Comic-Con this 12 months felt like a unique place. Some of the extra monolithic cubicles had moved places, some distributors and publishers have been absent, and although the bursting crowds have been excited — so excited — to be again at a totally functioning Comic-Con, there was nonetheless one thing off.
Yes, the then-new WGA/SAG-AFTRA super-union team-up had, on the final second, stripped Hall H of its Lokis, Feiges, and CGI Godzillas. And although individuals have been bummed, there was a way that it was all for a higher good. After all, Comic-Con is about comics, motion pictures, reveals, video games — all that good things. We all know precisely the place it comes from.
As I walked across the ground, I used to be in search of the DC sales space, largely as a result of I wished to see what they have been doing to have fun Superman’s eighty fifth anniversary. I by no means discovered it, however I saved meandering round the place it was and as an alternative discovered the public sale cubicles with their strikingly vibrant lights and squeaky-clean glass instances. Sometimes you’ll be able to see a man there in a tuxedo exhibiting off a Detective #27 to a pulsating collector.
But once more, this 12 months was completely different. At the ComicConnect sales space, there have been letters from Jerry Siegel, who with artist Joe Shuster co-created Superman within the Thirties in Cleveland. Most individuals know that Jerry and Joe bought Superman outright for $130 and for many years tried to get a greater deal through negotiation, letters, and lawsuits. These letters have been actual historical past, being proven upfront of their on-line public sale in August. And in typical Comic-Con style, I walked proper previous them.
A number of days later, the content material of the letters started to floor on social media, to shocked reactions.
The most alarming of the lot is this one. Jerry despatched lots of most of these letters throughout the fifties, however this explicit one to Jack Liebowitz was filled with extra than simply invective. The envelope included a powdery white substance.
The powder was professionally examined in a laboratory and located to be cornstarch as an alternative of arsenic, however the impact will need to have been terrifying.
Some of us bear in mind the flurry of white powder letters (Anthrax, ricin) that flooded information departments and authorities mailrooms within the wake of 9/11 and killed 5 individuals. These threats nonetheless occur immediately. The U.S. Code had legal guidelines in place in opposition to these crimes as early as 1935, so Jerry may have/ought to have been charged with one thing — so why wasn’t he? Superman’s house owners wished nothing to do with Jerry. Why not use this as an excuse to be rid of him? Did they assume it could malign the Superman model? Or expose them to unhealthy publicity? Or did somebody there really feel mercy? I believe the shortage of a signature on this letter is telling. What I nonetheless can’t imagine is that this has been saved a secret. There are so many Jerry tales and rumors on the market from this time (most of them unfaithful), so why hold this one beneath wraps? No one, it appears, talked to the newspapers.
Arsenic letters have been commonplace in pulp detective tales. In the actual world, there was this story within the Daily News on February 28, 1951. Georgia governor Herman Tallmadge was despatched a letter with arsenic powder however was unhurt. He blamed it on “just another crank” who disagreed together with his white nationalist-centered insurance policies. Tallmadge was additionally recognized for his actions in 1934 when he arrested hanging Georgia staff and threw them in a WWI POW camp surrounded by barbed wire. He then ordered them tried by navy tribunal.
Based on current convictions, if Jerry Siegel despatched that letter immediately and pleaded responsible, he would almost definitely be sentenced to 2-5 years in jail.
Though the Nineteen Fifties have been definitely a time of desperation for Jerry and Joe (who drew his Nights of Horror work then), there has by no means been any indication that their circumstances of poverty, anguish, and maybe even sickness, resulted in precise legal exercise.
This is an necessary letter in attempting to grasp each Jerry’s mindset on the time and his relationship with National. I sit up for studying some actual detective work on this.
The timeline is murkier for this subsequent letter. Though the public sale places it as later 1951, I might place it earlier than the White Powder letter just because it doesn’t reference it. But it is provocative in its personal proper. ComicConnect identifies the author as National boss Harry Donenfeld (and I agree). On Facebook, Brian McKernan has dubbed it “The Red Letter.”
