Friday, January 16, 2015

The Superman Daily Newspaper Strip I

Today, January 16th is significant in the fact that it marks the 76th Anniversary of the beginning of the daily Superman Syndicated Newspaper strip by Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster. After the success of Action Comics #1 in June of 1938, and the skyrocketing in popularity of the character Superman, Siegel & Shuster were finally able to take their creation Superman into the publishing market they had hoped for all along, the syndicated Newspaper Comics arena!

It's crazy to think about nowadays, but in 1938, when Superman first debuted, comic books were still in their infancy, and considered second tier to the syndicated comic strips in newspapers. The newspaper comic strips had much higher circulation, and in turn shelled out a lot more money. Those comics that weren't deemed popular or good enough for Newspaper syndication, such as Siegel and Shuster's first Superman story, had to settle for repurposing their stories for comic books. Once Superman caught fire in the pages of Action Comics, Siegel and Shuster's dream of a syndicated Superman comic strip would soon be a reality. In fact the newspaper strip debuted just 7 months after Superman's first appearance in Action Comics, and months before DC would launch a second Superman title, his own self-titled Superman #1.

The comic strip ran for many decades, and after about 10 months of black & white daily strips, Superman joined the ranks of the "Full Color Sunday" strips. Instead of bringing you these classic stories in one daily strip at a time, now you can tune in daily to catch 6 strips each day!

So without further ado, here are the first 6 daily newspaper Superman strips by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster:







Be sure to tune back in tomorrow for the next 6 installments of the Superman Daily Newspaper Strip as well as Superman themed King-Size Comics Giant-Size Fun Podcast Episode 010!

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