected Superman comic, sparing only the cover. They continued collaborating on other projects, but for the time being Shuster was through with Superman.^[21]

Siegel wrote to numerous artists.^[20] The first response came in July 1933 from Leo O’Mealia, who drew the Fu Manchu strip for the Bell Syndicate.^[22]^[23] In the script that Siegel sent to O’Mealia, Superman’s origin story changes: He is a “scientist-adventurer” from the far future when humanity has naturally evolved “superpowers”. Just before the Earth explodes, he escapes in a time-machine to the modern era, whereupon he immediately begins using his superpowers to fight crime.^[24] O’Mealia produced a few strips and showed them to his newspaper syndicate, but they were rejected. O’Mealia did not send to Siegel any copies of his strips, and they have been lost.^[25]

In June 1934, Siegel found another partner, an artist in Chicago named Russell Keaton.^[26]^[27] Keaton drew the Buck Rogers and Skyroads comic strips. In the script that Siegel sent Keaton in June, Superman’s origin story further evolved: In the distant future, when Earth is on the verge of exploding due to “giant cataclysms”, the last surviving man sends his three-year-old son back in time to the year 1935. The time-machine appears on a road where it is discovered by motorists Sam and Molly Kent. They leave the boy in an orphanage, but the staff struggle to control him because he has superhuman strength and impenetrable skin. The Kents adopt the boy and name him Clark, and teach him that he must use his fantastic natural gifts for the benefit of humanity. In November, Siegel sent Keaton an extension of his script: an adventure where Superman foils a conspiracy to kidnap a star football player. The extended script mentions that Clark puts on a special “uniform” when assuming the identity of Superman, but it is not described.^[28] Keaton produced two weeks’ worth of strips based on Siegel’s script. In November, Keaton showed his strips to a newspaper syndicate, but they too were rejected, and he abandoned the project.^[29]^[30]

Siegel and Shuster reconciled and resumed developing Superman together. The character became an alien from the planet Krypton. Shuster designed the now-familiar costume: tights with an “S” on the chest, over-shorts, and a cape.^[31]^[32]^[33] They made Clark Kent a journalist who pretends to be timid, and conceived his colleague Lois Lane, who is attracted to the bold and mighty Superman but does not realize that he and Kent are the same person.^[34]

In June 1935 Siegel and Shuster finally found work with National Allied Publications, a comic magazine publishing company in New York owned by Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson.^[36] Wheeler-Nicholson published two of their strips in New Fun Comics #6 (1935): “Henri Duval” and “Doctor Occult“.^[37] Siegel and Shuster also showed him Superman and asked him to market Superman to the newspapers on their behalf.^[38] In October, Wheeler-Nicholson offered to publish Superman in one of his own magazines.^[39] Siegel and Shuster refused his offer because Wheeler-Nicholson had demonstrated himself to be an irresponsible businessman. He had been slow to respond to their letters and had not paid them for their work in New Fun Comics #6. They chose to keep marketing Superman to newspaper syndicates themselves.^[40]^[41] Despite the erratic pay, Siegel and Shuster kept working for Wheeler-Nicholson because he was the only publisher who was buying their work, and over the years they produced other adventure strips for his magazines.^[42]

Wheeler-Nicholson’s financial difficulties continued to mount. In 1936, he formed a joint corporation with Harry Donenfeld and Jack Liebowitz called Detective Comics, Inc. in order to release his third magazine, which was titled Detective Comics. Siegel and Shuster produced stories for Detective Comics too, such as “Slam Bradley“. Wheeler-Nicholson fell into deep debt to Donenfeld and Liebowitz, and in early January 1938, Donenfeld and Liebowitz petitioned Wheeler-Nicholson’s company into bankruptcy and seized it.^[4]^[43]

In early December 1937, Siegel visited Liebowitz in New York, and Liebowitz asked Siegel to produce some comics for an upcoming comic anthology magazine called Action Comics.^[44]^[45] Siegel proposed some new stories, but not Superman. Siegel and Shuster were, at the time, negotiating a deal with the McClure Newspaper Syndicate for Superman. In early January 1938, Siegel had a three-way telephone conversation with Liebowitz and an employee of McClure named Max Gaines. Gaines informed Siegel that McClure had rejected Superman, and asked if he could forward their Superman strips to Liebowitz so that Liebowitz could consider them for Action Comics. Siegel agreed.^[46] Liebowitz and his colleagues were impressed by the strips, and they asked Siegel and Shuster to develop the strips into 13 pages for Action Comics.^[47] Having grown tired of rejections, Siegel and Shuster accepted the offer. At least now they would see Superman published.^[48]^[49] Siegel and Shuster submitted their work in late February and were paid US$130 (equivalent to $3,000 in 2025) for their work ($10 per page).^[50] In early March they signed a contract at Liebowitz’s request in which they gave away the copyright for Superman to Detective Comics, Inc. This was normal practice in the business, and Siegel and Shuster had given away the copyrights to their previous works as well.^[51]

The duo’s revised version of Superman appeared in the first issue of Action Comics, which was published on April 18, 1938. The issue was a huge success thanks to Superman’s feature.^[1]^[52]^[53]

Influences

Siegel and Shuster read pulp science-fiction and adventure magazines, and many stories featured characters with fantastical abilities such as telepathy, clairvoyance, and superhuman strength. One character in particular was John Carter of Mars from the novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs. John Carter is a human who is transported to Mars, where the lower gravity makes him stronger than the natives and allows him to leap great distances.^[54]^[55] Another influence was Philip Wylie‘s 1930 novel Gladiator, featuring a protagonist named Hugo Danner who had similar powers.^[56]^[57]

Superman’s stance and devil-may-care attitude were influenced by the characters of Douglas Fairbanks, who starred in adventure films such as The Mark of Zorro and Robin Hood.^[58] The name of Superman’s home city, Metropolis, was taken from the 1927 film of the same name.^[59] Popeye cartoons were also an influence.^[59]

Douglas Fairbanks and Harold Lloyd influenced the look of Superman and Clark Kent, respectively.

Clark Kent’s harmless facade and dual identity were inspired by the protagonists of such movies as Don Diego de la Vega in The Mark of Zorro and Sir Percy Blakeney in The Scarlet Pimpernel. Siegel thought this would make for interesting dramatic contrast and good humor.^[60]^[61] Another inspiration was slapstick comedian Harold Lloyd. The archetypal Lloyd character was a mild-mannered man who finds himself abused by bullies but later in the story snaps and fights back furiously.^[62]

Kent is a journalist because Siegel often imagined himself becoming one after leaving school. The love triangle between Lois Lane, Clark, and Superman was inspired by Siegel’s own awkwardness with girls.^[63]

The pair collected comic strips in their youth, with a favorite being Winsor McCay‘s fantastical Little Nemo.^[59] Shuster remarked on the artists who played an important part in the development of his own style: “Alex Raymond and Burne Hogarth were my idols – also Milt Caniff, Hal Foster, and Roy Crane.”^[59] Shuster taught himself to draw by tracing over the art in the strips and magazines they collected.^[4]

As a boy, Shuster was interested in fitness culture^[64] and a fan of strongmen such as Siegmund Breitbart and Joseph Greenstein. He collected fitness magazines and manuals and used their photographs as visual references for his art.^[4]

The visual design of Superman came from multiple influences. The tight-fitting suit and shorts were inspired by the costumes of wrestlers, boxers, and strongmen. In early concept art, Shuster gave Superman laced sandals like those of strongmen and classical heroes, but these were eventually changed to red boots.^[35] The costumes of Douglas Fairbanks were also an influence.^[65] The emblem on his chest was inspired by heraldic crests.^[66] Many pulp action heroes such as swashbucklers wore capes. Superman’s face was based on Johnny Weissmuller with touches derived from the comic-strip character Dick Tracy and from the work of cartoonist Roy Crane.^[67]

The word “superman” was commonly used in the 1920s and 1930s to describe men of great ability, most often athletes and politicians.^[68] It occasionally appeared in pulp fiction stories as well, such as “The Superman of Dr. Jukes”.^[69] It is unclear whether Siegel and Shuster were influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche‘s concept of the Übermensch; they never acknowledged as much.^[70]

Comics

Comic books

Newspaper strips

Editors

Initially, Jerry Siegel was allowed to write Superman more or less as he saw fit because nobody had anticipated the success and rapid expansion of the franchise.^[91]^[92] But soon Siegel and Shuster’s work was put under careful oversight for fear of trouble with censors.^[93] Siegel was forced to tone down the violence and social crusading that characterized his early stories.^[94] Editor Whitney Ellsworth, hired in 1940, dictated that Superman not kill.^[95] Sexuality was banned, and colorfully outlandish villains such as Ultra-Humanite and Toyman were favored over gangsters as they were thought to be less frightening to young readers.^[96]

Mort Weisinger was the editor on Superman comics from 1941 to 1970, his tenure briefly interrupted by military service. Siegel and his fellow writers had developed the character with little thought of building a coherent mythology, but as the number of Superman titles and the pool of writers grew, Weisinger demanded a more disciplined approach.^[97] Weisinger assigned story ideas, and the logic of Superman’s powers, his origin, the locales, and his relationships with his growing cast of supporting characters were carefully planned. Elements such as Bizarro, his cousin Supergirl, the Phantom Zone, the Fortress of Solitude, alternate varieties of kryptonite, robot doppelgangers, and Krypto were introduced during this era. The complicated universe built under Weisinger was beguiling to devoted readers but alienating to casuals.^[98] Weisinger favored lighthearted stories over serious drama, and avoided sensitive subjects such as the Vietnam War and the American civil rights movement because he feared his right-wing views would alienate his left-leaning writers and readers.^[99] Weisinger also introduced letters columns in 1958 to encourage feedback and build intimacy with readers.^[100]

Weisinger retired in 1970 and Julius Schwartz took over. By his own admission, Weisinger had grown out of touch with newer readers.^[101] Starting with The Sandman Saga, Schwartz updated Superman by making Clark Kent a television anchor, and he retired overused plot elements such as kryptonite and robot doppelgangers.^[102] Schwartz also scaled Superman’s powers down to a level closer to Siegel’s depiction. These changes would eventually be reversed by later writers. Schwartz allowed stories with serious drama such as “For the Man Who Has Everything” (Superman Annual #11), in which the villain Mongul torments Superman with an illusion of happy family life on a living Krypton.

Schwartz retired from DC Comics in 1986 and was succeeded by Mike Carlin as an editor on Superman comics. His retirement coincided with DC Comics’ decision to reboot the DC Universe with the companywide-crossover storyline “Crisis on Infinite Earths“. In The Man of Steel, renowned artist and writer John Byrne rewrote the Superman mythos; again reducing Superman’s powers, which writers had slowly re-strengthened, and revised many supporting characters, such as making Lex Luthor a billionaire industrialist rather than a mad scientist, and making Supergirl an artificial shapeshifting organism because DC wanted Superman to be the sole surviving Kryptonian.

Carlin was promoted to Executive Editor for the DC Universe books in 1996, a position he held until 2002. KC Carlson took his place as editor of the Superman comics.

Aesthetic style

In the earlier decades of Superman comics, artists were expected to conform to a certain “house style”.^[103] Joe Shuster defined the aesthetic style of Superman in the 1940s. After Shuster left National, Wayne Boring succeeded him as the principal artist on Superman comic books.^[104] He redrew Superman taller and more detailed.^[105] Around 1955, Curt Swan in turn succeeded Boring.^[106] The 1980s saw a boom in the diversity of comic book art and now there is no single “house style” in Superman comics.^{[citation needed]}

Copyright issues

Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster

Main article: Copyright lawsuits by Superman’s creators

In a contract dated March 1, 1938, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster gave away the copyright to Superman to their employer, DC Comics (then known as Detective Comics, Inc.)^[b] prior to Superman’s first publication in April. Contrary to popular perception, the $130 that DC Comics paid them was for their first Superman story, not the copyright to the character — that, they gave away for free. This was normal practice in the comic magazine industry and they had done the same with their previous published works (Slam Bradley, Doctor Occult, etc.),^[51] but Superman became far more popular and valuable than they anticipated and they much regretted giving him away.^[107] DC Comics retained Siegel and Shuster, and they were paid well because they were popular with the readers.^[108] Between 1938 and 1947, DC Comics paid them together at least $401,194.85 (equivalent to $7,730,000 in 2025).^[109]^[110]

Siegel wrote most of the magazine and daily newspaper stories until he was conscripted into the United States Army in 1943, whereupon the task was passed to ghostwriters.^[111]^[112] While Siegel was serving in Hawaii, DC Comics published a story featuring a child version of Superman called “Superboy“, which was based on a script Siegel had submitted several years before. Siegel was furious because DC Comics did this without having bought the character.^[113]

After Siegel’s discharge from the Army, he and Shuster sued DC Comics in 1947 for the rights to Superman and Superboy. The judge ruled that Superman belonged to DC Comics, but that Superboy was a separate entity that belonged to Siegel. Siegel and Shuster settled out-of-court with DC Comics, which paid the pair $94,013.16 (equivalent to $1,259,802 in 2025) in exchange for the full rights to both Superman and Superboy.^[114] DC Comics then fired Siegel and Shuster.^[115]

DC Comics rehired Jerry Siegel as a writer in 1959.

