Originally published on Deseret News by Jacob Hess.
To hear Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster reminisce about early inspirations, it’s hard to decipher any overtly religious influence on their creative process at all. Instead, the now-deceased duo credit their shared love of early science fiction and inspiration from the athletic stunts of Douglas Fairbanks and Harold Lloyd’s fight scenes for the idea of a “meek and mild-mannered reporter” with a super secret.
Far from mirroring obvious biblical themes, the hero’s first comic appearance in June 1938’s Action Comics #1 showed baby Superman dispatched to earth by an alien scientist and found by a “passing motorist” — who turns him over to a city orphanage.
This was also the ninth year of a worldwide economic crisis that left people hungry for more than just food. And something about this strange new character created by two young men who had attended Hebrew school in Cleveland, Ohio as boys captured the American imagination. It continues with this week’s release of James Gunn’s “Superman.”
But one element of the original story was clearly reflective of their religious heritage — a baby saved from destruction by parents who send him forth in a small vessel and who gets raised by strangers, before eventually reclaiming his heritage as a “champion of the oppressed.”
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