The conception of Superman, an interesting theory...probably bunk

[hockey&comicsguy]

Okay, so my family owns a steel foundry. It's been in operation since 1923, in our possession since the early '70's. I don't remember exactly when, it was years ago, my uncle told me a story about how the "guy" (you'll have to excuse his lack of knowledge of comics) came up with the idea of Superman. In a nutshell, basically he said the guy was driving on down the highway and saw our shop (the highway runs right passed us), saw our logo, which bears a striking resemblance to Supes in both shape and color choice and was inspired to create Superman.....the man of "steel".

 

Anyway, my uncle has a penchant for spinning yarn and driking too much during Christmas get togethers so I always blew him off. Anyway, I thought i'd share the story as it's kind of fun to think about personally, even if it isn't true. And by all means, if anybody has access to articles or anything regarding where the creators came up with the vision for Superman i'd love to see it. As a side note our plant was very active during the late 30's and early 40's building parts for the Navy to help the War effort. The Navy actually built part of our plant at one point to ramp up production.

 

Here's a poor image of our logo. We don't have black in our logo, that's just the color they chose for our homepage. The logo is red only, the background generally being white. Food for thought.

 

[Robert Beerbohm]

yer pic did not materialize, at least for me - i have a blue box with a ? in the middle

[chrisco37]

yer pic did not materialize, at least for me - i have a blue box with a ? in the middle

 

I've got the dreaded "Red X".

 

No idea (and can't recall that I've ever heard) how S&S came up with Supes appearance.

 

I'm pretty sure the actual idea for the character was an offshoot of an old story "Rise of the Superman" or something like that, that S&S had done a few years earlier. It was about an evil guy that took over the world (or something like that ). The 1988 OS did a whole big article on it (for the 50th Anniversary of Supes). They even included some pics from the original source material.

[hockey&comicsguy]

yer pic did not materialize, at least for me - i have a blue box with a ? in the middle

 

Sorry Bob, that's odd as the pic is showing up fine for me.

 

Anyway, the "S" is very similar to Supes only each turn of the S is at an angle versus the curved lines of Superman's. Our logo has 4 sides to it (diamond) whereas Supes has 5 sides to it. And basically ours is an elongated version. You could call them major differences in style or minor. Opinions vary always.

[chrisco37]

yer pic did not materialize, at least for me - i have a blue box with a ? in the middle

 

Sorry Bob, that's odd as the pic is showing up fine for me.

 

Anyway, the "S" is very similar to Supes only each turn of the S is at an angle versus the curved lines of Superman's. Our logo has 4 sides to it (diamond) whereas Supes has 5 sides to it. And basically ours is an elongated version. You could call them major differences in style or minor. Opinions vary always.

 

Is the diamond the same as the Steelers logo?

[Silver Surfer]

I can't see the pic either.

[esquirecomics]

Where are you guys seeing a picture?

[MrBedrock]

Please repost that picture. It could be the smoking gun, the magic bullet, and the key to all subsequent comic history!

 

Or it just might be kinda neat to see....

[BangZoom]

There is no picture.

 

Apparently hockey&comicsguy is the only one who can see it.

 

It must be in his cache.

[MrBedrock]

There is no picture.

 

Apparently hockey&comicsguy is the only one who can see it.

 

It must be in his cache.

 

I'll pay cache to see it!

[comicdonna]

There is no picture.

 

Apparently hockey&comicsguy is the only one who can see it.

 

It must be in his cache.

Being a Superman collector, I would also like to see the picture.

[comicdonna]

Steel Foundry! Does the logo look anything like this?

[hockey&comicsguy]

Steel Foundry! Does the logo look anything like this?

 

sorry everyone, let's try this again

 

please excuse the choppiness of the image. had to copy/resize it

 

 

 

man, I have to get a copy of that book!

[comicdonna]

It fits in nicely with your family business and your logo!

[Robert Beerbohm]

OK, i have a few moments to address this concept

 

A late friend of mine in comics collecting and Siegel & Shuster Lore investigating, Lee Randall, who was also on the GCD at www.comics.org and who contributed some data into my Big Bang Theory of Comic Book History in CBM #50 back in 1997 re Jerry, Joe, Mort and Julie as teen age fan boys circa 1929-1935 centering on the origins of where Superman concepts originated, pin-pointing a lot into Hugo Gernsback's Amazing Stories and what grew from there such as a Jack WIlliamosn story, The Girl From Mars, a 1929 piece which one only got by, well, here is a small piece of the article, which Julie Schwartz edited my prose, and i have a dozen hours of taped interviews on this piece from him, anyways,

 

 

Anyways, the premise of this Jack Williamson story is Mars is getting ready to explode, scientist rockets onyl daughter to Earth to escape the planet explosion destruction

 

Girl is found, raised, has super powers jumping/flying, strength, etc

 

I bring this all up only in that when Gary Carter & crew laid out the piece, this was shrunk down to minute size and cropped down - and almost 4000 words were cropped out by them as well

 

Part of what was a key piece of data had been supplied by Lee randall, mentioned above

 

He was going thru the Shaker Heights (Cleveland suburb) high school year book for circa 1933-34, and saw the logo for the basketball team - GMCarter decided that was not important enough, i guess, and it was left on the cutting room floor

 

So, i do not have my image of that page handy, the research was from over a decade ago

 

Maybe this was a common logo which comes out of that area? food for thought?

 

here is the logo sent to me PM like - sure looks similar

 

[Detroit MIke]

Unfortunately, the story of the creation of Superman happening in one magic moment doesn't hold much water. Siegel was a young kid that loved reading the pulps. He borrowed ideas and brought them together into something new and better.

 

[BangZoom]

...He borrowed ideas and brought them together into something new and better.

 

I agree.

[The Black Hand ®]

Unfortunately, the story of the creation of Superman happening in one magic moment doesn't hold much water. Siegel was a young kid that loved reading the pulps. He borrowed ideas and brought them together into something new and better.

 

 

That's pretty much how everything is created. Give credit for the lightbulb to the sun. Everyone is influenced by what occured before them.

[Robert Beerbohm]

Oh, methinks you misconstrue my intent, Detroit Mike, and an avalanche is brewing. I was not suggesting S&S thought up Supes in one thought pattern here - this is just one of many aspects going into just this one aspect of Superman's origin - as easily one can go back to ERB John Carter of Mars which originates 1912 which WIlliamson obviously borrowed from for his later 1929 story Girl From Mars, but only in reverse where the powers end up materializing and he blows up Mars, no going back & forth.

 

so, This piece is a tiny one from the 12,000 words which did see print, so, out of context here, if one does nto have a chance to read the entire piece

 

There is a plan afoot to expand the original CBM 50 piece into a much larger book -

[Aman619]

those S logo images are indentical. why is that?