In 1965, Siegel and Shuster attempted to regain rights to Superman using the renewal option in the Copyright Act of 1909, but the court ruled Siegel and Shuster had transferred the renewal rights to DC Comics in 1938. Siegel and Shuster appealed, but the appeals court upheld this decision. DC Comics fired Siegel once again, when he filed this second lawsuit.^[116]

In 1975, Siegel and several other comic book writers and artists launched a public campaign for better compensation and treatment of comic creators. Warner Brothers agreed to give Siegel and Shuster a yearly stipend, full medical benefits, and credit their names in all future Superman productions in exchange for never contesting ownership of Superman. Siegel and Shuster upheld this bargain.^[4]

Shuster died in 1992. DC Comics offered Shuster’s heirs a stipend in exchange for never challenging ownership of Superman, which they accepted for some years.^[114]

Siegel died in 1996. His heirs attempted to take the rights to Superman using the termination provision of the Copyright Act of 1976. DC Comics negotiated an agreement wherein it would pay the Siegel heirs several million dollars and a yearly stipend of $500,000 in exchange for permanently granting DC the rights to Superman. DC Comics also agreed to insert the line “By Special Arrangement with the Jerry Siegel Family” in all future Superman productions.^[117] The Siegels accepted DC’s offer in an October 2001 letter.^[114]

Copyright lawyer and movie producer Marc Toberoff then struck a deal with the heirs of both Siegel and Shuster to help them get the rights to Superman in exchange for signing the rights over to his production company, Pacific Pictures. Both groups accepted. The Siegel heirs called off their deal with DC Comics and in 2004 sued DC for the rights to Superman and Superboy. In 2008, the judge ruled in favor of the Siegels. DC Comics appealed the decision, and the appeals court ruled in favor of DC, arguing that the October 2001 letter was binding. In 2003, the Shuster heirs served a termination notice for Shuster’s grant of his half of the copyright to Superman. DC Comics sued the Shuster heirs in 2010, and the court ruled in DC’s favor on the grounds that the 1992 agreement with the Shuster heirs barred them from terminating the grant.^[114]

Under current US copyright law, Superman’s first appearance in Action Comics #1 is due to enter the US public domain on January 1, 2034.^[118]^[c] However, this will only apply (at first) to the character as he is depicted in 1938. In addition DC Comics retains trademarks on Superman’s name, image and ‘S’ logo, and unlike copyrights, trademarks do not expire unless they cease to be used.^[119]

Captain Marvel

Superman’s success immediately begat a wave of imitations. The most successful from this period was Captain Marvel, first published by Fawcett Comics in December 1939. Captain Marvel had many similarities to Superman: Herculean strength, invulnerability, the ability to fly, a cape, a secret identity, and a job as a journalist. DC Comics filed a lawsuit against Fawcett Comics for copyright infringement.^[120]

The trial began in March 1948 after seven years of discovery. The judge ruled that Fawcett had indeed infringed on Superman. However, the judge also found that the copyright notices that appeared with the Superman newspaper strips did not meet the technical standards of the Copyright Act of 1909 and were therefore invalid. Furthermore, since the newspaper strips carried stories adapted from Action Comics, the judge ruled that DC Comics had effectively abandoned the copyright to the Action Comics stories and Superman, and therefore forfeited its right to sue Fawcett for copyright infringement.^[114]

DC Comics appealed this decision. The appeals court ruled that unintentional mistakes in the copyright notices of the newspaper strips did not invalidate the copyrights. Furthermore, Fawcett knew that DC Comics never intended to abandon the copyrights, and therefore Fawcett’s infringement was not an innocent misunderstanding, and therefore Fawcett owed damages to DC Comics.^[d] The appeals court remanded the case back to the lower court to determine how much Fawcett owed in damages.^[114]

At that point, Fawcett Comics decided to settle out of court with DC Comics. Fawcett paid DC Comics $400,000 (equivalent to $4,813,000 in 2025) and agreed to stop publishing Captain Marvel. The last Captain Marvel story from Fawcett Comics was published in September 1953.^[121]

DC Comics licensed Captain Marvel in 1972 and published crossover stories with Superman. By 1991, DC Comics had purchased Fawcett Comics and with it the full rights to Captain Marvel. DC eventually renamed the character “Shazam” to prevent disputes with Marvel Comics, who had created a character of their own named “Captain Marvel” back when the Fawcett character had been out of print.^[122]

Character overview

Several elements of the Superman narrative have remained consistent in the myriad stories published since 1938.

Superman

In Action Comics #1 (1938), Superman is born on an alien world to a technologically advanced species that resembles humans. Shortly after he is born, his planet is destroyed in a natural cataclysm, but his scientist father foresaw the calamity and saves his baby son by sending him to Earth in a small spaceship. The ship is too small to carry anyone else, so Superman’s parents are forced to stay behind and die in the cataclysm. The earliest newspaper strips name the planet Krypton, the baby Kal-L, and his biological parents Jor-L and Lora;^[123] their names were changed to Jor-El, and Lara in a 1942 spinoff novel by George Lowther.^[124] The ship lands in the American countryside, where the baby is discovered by the Kents, a farming couple.

The Kents name the boy Clark and raise him in a farming community. A 1947 episode of the radio serial places this yet unnamed community in Iowa.^[125] It is named Smallville in Superboy #2 (June 1949). The 1978 Superman movie placed it in Kansas, as have most Superman stories since.^[126] New Adventures of Superboy #22 (Oct. 1981) places it in Maryland.

In Action Comics #1 and most stories published before 1986, Superman’s powers begin developing in infancy. From 1944 to 1986, DC Comics regularly published stories of Superman’s childhood and adolescent adventures, when he called himself “Superboy“. From 1986 on (beginning with Man of Steel #1), Superman’s powers emerged more slowly and he began his superhero career as an adult.

The Kents teach Clark he must conceal his otherworldly origins and use his fantastic powers to do good. Clark creates the costumed identity of Superman so as to protect his personal privacy and the safety of his loved ones. As Clark Kent, he wears eyeglasses to disguise his face and wears his Superman costume underneath his clothes so that he can change at a moment’s notice. To complete this disguise, Clark avoids violent confrontation, preferring to slip away and change into Superman when danger arises, and in older stories he would suffer occasional ridicule for his apparent cowardice.

In Superboy #78 (1960), Superboy makes his costume out of the indestructible blankets found in the ship he came to Earth in. In Man of Steel #1 (1986), Martha Kent makes the costume from human-manufactured cloth, and it is rendered indestructible by an aura that Superman projects. The “S” on Superman’s chest at first was simply an initial for “Superman”. When writing the script for the 1978 movie, Tom Mankiewicz made it the crest of Superman’s Kryptonian family, the House of El.^[127] This was carried over into some comic book stories and later movies, such as Man of Steel. In the comic story Superman: Birthright, the crest is described as an old Kryptonian symbol for hope.

Clark works as a newspaper journalist. In the earliest stories, he worked for The Daily Star, but the second episode of the radio serial changed this to the Daily Planet. In comics from the early 1970s, Clark worked as a television journalist, which was an attempt to modernize the character. However, for the 1978 movie, the producers chose to make Clark a newspaper journalist again because that was how most people outside of comic book readers knew him.^[128]

The first story in which Superman dies was published in Superman #149 (1961), in which he is murdered by Lex Luthor by means of kryptonite. This story was “imaginary” and therefore was ignored in subsequent books. In Superman #188 (April 1966), Superman is killed by kryptonite radiation but is revived in the same issue by one of his android doppelgangers. In the 1990s The Death and Return of Superman story arc, after a deadly battle with Doomsday, Superman died in Superman #75 (Jan. 1993). He was later revived by the Eradicator using Kryptonian technology. In Superman #52 (May 2016) Superman is killed by kryptonite poisoning, and this time he is not resurrected, but replaced by the Superman of an alternate timeline.

Superman maintains a secret hideout called the “Fortress of Solitude”, which is located somewhere in the Arctic. Here, Superman keeps a collection of mementos and a laboratory for science experiments. Action Comics #241 (1958) depicts the Fortress of Solitude as a cave in a mountain, sealed with a very heavy door that is opened with a gigantic key too heavy for anyone but Superman to use. In the 1978 movie, the Fortress of Solitude is a structure made of white crystal.

Clark Kent

“Clark Kent” redirects here. For other uses, see Clark Kent (disambiguation).

Superman’s secret identity is Clark Joseph Kent, a reporter for the Daily Planet. Although his name and history originate from his early life with his adoptive Earth parents, everything about Clark was staged for the benefit of his alternate identity: as a reporter for the Daily Planet, he receives late-breaking news before the general public, always has a plausible reason to be present at crime scenes, and need not strictly account for his whereabouts as long as he makes his publication deadlines. He sees his job as a journalist as an extension of his Superman responsibilities—bringing truth to the forefront and fighting for the little guy. He believes that everybody has the right to know what is going on in the world, regardless of who is involved.^[129] In the Bronze Age of Comic Books, Clark Kent was featured in a series that appeared primarily in The Superman Family, “The Private Life of Clark Kent” where Superman dealt with various situations subtly while remaining Clark.

To deflect suspicion that he is Superman, Clark Kent adopted a mainly passive and introverted personality with conservative mannerisms, a higher-pitched voice, and a slight slouch. This personality is typically described as “mild-mannered”, as in the opening narration of Max Fleischer‘s Superman animated theatrical shorts. These traits extended into Clark’s wardrobe, which typically consists of a bland-colored business suit, a red necktie, black-rimmed glasses, combed-back hair, and occasionally a fedora. Clark wears his Superman costume underneath his street clothes, allowing easy changes between the two personae and the dramatic gesture of ripping open his shirt to reveal the familiar “S” emblem when called into action. His hair also changes with the clothing change, with Superman sporting a small curl or spit curl on his forehead. Superman usually stores his Clark Kent clothing compressed in a secret pouch within his cape,^[130] though some stories have shown him leaving his clothes in some covert location (such as the Daily Planet storeroom)^[131] for later retrieval.

As Superman’s alter ego, the personality, concept, and name of Clark Kent have become synonymous with secret identities and innocuous fronts for ulterior motives and activities. In 1992, Superman co-creator Joe Shuster told the Toronto Star that the name derived from 1930s cinematic leading men Clark Gable and Kent Taylor, but the persona from bespectacled silent film comic Harold Lloyd and himself.^[132] Clark’s middle name is given variously as either Joseph, Jerome, or Jonathan, being allusions to creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, and to his adoptive father.

Personality

In the original Siegel and Shuster stories, Superman’s personality is rough and aggressive. He often uses excessive force and terror against criminals, on some occasions even killing them. This came to an end in late 1940 when new editor Whitney Ellsworth instituted a code of conduct for his characters to follow, banning Superman from ever killing.^[133] The character was softened and given a sense of humanitarianism. Ellsworth’s code, however, is not to be confused with “the Comics Code“, which was created in 1954 by the Comics Code Authority and ultimately abandoned by every major comic book publisher by the early 21st century.

In his first appearances, Superman was considered a vigilante by the authorities, being fired upon by the National Guard as he razed a slum so that the government would create better housing conditions for the poor. By 1942, however, Superman was working side-by-side with the police.^[134]^[135] Today, Superman is commonly seen as a brave and kind-hearted hero with a strong sense of justice, morality, and righteousness. He adheres to an unwavering moral code instilled in him by his adoptive parents.^[136] His commitment to operating within the law has been an example to many citizens and other heroes, but has stirred resentment and criticism among others, who refer to him as the “big blue boy scout”. Superman can be rather rigid in this trait, causing tensions in the superhero community.^[137] This was most notable with Wonder Woman, one of his closest friends, after she killed Maxwell Lord.^[137] Booster Gold initially had an icy relationship with the Man of Steel but grew to respect him.^[138]

Having lost his home world of Krypton, Superman is very protective of Earth,^[139] and especially of Clark Kent’s family and friends. This same loss, combined with the pressure of using his powers responsibly, has caused Superman to feel lonely on Earth, despite having his friends and parents. Previous encounters with people he thought to be fellow Kryptonians, Power Girl^[140] and Mon-El,^[141] have led to disappointment. The arrival of Supergirl, who has been confirmed to be his cousin from Krypton, relieved this loneliness somewhat.^[142] Superman’s Fortress of Solitude acts as a place of solace for him in times of loneliness and despair.^[143]

Powers, abilities, and weaknesses

The catalog of Superman’s powers and his strength has varied considerably over the vast body of Superman fiction released since 1938.

Since Action Comics #1 (1938), Superman possesses superhuman strength. The cover of Action Comics #1 shows him effortlessly lifting a car over his head. Another classic feat of strength on Superman’s part is breaking steel chains. In some stories, he is strong enough to shift the orbits of planets and crush coal into diamond with his bare hands.

Since Action Comics #1 (1938), Superman has a highly durable body, invulnerable for most practical purposes. At the very least, bullets bounce harmlessly off his body. In some stories, such as Kingdom Come, not even a nuclear bomb can harm him.

In the earliest stories, Superman’s costume is made out of exotic materials that are as tough as he is, which is why it typically does not tear up when he performs superhuman feats. In later stories, beginning with Man of Steel #1 (1986), Superman’s body is said to project an aura that renders invulnerable any tight-fitting clothes he wears, and hence his costume is as durable as he is even if made of common cloth.

In Action Comics #1, Superman possesses superhuman speed, allowing him to run and leap by traveling at supersonic speeds, which he could do to a prodigious degree thanks to his strength, but originally lacks flight. Superman gained the ability to fly in the second episode of the radio serial in 1940.^[144] Superman can run and fly faster than the speed of sound and in some stories, he can even fly faster than the speed of light to travel to distant galaxies.

Superman can project and perceive X-rays via his eyes, which allows him to see through objects. He first uses this power in Action Comics #11 (1939). Certain materials such as lead can block his X-ray vision.

Superman can project beams of heat from his eyes which are hot enough to melt steel. He first used this power in Superman #59 (1949) by applying his X-ray vision at its highest intensity. In later stories, this ability is simply called “heat vision”.

Superman can hear sounds that are too faint for a human to hear, and at frequencies outside the human hearing range. This ability was introduced in Action Comics #11 (1939).

