As the story ends, Dunn's powers wear off and he realizes he will be returning to the bread line to be a forgotten man once more. Having killed the evil Smalley, who had intended to kill Dunn and give himself the same powers, Dunn was left unable to use his knowledge to recreate the secret formula. This superpowered man uses these abilities for evil, only to discover that the potion's effects are temporary. When Smalley's experimental potion grants Dunn telepathic powers, the man becomes intoxicated by his power and seeks to rule the world. Story Ī chemist named Professor Ernest Smalley randomly chooses raggedly dressed vagrant Bill Dunn from a bread line and recruits him to participate in an experiment in exchange for 'a real meal and a new suit'. The character Jane Porter refers to Tarzan as a 'superman' in the 1912 pulp novel Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Siegel would later name Tarzan as an influence on the creation of his and Shuster's character. The term 'superman' was popularized by George Bernard Shaw with his 1903 play Man and Superman. The term 'superman' derives from a common English translation of the term Übermensch, which originated with Friedrich Nietzsche's statement, ' Ich lehre euch den Übermenschen' ('I will teach you all the superman'), in his 1883 work Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Fine, combining the first name of a cousin with his mother's maiden name. Siegel published it under the pen name Herbert S. It appeared in issue #3 of the fanzine, with accompanying artwork by Shuster. Inspired by the spread of the term 'superman' in popular culture of their time and thus indirectly inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche's idea of a super-human (the Übermensch), it featured a meek man transformed into a powerful villain bent on dominating the world. Siegel wrote 'The Reign of the Superman' in 1932. With their work rejected by publishers, 18-year-old Shuster produced the duo's own typed, mimeographed science fiction fanzine titled Science Fiction: The Advance Guard of Future Civilization, producing five issues. High school friends Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster tried selling stories to magazines in order to escape Depression-era poverty. (Although the name is hyphenated between syllables due to it being broken between pages on the story's opening spread, it is spelled Superman in the magazine's table of contents and in the story's text.) The title character of this story is a telepathic villain, rather than a physically powerful hero like the well-known character. It was the writer/artist duo's first published use of the name Superman, which they later applied to their archetypal fictional superhero. ' The Reign of the Superman' (January 1933) is a short story written by Jerry Siegel and illustrated by Joe Shuster. Opening pages in the fanzine Science Fiction: The Advance Guard of Future Civilization #3.

Jerry siegel and artist joe shuster