Joe Shuster
Joe Shuster
Joseph "Joe" Shuster was a Canadian-American comic book artist best known for co-creating the DC Comics character Superman, with writer Jerry Siegel, in Action Comics #1...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionArtist
Date of Birth10 July 1914
CountryCanada
buildings cases draw mostly natural point tall
He was mostly leaping tall buildings in the beginning. There were cases where he would leap off a tall building or swoop down, and at that point he would look like he was flying, I suppose. It was just natural to draw him like that.
anatomy classes detailed drawings looked sketches time
Those early sketches looked too cartoony; I really wanted to do detailed drawings - I was taking anatomy classes - but unfortunately I wasn't able to do it because of the time element.
jerry
Before I ever put anything on paper, Jerry and I would talk back and forth.
destroyed drawings fact simply tear turned
I'm a perfectionist, and I think the fact that the drawings had been turned down made me want to tear them up. I simply destroyed them.
artist delight pages
Not only that, but when I first met Joe, to my intense delight, he showed me that he was a collector. He was collecting some of the early Tarzan pages by Hal Foster, and, later, early Flash Gordons; and I found that we were both absolutely interested in the same type of thing.
ohio years cleveland
I came from Canada when I was about 10 years old, and our family settled in Cleveland, Ohio.
art burden heavy
I did all the work at the beginning up until the point where I couldn't handle the increasingly heavy art production burden alone. I needed, and got, assistance.
littles bits little-bit
Clark Kent, I suppose, had a little bit of Harold Lloyd in him.
imagination speak deadline
In the beginning, we had a great deal of freedom, and Jerry wrote completely out of his imagination - very, very freely. We even had no editorial supervision to speak of, because they were in such a rush to get the thing in before deadline. But later on we were restricted.
jobs pride two
I had to produce a complete page - or two or three - in one day. I took a lot of pride in my work, and I hated to do a mediocre job. Evidently, some of the writers enjoyed my work best of all for that very reason.
art giving calendars
I drew a picture on the back of a calendar in pencil. In those days they used to give out free calendars, I had no art paper, so I took whatever else I could.
glasses shy
I was mild-mannered, wore glasses, was very shy with women.
character thinking names
I think initially we wanted to use the first letter of the character's name. We thought S was perfect.
jumping giving flying
And I agreed the feeling of action as he was flying or jumping or leaping - a flowing cape would give it movement. It really helped, and it was very easy to draw.