Since Action Comics #20 (1940), Superman possesses superhuman breath, which enables him to inhale or blow huge amounts of air, as well as holding his breath indefinitely to remain underwater or space without adverse effects. He has a significant focus of his breath’s intensity to the point of freezing targets by blowing on them. The “freeze breath” was first demonstrated in Superman #129 (1959).

Action Comics #1 (1938) explained that Superman’s strength was common to all Kryptonians because they were a species “millions of years advanced of our own”. In the first newspaper strips, Jor-El is shown running and leaping like Superman, and his wife survives a building collapsing on her. Later stories explained they evolved superhuman strength simply because of Krypton’s higher gravity. Superman #146 (1961) established that Superman’s abilities other than strength (flight, durability, etc.) are activated by the light of Earth’s yellow sun. This was shortly changed to all of his powers including strength being activated by yellow sunlight and deactivated by red sunlight similar to that of Krypton’s sun.^[145]

Weaknesses

Exposure to green kryptonite radiation nullifies Superman’s powers and incapacitates him with pain and nausea; prolonged exposure will eventually kill him. Although green kryptonite is the most commonly seen form, writers have introduced other forms over the years: such as red, gold, blue, white, and black, each with peculiar effects.^[146] Gold kryptonite, for instance, nullifies Superman’s powers but otherwise does not harm him. Kryptonite first appeared in a 1943 episode of the radio serial.^[147] It first appeared in comics in Superman #61 (Dec. 1949).^[148]

Superman lacks special resistances to magic; as established in Superman #171 (1964), enchanted weapons and magical spells affect Superman as easily as they would a normal human.

Like all Kryptonians, Kal-El is also highly susceptible to psychokinetic phenomena ranging along Telekinesis, Illusion casting, Mind control, etc., as shown in Wonder Woman Vol 2 # 219 (Sept. 2005). A powerful enough psionic can affect either the psyche or microbiology of Superman to induce strokes or mangle his internal organs, as well as disrupt his mind and perceptions of the world, something a young metahuman showcased in Superman #48 (Oct. 1990).

Many stories describe Superman as being vulnerable to radiation at wavelengths equal to the light of the “red sun” of the planet Krypton, which causes him to temporarily lose his powers.

Over the years, writers have invented many other weaknesses for Superman using various science fiction tropes, with some of these weaknesses only existing for a short period of time.

Occasional equipment

This section needs expansion. You can help by making an edit request. (February 2025)

On occasion, Superman has made use of a special aeroplane called the Supermobile which has the same abilities as him and can protect him from the radiation of a red sun.^[149]

Superman has used several fictional robots that resemble his appearance and have similar abilities. Superman robots played a particularly dominant role in the late 1950s and 1960s era Superman comics, when readers were first introduced to Superman possessing various robot duplicates. These robots each possessed a fraction of Superman’s powers, and were sometimes used to substitute for him on missions or protect his secret identity.^[150]^[151] One notable Superman robot was named Ajax, also known as Wonder Man.^[152] Other Superman robots had other names, including Robot Z,^[153] Robot X-3,^[154] and MacDuff.^[155]

The idea of Superman robots extended into Superboy and Supergirl stories of the period as well, with the two also possessing robotic duplicates.^[156]^[157] In the early 1970s, the Superman comics largely abandoned the Superman robots as part of a change in tone and writing style. In-universe, the robots are rendered unusable by Earth’s pollution levels and artificial radiation.^[158] The notion of Superman robots was reintroduced for post-Crisis comic continuity in a late 1990s storyline. While under Dominus‘ control, Superman builds a series of robots to oversee the Earth. Unlike the original Superman robots, they possess a more mechanical appearance.^[159] In Superman (vol. 2) #170, Krypto nearly kills Mongul and is confined to the Fortress of Solitude as punishment. A Superman robot nicknamed “Ned” is employed as Krypto’s caretaker. In a later storyline, Brainiac 8 revived and increased the power to a forgotten Superman robot. The robot attacked the Teen Titans, killing Troia and Omen before it was defeated.^[160]

Supporting characters

Lois Lane

Others

Other supporting characters include Jimmy Olsen, a photographer at the Daily Planet, who is friends with both Superman and Clark Kent, though in most stories he does not know that Clark is Superman. Jimmy is frequently described as “Superman’s pal”, and was conceived to give young male readers a relatable character through which they could fantasize being friends with Superman.

In the earliest comic book stories, Clark Kent’s employer is George Taylor of The Daily Star, but the second episode of the radio serial changed this to Perry White of the Daily Planet.^[164]

Clark Kent’s foster parents are Jonathan and Martha Kent. In many stories, one or both of them have died by the time Clark becomes Superman. Clark’s parents taught him that he should use his abilities for altruistic means, but that he should also find some way to safeguard his private life.

Antagonists

Main article: List of Superman enemies

The villains Superman faced in the earliest stories were ordinary humans, such as gangsters, corrupt politicians, and violent husbands; but they soon grew more colorful and outlandish so as to avoid offending censors or scaring children. The mad scientist Ultra-Humanite, introduced in Action Comics #13 (June 1939), was Superman’s first recurring villain. Superman’s best-known nemesis, Lex Luthor, was introduced in Action Comics #23 (April 1940) and has been depicted as either a mad scientist or a wealthy businessman (sometimes both).^[165] In 1944, the magical imp Mister Mxyzptlk, Superman’s first recurring super-powered adversary, was introduced.^[166] Superman’s first alien villain, Brainiac, debuted in Action Comics #242 (July 1958). General Zod, who first appeared in Adventure Comics #283 (April 1961), is a fellow Kryptonian with similar powers. The monstrous Doomsday, introduced in Superman: The Man of Steel #17–18 (Nov.-Dec. 1992), was the first villain to evidently kill Superman in physical combat without exploiting Superman’s critical weaknesses such as kryptonite.

Alternative depictions

Main article: Alternative versions of Superman

The details of Superman’s origin story and supporting cast vary across his large body of fiction released since 1938, but most versions conform to the basic template described above. A few stories feature radically altered versions of Superman. An example is the graphic novel Superman: Red Son, which depicts a communist Superman who rules the Soviet Union.^[167] DC Comics has on some occasions published crossover stories where different versions of Superman interact with each other using the plot device of parallel universes. For instance, in the 1960s, the Superman of “Earth-One” would occasionally feature in stories alongside the Superman of “Earth-Two”, the latter of whom resembled Superman as he was portrayed in the 1940s.^[168]

Impact and legacy

The superhero archetype

Superman is often considered the first superhero. This point can be debated: Ogon Bat, the Phantom, Zorro, and Mandrake the Magician arguably fit the definition of the superhero yet predate Superman. Nevertheless, Superman popularized this kind of character and established the conventions: a costume, a codename, extraordinary abilities, and an altruistic mission.^{[citation needed]} Superman’s success in 1938 begat a wave of imitations, which include Batman, Captain America, and Captain Marvel. This flourishing is today referred to as America’s Golden Age of Comic Books, which lasted from 1938 to about 1950. The Golden Age ended when American superhero book sales declined, leading to the cancellation of many characters; but Superman was one of the few superhero franchises that survived this decline, and his sustained popularity into the late 1950s led to a revival in the Silver Age of Comic Books, when characters such as Spider-Man, Iron Man, and The X-Men were created.

After World War II, American superhero fiction entered Japanese culture. Astro Boy, first published in 1952, was inspired by Mighty Mouse, which in turn was a parody of Superman.^[169] The Superman animated shorts from the 1940s were first broadcast on Japanese television in 1955, and they were followed in 1956 by the TV show Adventures of Superman starring George Reeves. These shows were popular with the Japanese and inspired Japan’s own prolific genre of superheroes. The first Japanese superhero movie, Super Giant, was released in 1957. The first Japanese superhero TV show was Moonlight Mask in 1958. Other notable Japanese superheroes include Ultraman, Kamen Rider, and Sailor Moon.^[170]^[171]^[172]

Fine art

Since the Pop Art period and the 1960s, the character of Superman has been “appropriated” by multiple visual artists and incorporated into contemporary artwork,^[173]^[174] most notably by Andy Warhol,^[175]^[176] Roy Lichtenstein,^[177] Mel Ramos,^[178] Dulce Pinzon,^[179] Mr. Brainwash,^[180] Raymond Pettibon,^[181] Peter Saul,^[182] Giuseppe Veneziano,^[183] F. Lennox Campello,^[184] and others.^[180]^[185]^[186]

Vernacular

Several Superman-related terms have entered widespread English usage: “kryptonite” is now commonly used as a metaphor for a particular weakness, while “brainiac” and “bizarro” are used as generic terms for a highly intelligent person and for something strange or unconventional, respectively.^[187]^[188]^[189]^[190]^[191]^[192]

Auctions

In November 2025, a near pristine condition copy of Superman No. 1, the 1939 issue that introduced the Man of Steel in his first solo title was sold at Heritage Auctions for record breaking^{[clarification needed]} $9.12 million.^[193]

Literary analysis

Superman has been interpreted and discussed in many forms, with Umberto Eco noting that “he can be seen as the representative of all his similars”.^[194] Writing in Time in 1971, Gerald Clarke stated: “Superman’s enormous popularity might be looked upon as signaling the beginning of the end for the Horatio Alger myth of the self-made man.” Clarke viewed the comics characters as having to continuously update in order to maintain relevance and thus representing the mood of the nation. He regarded Superman’s character in the early seventies as a comment on the modern world, which he saw as a place in which “only the man with superpowers can survive and prosper”.^[195] Andrew Arnold, writing in the early 21st century, has noted Superman’s partial role in exploring assimilation, the character’s alien status allowing the reader to explore attempts to fit in on a somewhat superficial level.

A.C. Grayling, writing in The Spectator, traces Superman’s stances through the decades, from his 1930s campaign against crime being relevant to a nation under the influence of Al Capone, through the 1940s and World War II, a period in which Superman helped sell war bonds,^[196] and into the 1950s, where Superman explored the new technological threats. Grayling notes the period after the Cold War as being one where “matters become merely personal: the task of pitting his brawn against the brains of Lex Luthor and Brainiac appeared to be independent of bigger questions”, and discusses events post 9/11, stating that as a nation “caught between the terrifying George W. Bush and the terrorist Osama bin Laden, America is in earnest need of a Saviour for everything from the minor inconveniences to the major horrors of world catastrophe. And here he is, the down-home clean-cut boy in the blue tights and red cape”.^[197]

An influence on early Superman stories is the context of the Great Depression. Superman took on the role of social activist, fighting crooked businessmen and politicians and demolishing run-down tenements.^[198] Comics scholar Roger Sabin sees this as a reflection of “the liberal idealism of Franklin Roosevelt‘s New Deal“, with Shuster and Siegel initially portraying Superman as champion to a variety of social causes.^[199]^[200] In later Superman radio programs the character continued to take on such issues, tackling a version of the Ku Klux Klan in a 1946 broadcast, as well as combating anti-semitism and veteran discrimination.^[201]^[202]^[203]

Scott Bukatman has discussed Superman, and the superhero in general, noting the ways in which they humanize large urban areas through their use of the space, especially in Superman’s ability to soar over the large skyscrapers of Metropolis. He writes that the character “represented, in 1938, a kind of Corbusierian ideal. Superman has X-ray vision: walls become permeable, transparent. Through his benign, controlled authority, Superman renders the city open, modernist and democratic; he furthers a sense that Le Corbusier described in 1925, namely, that ‘Everything is known to us’.”^[204]

Jules Feiffer has argued that Superman’s real innovation lay in the creation of the Clark Kent persona, noting that what “made Superman extraordinary was his point of origin: Clark Kent.” Feiffer develops the theme to establish Superman’s popularity in simple wish fulfillment,^[205] a point Siegel and Shuster themselves supported, Siegel commenting that “If you’re interested in what made Superman what it is, here’s one of the keys to what made it universally acceptable. Joe and I had certain inhibitions… which led to wish-fulfillment which we expressed through our interest in science fiction and our comic strip. That’s where the dual-identity concept came from” and Shuster supporting that as being “why so many people could relate to it”.^[206]

Ian Gordon suggests that the many incarnations of Superman across media use nostalgia to link the character to an ideology of the American Way. He defines this ideology as a means of associating individualism, consumerism, and democracy and as something that took shape around WWII and underpinned the war effort. Superman, he notes was very much part of that effort.^[207]

An allegory for immigrants

Superman’s immigrant status is a key aspect of his appeal.^[208]^[209]^[210] Aldo Regalado saw the character as pushing the boundaries of acceptance in America. The extraterrestrial origin was seen by Regalado as challenging the notion that Anglo-Saxon ancestry was the source of all might.^[211] Gary Engle saw the “myth of Superman [asserting] with total confidence and a childlike innocence the value of the immigrant in American culture“. He argues that Superman allowed the superhero genre to take over from the Western as the expression of immigrant sensibilities. Through the use of a dual identity, Superman allowed immigrants to identify with both of their cultures. Clark Kent represents the assimilated individual, allowing Superman to express the immigrants’ cultural heritage for the greater good.^[209] David Jenemann has offered a contrasting view. He argues that Superman’s early stories portray a threat: “the possibility that the exile would overwhelm the country”.^[212] David Rooney, a theater critic for The New York Times, in his evaluation of the play Year Zero considers Superman to be the “quintessential immigrant story […] [b]orn on an alien planet, he grows stronger on Earth, but maintains a secret identity tied to a homeland that continues to exert a powerful hold on him even as his every contact with those origins does him harm”.^[213] Junot Díaz argues that the character particularly resonates with the experiences of undocumented immigrants in the United States.^[214] Throughout the depictions of Superman’s archenemy Lex Luthor in comics, film, and television, Luthor has frequently expressed and exploited xenophobia against Superman.^[215]

