Superman: The never-ending Copyfight Crisis rages on!
Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were both about 19 years old when they created the character called “Superman,” in 1933. He was based upon the title character from a novel called Gladiator, by Philip Wylie, Hercules, and Samson. Also, interestingly enough, Siegel and Shuster seem to have swiped the name “Superman” from an ad for “The Man of Bronze,” Doc Savage:
He was not originally appreciated by editors:
But the two did still try to sell Superman and got back nasty replies from some editors. Bell Syndicate told them, “We are in the market only for strips likely to have the most extra-ordinary appeal, and we do not feel Superman gets into this category.” United Features said that Superman was “a rather immature piece of work.”
Finally, in 1938, the pair of impractical dreamers managed to sell the character and an initial 13 page story to Detective Comics, which is now known as just DC. The total value of their first check was $412 and, as it turns out, that supercheck is now up for auction by a company called ComicConnect, which features a suitably purple description:
On March 1, 1938, DC Comics gave two young men from Cleveland $130 for the rights to a comic character named Superman. That $130 check essentially created a billion dollar industry and set in motion nearly 70 years of legal battles that continue to this day. [Read more →]
that I really liked. For one, I love the way that author Emily Arsenault portrays the friendship between Nora and Charlotte, both as children and later as adults. I love the mystery storyline, the way the children pursue their “investigation,” the difficulty that Nora has dealing with it as an adult. I thought the portrayal of Nora was especially good, the way she has grown away from her childhood home and the difficulties she has going back to it and seeing her classmates as adults. And most of all, I enjoyed the skillful way that Arsenault leads you from one suspect to another, the way that she subtly points the finger at different players in this game, so that it is easy to believe any one of them could have murdered Rose.
begins in with a grand jury. It’s an excellent plot device because we don’t know what he grand jury trial is about; we don’t know who is on trial or what the charges may be. But we do know that it comes too late:
