Jerry Siegel

Born in 1914 in Cleveland, Ohio, Jerome Siegel was, as a teenager, a fan of the merging literary genre that came to be known as science fiction.  Together with schoolmate Joe Shuster, Siegel published several science-fiction magazines and, in 1933, they came up with their own science-fiction hero - Superman.  Siegel scripted and Shuster drew several weeks' worth of newspaper strips featuring their new creation, but garnered no interest from publishers or newspaper syndicates.  It wasn't until the two established themselves as reliable adventure-strip creators at DC Comics that the editors at DC offered to take a chance on the Superman material - provided it was re-pasted into comic-book format for DC's new magazine, Action Comics.

Jerome Siegel and Joe Shuster also created the costumed character of Superboy - Superman when he was a boy.  Siegel wrote the very first Superboy story, which was illustrated by Shuster, but it did not see print until 1945 in DC's More Fun Comics #101

Siegel wrote the adventures of Superman (as well as other DC heroes, most notably the Spectre, his co-creation with Bernard Bailey) through 1948.  He then spent time scripting several newspaper strips such as Funnyman and Ken Winston until 1959, when he was told that he could return to work at DC on the condition that he deny being one of the creators of Superman.  From 1959 until 1965, he again chronicled the adventures of Superman and many other DC characters.  Most of his stories from this time period (including the origin of Lex Luthor and the death of Superman) remain uncredited.