His comic book career after Superman was relatively unsuccessful, and by the mid-1970s, Shuster had left the field completely due to partial blindness.

[6][7][8] His father, Julius Shuster (originally Shusterowich), an immigrant from Rotterdam, had a tailor shop in Toronto's garment district.

Siegel described his friendship with the similarly shy and bespectacled Shuster: "When Joe and I first met, it was like the right chemicals coming together.

Siegel and Shuster each compared this character to Slam Bradley, an adventurer the pair had created for Detective Comics #1 (March 1937).

Editor Vin Sullivan chose it as the cover feature for National's Action Comics #1 (June 1938).

When the comic strip received international distribution, the company permanently changed the name to the Daily Planet.

[26][27][28] Due to financial difficulties, Wheeler-Nicholson had formed a corporation with Harry Donenfeld and Jack Liebowitz called Detective Comics, Inc.

A series of mergers and name changes resulted in the publisher becoming National Periodical Publications, and then, in 1977, DC Comics (which had been its nickname since 1940).

[30][31] In 1947, the team rejoined editor Sullivan, by then the founder and publisher of the comic-book company Magazine Enterprises where they created the short-lived comical crime-fighter Funnyman.

[32] Shuster was also the anonymous illustrator for Nights of Horror, an underground sadomasochistic fetish paperback book series.

In 1954, Nights of Horror garnered controversy because of its involvement in the trial of the Brooklyn Thrill Killers, where it was alleged by psychiatric expert and anti-comics crusader Fredric Wertham that the gang's leader had read the books and that they were responsible for his crimes.

The Nights of Horror series was seized and banned in the State of New York, and the case eventually went to the Supreme Court.

The Association of American Editorial Cartoonists' president, Jerry Robinson, was involved in the campaign along with comic-book artist Neal Adams.

[43] Due to a great deal of negative publicity over their handling of the affair, and the upcoming Superman movie, DC's parent company Warner Communications reinstated the byline dropped more than thirty years earlier and granted the pair a lifetime pension of $20,000 a year, later increased to $30,000, plus health benefits.

After he died, DC Comics agreed to pay off his unpaid debts in exchange for an agreement from his heirs to not challenge ownership over Superman.

[47] Shuster died on July 30, 1992, at his West Los Angeles home of congestive heart failure and hypertension.