Religious themes

It is popularly believed that Superman took inspiration from Judaic mythology and there is some circumstantial evidence to support this. The British rabbi Simcha Weinstein notes that Superman’s story has some parallels to that of Moses. For example, Moses as a baby was sent away by his parents in a reed basket to escape death and was adopted by a foreign culture. Weinstein also posits that Superman’s Kryptonian name, “Kal-El”, resembles the Hebrew phrase qōl ʾēl (קוֹל-אֵל) which can be taken to mean “Voice of God”.^[216] The historian Larry Tye suggests that this “Voice of God” is an allusion to Moses’ role as a prophet.^[217] The suffix “el“, meaning “god”, is also found in the name of angels (e.g. Gabriel, Ariel), who are airborne humanoid agents of good with superhuman powers. The Nazis also thought Superman was a Jew and in 1940 the Schutzstaffel (SS) newspaper Das Schwarze Korps denounced Superman and his creator Jerry Siegel.^[218]

All that said, historians such as Martin Lund and Les Daniels argue that the evidence for Judaic influence in Siegel and Shuster’s stories is merely circumstantial. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were not practicing Jews and never acknowledged the influence of Judaism in any memoir or interview.^[219]^[220]

Superman stories have occasionally exhibited Christian themes as well. Screenwriter Tom Mankiewicz consciously made Superman an allegory for Jesus Christ in the 1978 movie starring Christopher Reeve: baby Kal-El’s ship resembles the Star of Bethlehem, and Jor-El gives his son a messianic mission to lead humanity into a brighter future.^[221] This messianic theme was revisited in the 2013 movie Man of Steel, wherein Jor-El asks Superman to redeem the Kryptonian race, which corrupted itself through eugenics, by guiding humanity down a wiser path.^[222]

In other media

Main article: Superman (franchise)

Radio

The first adaptation of Superman beyond comic books was a radio show, The Adventures of Superman, which ran from 1940 to 1951 for 2,088 episodes, most of which were aimed at children. The episodes were initially 15 minutes long, but after 1949 they were lengthened to 30 minutes. Most episodes were done live.^[223] Bud Collyer was the voice actor for Superman in most episodes. The show was produced by Robert Maxwell and Allen Ducovny, who were employees of Superman, Inc. and Detective Comics, Inc. respectively.^[224]^[225]

Stage

In 1966 Superman had a Tony-nominated musical play produced on Broadway. It’s a Bird… It’s a Plane… It’s Superman featured music by Charles Strouse, lyrics by Lee Adams and book by David Newman and Robert Benton. Actor Bob Holiday performed as Clark Kent/Superman and actress Patricia Marand performed as Lois Lane.

Film

Main article: Superman in film

Paramount Pictures released a series of Superman theatrical animated shorts between 1941 and 1943. Seventeen episodes in total were made, each 8–10 minutes long. The first nine films were produced by Fleischer Studios and the next films were produced by Famous Studios. Bud Collyer provided the voice of Superman. The first episode had a production budget of $50,000 with the remaining episodes at $30,000 each^[226] (equivalent to $657,000 in 2025), which was exceptionally lavish for the time; $9,000 – $15,000 was more typical for animated shorts.^[227] Joe Shuster provided model sheets for the characters, so the visuals resembled the contemporary comic book aesthetic.^[228]

The first live-action adaptation of Superman was a movie serial released in 1948, targeted at children. Kirk Alyn became the first actor to portray the hero onscreen. The production cost up to $325,000^[229] (equivalent to $4,355,000 in 2025). It was the most profitable movie serial in movie history.^[230] A sequel serial, Atom Man vs. Superman, was released in 1950. For flying scenes, Superman was hand-drawn in animated form, composited onto live-action footage.
The first feature film was Superman and the Mole Men, a 58-minute B-movie released in 1951, produced on an estimated budget of $30,000 (equivalent to $372,000 in 2025).^[231] It starred George Reeves as Superman, and was intended to promote the subsequent television series.^[232]
The first big-budget movie was Superman in 1978, starring Christopher Reeve and produced by Alexander and Ilya Salkind. It was 143 minutes long and was made on a budget of $55 million (equivalent to $271,000,000 in 2025). It is the most successful Superman feature film to date in terms of box office revenue adjusted for inflation.^[233] The soundtrack was composed by John Williams and was nominated for an Academy Award.

The success of the 1978 film arguably paved the way for later big-budget superhero movies like Batman (1989) and Spider-Man (2002).^[234]^[235]^[236]

The 1978 film spawned three sequels: Superman II (1980), Superman III (1983), Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987).
In 2006, Superman Returns was released, designed after the 1978–1987 film series. Superman was portrayed by Brandon Routh, who later reprised his role in the Arrowverse crossover Crisis on Infinite Earths (2019–2020).
Superman has appeared in a series of direct-to-video animated films produced by Warner Bros. Animation called DC Universe Animated Original Movies, beginning with Superman: Doomsday in 2007. Many of these movies are adaptations of popular comic book stories.
Superman appeared in the theatrical animated feature film Teen Titans Go! To the Movies (2018), voiced by Nicolas Cage.
Superman appeared in the theatrical animated feature film DC League of Super-Pets (2022), voiced by John Krasinski.

DC Extended Universe

Main article: Superman (DC Extended Universe)

In 2013, Man of Steel was released by Warner Bros. as a reboot of the film series, starring Henry Cavill as Superman.
A sequel, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016), featured Superman alongside Batman and Wonder Woman, making it the first theatrical film in which Superman appeared alongside other superheroes from the DC Universe.
Cavill reprised his role in Justice League (2017) and its director’s cut (2021).
This version of Superman also makes cameos in Shazam! (2019) and in the first season finale of the TV series Peacemaker (2022) but portrayed by stand-ins for Cavill.
Cavill makes an uncredited cameo appearance as Superman in the mid-credits scene of the film Black Adam (2022).
Nicolas Cage makes a cameo appearance as an alternate version of Superman in the film The Flash (2023), Cage shooting his scenes through volumetric capture, before he was deaged with computer-generated imagery (CGI).^[237] Cavill, George Reeves, and Christopher Reeve also cameo as their respective versions of Superman through the use of CGI representing their likenesses, Cavill having filmed additional scenes as the character for the film which were removed during post-production.

DC Universe

A new reboot of the film series, Superman, is set in the DC Universe (DCU) franchise. The film was written and directed by James Gunn and stars David Corenswet as Superman.
Superman appears in the DCU film Supergirl (2026), with Corenswet reprising the role.
Superman is set to appear in the DCU film Man of Tomorrow (2027), with Corenswet reprising the role.

Television

Duration: 17 minutes and 33 seconds.17:33Full film, Stamp Day for Superman, 1954

Adventures of Superman, which aired from 1952 to 1958, was the first television series based on a superhero. It starred George Reeves as Superman. Whereas the radio serial was aimed at children, this television show was aimed at a general audience,^[238]^[239] although children made up the majority of viewers. Robert Maxwell, who produced the radio serial, was the producer for the first season. For the second season, Maxwell was replaced with Whitney Ellsworth. Ellsworth toned down the violence of the show to make it more suitable for children, though he still aimed for a general audience. This show was extremely popular in Japan, where it achieved an audience share rating of 74.2% in 1958.^[240]
His first animated television series was The New Adventures of Superman, which aired from 1966 to 1970. The show also feature a seven-minute part focused on Superboy named The Adventures of Superboy.
Starting in 1974, Superman was one of the leading characters in the Hanna-Barbera-produced animated series Super Friends and all its sequels until 1986.
To celebrate his 50th anniversary, Ruby Spears produced an animated series partially based on Superman (1978) and post-Crisis Superman comics created by John Byrne. The model sheets for Superman (1988) were drawn by legendary comics artist Gil Kane and most of the episodes were written by comics writer Marv Wolfman.
Superboy aired from 1988 to 1992. It was produced by Alexander and Ilya Salkind, the same men who had produced the Superman films starring Christopher Reeve.
Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman aired from 1993 to 1997. This show was aimed at adults and focused on the relationship between Clark Kent and Lois Lane as much as Superman’s heroics.^[232] Dean Cain played Superman, and Teri Hatcher played Lois.
Smallville aired from 2001 to 2011. The show was targeted at young adults.^[241]^[242] Played by Tom Welling, the series covered Clark Kent’s life prior to becoming Superman, spanning ten years from his high school years in Smallville to his early life in Metropolis. Although Clark engages in heroics, he does not wear a costume, nor does he call himself Superboy. Rather, he relies on misdirection and his blinding speed to avoid being recognized. Later seasons find him becoming a public hero called the Red-Blue Blur, eventually shortened to the Blur, in a proto-Justice League before taking on the mantle of Superman.
Superman: The Animated Series (with the voice of Tim Daly as the adult character) aired from 1996 to 2000. After the show’s conclusion, this version of Superman appeared in the sequel shows Batman Beyond (voiced by Christopher McDonald) aired from 1999 to 2001 and Justice League and Justice League Unlimited (voiced by George Newbern), which ran from 2001 to 2006. All of these shows were produced by Bruce Timm. This was the most successful and longest-running animated version of Superman.^[232]
In the Arrowverse, Earth-38 Superman (played by Tyler Hoechlin), appears as a special guest star in several television series: Supergirl, The Flash, Arrow,Legends of Tomorrow, and Batwoman.
Hoechlin also played his Arrowverse doppelgänger on Superman & Lois that is set outside of Earth-Prime.
Superman appears as an ensemble character in the animated show Justice League Action. He also appears as a guest character in other animated shows such as Batman: The Brave and the Bold and Harley Quinn.
The 2023 animated series My Adventures with Superman depicts a young Superman (played by Jack Quaid) at the start of his career, through the eyes of a reimagined Lois Lane, with elements of romantic comedy alongside the standard action-adventure and science fiction tropes.

Video games

Main article: List of video games featuring Superman

The first electronic game was simply titled Superman, and released in 1979 for the Atari 2600.
The last game fully centered on Superman was the adaptation of Superman Returns in 2006.
From 2006 to present, Superman appeared in a co-starring role, such as the Injustice game series (2013–present).

Merchandising

DC Comics trademarked the Superman chest logo in August 1938.^[243] Jack Liebowitz established Superman, Inc. in October 1939 to develop the franchise beyond the comic books.^[52] Superman, Inc. merged with DC Comics in October 1946.^[244] After DC Comics merged with Warner Communications in 1967, licensing for Superman was handled by the Licensing Corporation of America.^[245]

The Licensing Letter (an American market research firm) estimated that Superman licensed merchandise made $634 million in sales globally in 2018 (43.3% of this revenue came from the North American market). For comparison, in the same year, Spider-Man merchandise made $1.075 billion and Star Wars merchandise made $1.923 billion globally.^[246]

The earliest paraphernalia appeared in 1939: a button proclaiming membership in the Supermen of America club. The first toy was a wooden doll in 1939 made by the Ideal Novelty and Toy Company.^[247] Superman #5 (May 1940) carried an advertisement for a “Krypto-Raygun”, which was a gun-shaped device that could project images on a wall.^[248] The majority of Superman merchandise is targeted at children, but since the 1970s, adults have been increasingly targeted because the comic book readership has gotten older.^[249]

During World War II, Superman was used to support the war effort. Action Comics and Superman carried messages urging readers to buy war bonds and participate in scrap drives.^[250] Other superheroes became patriots who went to fight: Batman, Wonder Woman and Captain America.

Notes

Consolidated Book Publishers was also known as Humor Publishing. Jerry Siegel always referred to this publisher as “Consolidated” in all interviews and memoirs. Humor Publishing was possibly a subsidiary of Consolidated.
National Allied Publications was founded in 1934 by Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson. Due to financial difficulties, Wheeler-Nicholson formed a corporation with Harry Donenfeld and Jack Liebowitz called Detective Comics, Inc. In January 1938, Wheeler-Nicholson sold his stake in National Allied Publications and Detective Comics to Donenfeld and Liebowitz as part of a bankruptcy settlement. On September 30, 1946, these two companies merged to become National Comics Publications. In 1961, the company changed its name to National Periodical Publications. In 1967 National Periodical Publications was purchased by Kinney National Company, which later purchased Warner Bros.-Seven Arts and became Warner Communications. In 1976, National Periodical Publications changed its name to DC Comics, which had been its nickname since 1940. Since 1940, the publisher had placed a logo with the initials “DC” on all its magazine covers, and consequently “DC Comics” became an informal name for the publisher.
See USC Title 17, Chapter 3, § 304(b) and § 305. Because the copyright to Action Comics #1 was in its renewal term on October 27, 1998 (the date the Copyright Term Extension Act became effective), its copyright will expire 95 years after first publication and at the end of the calendar year.
See Copyright Act of 1909 § 20

