CHAPTER 20
Original Voices
Comics as Life
The superhero genre was born out of the minds of two teenagers from Cleveland, Ohio—Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster—when they sold (as we’ve seen throughout this book) Superman to DC Comics leading to his first appearance in 1938’s Action Comics #1. This red-and-blue symbol of the oppressed launched the comic book as we know it and began a roller-coaster cycle of creation, experimentation, revitalization, and stagnation.
It was that stagnation that once again made Cleveland, Ohio, part of another comics movement when Harvey Pekar, a file clerk at the Cleveland Veteran’s Administration (VA) Hospital, met underground comix artist Robert Crumb (of the famous Keep On Truckin’ comic) at a jazz records swap ...
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