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ACTION COMICS. Action Comics is considered the birthplace of the superhero genre

based upon the debut of Superman in its fi rst issue (cover-dated June 1938); it remains
one of the most signifi cant titles in the comic book medium. Originally published
by Detective Comics , a predecessor of DC Comics , the series began as an anthol-
ogy featuring several heroic characters, such as explorer Marco Polo, adventurer Tex
Th omson, cowboy Chuck Dawson, reporter Scoop Scanlon, prizefi ghter Pep Morgan,
and magician Zatara. Included among these standard archetypal fi gures was Superman,
the fi rst super powered crime fi ghter in popular culture.
Superman had been created several years earlier by Jerry Siegel (writer) and Joe
Shuster (artist) in the hope of selling the character to a newspaper syndicate. Th at eff ort
proved unsuccessful, but the Man of Steel was eventually accepted for possible inclu-
sion in the forthcoming Action Comics. Siegel and Shuster cut their sample newspaper
strips apart and reformatted them for the comic book page. Publisher Jack Liebowitz
discarded the originally advertised cover drawing in favor of the now iconic image of
Superman hoisting a car over his head. Only 200,000 copies of Action Comics #1 were
published and Superman did not appear on the cover again until the seventh issue.
Within the fi rst months of publication, customer surveys revealed that Superman was
attracting a legion of new readers. Monthly sales of Action Comics skyrocketed to nearly
a million. Th e popularity of Superman led publishers to introduce countless other
costumed superheroic characters and, thus, a new genre was born. Today fewer than
100 original copies of Action Comics #1 are known to exist.
Action Comics #1 introduced many enduring elements of the Superman mythology,
including Lois Lane, Clark Kent, and Th e Daily Star newspaper (later changed to Th e
Daily Planet ). Superman’s archenemy Lex Luthor debuted in issue #23 with a full head