Nobody except Siegel and Shuster had exhibited much faith in Superman; Jack Liebowitz called the decision to run the feature "a pure accident," and Vin Sullivan stated that he simply found it "interesting." Publication of the first Superman story was essentially an experiment, with no attendant publicity or promotion, and it was actually the ordinary reader who made the character a star. "I never tried to write down," Jerry Siegel said. "I just wrote stories that I enjoyed, and I was hopeful that if I enjoyed it then other people would. I have a great healthy respect for the fans. I didn't care what their age was, I tried to write up to them. That was my ideal. This was a super character, and I wanted to do right not only by the character but also by the reader."
One way Siegel and Shuster reached out to the audience was by dealing with the social problems of the day. The thirteen pages of Superman's adventures in Action Comics #1 include episodes centered on unjust imprisonment, spousal abuse, and corrupt government officials. Subsequent issues included stories on labor relations, disarmament, and drunken driving. "Superman himself didn't take the whole thing that seriously, except that he was very serious about helping people in trouble and distress, because Joe and I felt that very intensely," Seigel said. "We were young kids and if we wanted to see a movie we had to sell milk bottles, so we sort of had the feeling that we were right there at the bottom and we could empathize with people. Superman grew out of our feelings about life. And that's why, when we saw so many similar strips coming out, we felt that they were perhaps imitating the format of Superman, but something wasn't there, which was this tremendous feeling of compassion that Joe and I had for the downtrodden."
Nobody was more downtrodden than poor Clark Kent, who in that first issue was thoroughly humiliated by various bullies and also by his colleague Lois Lane. Superman's decision to walk among humans disguised as the humble Kent was part of a classical tradition that included heroes like Homer's Odysseus and Shakespeare's Henry V. That Kent is no more than a mask for Superman is shown clearly in the brief origin story, consuming less than a full page, that would be expanded and elaborated with each retelling over the years. In the original version, a nameless scientist on a nameless planet being "destroyed by old age" puts his infant son in a spaceship bound for Earth. The baby is found and taken to an orphanage, where his strength amazes doctors. Reaching maturity, he dons the Superman costume and takes a reporter's job as Clark Kent. No explanation is given for his human name, or for the way the authorities kept his powers secret for so many years.
Siegel and Shuster had the opportunity to improve on this sketchy scenario in just a few months, when they realized their dream of seeing Superman appear in a nationally syndicated newspaper strip. A daily black-and-white strip made its debut on January 6, 1939, and a color Sunday page followed on November 5. Running continuously until May 1966, and then revived from 1977 to 1983, Superman became one of the most successful of the great adventure comic strips. Superman reached local newspapers via the McClure Syndicate, whose executive M. C. Gaines and his enthusiastic young assistant, Sheldon Mayer, had originally recommended the character for comic books. The same strip that had been rejected by almost every syndicate in the country was suddenly a hot property, and Gaines had the inside track. The McClure Syndicate was the country's oldest, and by 1941 it had placed Siegel and Shuster's strip in hundreds of newspapers with a readership estimated at more than 20 million. Such circulation far surpassed that of Action Comics or any other comic book, and it can be argued that it was the newspaper strip that began Superman's existence as a franchise.