References

The copyright date of Action Comics #1 was registered as April 18, 1938.
See Catalog of Copyright Entries. New Series, Volume 33, Part 2: Periodicals January–December 1938. United States Library of Congress. 1938. p. 129.
Dallas et al. (2013), American Comic Book Chronicles: The 1980s, p. 208
“Best-selling comic books of all time”. Statista. Archived from the original on April 5, 2018. Retrieved April 4, 2018.
Ricca (2014) Super Boys
Jerry Siegel (under the pseudonym Herbert S. Fine). “The Reign of the Superman”. Science Fiction: The Advance Guard of Future Civilization #3. January 1933
Summarized in Ricca 2014, pp. 70–72 Super Boys
Jerry Siegel, quoted in Daniels (1998). Superman: The Complete History, p. 15: “When we presented different strips to the syndicate editors, they would say, ‘Well, this isn’t sensational enough.’ So I thought, I’m going to come up with something so wild they won’t be able to say that.”
Jerry Siegel. Creation of a Superhero (unpublished memoir, written c.1978; Scans available from Dropbox and Scribd^{[permanent dead link]}).:
“…one of the things which spurred me into creating a “Superman” strip was something a syndicate editor said to me after I had been submitting various proposed comic strips to him. He said, “The trouble with your stuff is that it isn’t spectacular enough. You’ve got to come up with something sensational! Something more terrific than the other adventure strips on the market!””
Tye (2012), Superman, p. 17: “The version he was drafting would again begin with a wild scientist empowering a normal human against his will, but this time the powers would be even more fantastic, and rather than becoming a criminal, the super-being would fight crime ‘with the fury of an outraged avenger’.”
Jerry Siegel. Creation of a Superhero (unpublished memoir, c. 1978; Scans available from Dropbox and Scribd^{[permanent dead link]}).:
p. 30: “The hero of ‘THE SUPERMAN’ comic book strip was also given super-powers against his will by a scientist. He gained fantastic strength, bullets bounced off him, etc. He fought crime with the fury of an outraged avenger.”
50: “What, I thought, could be more sensational than a Superman who could fly through the air, who was impervious to flames, bullets, and a mob of enraged amok adversaries?”
Siegel in Andrae (1983), p. 10: “Obviously, having him a hero would be infinitely more commercial than having him a villain. I understand that the comic strip Dr. Fu Manchu ran into all sorts of difficulties because the main character was a villain. And with the example before us of Tarzan and other action heroes of fiction who were very successful, mainly because people admired them and looked up to them, it seemed the sensible thing to do to make The Superman a hero. The first piece was a short story, and that’s one thing, but creating a successful comic strip with a character you’ll hope will continue for many years, it would definitely be going in the wrong direction to make him a villain.”
Daniels (1998). Superman: The Complete History, p. 17: “… usually [Shuster] and Siegel agreed that no special costume was in evidence, and the surviving artwork bears them out.”
Siegel and Shuster in Andrae (1983), p.9-10: “Shuster: […] It wasn’t really Superman: that was before he evolved into a costumed figure. He was simply wearing a T-shirt and pants; he was more like Slam Bradley than anything else — just a man of action. […]
Siegel: In later years – maybe 10 or 15 years ago – I asked Joe what he remembered of this story, and he remembered a scene of a character crouched on the edge of a building, with a cape almost a la Batman. We don’t specifically recall if the character had a costume or not. […] Joe and I – especially Joe – seem to recall that there were some scenes in there in which that character had a bat-like cape.”
Daniels (1998). Superman: The Complete History, p. 17
The copyright date of Detective Dan Secret Operative 48 was registered as May 12, 1933.
See Catalog of Copyright Entries. New Series, Volume 30, For the Year 1933, Part 1: Books, Group 2. United States Library of Congress. 1933. p. 351.
Scivally (2007). Superman on Film, Television, Radio and Broadway, p. 6: “Detective Dan—Secret Operative 48 was published by the Humor Publishing Company of Chicago. Detective Dan was little more than a Dick Tracy clone, but here, for the first time, in a series of black-and-white illustrations, was a comic magazine with an original character appearing in all-new stories. This was a dramatic departure from other comic magazines, which simply reprinted panels from the Sunday newspaper comic strips.”
Jerry Siegel. Creation of a Superhero (unpublished memoir, written c.1978; Scans available from Dropbox and Scribd^{[permanent dead link]}):
“I do recall, though, that when Mr. Livingston visited Cleveland, Joe and I showed THE SUPERMAN comic book pages to Mr. Livingston in his hotel room, and he was favorably impressed.”
Beerbohm, Robert (1996). “Siegel & Shuster Presents… The Superman”. Comic Book Marketplace. No. 36. Gemstone Publishing Inc. pp. 47–50.:
“So this early Superman cover was done, replete with a “10¢” plug… and was placed on an entire comic book, written, drawn, inked, and shown to the Humor people by Jerry and Joe when they happened to come through Cleveland (trying to shop Detective Dan to the NEA newspaper syndicate).”
Ricca 2014, pp. 97–98 Super Boys
Tye (2012), Superman, p. 17: “Although the first response was encouraging, the second made it clear that the comic book was so unprofitable that its publishers put on hold any future stories.”
Ricca 2014, p. 99 Super Boys: “Jerry was convinced, just as he was in those early pulp days, that you had to align yourself with someone famous to be famous yourself. […] Over the next year, Jerry contacted several major artists, including Mel Graff, J. Allen St. John, and even Bernie Schmittke […]”
Tye (2012), Superman, p. 18: “When I told Joe of this, he unhappily destroyed the drawn-up pages of ‘THE SUPERMAN’ burning them in the furnace of his apartment building. At my request, he gave me as a gift the torn cover. We continued collaborating on other projects.”
In an interview with Andrae (1983), Shuster said he destroyed their 1933 Superman comic as a reaction to Humor Publishing’s rejection letter, which contradicts Siegel’s account in Siegel’s unpublished memoir. Tye (2012) argues that the account from the memoir is the truth and that Shuster lied in the interview to avoid tension.
See also Creation of a Superhero (unpublished memoir by Jerry Siegel, written c.1978; Scans available from Dropbox and Scribd^{[permanent dead link]}).
Tye (2012), Superman, p. 18:”Next on the list was Leo O’Mealia, who drew the Fu Manchu comic and soon found in his mailbox Jerry’s more fully developed script for Superman.”
Jerry Siegel. Creation of a Superhero (unpublished memoir, written c.1978; Scans available from Dropbox and Scribd^{[permanent dead link]}).:
“Leo O’Mealia’s first letter to me was dated July 17, 1933”
Tye (2012), Superman, p. 18
Jerry Siegel. Creation of a Superhero (unpublished memoir, written c.1978; Scans available from Dropbox and Scribd^{[permanent dead link]}).:
“I no longer have a copy of the script of that particular version of “Superman”. […] I never saw [O’Mealia’s] Superman drawings. He did not send me a copy of it.”
Jerry Siegel. Creation of a Superhero (unpublished memoir, written c.1978; Scans available from Dropbox and Scribd^{[permanent dead link]}). Extract filed under Exhibit A (Docket 184) in Laura Siegel Larson v Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., DC Comics, Case no. 13-56243:
“In a letter dated June 9, 1934, he wrote back expressing interesting in the possibility of our teaming-up together on a newspaper syndication comic strip. […] Russell Keaton’s letter to me of June 14, 1934, was very enthusiastic. He stated that in his opinion “Superman” was already a tremendous hit and that he would be glad to collaborate with me on “Superman”.”
Jones (2004). Men of Tomorrow, p. 112-113
Ricca 2014, pp. 101–102 Super Boys
Excerpts of Siegel and Keaton’s collaboration can be found in Exhibit A (Docket 373–3), Exhibit C (Docket 347–2), Exhibit D (Docket 347–2), and Exhibit E (Docket 347–2) in Laura Siegel Larson v Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., DC Comics, Case no. 13-56243.
(Compilation available at Dropbox).
Ricca 2014, p. 102 Super Boys: “Jerry tried to sell this version to the syndicates, but no one was interested, so Keaton gave up.”
Jerry Siegel. Creation of a Superhero (unpublished memoir, written c.1978; Scans available from Dropbox and Scribd^{[permanent dead link]}). Extract filed under Exhibit A (Docket 184) in Laura Siegel Larson v Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., DC Comics, Case no. 13-56243:
“Keaton’s next letter to me, sent November 3, 1934, stated “Superman” was in a locker in a bus station, and that he was going to show the feature to Publishers Syndicate, after that weekend. […] I got a brief note from Russell Keaton. He wrote that he was completely withdrawing from any participation at all in the “Superman” comic strip and that as far as he was concerned: “the book is closed”. Unhappily, I destroyed the letter.”
Interview with Joe Shuster by Bertil Falk in 1975, quoted in Alter Ego #56 (Feb 2006):
“SHUSTER: […] I conceived the character in my mind’s eye to have a very, very colorful costume of a cape and, you know, very, very colorful tights and boots and the letter “S” on his chest.
FALK: You did that, not Siegel?
SHUSTER: Yes, yes. I did that because that was my concept from what he described, but he did inspire me […]”
Daniels (1998). Superman: The Complete History, p. 18
Over the years, Siegel and Shuster made contradictory statements regarding when they developed Superman’s familiar costume. They occasionally claimed to have developed it immediately in 1933. Daniels (1998) writes: “… usually [Shuster] and Siegel agreed that no special costume was in evidence [in 1933], and the surviving artwork bears them out.” The cover art for their 1933 proposal to Humor Publishing shows a shirtless, cape-less Superman. Siegel’s collaboration with Russell Keaton in 1934 contains no description nor illustration of Superman in costume. Tye (2012) writes that Siegel and Shuster developed the costume shortly after they resumed working together in late 1934.
Siegel’s unpublished memoir, The Story Behind Superman (Archived September 13, 2016, at the Wayback Machine), as well as an interview with Thomas Andrae in Nemo #2 (1983), corroborate each other that Clark Kent’s timid-journalist persona and Lois Lane were developed in 1934.
Andrae (1983): “I also had classical heroes and strongmen in mind, and this shows in the footwear. In the third version, Superman wore sandals laced halfway up the calf. You can still see this on the cover of Action #1, though they were covered over in red to look like boots when the comic was printed.”
Wheeler-Nicholson offered Siegel and Shuster work in a letter dated June 6, 1935. See Ricca 2014, p. 104 Super Boys
Ricca 2014, p. 104 Super Boys
Jerry Siegel. Creation of a Superhero (unpublished memoir, written c.1978; Scans available from Dropbox and Scribd^{[permanent dead link]}).
p. 55: “In addition, I submitted Superman for newspaper syndication consideration by Wheeler-Nicholson.”
Letter from Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson to Siegel and Shuster, dated October 4, 1935, quoted in Ricca 2014, p. 146Super Boys: “…you would be much better off doing Superman in full page in four colors for one of our publications.”
Jerome Siegel, in a sworn affidavit signed 1 March 1973, filed in Jerome Siegel & Joseph Shuster vs National Periodical Publications et al, 69 Civ 1429:
“In 1935 Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson, a publisher of comic books, expressed interest in Superman and tried to persuade us that the property would be more successful if published in comic book form where it would be seen in color than it would be in a black and white daily strip. Our experience with him had been such that we did not consider him the publisher to entrust with the property and his proposal was rejected.”
Jerry Siegel. Creation of a Superhero (unpublished memoir, written c.1978; Scans available from Dropbox and Scribd^{[permanent dead link]}).
p. 57 “Joe and I were not sold on Wheeler-Nicholson and hoped to place “Superman” with what we hoped would be a more responsible organization. I asked Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson to return the “Superman” strips to me. […] I continued my marketing attempts to place “Superman” with a newspaper syndicate”.
Tye (2012), Superman, p. 24: “So while they continued to write and draw for him, and to live off what payments they got, they determined not to trust him with their prize possession.”
Jerry Siegel. Creation of a Superhero (unpublished memoir, written c.1978; Scans available from Dropbox and Scribd^{[permanent dead link]}).:
“On January 5, 1938, Liebowitz wrote to me […] that the Nicholson Publishing Company had been petitioned into bankruptcy by its creditors. […] On January 10, Vin Sullivan wrote to me that Nicholson Publishing Company was in the hands of receivers […] and that “Detective Comics” was being published by the firm for which Liebowitz was the manager.”
J. Addison Young, “Findings of Fact” (April 12, 1948), in Jerome Siegel and Joseph Shuster vs. National Comics Publications Inc. et al. (New York Supreme Court 1947) (Scan available on Scribd Archived August 20, 2016, at the Wayback Machine):
“On December 4, 1937, defendant LIEBOWITZ, representing DETECTIVE COMICS, INC., met plaintiff SIEGEL in New York City.”
Siegel, Jerry. Unpublished memoir “The Story Behind Superman #1” Archived September 13, 2016, at the Wayback Machine, registered for U.S. copyright in 1978 under later version Creation of a Superhero as noted by Tye (2012). Superman, p. 309. P. 5. Memoir additionally cited by Ricca (2014) in Super Boys, and available online at sites including “The Story Behind Superman #1”. Archived from the original on December 22, 2015. Retrieved December 20, 2015 – via Scribd.com. Note: Archive of p. 1 only.
Jerry Siegel. Creation of a Superhero (unpublished memoir, written c.1978; Scans available from Dropbox and Scribd^{[permanent dead link]}).:
“I received a telephone call early in January of 1938 from Gaines of the McClure Syndicate. This was a three-way call between Gaines, Liebowitz and myself. Gaines informed me that the syndicate was unable to use the various strips which I had sent for inclusion in the proposed syndicate newspaper tabloid. He asked my permission to turn these features, including “Superman”, over to Detective Comics’ publishers for consideration for their proposed new magazine, “Action Comics”. I consented.”
Via editor Vin Sullivan, in a letter to Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, dated January 10, 1948. Quoted in Ricca (2014). Super Boys
Jerry Siegel. The Life and Times of Jerry Siegel (unpublished memoir, written c.1946; Scans available at Dropbox and Scribd^{[permanent dead link]}):
“Joe and I talked it over, decided we were tired of seeing the strip rejected everywhere, and would at least like to see it in print. And so we pasted our samples of a SUPERMAN daily strip into comic magazine page form, as request, and sent it on.”
Kobler, John (June 21, 1941). “Up, Up, and Awa-a-ay!: The Rise of Superman, Inc” (PDF). The Saturday Evening Post. Archived (PDF) from the original on September 13, 2016.:
“[Siegel and Shuster], who by this time had abandoned hope that Superman would ever amount to much, mulled this over gloomily. Then Siegel shrugged, ‘Well, at least this way we’ll see [Superman] in print.’ They signed the form.”
NOTE: The form mentioned refers to a contract of sale signed on March 1, 1938.
J. Addison Young, “Findings of Fact” (April 12, 1948), in Jerome Siegel and Joseph Shuster vs. National Comics Publications Inc. et al. (New York Supreme Court 1947) (Scan available on Scribd Archived August 20, 2016, at the Wayback Machine):
“Defendant THE MC CLURE NEWSPAPER SYNDICATE, then submitted to DETECTIVE COMICS, INC. the SUPERMAN comic strip created by plaintiffs, which strip consisted of a few panels suitable for newspaper syndication […] DETECTIVE COMICS, INC. examined the old material and returned it to plaintiffs for revision and expansion into a full length thirteen-page comic strip release suitable for magazine publication. […] Plaintiffs revised and expanded the said SUPERMAN material in compliance with the said request of DETECTIVE COMICS, INC. and on or about February 22, 1938, resubmitted such revised and expanded material to DETECTIVE COMICS, INC. […] On March 1, 1938 […] DETECTIVE COMICS, INC. wrote to plaintiff SIEGEL […] enclosing a check in the sum of $412. which included $130. in payment of the first thirteen-page SUPERMAN release at the agreed rate of $10. per page […]”
