The amazing story of Joanne Siegel – the super… | Little White Lies

The amaz­ing sto­ry of Joanne Siegel – the super woman who inspired a com­ic book icon

01 Jun 2017

A black and white photograph showing the face of a smiling woman with curled hair and wearing a bow tie.
A black and white photograph showing the face of a smiling woman with curled hair and wearing a bow tie.
The wife of Super­man co-cre­ator Jer­ry Siegel was the real-life mod­el for Lois Lane.

As the old adage goes, behind every great man, there is a great woman. In the world of comics that woman is Joanne Siegel, wife of Super­man co-cre­ator Jer­ry Siegel. Joanne was not only the inspi­ra­tion behind fear­less reporter Lois Lane, one of the most icon­ic and influ­en­tial female com­ic book char­ac­ters, but was also the tire­less and unre­lent­ing force behind the law­suit to restore her hus­band and Joe Shuster’s copy­right to Superman.

Joanne was born Jolan Kovacs in Cleve­land, Ohio on 1 Decem­ber, 1917 to Hun­gar­i­an immi­grant par­ents. Class­mates and teach­ers found her first name dif­fi­cult to pro­nounce and took to call­ing her Joanne, which was the name that stuck. In 1935, at the height of the Great Depres­sion, Joanne took out a clas­si­fied ad in Cleveland’s The Plain Deal­er pro­mot­ing her­self as avail­able for mod­el­ling work, albeit with no expe­ri­ence. Out of all the respons­es one inquiry seemed legit­i­mate from Joe Shus­ter, a young Cleve­land artist, who with his writer friend Jer­ry Siegel was devel­op­ing a poten­tial car­toon strip – and com­ic book his­to­ry was made.

At that point, the char­ac­ter for Lois Lane was already per­co­lat­ing in Siegel’s mind. He knew he want­ed Lois to be a jour­nal­ist, and his mod­el was Torchy Blane, a clever, spunky female reporter fea­tured in a series of B‑movies in the 1930s, most reg­u­lar­ly por­trayed by actress Glen­da Far­rell. Iron­i­cal­ly, in the 1938 film Torchy Blane in Pana­ma, Torchy was played by singer/​actress Lola Lane, who some sources say inspired the allit­er­a­tive name of Superman’s lead­ing lady. Dur­ing the mod­el­ling ses­sion Joanne struck a vari­ety of pos­es, includ­ing drap­ing her­self over the arms of a chair, to show how she might look being car­ried by Super­man in flight. Shuster’s pre­lim­i­nary draw­ings for Lois repro­duced her hair­style and facial features.

Over the years, many women in Cleve­land claimed they served as the mod­el for Lois Lane. While Siegel did admit some traits of oth­er women he knew might have influ­enced the char­ac­ter, both Shus­ter and Siegel have attest­ed that Joanne was the cen­tral mod­el for Lois. Joanne and Jerry’s daugh­ter and only child, Lau­ra Siegel Lar­son, has gone on record stat­ing from the day [my father] met [my moth­er] it was her per­son­al­i­ty that he infused into the char­ac­ter. She was not only beau­ti­ful, but very smart and deter­mined, and she had a lot of guts; she was a coura­geous person.”

Joanne, Joe and Jer­ry lost con­tact after World War Two broke out. Joanne did fur­ther mod­el­ling work in Boston and New York under the name of Joanne Carter, and sup­port­ed the war effort by work­ing in a Los Ange­les ship­yard. After the war, she returned to New York and re-estab­lished a con­nec­tion with Jer­ry Siegel at a fundrais­ing ball for car­toon­ists. Sparks flew, and Joanne and Siegel mar­ried in 1948, both hav­ing been pre­vi­ous­ly mar­ried and divorced. They lived in Con­necti­cut and Long Island before mov­ing to Cal­i­for­nia in the 1960s.

Joanne worked a num­ber of jobs dur­ing her mar­riage in the 1950s and 60s, includ­ing as one of California’s ear­ly car sales­women, but much of her life was tak­en up try­ing to reclaim the orig­i­nal Super­man copy­right. When Super­man made his debut in Action Comics No. 1 in June 1938, he imme­di­ate­ly became a com­ic book icon and sen­sa­tion. Super­man grew to be arguably one of the most well known fic­tion­al char­ac­ters in the world. How­ev­er, Shus­ter and Siegel were not able to ben­e­fit from the pop­u­lar­i­ty of their creation.

After fail­ing to gain the inter­est of news­pa­per syn­di­cates in their cre­ation, the duo sold Super­man to DC Comics’ pre­de­ces­sor, Detec­tive Comics, Inc, in 1937. Shus­ter and the Siegels attempt­ed to get back the rights to Super­man in 1947, but a court ruled they had sold the entire copy­right for $130. The Shus­ter and Siegel legal ordeals regard­ing the Super­man copy­right are one of the most leg­endary cau­tion­ary tales of intel­lec­tu­al property.

Ms Lar­son has stat­ed her par­ents lived in pover­ty for many years. She also recalls it was Joanne who called up Superman’s pub­lish­er at a cer­tain point and said how can you sit by and con­tin­ue to make mil­lions of dol­lars off a char­ac­ter that Jer­ry co-cre­at­ed and allow him to live in this unbe­liev­able pover­ty?” Even­tu­al­ly Jer­ry went back to work as an uncred­it­ed writer on many Super­man sto­ries; how­ev­er, it would be years before DC Comics agreed to include the cre­at­ed by Jer­ry Siegel and Joe Shus­ter” byline at the begin­ning of every Super­man sto­ry. It was also due to Joanne’s deter­mi­na­tion and tenac­i­ty that in the 1970s Shus­ter and Siegel, backed by the most influ­en­tial names in the com­ic book indus­try at the time and the release of the 1978 Super­man movie, were giv­en a life­long stipend as the co-cre­ators of Superman.

In 1999, three years after Jer­ry Siegel’s death, the Shus­ter and Siegel fam­i­lies, spear­head­ed by Joanne, filed a law­suit against Warn­er Bros for the copy­right of Super­man. Joanne called regain­ing the copy­right a dream of Jerry’s,” and in 2008, due to new revi­sions of the Copy­right Act, a fed­er­al judge ruled that the Shus­ter and Siegel fam­i­lies owned a large share of the Super­man copy­right. Joanne Siegel passed away on 12 Feb­ru­ary, 2011, thank­ful­ly not liv­ing to see the rul­ing over­turned in 2013/2014 and Warn­er Bros grant­ed the right to retain the Super­man copy­right with­out legal challenge.

Although she doesn’t pos­sess super­pow­ers and doesn’t wear a cape and tights, Lois Lane is undoubt­ed­ly a com­ic book icon. Actress­es Noël Neill, Phyl­lis Coates, Mar­got Kid­der, Dana Delaney, Teri Hatch­er, Eri­ca Durance, Kate Bosworth and Amy Adams have brought Lois’ mox­ie, class and jour­nal­is­tic integri­ty to life across mul­ti­ple enter­tain­ment medi­ums, from film to tele­vi­sion to ani­ma­tion. She paved the way for the cre­ation of female comics char­ac­ters, from Won­der Woman and Ms Mar­vel to Harley Quinn and Emma Frost, and moral­ly ambigu­ous women such as Seli­na Kyle and Jes­si­ca Jones. With­out Lois, we would not have the width and breadth of female comics char­ac­ters, super­heroes or oth­er­wise – and with­out Joanne Siegel, there would be no Lois Lane.

You might like