Walking Corpses & Conscious Plants: Possibilist Ecologies in ...

Bingham 24
and Joe Shuster to come up with characters who they could be proud of to represent their
heritage. In 1932 the two created Superman, a champion who faced a great deal of
adversity non unlike antisemitism faced by Jewish individuals. Forced to hide his true
identity on Earth, Superman had been born on the planet Kal-El which means “God
Light” in Hebrew (Tabachnick 10). This heroic character became the model for a new
archetypal comic; however, his narrative would not be issued in print for another six
years. Seigel and Shuster's success was largely wrapped up in an imminent move away
from the publishing sponsored by newspaper syndicates that came to fruition later in the
decade.
It wasn't until 1933 that there was a significant shift in the way comics were
assembled, presented, and distributed which enabled Superman to achieve extensive
popularity in the coming years. Max Gaines completely changed the industry when he
suggested using comics as promotional gimmick to increase product sales. As a salesman
working at Eastern Color Printing, Gaines and sales manager Harry Wildenberg devised a
plan to boost sales for clients like Proctor & Gamble by cheaply selling comic reprints
and asking customers for a label from one of the company's products with the advertised
fee for the publication (Inge 139, Harvey, The Art 17). The idea blossomed into Funnies
on Parade and was adopted by a number of other businesses including Canada Dry,
Kinney Shoes, and Wheatena (Benton 15). Though the first run with Proctor & Gamble
was only thirty-two pages long (Harvey, The Art 17), each of the comic books produced
for these new clients was typically sixty-four pages long and measured 7.25” x 10.25”
(Feiffer 14). Rather than continuing to take a mere fraction of the profits earned by these
publications, Gaines saw a market for the product outside of promotional corporate