Eastern then launched an entire series of comic compilation books without the services of the disappointed Gaines. But the enterprising businessman—showing that fighting spirit—struck a profit-sharing deal with the McClure Newspaper Syndicate and set out to launch a competing line. As Gaines’s new titles became profitable, more publishers began bundling books of comic strip reprints and selling them at newsstands and dime stores. Before long the backlog of available newspaper strips had been exhausted, and existing content for new compilations was scarce.
That’s when the trailblazing publisher of National Allied Publications began hiring new writers and illustrators to create original strips and new characters. Other publishers followed suit. In this wild swirl of competition, the comic book industry began to take shape. Since almost all the major players were Jewish, Jewish writers and illustrators were free to apply for work. This was their chance to start a career in the broader publishing trade. As Jerry and Joe worked on new characters far away in Cleveland, the delivery system for their creations was being built.
By the mid-1930s a short, dapper, well-connected, and highly successful publisher named Harry Donenfeld was contemplating entry into the emerging field. Donenfeld had an appetite for success and the track record to prove it. He knew how to pick titles that sold, hire writers with sizzle, print on the cheap, and, if necessary, muscle his magazines into newsstands, drugstores, cigar stores, barbershops, and beauty salons. Wining and dining wealthy businessmen and powerful politicians at the best restaurants in Manhattan, he spared no expense for his potential clients, influential colleagues, and fun-loving friends.
Donenfeld had made a fortune back in the Roaring Twenties by publishing girlie magazines and racy pulp titles, which had sold as fast as his rackety printing presses could roll them out. With Prohibition in force, Donenfeld had supplemented his publishing profits by transporting stockpiles of bootleg whiskey into New York. He had hid the illegal booze in train cars carrying paper shipments from Canada and sold the hooch to speakeasies across the city, while marketing his magazines and books nationwide. Harry Donenfeld was living the high life—on his terms. His wife Gussie kept their home in the Bronx like a showplace as Donenfeld paraded his girlfriends through the glitziest clubs in town.
But those Roaring Twenties gave way to the Depression, Prohibition was repealed, and the world was far less forgiving of questionable business dealings. Political reformers were looking askance at big shots who cashed in on borderline pornography while millions of decent, out-of-work Americans scrambled to keep from starving. By 1937 New York mayor Fiorello LaGuardia was running for reelection on the promise of shutting down indecent books and magazines, and prosecutors were bringing indictments against risqué publishers. So Donenfeld set out to establish a more legitimate product line. He thought bigger and played harder than anyone else in the fledgling comic book field and figured he could get in on the ground floor and gobble up the profits. The comic book trade was still limited, but the potential for growth was promising. He needed a breakthrough title. He had no way of knowing that two young men in Cleveland had created a character who could provide that kind of breakthrough.
TO MOVE INTO THE COMIC FIELD, Donenfeld turned to his friend, business partner, and spiritual opposite Jack Liebowitz, a no-nonsense, detail-savvy accountant who had grown up in the same Lower East Side, New York, neighborhood as the flamboyant Donenfeld. In contrast to Donenfeld, during those same Roaring Twenties, Liebowitz had studied accounting at night at New York University and had gone to work as a financial manager for the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. He got by on a modest salary while working to win higher wages and better working conditions for immigrants who toiled in crowded sweatshops for 12 to 14 hours a day.
Liebowitz, whose parents had left Ukraine and settled in New York City when he was three, could relate to the hardworking garment makers and believe in their cause. But by the early 1930s, with the Depression bearing down, the striking union out of money, and radical communists attempting a takeover, Liebowitz was more than ready to go into business with a smooth operator from the old neighborhood.
So, the mild-mannered accountant and the back-slapping business tycoon cast their gaze on the emerging comic book business. As the first commercial comic books rolled off the same presses that printed cheap pulp magazines like Ghost Stories, Strange Suicides, and Medical Horrors, Donenfeld and Liebowitz maneuvered for an opening. By 1938 the pair had taken over National Allied Publications and DC Comics (publisher of Detective Comics), thus setting themselves up as major players in the emerging comic book industry.
* CHAPTER 5 *
CHAMPION OF THE OPPRESSED
AS THE COMIC BOOK INDUSTRY took shape in New York, Jerry and Joe were eking out a living by operating their own two-man comic business in Cleveland. The aspiring writer and illustrator were living with their parents to save on expenses, working from a makeshift studio in Joe’s attic, and working menial part-time jobs to make ends meet. Having managed to get a couple of contracts with new comic book publishers in New York, the pair developed a few interesting characters. Their title Federal Men featured a wisecracking Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent named Steve Carson who worked undercover to find kidnapped babies and shut down criminal gangs. Spooky Dr. Occult was a brash, supernatural ghost detective who tracked down zombies, vampires, and other spectral figures. In some episodes the evil Dr. Occult even donned a red cape and took flight as the creators tried out a bit of their Superman material. As the work ebbed and flowed, Jerry and Joe waited for their big break. That’s where Superman was supposed to come in.
At first Jerry insisted on holding back the Superman character from the low-paying comic book publishers in hopes of selling it to an established newspaper syndicate. A major syndicate like King Features or United Features could place a Superman strip in hundreds of newspapers nationwide and generate thousands of dollars in royalties in the process. A portion of the royalties would go to the creators week after week, month after month, year after year, for the life of the strip. Strips like Little Orphan Annie and Popeye had been popular in newspapers for years, and their creators were dining at the top of the comic-art food chain. But the strategy of saving Superman for syndication had produced only a drawer full of rejection letters from syndicate executives, who claimed that an all-powerful being from another planet, dressed in tights and serving the public good, was too far-fetched for a broad newspaper audience comprised mostly of adults. One editor from United Features indelicately summed up Superman as “a rather immature piece of work.”
Losing patience with rejections, Jerry and Joe finally sent off Superman samples to comic book publishers, only to receive more negative feedback. With no one in the publishing business showing interest in the Superman character, the Man of Steel sat on the shelf. Then, one day in the spring of 1938, Jerry and Joe opened the mail to find an intriguing proposal from DC Comics—Harry Donenfeld’s promising new venture. The letter came from editor Vin Sullivan, who had been assigned to launch a new title, Action Comics (AC), to build on the success of DC Comics. Jerry and Joe had created a couple of the lesser characters for Donenfeld’s publications, but this new one sounded bigger. Sullivan wanted a 13-page Superman adventure as the lead story for the debut issue of AC. Sullivan was desperate for a good character and didn’t have time to start from scratch with a new concept. He had come across an old, rejected Superman proposal, and he was willing to pay Siegel and Shuster to recraft it for AC—pronto. Jerry and Joe’s company would have to produce the four-color cover and 13 pages of illustrated text in a couple of weeks to meet a fast-approaching deadline.
Tired of watching their best character sit on the shelf as new comic books rolled out new superheroes every week (even the word “super” was turning up regularly), Siegel and Shuster accepted the offer and began scrambling to fill the order. After a series of back-and-forth rewrites, remakes, and spats between the Cleveland collaborators