Publication history of Superman

[2] Siegel's short story "The Reign of the Superman" (with illustration by Shuster) concerned a bald-headed villain, vaguely reminiscent of Flash Gordon's Ming the Merciless, bent on dominating the world.

When a publisher had difficulty deciding on an appropriate cover for a new magazine called Action Comics, an employee produced Siegel's and Shuster's proposal, which depicted Superman lifting a car with his hands.

In 1964, when Siegel and Shuster sued for more money, DC fired them, prompting a legal battle that ended in 1967, when they accepted $200,000 and signed away any further claim to Superman or any character created from him.

Following the huge financial success of Superman in 1978 and news reports of their pauper-like existences, Warner Communications gave Siegel and Shuster lifetime pensions of $35,000 per year and health care benefits.

The ship launches just as the planet explodes, with Kal-L landing on Earth in a farm country town (later identified as Smallville) around the time of World War I.

In this version, John and Mary Kent (passing motorists who witness the spaceship landing) take the infant to an orphanage and soon return to adopt the child, naming him Clark.

After the deaths of his adoptive parents, Clark decides to use his powers for the benefit of humanity, constructing a stylized costume and moving to the nearby city of Metropolis.

The earliest Superman stories were written by Siegel, and drawn by Shuster in a style heavily influenced by comic strip artist Roy Crane.

His work was direct, unprettied - crude and vigorous; as easy to read as a diagram.... Slickness, thank God, was beyond his means" (Feiffer, The Great Comic Book Heroes, 1965).

In the last interview Shuster gave before his death, he explained that he had modeled the visual appearance of Clark Kent on himself and movie star Harold Lloyd, and that of Superman on Douglas Fairbanks Senior.

The story, which purported on the title page to tell "how comic strips are written and drawn", showed a studio filled with "artists -- stacks of them -- figure men, background specialists, inkers, letterers" as well as script-writers, all devoted to the production of stories about a Superman-like character, while the original creator of the strip was, to Superman's consternation, kept busy answering his fan mail ("King of the Comic Books", Superman #25, 1943).

Superman becomes an honorary member of the Justice Society of America, though he only participates in two capers in the original Golden Age stories (All-Star Comics #8 and 36).

Although Superman had remained in continuous publication and was not explicitly revised for the Silver Age, the various inconsistencies between his original appearance (see Kal-L) and the version depicted in the 1960s were explained in the same way.

Under the editorship of Mort Weisinger, the 1950s and early 1960s oversaw a major expansion of the character's mythos with such memorable foes as Brainiac and Bizarro appearing, as well as the arrival of his cousin Kara—also known as Supergirl—and the formation of the Justice League of America.

Also, a rival company called Marvel Comics had unleashed a myriad of new characters including the Hulk, the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man, whose more sophisticated characterization encouraged more compelling storytelling.

Jor-El immediately begins work on a rocket that will allow the whole family to escape the coming disaster, but events move too quickly, and only a small model is completed by the time of the final quakes.

During this same time period, editor Mort Weisinger was replaced by Julius Schwartz, who wanted to transition Superman to a more modern and realistic form.

A series of stories in the 1970s establish that the Earth-Two Superman had married his version of Lois Lane in the 1950s (Action Comics #484 (1978)) and had become the editor-in-chief of The Daily Star.

Kal-L also continues to serve with the revived Justice Society; he is revealed as a founding member of the group in the team's origin story in DC Special #29.

Next, DC published the Reign of the Supermen storyline, during which four different characters - a new Superboy, the cyborg Man of Tomorrow, the brutal Last Son of Krypton and Steel - are introduced as Superman, although none of them actually are.

The real hero returned, but the story's aftermath lead to fellow superhero Green Lantern losing his mind and becoming a villain called Parallax.

The series combined elements of both the Pre-and-Post-Crisis versions of the character and featured an all-star cast including Tim Daly as Superman, Dana Delany as Lois Lane, and Clancy Brown as Lex Luthor.

The pair willingly deplete their powers as they drag Superboy-Prime into Rao, Krypton's red sun, and use the last of their strength to defeat him on Mogo, the sentient Green Lantern planet.

In his attempt to escape reality, his assault on the barrier wall of the paradise dimension alters history, causing revisions of events to occur, especially the Birthright origin.

Although he manages to weasel his way out of prison, Lex Luthor's reputation is damaged irreparably (partially due to Clark's writing) and so are his fortune and power over LexCorp, now run by Lana Lang.

The new timeline is indicated to revise the complicated web of origins in a panel which shows a progression of four to five successive versions of Superman that are viewed by Kara Zor-El, clearly aping the art styles of Joe Shuster, Curt Swan, John Byrne, Dan Jurgens and Leinil Francis Yu.

The new version also supports the portrayal and aesthetic design of Jor-El, now similar to Marlon Brando's portrayal of the role, and Krypton, as featured in the ongoing Richard Donner co-authored arcs of Action Comics (essentially rendering Krypton closer in style to his and Bryan Singer's shared film continuity), as well as the fitting in with the discovery in The Lightning Saga that Clark was a member of the Legion of Super-Heroes during his adolescence and still retains possession of a Legion flight ring.

After resolving this arc, Superman has dealt with the return of one of his most dangerous villains, Brainiac, which resulted in the arrival of thousands of Kryptonians on Earth and the death of his adoptive father.

In addition, real-life astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson assisted DC Comics in determining that Krypton orbited the red dwarf LHS 2520 in the constellation Corvus 27.1 lightyears from Earth.

Thanks to Jon, the new Superboy, the two Supermen merge into one complete version of Superman, rearranging their shared histories and accommodating them into the restored DC Universe.