Source: CRB Foundation Heritage Project (1991)
Type: TV
Like many Canadians, I dearly love our "Heritage Minutes", well produced vignettes about Canadian history and innovation that still run on tv today. Just talking about them in any given part of Canada will make people try to enumerate them all, if not do the lines. "Patrick, Patrick O'Neil." "You know very well I cannot read a word." "Is THIS normal?!" "Come on, Vince, come on!" "We need these baskets back." They're classics.
But my world was tipped upside down when I realized the Minute about Joe Shuster and his role in the creation of Superman was completely bogus! What ELSE had I been lied to about? Are other Minutes as wrong as this one? Did Canada NOT give the world the multiplex, basketball and instant mashed potatoes (I kid you not)? I mean, look at the above Minute and doesn't it look like Shuster - Superman's first ARTIST - invented Superman all by himself a good 7 years before Action Comics #1? If so, why the heck is Jerry Siegel's family always taking DC Comics to court? Setting the record straight:
-Jerry Siegel was Superman's first writer, and while the character is a collaboration, I'm pretty sure you need the two of them in a room to think it up. There is compelling evidence (despite the fact no interview confirms it) that Superman was inspired by Siegel's father getting shot and killed in a bungled robbery attempt. A bulletproof man seems to be more Siegel's fantasy than Shuster's.
-The name Superman was given to a character written by Siegel and drawn by Shuster in the short story "Reign of the Super-Man" in 1933. He's a Lex Luthor type, and it's only after this that they thought up the Superman we all know and love. They had to shop it around for half a dozen years.
-Lois Lane is not based on the fictional woman seen here, but rather on two women: Joanne Carter, a model hired by the creative team who later married Siegel, and Torchy Blane, a female reporter from a series of movies of the 30s (loosely based on Nellie Bly). In some of them, Torchy is played by... Lola Lane.
-Shuster IS considered responsible for naming the Daily Star - the newspaper Clark and Lois originally worked at before it turned into the Daily Planet - after the Toronto Daily Star, for which he had worked as a newsboy.
-When he was 10, Shuster's family moved to Cleveland, Ohio, so that part's correct. It's where he met Siegel and the historic partnership began.
So that Heritage moment is bogus, but please, someone reassure me that Winnie the Pooh got his name exactly as the CRB would have it!
Type: TV
Like many Canadians, I dearly love our "Heritage Minutes", well produced vignettes about Canadian history and innovation that still run on tv today. Just talking about them in any given part of Canada will make people try to enumerate them all, if not do the lines. "Patrick, Patrick O'Neil." "You know very well I cannot read a word." "Is THIS normal?!" "Come on, Vince, come on!" "We need these baskets back." They're classics.
But my world was tipped upside down when I realized the Minute about Joe Shuster and his role in the creation of Superman was completely bogus! What ELSE had I been lied to about? Are other Minutes as wrong as this one? Did Canada NOT give the world the multiplex, basketball and instant mashed potatoes (I kid you not)? I mean, look at the above Minute and doesn't it look like Shuster - Superman's first ARTIST - invented Superman all by himself a good 7 years before Action Comics #1? If so, why the heck is Jerry Siegel's family always taking DC Comics to court? Setting the record straight:
-Jerry Siegel was Superman's first writer, and while the character is a collaboration, I'm pretty sure you need the two of them in a room to think it up. There is compelling evidence (despite the fact no interview confirms it) that Superman was inspired by Siegel's father getting shot and killed in a bungled robbery attempt. A bulletproof man seems to be more Siegel's fantasy than Shuster's.
-The name Superman was given to a character written by Siegel and drawn by Shuster in the short story "Reign of the Super-Man" in 1933. He's a Lex Luthor type, and it's only after this that they thought up the Superman we all know and love. They had to shop it around for half a dozen years.
-Lois Lane is not based on the fictional woman seen here, but rather on two women: Joanne Carter, a model hired by the creative team who later married Siegel, and Torchy Blane, a female reporter from a series of movies of the 30s (loosely based on Nellie Bly). In some of them, Torchy is played by... Lola Lane.
-Shuster IS considered responsible for naming the Daily Star - the newspaper Clark and Lois originally worked at before it turned into the Daily Planet - after the Toronto Daily Star, for which he had worked as a newsboy.
-When he was 10, Shuster's family moved to Cleveland, Ohio, so that part's correct. It's where he met Siegel and the historic partnership began.
So that Heritage moment is bogus, but please, someone reassure me that Winnie the Pooh got his name exactly as the CRB would have it!
Comments
You guys can have instant potatoes though.
Siskoid is a Canadian, and that means, in addition to being pure evil, he's desperate.
Drive a harder bargain!
We can get Nathan Fillion from this, easily.
http://noblemania.blogspot.com/2008/09/death-of-jerry-siegels-father-part-2.html
We are still awesome though. We invented pizza pops and eat more ketchup chips than any other country.