Plans for Superman Statue in Cleveland, Eighteen Years in the Making, Advance With Hefty Funding Campaign

Cleveland seems to have excelled in paying debts to Superman and his creators in the past year or so.

Last September, a month-long conference dedicated to the Man of Steel hit the superhero's birthplace, with hundreds of fans gathering to wax academic or geek out about The Man of Steel's wide influence on American culture. And just this week, after months of prep, the latest installment in the Superman film franchise, Genesis , began shooting in a downtown dressed up as a modernist Metropolis.

Last Thursday afternoon, from a podium in the Cleveland History Center, came even better news: after two decades of trying, Cleveland would finally get a Superman statue, one situated in new plaza on the southwest corner of the Medical Mart construction downtown.

But a statue with a catch. Members and friends of the Siegel and Shuster Society say a whopping $2.5 million will have to be raised. All without federal grants, or city and county dollars: the people, the Society said, will contribute the money themselves.

And not just for a statue. Those seven figures will go toward constructing a Tribute Plaza off the corner of St. Clair and Ontario, where six-foot bronze figures of the Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, and Siegel's wife Joanne (the muse for Lois Lane), will stand pointing up to a silver Superman in flight, 18 feet up in the air.

Like the Superman creators themselves, the Society and its supporters reminded press that they too are no strangers to years of false starts and naysaying.

"Remember, it took [them] nearly six years" to get Superman 's first issue, in 1938, published, Siegel and Shuster Society President Gary Kaplan told the crowd, standing in front of a silver Clark Kent bust. "And they, despite facing rejections for those six years—Jerry and Joe never lost hope. And neither did we."

"And today," he added, "we are finally almost there."

For what seems like decades, progress towards an apt homage for Superman's creators was Cleveland's kryptonite. Hordes of head-scratching Clevelanders, from council folk to everyday fans, continued to cry into the abyss for a proper statue for the world's most popular superhero. Without much return.

Earnest efforts date back to at least the mid-1990s, when then Councilman William Patmon called on Mike White's City Hall to birth a memorial for Siegel and Shuster. (Siegel had just died at 77.) A small company called Neverending Battle Inc. had been working since 1988 on the effort, but had also been dismantled, facing $200,000 in debt.

In 2007, Michael Sangiacomo, then a columnist for the Plain Dealer, penned a diatribe about Cleveland's missed opporunity, both to honor its two most prolific comic book artists and cash in on a genius tourism opportunity.

“It seemed to be snake-bit," he told the New York Times in 2008, regarding the statue pursuit. "Whenever an effort would start, something would mess it up.”

Others felt the rage: Sangiacomo's complaints led eventually to creation of, with Gary Kaplan, the Siegel and Shuster Society. A year later, with about $53,000 raised by fans across the globe, the society helped rehab Siegel's aging house on Kimberly Avenue in Glenville.

Sixteen years later, Sangiacomo feels the Society could leverage Superman's universality to raise the funds again—even with those funds being nearly 25 times more.

"This will be built because of ordinary people around the world who will contribute to make this possible," he said on Thursday. "I mean, we've already heard from people in other countries wanting to contribute and say, 'We will be there to see this, no question.'"

The same spirit was shared by Leigh Goldie, the second cousin of Shuster, who recalled the tens of thousands raised for the Kimberly Avenue house rehab—and miniature museum—as a truly human event. Money, she said, "donated by regular, ordinary people." (And from proceeds from Ohio's Superman license plates.)

Goldie envisions the same global spirit leading into a tourism spike for Cleveland, akin to the Rock Hall or the Convention Center itself.

"This is going to be a shining light on our entire city and people from all over the world, not just the country," Goldie said. Everyone around "the world is going to be coming just to see this tribute plaza."

Those interested in donating to the Society and their statue project can do so on their website. Donations by check or money order, Goldie said, can be mailed to her at 23500 Mercantile Road, Suite D, Beachwood, Ohio 44122.

Cuyahoga County Councilman Pernel Jones, a "comic book nerd" himself, predicts the plaza will debut to the public concurrent with the Comic Book Convention in March 2025.

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