Jones (2004). Men of Tomorrow, p. 125: “They signed a release surrendering all rights to the publisher. They knew that was how the business worked – that’s how they’d sold every creation from Henri Duval to Slam Bradley.”
Tye (2012). Superman
J. Addison Young, “Findings of Fact” (April 12, 1948), in Jerome Siegel and Joseph Shuster vs. National Comics Publications Inc. et al. (New York Supreme Court 1947) (Scan available on Scribd Archived August 20, 2016, at the Wayback Machine):
“The first thirteen pages of SUPERMAN material were published on April 18, 1938, in the June 1938 issue of “Action Comics”magazine”.
Andrae (1983): “…when I did the version in 1934, (which years later, in 1938, was published, in revised form, in Action Comics #1) the John Carter stories did influence me. Carter was able to leap great distances because the planet Mars was smaller that [sic] the planet Earth; and he had great strength. I visualized the planet Krypton as a huge planet, much larger than Earth; so whoever came to Earth from that planet would be able to leap great distances and lift great weights.”
“The History Behind Superman’s Ever-Changing Superpowers”. Gizmodo. Archived from the original on March 26, 2017.
Jerry Siegel. Creation of a Superhero (unpublished memoir, written c.1978;Scans available from Dropbox and Scribd^{[permanent dead link]}).:
“I had read and enjoyed Philip Wylie’s book “The Gladiator”. It influenced me, too.”
Feeley, Gregory (March 2005). “When World-views Collide: Philip Wylie in the Twenty-first Century”. Science Fiction Studies. 32 (95): 177–182. doi:10.1525/sfs.32.1.0177. ISSN 0091-7729. Archived from the original on April 3, 2013. Retrieved December 6, 2006.
Andrae (1983): “… I was inspired by the movies. In the silent films, my hero was Douglas Fairbanks Senior, who was very agile and athletic. So I think he might have been an inspiration to us, even in his attitude. He had a stance which I often used in drawing Superman. You’ll see in many of his roles—including Robin Hood—that he always stood with his hands on his hips and his feet spread apart, laughing—taking nothing seriously.”
Andrae (1983)
Jerry Siegel, quoted in Andrae (1983): “I loved The Mark of Zorro, and I’m sure that had some influence on me. I did also see The Scarlet Pimpernel but didn’t care much for it.”
Jerry Siegel. Creation of a Superhero (unpublished memoir, written c.1978; Scans available from Dropbox and Scribd^{[permanent dead link]}).:
“In movies, I had seen “The Scarlet Pimpernel”, “The Mark of Zorro” and Rudolph Valentino in “The Eagle”, and I thought that a mighty hero, who in another identity pretended to be an ineffectual weakling, made for great dramatic contrast. In addition, it would, in a comic strip, permit some humorous characterization.”
Siegel: “We especially loved some of those movies in which Harold Lloyd would start off as a sort of momma’s boy being pushed around, kicked around, thrown around, and then suddenly would turn into a fighting whirlwind.”
Shuster: “I was kind of mild-mannered and wore glasses so I really identified with it”
Anthony Wall (1981). Superman – The Comic Strip Hero (Television production). BBC. Event occurs at 00:04:50. Archived from the original on December 28, 2015.
Andrae (1983): Siegel: “As a high school student, I thought that someday I might become a reporter, and I had crushes on several attractive girls who either didn’t know I existed or didn’t care I existed. […] It occurred to me: What if I was real terrific? What if I had something special going for me, like jumping over buildings or throwing cars around or something like that? Then maybe they would notice me.”
Shuster in Andrae (1983) “I tried to build up my body. I was so skinny; I went in for weight-lifting and athletics. I used to get all the body-building magazines from the second-hand stores — and read them….”
Andrae (1983): “It was inspired by the costume pictures that Fairbanks did: they greatly influenced us.”
“Of Supermen and kids with dreams” (PDF).
Ricca (2014). Super Boys, p. 124: “The overall physical look of Superman himself is from Johnny Weissmuller, whose face Joe swiped from movie magazines and news articles. … Joe just squinted the eyes like his idol Roy Crane [did with his characters] and added a Dick Tracy smile.” Ricca cites Beerbohm, Robert L. (August 1997). “The Big Bang Theory of Comic Book History”. Comic Book Marketplace. Vol. 2, no. 50. Coronado, California: Gemstone Publishing.
Ricca (2014). Super Boys, p. 129: “What the boys did read were the magazines and papers where “superman” was a common word. Its usage was almost always preceded by “a”. Most times the word was used to refer to an athlete or a politician.”
Flagg, Francis (November 11, 1931). “The Superman of Dr. Jukes”. Wonder Stories. Gernsback.
Jacobson, Howard (March 5, 2005). “Up, Up and Oy Vey!”. The Times. UK. p. 5. Archived from the original on May 16, 2015.: “If Siegel and Shuster knew of Nietzsche’s Ubermensch, they didn’t say…”
“Comic with first Superman story sells for $1.5m”. The Independent. March 30, 2010. Archived from the original on April 2, 2010. Retrieved March 30, 2010.
Action Comics Archived February 23, 2016, at the Wayback Machine at the Grand Comics Database.
Superman Archived February 27, 2016, at the Wayback Machine (1939–1986 series) and Adventures of Superman Archived March 5, 2016, at the Wayback Machine (1987 continuation of series) at the Grand Comics Database.
“Superman”-titled comics Archived March 5, 2016, at the Wayback Machine at the Grand Comics Database.
“Best-selling comic books of all time worldwide as of February 2015 (in million copies)”. Statista. Archived from the original on April 5, 2018. Retrieved July 30, 2018.
Tilley, Carol (March 1, 2016). “Unbalanced Production: The Comics Business in the 1940s”. The Beat. Archived from the original on July 30, 2018. Retrieved July 30, 2018.
Tye (2012). Superman, p. 163: “It did work. In 1960, the first year in which sales data was made public, Superman was selling more comic books than any other title or character, and he stayed on top through much of the decade.
Comichron. Comic Book Sales By Year Archived July 23, 2016, at the Wayback Machine
“Thesp trio eyes ‘Nurse’; ‘Superman’ may fly”. Variety.com. September 29, 1998. Archived from the original on July 28, 2018. Retrieved July 28, 2018.
Tye (2012). Superman, p. 245: “Journalists, along with most of their readers and viewers, didn’t understand that heroes regularly perished in the comics and almost never stayed dead.”
“2018 Comic Book Sales to Comic Book Shops”. Comichron. Archived from the original on February 7, 2019. Retrieved July 8, 2018.
Tye (2012). Superman, p. 294: “The remaining audience [by 2011] was dedicated to the point of fanaticism, a trend that was self-reinforcing. No longer did casual readers pick up a comic at the drugstore or grocery, both because the books increasingly required an insider’s knowledge to follow the action and because they simply weren’t being sold anymore at markets, pharmacies, or even the few newsstands that were left. […] Comic books had gone from being a cultural emblem to a countercultural refuge.”
Tye (2012). Superman, p. 212: “So Jenette [Kahn] and her business-savvy sidekick, Paul Levitz, started viewing comics as creative engines rather than cash cows, able to spin off profitable enterprises in other media.”
Scivally (2007). Superman on Film, Television, Radio and Broadway, p. 166: “Whereas in the 1950s, the average comic book reader was 12 years old, by the 1990s, the average comic book reader was 20. A mere decade later, in 2001, the average age of comic book readers was 25.”
Gordon (2017). Superman: The Persistence of an American Icon p. 164
Tumey, Paul (April 14, 2014). “Reviews: Superman: The Golden Age Sundays 1943–1946“. The Comics Journal. Archived from the original on May 29, 2014. Retrieved March 1, 2016. …Jerry Siegel had his hands — and typewriter — full, turning out stories for the comic books and the daily newspaper strips (which had completely separate continuities from the Sundays).
Daniels (1998). Superman: The Complete History, p. 74
Cole, Neil A. (ed.). “Wayne Boring (1905–1987)”. SupermanSuperSite.com. Archived from the original on October 8, 2016. Retrieved March 2, 2016.
Cole, Neil A. (ed.). “Win Mortimer (1919–1998)”. SupermanSuperSite.com. Archived from the original on June 30, 2014. Retrieved March 1, 2016.
Younis, Steven (ed.). “Superman Newspaper Strips”. SupermanHomepage.com. Archived from the original on March 26, 2015. Retrieved February 28, 2016.
Tye (2012). Superman, p. 49: “Initially Harry [Donenfeld], Jack [Liebowitz], and the managers they hired to oversee their growing editorial empire had let Jerry [Siegel] do as he wished with the character…”
Tye (2012). Superman, p. 41: “Neither Harry [Donenfeld] nor Jack [Liebowitz] had planned for a separate Superman comic book, or for that to be ongoing. Having Superman’s story play out across different venues presented a challenge for Jerry [Siegel] and the writers who came after him: Each installment needed to seem original yet part of a whole, stylistically and narratively. Their solution, at the beginning, was to wing it…”
Daniels (1998). Superman: The Complete History, p. 42: “…the publisher was anxious to avoid any repetition of the censorship problems associated with his early pulp magazines (such as the lurid Spicy Detective).”
Tye (2012). Superman, p. 49: “Once Superman became big business, however, plots had to be sent to New York for vetting. Not only did editors tell Jerry to cut out the guns and knives and cut back on social crusading, they started calling the shots on minute details of script and drawing.”
Daniels (1998). Superman: The Complete History, p. 42: “It was left to Ellsworth to impose tight editorial controls on Jerry Siegel. Henceforth, Superman would be forbidden to use his powers to kill anyone, even a villain.”
Tye (2012). Superman, p. 47: “No hint of sex. No alienating parents or teachers. Evil geniuses like the Ultra-Humanite were too otherworldly to give kids nightmares… The Prankster, the Toyman, the Puzzler, and J. Wilbur Wolngham, a W. C. Fields lookalike, used tricks and gags instead of a bow and arrows in their bids to conquer Superman. For editors wary of controversy, 1940s villains like those were a way to avoid the sharp edges of the real world.”
Tye (2012). Superman, p. 162: “Before Mort came along, Superman’s world was ad hoc and seat-of-the-pants, with Jerry and other writers adding elements as they went along without any planning or anyone worrying whether it all hung together. That worked fine when all the books centered around Superman and all the writing was done by a small stable. Now the pool of writers had grown and there were eight different comic books with hundreds of Superman stories a year to worry about.”
Tye (2012). Superman, p. 173: “But Weisinger’s innovations were taking a quiet toll on the story. Superman’s world had become so complicated that readers needed a map or even an encyclopedia to keep track of everyone and everything. (There would eventually be encyclopedias, two in fact, but the first did not appear until 1978.) All the plot complications were beguiling to devoted readers, who loved the challenge of keeping current, but to more casual fans they could be exhausting.”
Tye (2012). Superman, p. 165: “Weisinger stories steered clear of the Vietnam War, the sexual revolution, the black power movement, and other issues that red the 1960s. There was none of what Mort would have called “touchy-feely” either, much as readers might have liked to know how Clark felt about his split personality, or whether Superman and Lois engaged in the battles between the sexes that were a hallmark of the era. Mort wanted his comics to be a haven for young readers, and he knew his right-leaning politics wouldn’t sit well with his leftist writers and many of his Superman fans.”
Daniels (1998). Superman: The Complete History, p. 102: “One of the ways the editor kept in touch with his young audience was through a letters column, ‘Metropolis Mailbag,’ introduced in 1958.”
Tye (2012). Superman: The Complete History, p. 168: “He admitted later he was losing touch with a new generation of kids and their notions about heroes and villains.”
Julius Schwartz, quoted in Daniels (1998): “I said, ‘I want to get rid of all the kryptonite. I want to get rid of all the robots that are used to get him out of situations. And I’m sick and tired of that stupid suit Clark Kent wears all the time. I want to give him more up-to-date clothes. And maybe the most important thing I want to do is take him out of the Daily Planet and put him into television.’ I said ‘Our readers are not that familiar with newspapers. Most of them get their news on television, and I think it’s high time after all these years.'”
Harvey (1996), p. 144: “Artistic expressiveness of a highly individualistic sort had never been particularly welcomed by traditional comic book publishers. The corporate mind, ever focused on the bottom line of the balance sheet, favored bland “house styles” of rendering…”
Eury et al. (2006). The Krypton Companion, p. 18: “In 1948 Boring succeeded Shuster as the principal superman artist, his art style epitomizing the Man of Steel’s comics and merchandising look throughout the 1950s.”
Daniels (1998). Superman: The Complete History, p. 74: “…Superman was drawn in a more detailed, realistic style of illustration. He also looked bigger and stronger. “Until then Superman had always seemed squat,” Boring said. “He was six heads high, a bit shorter than normal. I made him taller–nine heads high–but kept his massive chest.”
Curt Swan (1987). Drawing Superman. Essay reprinted in Eury et al. (2006), pp. 58: “For 30 years or so, from around 1955 until a couple of years ago when I more or less retired, I was the principal artists of the Superman comic for DC Comics.”
Ricca (2014). Super Boys, p. 150: “It was then Donenfeld who not only now owned the property, but received the lion’s share of the profits; whatever Jerry and Joe got was parsed out by him.”
Ricca (2014). Super Boys, p. 155: “[Harry Donenfeld] knew readers had become accustomed to Siegel and Shuster’s work, and he didn’t want to risk upsetting a secret formula that he still didn’t completely understand, especially when it was selling so well.”
Tye (2012). Superman, p. 119: “In the ten years from 1938, when the first Action was published, to the filing of the suit in 1947, Jerry and Joe were paid […] a total of $401,194.85.”
Exhibit Q (Docket 353–3) in Laura Siegel Larson v Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., DC Comics, Case no. 13-56243 (Scans available from Dropbox and Scribd Archived August 7, 2020, at the Wayback Machine). Originally submitted as an exhibit in Jerome Siegel and Joseph Shuster vs. National Comics Publications Inc. et al. (New York Supreme Court 1947)
Jerry Siegel. The Life and Times of Jerry Siegel (unpublished memoir, written c.1946; Scans available at Dropbox and Scribd^{[permanent dead link]}):
“While I was in service, the majority of SUPERMAN’s adventures were ghost-written by writers employed by DETECTIVE COMICS, Inc.
Jerry Siegel, in a 1975 interview with Phil Yeh for Cobblestone magazine. Quoted in Siegel and Shuster’s Funnyman by Tom Andrae and Mel Gordon on page 49.:
“While I was in the service they started ghosting the Superman scripts, because obviously I couldn’t write them while I was away in the service.”
Ricca (2014). Super Boys, p. 223: “Jerry felt angryand instantly very isolated: Harry had gone ahead and okayed the title without telling him—or paying for it?”
Sergi (2015). The Law for Comic Book Creators
Ricca (2014). Super Boys, p. 226: “Jerry and Joe got a final check—and were promptly shown the door by National.”
Ricca 2014
Exhibit 2 (Docket 722–1) in Laura Siegel Larson vs Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., DC Comics, case no 13-56243.
Sergi (2015), p. 214
Scott Niswander (July 22, 2015). Why Isn’t SUPERMAN a PUBLIC DOMAIN Superhero?? (YouTube video). NerdSync Productions. Event occurs at 3:03~3:33. Archived from the original on November 22, 2016. Retrieved May 21, 2016.
“191 F.2d 594 NATIONAL COMICS PUBLICATIONS, Inc. v. FAWCETT PUBLICATIONS, Inc. et al”. Archived from the original on August 31, 2025. Retrieved March 7, 2025.
The Marvel Family #89. Copyright date registered as September 25, 1953.
See Catalog of Copyright Entries, Third Series, Volume 7, Part 2, Number 1: Periodicals, Jan–Jun 1953. United States Library of Congress. 1954. p. 268.
Thomas, Roy; Ordway, Jerry (July 2001). “Not Your Father’s Captain Marvel! An Artist-by-Artist Account of a Doomed Quest for a 1980s Shazam! Series”. Alter Ego. 3 (9). Raleigh, North Carolina: Two Morrows Publishing: 9–17.
Superman comic strip, January 16, 1939 Archived October 8, 2016, at the Wayback Machine, reprinted at “Episode 1: Superman Comes to Earth”. TheSpeedingBullet.com. Archived from the original on March 6, 2016. Retrieved March 27, 2016.
Lowther, George (1942). The Adventures of Superman. Per Ricca (2014), p. 204: “The book is also the first time that Superman’s parents are named “Jor-el” and “Lara”—a slight spelling change that would stick.”
