Jerry Siegel

(October 17, 1914 – January 28, 1996)

Jerome "Jerry" Siegel is best known as the creator of Superman, but he was first a very early sf fan from Cleveland. About 1929 or ’30, he published Cosmic Stories, which may have been the first fanzine. He corresponded with Carl Swanson in 1931–32 on an unsuccessful plan to set up a weird/sf prozine to be called Galaxy. In 1932, while in high school, he published (with his Glenville High schoolmate Joe Shuster) a mimeographed fanzine named Science Fiction.

He attended the First Worldcon in 1939. At Chicon, the next year, he attended with his wife, Bella, and participated in the masquerade as Clark Kent in normal clothes.

In the next few years, he and Joe Shuster made it big with Superman, the first of the great comic book superheroes, who premiered in 1938 and became one of the most recognizable characters of the 20th century. Siegel also used pseudonyms including Joe Carter and Jerry Ess and, jointly with Shuster, Bernard J. Kenton.

Jerry was the son of Jewish immigrants who arrived in New York in 1900, having fled antisemitism in their native Lithuania. He married Bella Lifshitz, a Jewish woman from his neighborhood of Glenville, on June 10, 1939. They had a son, Michael (January 27, 1944–January 17, 2006). The couple divorced in 1948, and in November of that year Siegel married Joan Kovacs (aka Joanne Carter), the original model for Lois Lane. They had a daughter, Laura (b. March 1, 1951) and remained together till his death.

• Emigrant’s Life: “Joe Shuster & Jerry Siegel: The Men Behind Superman.”
• 1983 interview from Nemo 2.
• Cleveland house.
• Pop Culture Wiki bio.
• FindaGrave entry.

Fanzines and Apazines:

• Cosmic Stories
• Science Fiction [1932] (with Joe Shuster)

Awards, Honors and GoHships:

• 1992 — Inducted (with Shuster posthumously) into the comic book industry's Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame
• 1993 — Jack Kirby Hall of Fame
• 2014 — Loncon 3 Special Committee Award to Siegel and Shuster in recognition of the first published appearance of Superman
• 2020 — 1945 Best Graphic Story or Comic Retro Hugo

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Person

1914—1996

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