Not one but two (technically three) short films about Joe Shuster

On 7/30/14, which happened to be the 100th birthday of Superman co-creator/original artist Joe Shuster, someone alerted me to a short (Spanish, intertitled) film about Joe Shuster, and one with a curious approach. This Is Joe (Éste es Joe) focuses on a sad (yet disputed) incident decades after Superman debuted. Unfortunately, since then, for a reason I do not know, the video has been taken down.


 It was entered in this contest.

The closing shot is reminiscent of one of the Jerry Seinfeld/Superman commercials.(Now we need a Jerry Seinfeld/Jerry Siegel commercial.)
Nice to see Joe in the spotlight for a change; it’s usually Siegel and Shuster or just Siegel (the play The History of Invulnerability ), though Shuster was the subject of Craig Yoe’s well-researched book Secret Identity (even if he might not be keen about his fetish art coming to light).

This reminded me of another short film about Joe, part of the “Heritage Minutes” series produced in his home country of Canada, which I first mentioned here in 2008:


The Canadian film credits Joe for some of Jerry’s ideas and I had minor quibbles with some of the phrasing of the newer one—but what’s more important is that, more and more, people are recognizing the significance of these creators enough to bring them to life, if only for a minute. It makes me want a full-length Siegel and Shuster feature film even more (and believe me, I’ve been trying for years).

The Heritage Minutes film is apparently a big enough deal in Canada that there's actually a spoof of it:


Parody...that’s when you really know you’ve made it.