"Crazypants-level weird"

"While the George Reeves television show The Adventures of Superman was on the air (1952-1958), the folks in charge decreed that his comics adventures must be seen as extensions of his televised exploits. That meant they had to conform to the show's comparatively narrow scope and effects budget. Thus the comic book Superman, the most powerful being in the known universe, ended up hanging around Metropolis most of the time and nabbing the odd jewel thief like a beat cop in blue L'eggs.

     Once the show ended, however, all bets were off, and writers and artists were free to get weird. Crazypants-level weird. And under the firm editorial hand of Mort Weisinger, who encouraged his writers to surround the Man of Steel with a vast and quirky network of friends and relations (Girl cousin! Super dog! Mermaid ex! Super-powered teen pals from the future! Super monkey! Super horse who is a centaur who is also a guy never mind why! Super cat! Dead Kryptonian fiancée he met when he went back in time! Tiny bottled Kryptonian municipality!) Superman became the harried, bemused patriarch of a garishly colored clan that routinely traversed the galaxy and the timestream as if they were just running out to the Piggly-Wiggly."
— Glen Weldon, OPR
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"a bigger piece of the action"

"We all know who Superman is. If you’re younger than 75, you don’t even remember a time when he didn’t exist. With the possible exception of Mickey Mouse, the indestructible and incorruptible Man of Steel is surely the most famous fictional character ever created in cartoon form.

     The two nerds from Cleveland who created Superman are not nearly as famous as he is, but they’re not exactly obscure, either. Since the mid-1970s, when the national news media took notice of their plight, it’s been well known that Jerry Siegel (the writer) and Joe Shuster (the illustrator) naïvely sold their rights to the character for next to nothing — and that their fight for a bigger piece of the action has led to a series of victories and has continued even after both men died in the 1990s."
— Peter Keepnews, The New York Times
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From: Lambiek

"Joe Shuster was born in Toronto, Canada, as the son of a Jewish Dutch father and an Ukrainian mother. He met Jerry Siegel when his family moved from Canada to Ohio in 1923. As teenagers, they published science-fiction fan magazines, and this was how they came in contact with Gladiator, the novel by Philip Wylie. This novel proved to be the biggest influence on their conception of Superman in 1933."
— Lambiek
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From: Wikipedia

Read more about Philip Wylie here...















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