More Superman history

Again, this is being transcribed or dictated by me through MacSpeech. But I had to write this down because it blows my mind. The comic book Action Comics #1 is the first appearance of Superman. Siegel and Shuster are credited with creating the character. The publishing house was called National Periodicals, and would later be known as DC, as in Detective Comics, another contemporary to Action Comics. You get the sense from reading about these early days of comic book history that it was pure accident and randomness that Siegel and Shuster came up with the Superman character -- there were countless failed characters and unsold comics everywhere at this time. Even if you believe one of them was bound to hit, it was unclear who it would hit and what success they would enjoy. But at the time comic books was huge business -- in the mid-1940s, the comic book was selling between 80 million and 100 million copies every week, with a typical issue passing along or trading to 6-10 readers thereby reaching more people than movies, television, radio, or magazines for adults.

The discovery of Superman is fascinating. After only a few months, a survey by the publishing house found that children were asking news sellers for the Superman character by name (something which until then was uncommon). In response the editors began to promote Superman on every issue of Action Comics. By its 19th issue, the title is selling some 500,000 copies per month, more than four times as much as any other comic. And "in 1939, the publishing of started publishing a codebook named Superman, and the company spun off a syndicated Superman strip." By 1940, the Superman comic book was selling over 1,250,000 copies a month. The daily strip was appearing in 300 cities.

A number of characters were created due to the popularity of Superman. These included: Wonder Man, Sandman, the Flash, Hawkman, HourMan, Captain America, Captain Marvel, Johnny Quick, Aquaman, and wonder woman. All of those were published by the end of 1941. Bob Kane responded by creating a flying hero that he called Bird Man, which was later massaged and refined into a character in a Batman. Unbeknownst to me, Bob Kane received "considerable aid" from an uncredited collaborator named Bill Finger.