Siegel Murder Propels Book Of Lies
Today’s USA Today features a story from David Colton detailing the background for Brad Meltzer’s forthcoming novel, The Book of Lies, which was inspired by the death of Jerry Siegel’s father, Mitchell. The article explores how this tragic event may have been the catalyst for Siegel to go on and create Superman.
The story discusses how the murder was largely kept under wraps until Gerard Jones covered it in his 2004 book Men of Tomorrow. "It had to have an effect," Jones said in the piece. "Superman’s invulnerability to bullets, loss of family, destruction of his homeland – all seem to overlap with Jerry’s personal experience. There’s a connection there: the loss of a dad as a source for Superman."
The actual events involved a robber who either shot the 60-year-old Siegel or the event triggered a fatal heart attack. Meltzer’s novel, on sale next Tuesday, uses the gun shot but in an afterward he explores the issue and admitted to Colton the truth was more likely a heart attack.
"In 50 years of interviews, Jerry Siegel never once mentioned that his father died in a robbery," Meltzer said in the piece. "But think about it," Meltzer says. "Your father dies in a robbery, and you invent a bulletproof man who becomes the world’s greatest hero. I’m sorry, but there’s a story there."
I can't seem to track it down right now, but an article I read on Yahoo! today quotes Meltzer as saying that a letter to the editor in a Cleveland newspaper the next day, reacting to the death of Siegel's father, comes from one A.L. Luthor…
The more Meltzer looked, the more intriguing things became. A letter published in The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer on June 3, 1932, the day after the robbery, denounces the need for vigilantes in the harsh days of the Depression. The letter is signed by an A.L. Luther."Is that where (Superman foe) Lex Luthor came from?" Meltzer says. "I almost had a heart attack right there. I thought, 'You have to be kidding me!' "From USA Today. Fascinating.
I'd have expected it to be Bob Kane's father who died in a robbery, if i had to guess.Oddly enough, the current cintinuity in "Funky Winkerbean" has a comic writer who's just landed the assignment to wtier Superman and finds himself blocked being taken for a tour of Siegel's childhood home and imagining what Siegel's childhood must have been like and what led him to co-create Superman. (The copy of Wylie's "Gladiator" on young Siegel's nightstand is a nice touch…)
It's amazing what "truth" an author can convince others to believe. Take a bunch of events that happened at the same time, force them into a plot, write a story, and suddenly—the "truth" is revealed.Let's just say I'm having a problem with the basis of the story.