Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster met in 1932 in high school in Cleveland, Ohio. They shared an interest in films, comics and science fiction. Siegel wrote science fiction stories and published them himself in a magazine called Science Fiction: The Advance Guard of Future Civilization. Schuster would often illustrate Siegel's stories.
The first Superman appeared in 1933, in one of these stories. This Superman was Bill Dunn, a vagrant man, who gained psychic powers after being tricked by an evil scientist into taking an experimental drug. He used his powers maliciously, for amusement and gain, but eventually his powers wore off and he was left as a vagrant once again.
As Siegel and Shuster attempted to get their stories syndicated in the newspapers, editors encouraged them to make their characters more sensational than anything that was already being published. Siegel also felt that a heroic character was more attractive to the public than a villain; so the second incarnation of Superman used his powers for good in fighting crime, unlike the villainous Bill Dunn. This Superman, like the first, was given powers against his will by an unscrupulous scientist, but instead of psychic powers he acquired superhuman strength and bullet–proof skin.
Siegel and Shuster eventually separated, frustrated by their continued failure to find a publisher for their work. In 1934, Shuster collaborated with an established illustrator named Russell Keaton on a series of comic strips that introduced Superman more as we know him today – an alien from the planet Krypton, with the now–familiar costume – and the mild–mannered journalist Clark Kent as his alter–ego. Keaton abandoned the project after this too failed to get published, and Siegel returned to Shuster.
In 1935, two of their other stories were published by the comic book entrepreneur Malcolm Wheeler–Nicholson in his New Fun Comics. They asked Wheeler–Nicholson to market Superman to the newspapers on their behalf; he offered to publish Superman in one of his other magazines, but they refused his offer as he hadn't paid them for the work he'd published previously.
Siegel and Shuster continued to produce other work for Wheeler–Nicholson, despite the erratic pay. He formed a joint corporation with Harry Donenfeld and Jack Liebowitz, called Detective Comics, Inc., in order to release his third magazine, entitled Detective Comics. Siegel and Shuster produced stories for Detective Comics, but Wheeler–Nicholson fell into serious debt and in January 1938 he was bankrupted by his partners, Donenfeld and Liebowitz. He then retired from the comics business.
Meanwhile, in December 1937, Liebowtiz had asked Siegel to produce some comics for an upcoming magazine called Action Comics. Siegel proposed some new stories, but not Superman, as he and Shuster were negotiating a deal with the McClure Newspaper Syndicate for Superman. In January 1938, an employee of McClure named Max Gaines informed Siegel that McClure had rejected Superman, and Siegel agreed to allow Gaines to forward the Superman strips to Liebowitz to be considered for Action Comics. Liebowitz and his colleagues were impressed, and asked Siegel and Shuster to develop the strips for Action Comics. Siegel and Shuster submitted their work in late February, and were paid $130 (AFI $2,314). In early March they released the copyright for Superman to Detective Comics, Inc. This was normal practice at the time, and it was how Siegel and Shuster were used to working.
Superman was finally published on 18 April 1938, in the first issue of Action Comics ... and the rest, as they say, is history.
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