SUPERMAN’S BIG CHECK
Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were lifetime friends even in their early 20s when they approached comic strip publisher M.C. Gaines with their SUPERMAN Concept, a comic strip they’d been trying to sell for a number of years. Publishers were reluctant to take on another sci-fi strip because Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers seemed to have the market sewed up. Gaines saw potential in the strip and decided to purchase it for his new comic book company, ALL AMERICAN PUBLICATIONS (which would eventually merge with National Comics and then become known as DC Comics), although Siegel and Shuster were still under the concept that it would be published as a comic strip– which at that time in history was more lucrative and more prestigious than comic books, which were seen as a sort of ghetto for failed comic strip artists.
In the above image we see a check for $402 dated March 1938 but upon closer inspection we see that the majority of it was for pages delivered while $130 is marked simply for ‘SUPERMAN’– Siegel and Shuster accepted this price in desperation to see their work in print, assigning all rights and profits from Superman to Detective Comics Inc. along with a contract to produce pages for National (as they had been doing) in a ten year contract which would net them a combined $400,000 – adjusted for inflation that contract which spanned 1937-1947 earned them $6,220,000.
The contract was worded as following:
Dated March 1
I, the undersigned, am an artist or author and have performed work for strip entitled SUPERMAN
In consideration of $130.00 agreed to be paid me by you, I hereby sell and transfer such work and strip, all good will attached thereto and exclusive right to the use of the characters and story, continuity and title of strip contained therein, to you and your assigns to have and hold forever and to be your exclusive property and I agree not to employ said characters by their names contained therein or under any other names at any time hereafter to any other person firm or corporation, or permit the use thereof by said other parties without obtaining your written consent therefor. The intent hereof is to give you exclusive right to use and acknowledge that you own said characters or story and the use thereof, exclusively. I have received the above sum of money.
Sgd. Joe Shuster
Sgd. Jerome Siegel
With SUPERMAN Exceeding anyone’s expectations and creating a juggernaut of merchandising and advertising profits much of it tied to the popular afternoon Radio Show THE ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN, the pair decided to seek higher compensation of those profits.
Siegel and Shuster filed suit with DC Comics in 1947 both for the rights and royalties to Superman but also to Superboy who had followed a few years later. The court ruled that National Comics owned the rights to Superman but that Jerry Siegel owned the rights to Superboy, the matter was settled out of court with DC Comics paying Siegel $94,000 for the rights to Superman and Superboy.
When the copyright renewal came up again in 1965 the pair again launched a lawsuit against DC Comics but this time the court ruled completely against them based on the 1948 settlement DC had made to Siegel.
At this point Joe Shuster was barely making a living as a delivery man because of his failing eyesight. At one point comic book artist and then American Editorial Cartoonist president Jerry Robinson was present when Joe made a delivery to DC Comics. The embarrassing situation made worse when an executive gave him $100 to buy a new coat and told him to find a better job.
In 1975 after Warner Brothers announced a big budget SUPERMAN film, Robinson enlisted the help of artist Neal Adams to help with a publicity campaign that served to shame DC Comics for the then current living conditions of Superman’s creators, a settlement was reached and the two of them were given small pensions of $20,000 a year plus a restoration of their bylines to the Superman Comics currently being published.
In an ironic twist, the $130 check was recently auctioned off and sold for an impressive $160,000.
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