June 1st 1938; Superman, the world's first super hero, appeared in the first issue of Action Comics. Superman is the brainchild of writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster.  "Joe and I were high school classmates in Cleveland," Siegel recalls.  "Like me, he was a science fiction fan; we published a fanzine called Science Fiction, with Joe as art director and myself as editor."  In the January 1933 issue, Siegel's The Reign of the Superman, illustrated by Shuster, saw print.  In this tale, the "Superman" becomes a villain after being granted super-powers by a mad scientist who is very much like the later arch-villain, Lex Luthor.

Later in 1933, when Siegel saw Detective Dan, one of the first comic books, "it occurred to me that a Superman who was a hero might make a great comic character," and wrote a comic book story that Shuster drew: The Superman. After it was rejected by Dan's publisher, a dejected Shuster destroyed all of the original art - only the cover survived. Pulp publisher Street & Smith's advertisement for Doc Savage's launch in 1933 bears similarities to Siegel and Shuster's alternate cover rough for The Superman.