Jerry Siegel

Born in 1914 in Cleveland, Ohio, Jerry Siegel was, as a teenager, a fan of the emerging literary genre that came to be known as science fiction. Together with schoolmate Joe Shuster, Siegel published several science fiction fan magazines, and in 1933 they came up with their own science fiction hero: Superman. Siegel scripted and Shuster drew several weeks' worth of newspaper strips featuring their new creation, but garnered no interest from publishers or newspaper syndicates. It wasn't until the two established themselves as reliable adventure strip creators at DC Comics that the editors at DC offered to take a chance on the Superman material—provided it was re-pasted into comic book format for DC's new magazine, Action Comics. Siegel wrote the adventures of Superman (as well as other DC heroes, most notably the Spectre, his co-creation with Bernard Baily) through 1948 and then again from 1959-1966, in the interim scripting several newspaper strips including Funnyman and Ken Winston. Jerry Siegel died in January 1996.