Video: Superman In Flight: The New Yorker In this week's issue, Deborah Friedell delves into the tangled origins of Superman. Jerome Siegel and Joe Shuster were only in high school, during the Depression, when they created the superhero. Ever since, the Man of Steel has been transformed and re-imagined in radio, comics, books, art, and movies. Here, we trace how depictions of Superman's ability to fly have changed over time: