Another of my stops on my way through Cleveland was the public library, which I had heard featured a pretty impressive Superman memorabilia exhibit.

And it did!

On another day during a lull in my conference I walked to the Cleveland Public Library, a beautiful building over 100 years old and also close to the convention center, so I was able to make it back fairly quickly. Upstairs on the second floor was a free exhibit that might as well have been a museum. A whole hallway had Superman memorabilia and artifacts, some from the earliest days of Supermania in the 1930s, donated by various collectors for public display.

There were more or less two categories of artifacts, one was various collectibles and the other was private letters and such from Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. My personal favorites included Thanksgiving greeting cards from Joe to Jerry from when Joe had moved to the West Coast, complete with the envelope the cards were addressed in. It was unbelievable to see something written by the creators of Superman firsthand. Whoever donated the collection deserves a big congratulations for that one.

Also featured were some cool collectibles, as I mentioned, some of which I had heard of, and some which I had not. Superman swim mask and flippers from the early years was quite interesting to see, knowing how crazy kids were for the Man of Tomorrow in that era, especially. There were also plenty of items autographed by Kirk Alyn and Noel Neil. Great stuff.

I didn’t see too many other Golden Age collectibles besides those, but there was a good amount of Silver Age stuff as well, including a real script from “Superman and the Mole Men,” a “Calling Superman” board game from 1954, and an original tv guide, among others. And of course, plenty of comics from the Silver Age and other eras.

Moving along to the Bronze Age, my favorites were the 1978 Superman movie soundtrack on vinyl, an 8×10 autographed photo of Christopher Reeve, lots of fun action figures and an original commissioned drawing by Gil Kane done at a convention.

Lots of other stuff was there too, including more modern items, but it all was way too much to go into in detail in one post. I hope you’ll zoom in on some of these photos as there is a lot to see. Just take my word for it when I say I honestly could have looked around for a couple hours.

Oh, and I shouldn’t have been surprised, but the library also had the biggest collection of Superman books to check out that I had ever seen. Because Cleveland.

If only I had all day!

I would love to look into when and how the exhibit was put together, but suffice it to say it is just great to see the love Jerry and Joe are given in their hometown to this day. These Superman collections are a terrific feature to the library, especially since they are free to the public whenever the library is open. Enjoy the pics!

Part 3 next week!