Born in 1914 in Cleveland, Ohio, Jerome Seigal was, as a teenager, a fan of the merging literary genre that came to be known as science fiction. Together with school mate Joe Shuster, Seigal published several science-fiction magazines and, in 1933 they came up with their own science-fiction hero - Superman. Seigal scripted and Shuster drew severl weeks worth of newspaper strips featuring their new creation, but garned 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 repasted into comic-book format for DC's new magazinne, Actiom Comics. Siegel wrote the adventures of Superman (as well as other DC heroes, most notably the Spectre, his co-creation with Bernard Bailey) through 1948 and then again from 1959-1965, in the interim scripting severl newspaper strips such as Funnyman and Ken Winston.
Joseph Shuster was born in 1914 in Toronto, Canada. When he was nine, his family moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where Shuster met young Jerry Siegel. The two became fast friends and collaborators; together, they published the earliest science-fiction fan magazines, where Shuster honed his fledgling art skills. In 1936, he and Siegal began providing DC Comics with such new features as Dr. Occult, Slam Bradley, and Radio Squad before selling Superman to DC in 1938. Influenced by comic-strip greats such as Wash Tubb's Roy Crane, Joe Shuster drew Superman through 1947, after which he left comic books to create the comic strip Funnyman, again with Siegal. Unfortunatly, failing eyesight cut short his career, but not before his place in history of American pop culture was assured. Shuster died of heart failure on July 30, 1992