The Secret Rocket per Lantz, James. “Superman Radio Series – Story Reviews”. SupermanHomepage.com. Archived from the original on June 26, 2016.
Jackson, Matthew (December 17, 2012). “The campaign to make a real Kansas town into Superman’s Smallville”. SyfyWire. Blastr.com (Syfy). Archived from the original on March 22, 2016. Retrieved March 22, 2016. Decades of comic book mythology and a hit TV series have made Superman’s hometown of Smallville, Kan., one of the most famous places in America.
Mankiewicz & Crane (2012), p. 203
Daniels (1998). Superman: The Complete History
“The New Batman/Superman Adventures”. Warner Bros. Archived from the original on February 2, 2007.
John Sikela (p). “The Origin of Superboy’s Costume!” Superboy, vol. 1, no. 78 (January 1960). New York, NY: DC Comics.
Seagle, Steven T. (w), McDaniel, Scott (p), Owens, Andy (i). “Truth” Superman: The 10¢ Adventure, vol. 1, no. 1 (March 2003). New York, NY: DC Comics.
Schutz, David (April 26, 1992). “When Superman Worked at The Star”. The Adventures of Superman. Archived from the original on July 17, 2010. Retrieved December 25, 2010.
Daniels (1998). Superman: The Complete History, p. 42
Weldon 2013a, p. 33
Weldon (2013a), p. 55
“The religion of Superman (Clark Kent / Kal-El)”. Adherents.com. August 14, 2007. Archived from the original on August 28, 2012.
Rucka, Greg (w), Lopez, David (p). “Affirmative Defense” Wonder Woman, vol. 2, no. 220 (October 1, 2005). DC Comics.
Action Comics #594 (1987)
Evans, Woody (2014). “Why They Won’t Save Us: Political Dispositions in the Conflicts of Superheroes”.^{[permanent dead link]}
Johns, Geoff (w), Conner, Amanda (p), Palmiotti, Jimmy (i). “Power Trip” JSA: Classified, vol. 1, no. 1 (September 2005). DC Comics.
Johns, Geoff Donner, Richard (w), Wight, Eric (p), Wight, Eric (i). “Who is Clark Kent’s Big Brother?” Action Comics Annual, vol. 1, no. 10 (March 2007). DC Comics.
Buskiek, Kurt, Nicieza, Fabian, Johns, Geoff (w), Guedes, Renato (p), Magalhaes, Jose Wilson (i). “Superman: Family” Action Comics, vol. 1, no. 850 (July 2007). DC Comics.
Wallace, Dan (2008). “Alternate Earths”. In Dougall, Alastair (ed.). The DC Comics Encyclopedia. London: Dorling Kindersley. pp. 20–21. ISBN 978-0-7566-4119-1.
“Clark Kent, Reporter”. The Adventures of Superman. Episode 2. February 14, 1940. WOR.:
–Look! Look! There, in the sky! It’s a man!
–Why, he’s flying!
–It can’t be! It’s not possible!
Action Comics #300 (1963)
Daniels (1998), pp. 106–107.
The Meteor From Krypton (June 1943). Per Hayde (2009): “Only one arc in 1943 managed to transcend its era: “The Meteor from Krypton.” Debuting on June 3, it marked the debut of kryptonite…”
Superman #61 Archived April 27, 2016, at the Wayback Machine at the Grand Comics Database. “Indexer notes … Green Kryptonite introduced in this story.”
Action Comics #481. DC Comics.
Action Comics #282 (November 1961)
Roberts, Dan (2014). Famous Robots and Cyborgs: An Encyclopedia of Robots from TV, Film, Literature, Comics, Toys, and More. Skyhorse Publishing. ISBN 9781626363892.
Superman #163 (August 1963)
Action Comics #274 (March 1961)
Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane #30 (January 1962)
Superman #414 (December 1985)
Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #37 (June 1959)
Action Comics #270 (November 1960)
World’s Finest Comics #202 (May 1971)
Weldon (2013b)
Titans/Young Justice: Graduation Day #3 (August 2003)
“If Lois should ACTUALLY learn Clark’s secret, the strip would lose about 75% of its appeal—the human interest angle. I know that a formula can possibly prove monotonous through repetition but I fear that if this element is removed from the story formula that makes up SUPERMAN, that this strip will lose a great part of its effectiveness.” Siegel, in his script notes, quoted in Ricca (2014) (Super Boys).
Superman #17 Archived April 15, 2016, at the Wayback Machine at the Grand Comics Database.
Cronin, Brian (June 28, 2011). “When We First Met”. Comics Should Be Good @ CBR. (column #30) ComicBookResources.com. Archived from the original on October 17, 2013. Retrieved March 16, 2016.
Scivally (2007). Superman on Film, Television, Radio and Broadway: “The episode also introduced Julian Noa as Clark Kent’s boss, whose name had evolved from Paris White to Perry White. White’s newspaper changed from The Daily Flash to the Daily Planet. Soon after the radio show appeared, the comic books also changed their Daily Star editor George Taylor to Daily Planet editor Perry White…”
Daniels (1998). Superman: The Complete History, p. 160
Though created to appear in Superman #30 (Sept. 1944), publishing lag time resulted in the character first appearing in the Superman daily comic strip that year, per Superman #30 Archived March 11, 2016, at the Wayback Machine at the Grand Comics Database.
“COMIC REVIEW: Superman: Red Son”. March 22, 2020. Archived from the original on July 19, 2025. Retrieved July 18, 2025.
“The Earth-2 Superman!”.
Schodt, Frederik L. (2007). The Astro Boy Essays: Osamu Tezuka, Mighty Atom, and the Manga/Anime Revolution. Stone Bridge Press. p. 45. ISBN 9781933330549.
Craig, Timothy (2015). Japan Pop: Inside the World of Japanese Popular Culture. Routledge. ISBN 9781317467212.
Katsuno, Hirofumi (2018). “The Grotesque Hero: Depictions of Justice in Tokusatsu Superhero Television Programs”. In Freedman, Alisa; Slade, Toby (eds.). Introducing Japanese Popular Culture. Routledge. ISBN 9781317528937.
Clements, Jonathan; Tamamuro, Motoko (2003). The Dorama Encyclopedia: A Guide to Japanese TV Drama Since 1953. Stone Bridge Press. ISBN 9781880656815.
Martin, Deborah (June 19, 2019). “Crystal Bridges exhibit ‘Men of Steel, Women of Wonder’ lands in San Antonio”. San Antonio Express-News. Archived from the original on July 8, 2020. Retrieved July 7, 2020.
“Men of Steel, Women of Wonder Debuts at San Antonio Museum of Art”. San Antonio Magazine. June 20, 2019. Archived from the original on July 7, 2020. Retrieved July 7, 2020.
Gural, Natasha. “Quickly To The Whitney, And Back Again To San Francisco, Chicago For Andy Warhol Beyond Superstardom”. Forbes. Archived from the original on July 26, 2020. Retrieved July 7, 2020.
Sante, Luc (May 3, 2020). “Andy Warhol, Superstar”. The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on May 3, 2020. Retrieved July 7, 2020.
Cohen, Alina (October 1, 2018). “How Roy Lichtenstein Unwittingly Invented Pop Art”. Artsy. Archived from the original on July 8, 2020. Retrieved July 7, 2020.
Genzlinger, Neil (October 31, 2018). “Mel Ramos, Painter of Female Nudes and Comic Heroes, Dies at 83”. The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on October 31, 2018. Retrieved July 7, 2020.
Jesus, Carlos Suarez De (January 31, 2008). “Immigrants Are Superheroes”. Miami New Times. Archived from the original on July 7, 2020. Retrieved July 7, 2020.
“Mr. Brainwash will convert a Richard Meier-designed building into a Beverly Hills art museum”. The Architect’s Newspaper. February 18, 2020. Archived from the original on July 8, 2020. Retrieved July 7, 2020.
Storr, Robert (June 2, 2017). “Pettibon’s World”. The New York Review of Books. Archived from the original on July 7, 2020. Retrieved July 7, 2020.
Schjeldahl, Peter. “The In-Your-Face Paintings of Peter Saul”. The New Yorker. Archived from the original on October 20, 2020. Retrieved July 7, 2020.
“Giuseppe Veneziano | artnet”. www.artnet.com. Retrieved July 14, 2020.
“F. Lennox Campello | Superman Naked | Artsy”. Artsy. Retrieved July 14, 2020.
Schkloven, Emma (January 25, 2017). “Traveling superhero-themed exhibit comes to Lynchburg College”. NewsAdvance.com. Retrieved July 7, 2020.
Trostle, Adora (January 30, 2019). “Results from the Miami Art Fairs a few Months Ago”. NY UNDRESSED. Archived from the original on July 14, 2020. Retrieved July 14, 2020.
“Kryptonite”. Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary. Merriam-Webster. Archived from the original on December 28, 2025. Retrieved January 3, 2026.
“kryptonite”. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online). HarperCollins. Archived from the original on January 10, 2026. Retrieved January 3, 2026.
“Brainiac”. Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary. Merriam-Webster. Archived from the original on December 23, 2025. Retrieved January 3, 2026.
“brainiac”. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online). HarperCollins. Archived from the original on January 10, 2026. Retrieved January 3, 2026.
“Bizarro”. Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary. Merriam-Webster. Archived from the original on February 19, 2026. Retrieved January 3, 2026.
“bizarro”. Collins English Dictionary. HarperCollins Publishers. Retrieved January 3, 2026.
“Most Valuable Comic Ever: ‘Superman No. 1’ Sells for a Record $9 Million”. The Hollywood Reporter. November 20, 2025. Archived from the original on January 5, 2026. Retrieved January 18, 2026.
Eco, Umberto (2004) [1962]. “The Myth of Superman”. In Heer, Jeet Heer; Kent, Worcesterm (eds.). Arguing Comics. University Press of Mississippi. p. 162. ISBN 1-57806-687-5.
Clarke, Gerald (December 13, 1971). “The Comics On The Couch”. Time. pp. 1–4. ISSN 0040-781X. Archived from the original on September 30, 2007. Retrieved January 29, 2007.
Daniels (1995). DC Comics: Sixty Years of the World’s Favorite Comic Book Heroes, p. 64
Grayling, A C (July 8, 2006). “The Philosophy of Superman: A Short Course”. The Spectator. UK. ISSN 0038-6952. Archived from the original on October 11, 2007. Retrieved January 29, 2007.
Daniels (1995). DC Comics: Sixty Years of the World’s Favorite Comic Book Heroes , pp. 22–23
The Mythology of Superman (DVD). Warner Bros. 2006.
Sabin, Roger (1996). Comics, Comix & Graphic Novels (4th paperback ed.). Phaidon. ISBN 0-7148-3993-0.
von Busack, Richard (July 2–8, 1998). “Superman Versus the KKK”. Metro Silicon Valley. San Jose, California. Archived from the original on May 11, 2015. Retrieved January 28, 2007.
Dubner, Stephen J; Levitt, Steven D (January 8, 2006). “Hoodwinked?”. The New York Times Magazine. p. F26. Archived from the original on April 7, 2012. Retrieved January 28, 2007.
Weldon (2013a), p. 83
Bukatman, Scott (2003). Matters of Gravity: Special Effects and Supermen in the 20th century. Duke University Press. ISBN 0-8223-3132-2.
Jules Feiffer The Great Comic Book Heroes, (2003). Fantagraphics. ISBN 1-56097-501-6
Andrae (1983), p.10.
Ian Gordon “Nostalgia, Myth, and Ideology: Visions of Superman at the End of the ‘American Century”in Michael Ryan, ‘ ‘Cultural Studies: An Anthology’ ‘(2007). Blackwell ISBN 978-1-4051-4577-0 ^{[permanent dead link]}.
Fingeroth, Danny Superman on the Couch (2004). Continuum International Publishing Group p53. ISBN 0-8264-1539-3
Engle, Gary “What Makes Superman So Darned American?” reprinted in Popular Culture (1992) Popular Press p 331–343. ISBN 0-87972-572-9
Wallace, Daniel; Singer, Bryan (2006). The Art of Superman Returns. Chronicle Books. p. 92. ISBN 0-8118-5344-6.
Aldo, Regalado (2005). “Modernity, Race, and the American Superhero”. In McLaughlin, Jeff (ed.). Comics as Philosophy. University of Mississippi Press. p. 92. ISBN 1-57806-794-4.
Jenemann, David (2007). Adorno in America. U of Minnesota Press. p. 180. ISBN 978-0-8166-4809-2.
Rooney, David (June 3, 2010). “Finding America, Searching for Identity”. The New York Times. Archived from the original on June 9, 2010. Retrieved June 11, 2010.
Junot Diaz, “My Problem with Superman,” New York Times, July 10, 2025. Archived July 20, 2025, at the Wayback Machine
Boucher, Ian. “Forging Kryptonite: Lex Luthor’s Xenophobia as Societal Fracturing, from Batman v Superman to Supergirl.” Adapting Superman: Essays on the Transmedia Man of Steel, edited by John Darowski, McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2021, pp. 216–234.
Weinstein, Simcha (2006). Up, Up, and Oy Vey! (1st ed.). Leviathan Press. ISBN 978-1-881927-32-7.
Tye, Larry (2012). Superman: The High-Flying History of America’s Most Enduring Hero. Random House Digital. pp. 65–67. ISBN 978-1-4000-6866-1. Like Moses. Much as the baby prophet was floated in a reed basket by a mother desperate to spare him from an Egyptian Pharaoh’s death warrant, so Kal-El’s doomed…
“Jerry Siegel Attacks!”. Das schwarze Korps. April 25, 1940. p. 8. Archived from the original on January 12, 2016.
Lund (2016)
Daniels (1998). Superman, p. 19: “There are parallel stories in many cultures, but what is significant is that Siegel, working in the generally patronized medium of the comics, had created a secular American messiah. Nothing of the kind was consciously on his mind, apparently: his explanation for dropping Superman down from the sky was that ‘it just happened that way’. And Shuster echoed him: ‘We just thought it was a good idea.'”
Dickholtz, Daniel (1998). “Steel Dreams”. Starlog Yearbook. Starlog Group, Inc. p. 77. Archived from the original on June 26, 2018. Retrieved June 26, 2018.
Man of Steel (2013; Warner Bros. Pictures). “They won’t necessarily make the same mistakes we did, not if you guide them, Kal.”
Hayde (2009). Flights of Fantasy
Tye (2012). Superman, p. 88: “[Harry Donenfeld] drafted Maxwell into Superman, Inc., first to oversee the licensing of toys and other products, then to bring the superhero into the world of broadcast.”
Scivally (2007). Superman on Film, Television, Radio and Broadway, p. 16: “Superman was brought to radio by Allen Ducovny, a press agent with Detective Comics, and Robert Maxwell (the pen name of Robert Joffe), a former pulp fiction author who was in charge of licensing the subsidiary rights of the company’s comic book characters.”
Pointer (2017): “… the budget for each short – an astonishing $30,000 …”
Dave Fleischer, quoted in Daniels (1998) Superman: The Complete History, p. 58: “The average short cost nine or ten thousand dollars, some ran up to fifteen; they varied.”
Tye (2012). Superman, p. 94: “Max and Dave [Fleischer’s] composers knew what Superman, Lois, and the others should look like, thanks to model sheets provided by Joe Shuster.”
Scivally (2007). Superman on Film, Television, Radio and Broadway, p. 37: “The challenges of the production had more than doubled its budget; the final cost was variously reported as anywhere from $250,000 to $325,000.”
Scivally (2007). Superman on Film, Television, Radio and Broadway, p. 37: “With all the hype, Superman quickly became the most profitable serial in film history.”
Scivally (2007). Superman on Film, Television, Radio and Broadway, p. 49: “According to Variety, the feature film and an additional twenty-four half-hour episodes were to come in for $400,000, or roughly $15,000 each.”
Scivally (2007). Superman on Film, Television, Radio and Broadway
“Superman Movies at the Box Office”. Box Office Mojo. Archived from the original on August 26, 2014. Retrieved July 24, 2016.
Bob Chipman (2016). Really That Good: SUPERMAN (1978) (YouTube). Moviebob Central. Archived from the original on December 11, 2021.
Scivally (2007). Superman on Film, Television, Radio and Broadway, p. 90
Tye (2012). Superman, p. 197
Sharf, Zack (May 24, 2023). “‘The Flash‘ Director Just Announced the Movie’s Most Shocking Cameo That’s Decades in the Making”. Variety. Archived from the original on May 24, 2023. Retrieved May 24, 2023.
Bernard Luber, quoted in Flights of Fantasy (Hayde 2009): “The show wasn’t strictly for youngsters. We offered the dream of every man – to fly, to be super.”
Scivally (2007), p. 52: “… Robert Maxwell hoped for an adult time slot, so he made Superman an adult show, with death scenes and rough violence.”
Clements, Jonathan; Tamamuro, Motoko (2003). The Dorama Encyclopedia: A Guide to Japanese TV Drama Since 1953. Stone Bridge Press. p. 200. ISBN 9781880656815.
Beeler, Stan (2011). “From Comic Book To Bildungsroman: Smallville, Narrative, And The Education Of A Young Hero”. In Geraghty, Lincoln (ed.). The Smallville Chronicles: Critical Essays on the Television Series. Scarecrow Press. ISBN 9780810881303.
Aurthur, Kate (May 20, 2006). “Young Male Viewers Lift Ratings for ‘Smallville'”. The New York Times. Archived from the original on June 12, 2006. Retrieved October 26, 2020.
Gordon (2017)
J. Addison Young, “Findings of Fact” (April 12, 1948), in Jerome Siegel and Joseph Shuster vs. National Comics Publications Inc. et al. (New York Supreme Court 1947) (Scan available on Scribd Archived August 20, 2016, at the Wayback Machine)
Gordon (2017). Superman: The Persistence of an American Icon p. 162
“Retail Sales of Licensed Merchandise Based on $100 Million+ Entertainment/Character Properties”. The Licensing Letter. July 23, 2018. Archived from the original on May 9, 2019. Retrieved August 7, 2018.
Anthony, Ian (November 2003). “Superb Manifestations: Five Anniversaries Converge In 2003 For Superman”. Superman Homepage. Archived from the original on August 22, 2019. Retrieved August 7, 2018.
Gordon (2017). Superman: The Persistence of an American Icon p. 146
Gordon (2017). Superman: The Persistence of an American Icon pp. 162–165
Gordon (2017). Superman: The Persistence of an American Icon, p. 155

