Before Krypton, There Was Cleveland
- Ronaldo Rodriguez Jr.
- Jul 17
- 3 min read
Updated: Aug 15
Before he flew across the silver screen or appeared on lunchboxes and action figures, Superman was just an idea, scribbled out in a Glenville home by two Cleveland teens.
The world’s most iconic superhero wasn’t born on Krypton or in Metropolis. He was born on Cleveland’s east side.
It’s the middle of the Great Depression. At Glenville High School, a restless freshman named Jerry Siegel is searching for his voice. Small, energetic, and obsessed with pulp sci-fi, Jerry isn’t a sports kid. He’s a dreamer. A writer. And when the school newspaper, The Glenville Torch, announces a fiction contest, Jerry sees his chance. His story doesn’t win, but they print it anyway. That small validation lights a spark that never goes out.
Not long after, Jerry meets Joe Shuster, another quiet kid from a working-class Jewish family. Joe’s into body-building magazines and comics, and he draws constantly. Where Jerry writes, Joe draws. They click instantly.
The two dive into science fiction and fantasy, creating stories they send off to the same pulp magazines they devour. Most are rejected. But they keep going.
Then, in the summer of 1932, tragedy strikes: Jerry’s father dies of a heart attack during an attempted robbery at his secondhand clothing store.
Jerry doesn’t talk about it. He writes.
One sleepless night, an idea takes hold: a man with unimaginable strength, who fights for justice and hides in plain sight as an affable reporter. The story pours out of him in a rush. The next morning, he runs to Joe’s house, breathless. Joe starts sketching. There, in Joe’s mother’s kitchen, Superman is born.
The character is part fantasy, part therapy. Superman isn’t just entertainment. He’s a rewrite of Jerry’s grief. In Superman’s world, no one’s father is left defenseless. The bad guys don’t get away. Power isn’t used to exploit, but used to protect.
They submit their creation again and again, for seven years, it’s rejected.
They keep going.
Finally, in 1938, National Publications (now DC Comics) bites. Siegel and Shuster sell Superman for $130. At 23 years old, they’re ecstatic.
That spring, Action Comics #1 hits newsstands. On the cover, Superman hoists a crushed green car above his head. The issue sells out. Superman becomes a phenomenon, and the superhero genre is born.
Siegel and Shuster go from basement dreamers to full-time creators, cranking out new Superman stories at breakneck speed. They get offices, assistants, and steady paychecks. They become, as author Brad Ricca puts it, “Cleveland famous.”
But the joy doesn’t last.
When DC begins publishing Superboy (a concept Siegel had pitched and been denied years earlier) without credit or compensation, the two friends are furious. They sue. In 1947, they win the rights to Superboy but lose the rights to Superman forever. They’re fired from DC, cut off from the character they created.
For decades, Siegel and Shuster’s names are erased from the mythology. No credits. No royalties. Joe battles vision loss and poverty. Jerry works low-level government jobs, living paycheck to paycheck.
It isn’t until the mid-1970s, after public outcry led by comic book artist Neal Adams and Jerry’s wife, Joanne (the real-life inspiration for Lois Lane), that pressure mounts on DC. Only then are Siegel and Shuster granted a small stipend, health benefits, and decades too late, official credit for their creation. Later comics and films would finally carry the credit: “Created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.”
Superman is now a global icon. But the real story, the one rooted in Cleveland, is a cautionary tale. It’s about how art, born from grief, idealism, and working-class imagination, can be seized, sanitized, and sold, leaving its creators behind.
Still, Siegel and Shuster’s legacy endures. Superman lasts because he wasn’t just a fantasy. He was an expression of loss, of yearning, of belief that one person, no matter how small, could change the world.
And like the city that birthed him, that story still matters.
