You Did What__ Mad Plans and Great Historical Disasters - Bill Fawcett [71]
Heinrich Dreser, himself addicted to the drug he pioneered, died four days before Christmas in 1924. The cause of death was given as a cerebral apoplexy, or stroke. Dreser, incorrigible in his misjudgment, had spent his twilight years taking a daily dose of the wrong wonder drug. Had anyone known at the time, it was conceivable that he could have averted that fate by taking a daily dose of the drug he rejected for its lack of medical value — the Bayer Aspirin.
You Sold Whom for How Much?
It is amazing what hard work, perseverance, and schoolboy friendship can sometimes accomplish.
SIEGEL & SHUSTER’S BIG BREAK
NEW YORK CITY, 1937
Brian M. Thomsen
Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster (both born in 1914) first met at Glenville High School in Cleveland in 1931. Joe, a budding cartoonist wannabe, had just moved there from Toronto and in meeting Jerry realized that he was in the presence of a kindred soul. Both were unathletic, bespectacled, shy, and, most important, science fiction fans.
Jerry had been submitting stories to the pulps for quite a while. He longed to have his work in print right alongside those of his favorite authors, but his efforts had yielded no success and even less encouragement. Undaunted, the aspiring young writer joined forces with his illustrator buddy and started their own amateur magazine, entitled Science Fiction — The Advance Guard of Future Civilization, as a venue for both of their talents, which heretofore had been underappreciated by the marketplace. In their January 1933 issue a story by Herbert S. Fine (Siegel under a pen name) was featured entitled “The Reign of the Superman,” complete with illustrations by Shuster. It was a Frankenstein sort of tale that illustrated the age-old axiom that absolute power corrupts absolutely. Their magazine expired soon thereafter, but the concept of “the superman” stayed with them for further noodling on the storyboards.
Roughly about this time M. C. Gaines was pioneering a new magazine genre with his publication Famous Funnies, which collected comic strips into book/magazine form. The two cartoonist wannabes decided to give this art a try and began to develop their concept of a Superman character (without “super strength” or other powers outside of the normal pulp genre) into a comic strip story, which they submitted to Gaines in 1933. Unfortunately, as luck would have it, Gaines had to turn it down since he was only collecting strips that were already appearing in print and at the time was not interested in considering any original submissions.
Siegel and Shuster were undaunted and continued to put their “Superman” on submission to the various funny-book publishers and syndicators that began popping up with greater though usually short-lived frequency. Unfortunately, rejections abounded, even from Super Magazines Inc., which should have been a natural home for their concept. Still, their work was being considered, and eventually in 1935 they made their first professional sale to National Allied Publishing — but not the Superman project.
Meanwhile M. C. Gaines still remembered the young team and in 1937 reestablished contact with them, soliciting some new projects. Through his contacts they wound up visiting several New York publishers and eventually found themselves in the offices of an operation called Detective Comics run by Harry Donenfeld and Jack Liebowitz, for whom they had previously done some work on a series called “Slam Bradley.” Donenfeld and Liebowitz asked Gaines if he would mind letting them take over on Siegel and Schuster’s “Superman” project for the upcoming launch of Action Comics. Gaines was not in a position to move with the property himself, so he gave them his blessing and as a result, Donenfeld and Liebowitz made a modest offer for the property that had been lying fallow since the boys had first tried to get a door into the industry.
Siegel