A SHRINE TO SUPERMAN

In Cleveland’s Glenville, a ribbon-cutting ceremony was held July 11 at 10622 Kimberly Avenue to dedicate the house as a shrine to Superman: the character’s co-creator Jerry Siegel was living here when, one hot night in the summer of 1933 or 1934 (I say 1933), he re-imagined the villain of his January 1933 short story, “The Reign of the Superman,” as a hero. Siegel’s widow, Joanne, who, as a teenager, had modeled for Joe Shuster’s visualization of Lois Lane, was on hand to give a short talk. The house was dilapidated to the point of near collapse when novelist Brad Meltzer saw the place a few years ago while researching his 2008 novel The Book of Lies. The place has been much rehabilitated since, thanks to Meltzer, who helped the city’s Siegel and Shuster Society stage an auction of original art to raise money to fix the falling down parts of the building.

Members of the Siegel and Shuster families flew in from all over the country for the occasion. A plaque explaining the significance of the site is affixed to a brand new burnished steel fence in front of the house; on another part of the fence is a shield emblazoned with the familiar “S” from Superman’s chest. The building a couple blocks away in which Shuster lived when he envisioned his friend’s concept is no longer extant, but another fence there bears another plaque of explanation. According to the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s Michael San Giacomo, whose columns had sparked the formation of the Siegel and Shuster Society to save the Siegel home, several hundred fans, many of whom were attending the weekend’s Screaming Tiki Cleveland Supercon, stood in the street in front of the Kimberly house during a brief but torrential rain storm to witness the historic event.