Read that final paragraph once more:
No, Jerry, I can’t give you any sympathy. You are a vicious, hypocritical, grasping bastard. Little sympathy we’d have had from you in case you had received your swimsuit in opposition to National Comics. All your delusions are primarily based on a personality which you admit you stole from another person. I can’t really feel sorry for a person who divorced his spouse, deserted his baby, and has squandered as a lot cash as you have got.
The remainder of the letters are equally unhappy and traditionally necessary, every in their very own approach. I’ll depart that half to the subsequent Siegel & Shuster students on the market. But if you’re considering comics historical past, simply learn them as-is. Don’t fear about licensed customers or specialists. Just learn the paperwork. This is nice, main supply stuff. This is historical past. Our historical past.
But inform me: does the letter sound acquainted? Listen to it. Can’t you nearly hear him? What struck me about this letter is that it is straight-up, unadulterated whataboutism. That is, it is deflection fairly than engagement. Harry doesn’t even point out Superman or Jerry’s factors about being underpaid (and truly unpaid), solely that it is in some way all his fault for different faults, each imprecise and imagined. You may substitute “But her emails” for “Philip Wylie‘s Gladiator” and be on the identical web page. It is not a rhetorical gesture; it is not reasoned debate. Here it is flat-out imply. It is additionally, most frequently, a strategy to deflect guilt.
Even an eclipsed look on the feedback about these new letters, titled “Jerry Threat” or “Jerry Destitute,” yields a lot of the identical response. Lots of “Well, they were paid the equivalent of a million dollars in the fifties!” and “Jerry shoulda got a lawyer LOL!” All of these myths have been defined in award-winning books.
Thankfully ComicsConnect has carried out the precise factor and let the scans be accessible to anybody who needs to see them. This is nice and has saved these letters from doable collector’s limbo. “It belongs on the internet” is not the identical factor as “it belongs in a museum,” nevertheless it works for me.
The white powder letter bought for $8,994.15, after thirty bids.
The hardest letter for me was this one:
Dear Harry:
Today is FATHER’S DAY.
I can’t assist my son due to YOU.
Jerry Siegel
At the time, Jerry was newly married to Joanne (the unique mannequin for Lois Lane,) and had a brand new daughter named Laura. He was additionally imagined to be paying baby assist for his son Michael from his earlier marriage. He was, as he mentioned many instances, in poverty. No one believed him. Or nobody cared. That nobody predicted Superman would achieve success doesn’t matter. All that issues is that it was.
As Jerry’s letters sat there at Comic-Con, all of the actors and screenwriters who would usually be in Hall H have been off someplace yelling themselves hoarse on a picket line. Jerry Siegel, lowered to a small set of paragraphs on paper a era outdated, was doing the identical. Only he wasn’t in Hollywood, he was protesting at Comic-Con, the huge multiverse of the American super-hero that arguably — and actually, possibly not even that — wouldn’t exist with out him.
Because I promise you: there could be no Comic-Con if it have been constructed round The Lone Ranger or The Shadow. Not on the thinnest of timelines.
Jerry engaged in this sort of self-advocacy his entire life. He fought repeatedly for his personal rights as a author and a creator. Was he annoying? Try persistent. Was he profitable? It took his total life. Like Ditko, like Kirby, like Adams, he acted on what he felt was unsuitable. And like all of them, he was his personal factor. He was dork radical. He was the primary.
What Jerry argued for and what the present strike needs are clearly not the identical precise issues. But the massive image: fee from content material you create and raises to mirror the price of residing? That is the identical. Sharing of income usually relegated to govt salaries? Harry, just like the studio heads immediately, was made a millionaire by Superman. And although they didn’t have Netflix in Jerry’s time, he knew all about A.I.
If you do inventive work for a residing, you have got inherited a system that privileges the Harrys over the Jerrys.
And in case you like comics? If they’ve saved your life like they’ve mine? Then see these letters for what they’re. The author of the primary Superman story is nonetheless shouting in a loud voice from a skinny piece of paper. It has been a very long time, however we should always nonetheless have the ability to hear him.
Brad Ricca is the Edgar-nominated author of six books, together with the 2023 Eisner nominee Ten Days in a Mad-House, with artist Courtney Sieh. More at brad-ricca.com
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