William Bernhardt's history of the legal wars on Superman

Crime Reads interviewed author William Bernhardt, who's published a history book titled The Superman Wars, which is about the legal issues surrounding the history of Superman's publication:

The story of Siegel and Shuster has been told before—most notably in Brad Ricca’s 2013 book Super Boys: The Amazing Adventures of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster—the Creators of Superman. Bernhardt has updated the long-running legal battles the two men and their heirs endured over the rights to the character. The subtitle of his book is A Battle for Truth, Justice, and an American Icon. [...]

L. Wayne Hicks: What are people going to learn from your book that wasn’t in Brad Ricca’s book?

William Bernhardt: There are several things. And don’t think I’m putting down Brad’s book, because I like his book, and I like him. I thought he was a really generous guy when I interviewed him. The first thing I said was, “Are you thinking about doing a second edition or an update or anything?” He said no. I said, “Okay, I don’t want to step on your toes.”

But for one thing, his book’s about fifteen years old now, and we’ve discovered a lot since then. I’ve discovered some things since then, and others have as well. He couldn’t tell the end of the lawsuit, because that hadn’t happened yet. That didn’t happen until 2016, that it was all over. The Siegel family did not talk to him, at least not on the record, because there was pending litigation.

I did eventually get them to talk to me, which was a real treat. I dug up the bankruptcy papers and figured out what really went down, and so I’m able to explain that, and I think the other lawsuits as well, in a way that will make it more comprehensible. And at the same time, I tried to write those things so that you don’t have to go to law school to understand it. It’s going to be understandable to anybody.

I'm sure there's always room for another take on the history of the legal wars, which Siegel/Shuster's families sadly lost in the end. But I get the feeling Bernhardt won't take an objective view of later executives at Time Warner, who enabled some of the worst abuse of the Superman franchise since the turn of the century. And that's a problem, if not a new one.

LWH: Which was the bigger problem: the boys being naive, or the publishing executives being crooked?

WB: I’m going to go with the latter. Because, you know, the Major (Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson), the guy who founded the company, was perhaps not the world’s greatest businessman, but he was a writer. He understood that creatives deserve to be paid, and sometimes he was late, he didn’t pay that much, but his idea was that someday we’re going to have a breakthrough, and then I’m going to share it with everybody.

That’s what he says at the bankruptcy courts. He says, if you let this go through, these guys aren’t going to treat the creatives the way I did. And boy, was he right about that. This was such an unexpected windfall to Harry Donenfeld and Jack Liebowitz. This is what they did. They acquired other people’s companies by basically creating debt or finding people in debt, or both, and using it to take over their companies. They had no idea that just weeks, if not days, after they fully controlled the company, Superman would come out and be an immediate sensation.

Harry Donenfeld is a millionaire less than a year later. Jack is not far behind him. And they had no intention of letting go of anything. They didn’t have to. Jack’s attitude was always, “Anybody can write this stuff. If you don’t cooperate, we’ll get somebody else to do it.” To be fair, Jerry and Joe did make some real money, especially given that the Depression was going on and a lot of people weren’t making any money. They made good money in the early days. But it doesn’t last.

If the head honchos at the time were corrupt, do they believe the later conglomerate heads were any better? Because look how far the might of the Man of Steel's fallen over the past decades, artistically and financially, no thanks to their neglect/enabling. That doesn't count?

LWH: What does Superman mean to you?

WB: I loved Superman when I was a kid. Part of that was when I started reading comics, the Batman comics were trying to imitate the Adam West series, the comedy series, so they were trying to be funny, not really very successfully. That didn’t appeal to me very much, but Superman stories were more science fiction, and that’s what I liked.

There were two main magazines, Superman and Action Comics. Superman, in my era, usually told the slugfest super villain stories, but Action Comics usually told science fiction stories. He’d go up in space and encounter a world where something’s different and I loved that stuff. In time, I came to realize that over and over again, Superman has been a symbol of hope, which I think is why he continues to be meaningful to people.

As an iconic creation, yes, but the comics themselves in over 2 decades, no. That's all collapsed, courtesy of all the company managers whom I sadly suspect Mr. Bernhardt doesn't say a negative word about, and anybody who won't show the courage to do so remains unconvincing in their alleged support for Siegel and Shuster, let alone any other creators of the times.

As for what he says about Batman comics imitating the West TV show, I think they became more tongue-in-cheek by the 1950s, and it was more a case of the TV show imitating the comics, so this is definitely not the most accurate statement Mr. Bernhardt's made. One more reason I'm not sure now if his new book about Superman history will be the most straightforward take on history available.