Broken Frontier

Readers of Brad Meltzer’s blog were greeted with several posts concerning a big announcement that would be forthcoming on Tuesday, September 2nd. This obviously had something to do with a countdown that was going on over at his charity’s webpage, Ordinary People Change the World. Some might have thought this was part of the promotion of The Book of Lies, Meltzer’s latest novel, which is being released on that day. The answer was yes and no.

Meltzer appeared on CBS’s The Early Show Tuesday morning, partially to promote The Book of Lies, but also to officially unveil the Siegel and Shuster society and to announce a celebrity auction the charity was putting on to raise funds to preserve the childhood home of Jerry Siegel—the place where as a young man he came up with Superman.

Visitors to Ordinary People Change the World should now be able to see a video promoting the auction. That video was shot by Jason Sherry, an independent filmmaker from Northeastern Pennsylvania (his film, Cubes, can be rented through Netflix), and Sherry spoke to us about the auction in order to get more attention for the cause.

Sherry and Meltzer met after a lecture the author gave in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Both men bonded during their conversation, and began e-mailing each other. Meltzer rented Cubes and realized that Sherry would be the ideal person to film the video segment promoting the auction.

"It just clicked in his head that when he was doing this project that I was somebody he knew would get right behind this project and understood where he was coming from," says Sherry, "and appreciate it more than just being somebody he could hire to shoot the video, that he knew my passion would be up there with his."

Sherry accompanied Meltzer to Cleveland on one of his visits to the former Siegel homestead to shoot the film. He describes the neighborhood where the house is located as a "fairly downtrodden" neighborhood in Cleveland. "As we were pulling up we actually saw building with a giant sign on it that said ‘No copper. All PVC pipe’," Sherry relates. "It was obviously an abandoned house that the owners were so worried about that they actually put this sign up to detract people from coming in to steal the pipe."

Sherry’s video, which can be seen here, details the condition of the house. The plaster is cracked, in some areas the slats behind the wall are exposed, and there is a hole in the ceiling where you can see in up into the next floor.

"You see that and it really looks like a building that, if you just looked at that element, was abandoned for a number of years," explains the director. "until you realize that right there next to this giant hole in the plaster where you can see the wooden beams—and some of those are cracked—there’s a bed with a comforter. There’s a dresser with somebody’s book they’ve been reading and medication and slippers next to the bed. Somebody is actively living there now with the house in this condition."

The auction therefore serves two purposes. It will preserve the home where and indelible part of Americana was created, and improve the living conditions of the building’s current residents.

People might think that the auction to renovate the childhood home of one of comic book’s most legendary creators might be a bit frivolous. Sherry answers that criticism. "I think detractors could easily say that, geez, aren’t there more important causes out there in the world? Why should we spend money on this? But when you look at the preservation of some other things, and not to say, ‘Oh, we’ve done worse ones, so then we should do this,’ but the house where Google was founded, people thought that was important to preserve. There are landmarks that have been preserved that have less cultural impact, in a sense."

The charity will run the auction in stages, week by week. The first batch of items is currently up on eBay. There are a number of items listed—some of which are: an original Superman sketch by Dave Gibbons, a Superman sketch by George Perez, a chance to be written into Powers provided by Brian Michael Bendis, a chance to be drawn with Superman by Jim Lee and the first draft that Neil Gaiman wrote for Waterstone’s What’s Your Story project. This round of the auction will end on September 9th.

Each week will feature more items. A veritable who’s who of comics has contributed their work to the auction. In addition, there are many one of a kind items and experiences—including VIP tickets to the Colbert Show and a walk-on part on Heroes—that you can bid on. A full list of donated items can be found here.

The piece de resistance has to be a Superman IV: The Quest for Peace T-Shirt signed by Jerry Siegel himself (Siegel gave a bunch of shirts to his wife to sell if she ever needed money. She is donating one of them to this auction).

If you get outbid for all of these items, you can still contribute. There are also a number of Chip Kidd designed T-shirts and merchandise for sale on the website to benefit the cause, and you can also make cash donations.

Brad Meltzer says: Save the house where Superman was created!