It was a young artist from Toronto that convinced the world a man could fly.
Joe Shuster’s creation was one of the world’s first comic book superheroes, sparking the rise of the comic book industry and multi-blockbuster cinematic universes that leads to crowded theatres every summer over the past decade. It was Superman that started it all — and Shuster’s creation will once again make its way onto the big screen as director James Gunn attempts to jump-start his own DC Comics cinematic universe with a new Superman movie set to hit theatres on July 11.
Although Superman isn’t known for his journalistic talent, his alter ego, Clark Kent, got his start at the Star, just as Shuster had.
Shuster, born in 1914 in Toronto, was a newsboy for the Toronto Daily Star (the Toronto Star before its name was changed in the ‘70s) for a short stint before he moved to the U.S.
It was Shuster’s time at the Star that inspired Superman’s alter ego as a journalist when he debuted in 1938, and the fictional newspaper Clark Kent worked at was named “the Daily Star.” The name was later changed to the more well-known “Daily Planet” by editors.
And, despite his short tenure at the Star, a century later, Shuster’s creation still looms large. Through researching the history of Shuster’s time at the Star, the paper’s librarian and long-time reporters disagreed on details, pulling up names of long-retired reporters in attempts to corroborate rumours and hearsay.
Newsroom lore has it that the Star office at 1 Yonge St. was the backdrop for the original 1978 Superman movies starring Christopher Reeve, though, no record aside from a vaguely captioned photo in the Star archive backs that urban legend up. One reporter argued that the photo was proof enough, while the Star’s librarian cited several stories the Star had written when productions (like “The Killing Fields,” “Eleni” and a made-for-TV movie with Mary Tyler Moore called “Heartsounds”) had visited the newsroom. None were written on the supposed 1 Yonge Street visit.
“I still remember drawing one of the earliest panels that showed the newspaper building,” Shuster said last interview before he died in 1992 was with the Star’s Henry Mietkiewicz.
Digging through his prints and papers in his home, Shuster shows Mietkiewicz a copy of an early Superman issue, where Superman/Clark Kent works at the Daily Star.
“There it is,” Shuster says, pointing to a picture of Superman descending toward a Metropolis skyline. “Whatever buildings I saw in Toronto remained in my mind and came out in the form of Metropolis.”
The original Daily Star building in the Superman comics appears eerily similar to the Toronto Daily Star building that towered on King Street, though it’s possible the building was just made in a generic art-deco style and Shuster never would have worked at the King Street headquarters of the Toronto Star Daily News. Instead, the Star’s library lined up the dates to
“We needed a name, and I spontaneously remembered the Toronto Star,” Shuster told Mietkiewicz. “So that’s the way I lettered it. I decided to do it that way on the spur of the moment, because The Star was such a great influence on my life … That’s why I’m so eager to talk with The Star now. I feel so deeply about this particular interview, because I’ve never had the chance to properly express my gratitude.”
He recalled to Mietkiewicz how proud he was to see a Star reporter among the first to cover the success of Action Comics no. 1, the debut comic book issue for Superman.
Shuster explained that he was never able to return to Toronto after a final visit in 1941, but he fondly remembers reading comics with his father, who worked at a tailor shop in the garment district, and searching, from store to store, for scrap pieces of paper to draw on. They moved around regularly, Shuster explained, but he recalls living on Bathurst, Oxford and Borden Streets and attending Ryerson and Lansdowne Public Schools.
The Daily Star lives on in the comic books, in parallel earths and through time-space shenanigans.
Joe Shuster’s legacy has been immortalized in Toronto with a street name in Liberty Village and his own Heritage Minute.
And reporters and editors, to this day, still argue whether Clark Kent walked, or flew through, the Star’s halls.
