Superman Through the Ages! Forum

I hit one of the random banners and re-read the first Superboy comic from More Fun. Why has Jerry been given the writing credit? Is it because four-fifths of the story is an origin rehash? This doesn't make Jerry the writer, and I really do find it hard to believe he wrote the final section. It also doesn't make sense with regard to subsequent events in the legal world.

Either I gave the writing credit to Jerry because I was under the mistaken impression that he was the writer; or that's how the credits in DC's reprint edition of More Fun read.

I have no idea who the actual writer was.

For that matter, DC probably doesn't know either.

Apparently the reprint that I had listed the writer as "unknown"

comics.org states it was Siegel:

Reprint: http://www.comics.org/details.lasso?id=229657#3
Original: http://www.comics.org/details.lasso?id=4115#3

Thanks. I'm no historian, but Jerry being the writer of that story makes no sense to me.

My "Superman The Complete History" book by Daniels gives the writing credit to Don Cameron.

Aldous, I think it is generally recognised - and acknowledged - (except by DC) that Jerry Siegel did write the first Superboy tale, as per Gerard Jones's Men of Tomorrow, and the following website, to use two examples:

http://www.supermanartists.comics.org/DCHISTORY/DCHISTORY-1.htm

Apparently the reason there were no credits in the Millennium Edition of More Fun Comics #101 is because DC didn't wish to acknowledge that Siegel and Shuster were the creators of Superboy, which is a sore point with Siegel's heirs, and is supposedly at least partly responsible for bringing on their lawsuit (not to mention the small matter of Smallville as well!).

As for what Daniels wrote in Superman: The Complete History, he may not have been allowed by DC (or their lawyers) to say that Siegel wrote the story, particularly if the book was commissioned by DC.

I found Superman: The Complete History to be a slanted and negative anti-Superman vehicle.  I advise the reader to question everything it says.

Great pictures, though.

Thanks, Lee. This is what the website says:


The Daniels history book has a slightly different version, and that's why the writer credit didn't make sense to me. The book seems to imply that Jerry gave them the idea of a mischievous Superboy, but it was rejected, then the next thing Jerry knew they had made the comic in More Fun with a helpful Superboy in the familiar costume, and he was upset. That was one reason I doubted the credit. The other was that the latter part of the comic is just so awful, I almost couldn't believe that Jerry could have written it.


Isn't that ridiculous? He either did or he didn't. Love him or hate him, facts are facts.


I don't fully understand, Rao, because whether or not it's a corporate and/or loose version of history, it doesn't strike me at all as being "anti-Superman". I'm disappointed to learn of your (and Lee's) opinion, naturally. But that's the point of the forum, so I can bring up things and have them discussed. Questioning is a good idea, but in any case, the book doesn't pretend to have the weight of things like "All In Colour For A Dime" or the amazing Steranko History of Comics. It's a casual fan's book with, as you pointed out, great pictures.

I am always cautious of champions of the little guy (Jerry) who believe he was a saint and the big guy (DC) is the devil incarnate. There is always a section of any community who view any big, successful company as wicked, no matter what the facts are.

But that's just the point, DC are not interested in the fact of whether or not Siegel wrote the first Superboy story, they have steadfastly denied him and Joe Shuster credit for the creation of Superboy and are not going to admit in print that they did (and certainly not in any book that has been commissioned or approved by them), as they may potentially lose many millions in their current legal wrangle with Siegel's heirs.

That is why, at the start of each episode of Smallville appears the carefully phrased byline: "Superman created by Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster", not "Superboy created by Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster".

People who are more knowledgeable (or have access to the facts) than I am in this area seem to be generally in consensus that Siegel wrote the first Superboy story, which is good enough for me, although admittedly I'd be more comfortable with citations of their source or sources, but one very rarely sees footnotes, even in scholarly publications about comics.

It is of course quite possible that part of the story at least may have been rewritten by someone else (maybe the part that you, Aldous, think to be un-Siegel-like), more likely than not by the editor, in this case, Jack Schiff.

It's odd that there's even an argument about who created Superboy, when you think of it, because he's clearly identified as the same person as Superman, only younger. It's the same guy. How would it look if I wrote a book called The adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn When They Grew Up and claimed to have come up with the characters myself?

And then sue the estate of Samuel Clemens somehow!

While in a literary sense they're the same person, from a legal standpoint, it's been ruled that Superman and Superboy are two distinct characters---thus the seperate legal battles over the two characters...

My understanding of this whole shenanigan is as follows. Maybe it will help:

Siegel conceived of Superboy as early as 1938, but DC rejected the idea. He mentioned wanting to publish Superboy stories to the Saturday Evening Post in 1941. From my understanding, DC still refused, but while he was away at war, DC published his Superboy stori(es?) anyway, in More Fun Comics issues beginning in 1945. He and Shuster sued in 1946, and the matter wasn't settled until 1948; meanwhile, DC published "The Origin of Superman" in Superman #53 that excluded Superboy from the origin altogether. (John Byrne later used this origin as his justification that the "original" Superman was not Superboy.)

However, after the Siegels won the lawsuit giving them the rights to Superboy as a separate character, they sold the copyright to DC. Having the rights to Superboy again, DC published Superboy #1 in 1949 and re-included him into Superboy's origin, until the reboot in 1986. Superboy's copyright term expired in 2004 and the character returned to the Siegels, fueling the current battles over Smallville royalties.