Bibliography

Andrae, Thomas (August 1983). “Of Supermen and Kids with Dreams” (PDF). Nemo: The Classic Comics Library. No. 2. Fantagraphics. pp. 6–19.
- Reprinted in Comics Values Monthly Superman Memorial Issue (1992) and Best, Daniel, ed. (August 3, 2012). “‘Jerry and I did a comic book together…’ Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster Interviewed”. 20th Century Danny Boy. Archived from the original on December 4, 2015. Retrieved December 4, 2015.
Beerbohm, Robert (1996). “Siegel & Shuster Presents… The Superman”. Comic Book Marketplace. No. 36. Gemstone Publishing Inc. pp. 47–50.
Cronin, Brian (2009). Was Superman a Spy?. Penguin. ISBN 9781101046562.
Daniels, Les (1995). DC Comics: Sixty Years of the World’s Favorite Comic Book Heroes (First ed.). Bulfinch Press. ISBN 978-0821220764.
Daniels, Les (1998). Superman: The Complete History (1st ed.). Titan Books. ISBN 1-85286-988-7.
Dean, Michael (October 14, 2004). “An Extraordinarily Marketable Man: The Ongoing Struggle for Ownership of Superman and Superboy”. The Comics Journal (263): 13–17. Archived from the original on December 1, 2006. Retrieved December 22, 2006.
Eury, Michael; Adams, Neal; Swan, Curt; Anderson, Murphy (2006). The Krypton Companion. Raleigh, NC: TwoMorrows Publishing. ISBN 978-1-893905-61-0.
Gordon, Ian (2017). Superman: The Persistence of an American Icon. Rutgers University Press. ISBN 9780813587530.
Harvey, Robert C. (1996). The Art of the Comic Book: An Aesthetic History. Univ. Press of Mississippi. ISBN 9780878057580.
Hatfield, Charles (2005). Alternative Comics: An Emerging Literature. Univ. Press of Mississippi. ISBN 9781604735871.
Hayde, Michael J. (2009). Flights of Fantasy: The Unauthorized but True Story of Radio & TV’s Adventures of Superman. BearManor Media. ISBN 9781593933449.
Jones, Gerard (2004). Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book. Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-03656-2.
Kobler, John (June 21, 1941). “Up, Up, and Awa-a-ay!: The Rise of Superman, Inc” (PDF). The Saturday Evening Post. Archived (PDF) from the original on September 13, 2016.
Lund, Martin (2016). Re-Constructing the Man of Steel: Superman 1938–1941, Jewish American History, and the Invention of the Jewish–Comics Connection. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-3-319-42959-5.
Mankiewicz, Tom; Crane, Robert (2012). My Life as a Mankiewicz: An Insider’s Journey through Hollywood. University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 9780813140575.
Pointer, Ray (2017). The Art and Inventions of Max Fleischer: American Animation Pioneer. McFarland. ISBN 978-1-4766-6367-8.
Ricca, Brad (2014). Super Boys: The Amazing Adventures of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster – the Creators of Superman. St. Martin’s Griffin. ISBN 978-1250049681.
Rossen, Jake (2008). Superman Vs. Hollywood: How Fiendish Producers, Devious Directors, and Warring Writers Grounded an American Icon. Chicago Review Press. ISBN 9781569765012.
Scivally, Bruce (2007). Superman on Film, Television, Radio and Broadway. McFarland. ISBN 9780786431663.
Sergi, Joe (2015). The Law for Comic Book Creators: Essential Concepts and Applications. McFarland. ISBN 978-0786473601.
Steranko, Jim (1970). The Steranko History of Comics vol. 1. Supergraphics. ISBN 9780517501887.
Tye, Larry (2012). Superman: The High-Flying History of America’s Most Enduring Hero. Random House New York. ISBN 978-1-58836-918-5.
Weldon, Glen (2013a). Superman: The Unauthorized Biography. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-34184-1.
Weldon, Glen (2013b). Superman: The Unauthorized Biography. Turner Publishing Company. ISBN 9781118483824.
Dallas, Keith; Sacks, Jason; Beard, Jim; Dykema, Dave; Paul Brian McCoy (2013). American Comic Book Chronicles: The 1980s. TwoMorrows Publishing. ISBN 9781605490465.

External links

Supermanat Wikipedia’s sister projects

Definitions from Wiktionary
Media from Commons
Quotations from Wikiquote
Data from Wikidata

Official website
Golden Age Archived November 21, 2019, at the Wayback Machine, Silver Age Archived November 6, 2019, at the Wayback Machine and Modern Age Archived November 21, 2019, at the Wayback Machine Superman at the Comic book database
Superman on DC Database, a DC Comics wiki
Superman on IMDb

v t e Superman

v t e Justice League characters

Articles and topics related to Superman

Portals:

Authority control databases

Categories:

Contents

Superman

Development

Influences

Comics

Comic books

Newspaper strips

Editors

Aesthetic style

Copyright issues

Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster

Captain Marvel

Character overview

Superman

Clark Kent

Personality

Powers, abilities, and weaknesses

Weaknesses

Occasional equipment

Supporting characters

Lois Lane

Others

Antagonists

Alternative depictions

Impact and legacy

The superhero archetype

Fine art

Vernacular

Auctions

Literary analysis

An allegory for immigrants

Religious themes

In other media

Radio

Stage

Film

DC Extended Universe

DC Universe

Television

Video games

Merchandising

See also

Notes

References

Bibliography

Further reading

External links

Share this: