Rare Superman, Batman covers heading for auction

Robinson says 'Joker' didn't use weapons because he wanted something "more in the line of literary Shakespearean villains."

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Joker creator Jerry Robinson 311 AP (photo credit: AP)
Joker creator Jerry Robinson 311 AP
(photo credit: AP)
NEW YORK — Jerry Robinson was 18 when he created the Joker, Batman's villainous psychopathic nemesis. He was among the pioneers of a new American art form that included Fred Ray, whose iconic 1942 comic book cover known as Superman Patriotic Shield sealed the superhero's status as the defender of "Truth, Justice and the American Way."
The two men worked side by side at DC Comics. But it was Robinson who had the wherewithal to save the original Superman 14 cover art depicting "The Man of Steel" with a bold eagle perched on his shoulder in front of a U.S. shield — as well as his own "Double Guns" Detective Comics No. 69 prototype showing the maniacal Joker rising out of an Aladdin lamp pointing guns at Batman and Robin.
Nearly 70 years later, Robinson is reluctantly parting with the two original artworks through the online auctioneer ComicConnect.com, from Nov. 10 through Dec. 1. The Superman cover is expected to bring $500,000 to $1 million, the Joker more than $400,000 (€287,000).
In the days before the comic book became accepted as a legitimate American art form, the original artworks — executed in black and white India ink on thick drawing boards — had no intrinsic value.
"It was a new genre, a new art form," Robinson told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from his Manhattan apartment. "Nobody thought of the original art work as having any value. It wasn't valued until it was published."
"I just had the sense that it should be saved," said Robinson, who was a member of the original Batman team at DC Comics, working alongside Superman's other big-name creators, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, and Captain America illustrator Jack Kirby, at DC's New York headquarters.
To Robinson, the Superman "just was perfect."
"'Truth, Justice and the American Way' really came from that cover," said Stephen Fishler, owner of ComicConnect.com.
DC Comics co-publisher Jim Lee described it as "an important part of comic book history ... pure Americana."
Robinson explained that the Patriotic Shield "became the iconic cover of World War II."
"Americans needed heroes and Superman became our hero," he said. "Superman would fight the Nazis and Hitler. He became a symbol of America."
"As soon as I finished a cover and I wanted to save it I'd have to call the engraver and say, 'Please don't destroy that, send it back when you come to pick up the next delivery,'" he said.
"When he forgot to call, as he often did, they were destroyed," added Robinson, whose work was featured last year in a Los Angeles exhibition "ZAP! POW! BAM! The Superhero: The Golden Age of Comic Books, 1938-1950."
Robinson, who is the subject of a new biography, "Jerry Robinson: Ambassador of Comics," is the only creator of the golden age of comics from the 1940s still alive, said Fishler. "Ninety-nine point nine percent of the art ... doesn't exist any longer. Publishers were there to make money, so to warehouse the hand-drawn black and white art was a waste of money."
Robinson's Joker cover — one of his first — is the only image to depict the supervillain using guns.
The firearm was nixed because "we wanted the Joker to be resourceful, to use other means of his own. All other common villains of the time used guns. The Joker was different. ... I wanted to create a villain worthy of Batman," said Robinson, who spent much of his later career as a political cartoonist.
A student of literature who attended Columbia University, he said he wanted the Joker "more in the line of literary Shakespearean villains."
So he created a villain with no super powers but one with maniacal tendencies who schemes to destroy his archenemy Batman and delights in his own warped sense of humor.
While both covers have been in his life for a while, Robinson said he was selling them because "now I'm 88 and I reluctantly have to make that decision."