It's a bird! It's a plane!

This was thanks to a storyline by the young Cleveland-based artistic team of writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster, who saw to it that baby alien Kal-El was discovered by Ma and Pa Kent after he arrived to Earth in a rocket ship. So, when you are a young boy embroiled in the ultimate mystery about your own roots, well, of course you’re going to be mesmerized by the Superman tale.

I don’t think he’s got my Superman tattoo, but Westmounter Henry Mietkiewicz, senior communications specialist at the Jewish General Hospital, shares my enthusiasm. We’ve got a lot in common when it comes to our love and fascination for the Man of Steel. But where Mietkiewicz outdoes me is that he actually met and interviewed half the team, Joe Shuster, and man, if professional envy had teeth...!

Toronto native Mietkiewicz, who turned 59 last week and has been here since 2000, was an entertainment writer at the Toronto Star, spending 27 years at that paper. It was 1992 and the editors challenged their staff to come up with their best stories that related to the history of their newspaper during an anniversary year. Like so many of us, Mietkiewicz had been bred on comic books since age five. “I started with kids comics, like Archie and Disney titles, before falling for superhero books,” Mietkiewicz told me. “And I still read DC comics. I think that I have always loved the mix of words and pictures that have the ability to influence people, so I also gravitate toward advertising and poster art.”

With Superman, however, Mietkiewicz admitted there was always a deeper fascination. So, knowing that artist Joe Shuster had been born in Toronto in 1914 and was still alive, he started looking for ways to contact the well known recluse, starting with a logical source, Frank Shuster, half of the legendary comedy team Wayne and Shuster and Joe’s cousin. “Frank was at the CBC then and he put me in touch with Joe.”

After assuring Shuster that his desired interview had nothing to do with controversy (Shuster didn’t want to jeopardize the pension that DC had been publically embarrassed into giving him and partner Siegel, after they received nothing of the untold millions DC had made off their character for so long), the two arranged a meeting. “In April 1992, I spent two days interviewing Joe at his apartment,” Mietkiewicz said. “I was given confirmation of some elements of the Superman mythos by the man who helped create it.”

Mietkiewicz learned, for instance, that the skyline of Metropolis was actually the Toronto skyline. And that the Daily Planet had originally (in the early comics) been called the Daily Star after, of course, the Toronto Star, both elements being Shuster’s tribute to his birthplace. He had his story for the Star.

The timing of the interview was also fateful: Shuster died in July 1992. “I will never forget this experience,” Mietkiewicz added. “And I will always remember his modesty... he considered himself a simple artist who helped develop a good idea, nothing more.”

When Atwater Library’s chief librarian Lynne Verge sat with Mietkiewicz for a discussion, she asked if he would join her excellent cadre of speakers and “I saw it as an opportunity to add something unusual to the regular line-up.” Next Thursday, March 12, at 12:30 p.m. at the Atwater Library, you can hear Mietkiewicz recount some truly magical moments. You do not need to be a fan of comic books, or an adoptee, to participate.