"Not only that, but when I first met Joe, to my intense delight, he showed me that he was a collector. He was collecting some of the early Tarzan pages by Hal Foster, and, later, early Flash Gordons; and I found that we were both absolutely interested in the same type of thing"
About this Quote
There is a particular kind of intimacy that forms when two artists realize they’re hoarding the same private mythology. Shuster’s “intense delight” isn’t just fan-gush; it’s the relief of finding a co-conspirator, someone whose taste already speaks the language of ink, anatomy, pacing, and spectacle. The sentence keeps widening - Tarzan pages, then Flash Gordon, then “absolutely” the same interests - as if the bond is being built in real time, brick by brick, through shared objects.
The intent is social and strategic at once. Collecting here isn’t a quaint hobby; it’s a credential and a compass. Early Hal Foster and Alex Raymond strips were the high-end grammar of adventure illustration, the place where draftsmanship met cinematic momentum. By naming them, Shuster signals seriousness: this isn’t childish consumption, it’s apprenticeship via curation. You can hear a maker clocking another maker’s influences and thinking, we can build from the same foundations.
The subtext is about legitimacy and hunger in an era when comics were still culturally disposable and professionally precarious. Being “a collector” means treating the medium as worth preserving - implicitly, worth elevating. It also hints at scarcity: early pages are treasures you track down, protect, study. Shuster’s excitement reads like recognition that their ambitions won’t be lonely.
Context matters: Shuster is remembered as a co-creator of Superman, but this quote sits upstream of icon-making, in the formative, slightly obsessive phase where taste and technique get assembled from borrowed light. It’s not nostalgia; it’s origin-story fuel.
The intent is social and strategic at once. Collecting here isn’t a quaint hobby; it’s a credential and a compass. Early Hal Foster and Alex Raymond strips were the high-end grammar of adventure illustration, the place where draftsmanship met cinematic momentum. By naming them, Shuster signals seriousness: this isn’t childish consumption, it’s apprenticeship via curation. You can hear a maker clocking another maker’s influences and thinking, we can build from the same foundations.
The subtext is about legitimacy and hunger in an era when comics were still culturally disposable and professionally precarious. Being “a collector” means treating the medium as worth preserving - implicitly, worth elevating. It also hints at scarcity: early pages are treasures you track down, protect, study. Shuster’s excitement reads like recognition that their ambitions won’t be lonely.
Context matters: Shuster is remembered as a co-creator of Superman, but this quote sits upstream of icon-making, in the formative, slightly obsessive phase where taste and technique get assembled from borrowed light. It’s not nostalgia; it’s origin-story fuel.
Quote Details
| Topic | Friendship |
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