1938: SUPERMAN MAKES HIS DEBUT
He’s now considered the archetypal superhero, but Superman started out life as a villain. His teenage creators, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, self-published their short story The Reign of the Superman in 1933. Sales were low, and thinking that their antagonist was to blame, they recast him as a more marketable hero: an alien from the planet Krypton, who grows up on Earth with superhuman abilities. But still the publishers rejected their idea.
INFOGRAPHIC: ESTHER CURTIS, ALAMY X2, GETTY X4, THE GLASGOW LOOKING GLASS/BY PERMISSION OF UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW LIBRARY/SPECIAL COLLECTIONS X1