It’s a party! It’s a festival! It’s the Superman Celebration in Metropolis, Illinois!
For nearly 50 years, the small community in southern Illinois has celebrated the Man of Steel with the Metropolis Superman Celebration. What started in the late 1970s as a small event for the local community has since expanded to become one of the city’s marquee events, drawing in Superman fans from all over the world.
The origin story that bound the Massac County seat – named by its settlers for its growth potential in the early 1800s – to Superman isn’t a complex one. Cue the John Williams music.
Metropolis’ legacy with Superman started when local businessman Bob Westerfield realized his Illinois town was the only Metropolis in the United States. After Westerfield connected local officials with DC Comics, the city – which bears more of a resemblance to Clark Kent’s canonical hometown of Smallville – became the official hometown of Superman in the summer of 1972. Before the decade’s end, the Superman Celebration was born.
Karla Ogle, one of the annual event’s planners through the Metropolis Chamber of Commerce, said that the celebration is still paying dividends for the town after decades.
“What we've noticed is anytime that there is a movie or a series that comes out, people get on and they start Googling and eventually, while they're Googling, Metropolis pops up, and we're kind of a curiosity,” Ogle said. “Then they'll research it, and they'll see that, ‘Wow, that's kind of an interesting thing. They have an event every year, Superman Celebration … I think I need to go.’ And next thing you know it, they're coming and this is their fifth year, their seventh year, their 15th year.”
The four-day event includes autographs and Q&A sessions with stars from the various adaptations of Superman, children’s events at the Smallville tent and a costume contest to wrap up the weekend. The biggest costs for the weekend are getting Superman-related celebrities to the event. One Ogle pointed to as an exciting get over the years was Tom Welling, who played Clark Kent in Smallville.
Attendees come from all over the world. Ogle remembered a group from Japan who told her they had planned their trip only to come to the Superman Celebration and didn’t have plans to stop anywhere else in the states.
“We have a map on the street that we have people put push pins [in] telling where they're from, and there's always at least three other countries that attend, which just absolutely blows my mind,” Ogle said. “It just really speaks volumes of the show that we put on and the love for Superman.”
Ogle said often the feedback the planners receive is to not change a thing, but the planning committee tries to tweak things as new movies come out and anniversaries come up. With intellectual property being perhaps more valuable than ever, the city has to work with the parent company of DC Comics to make sure they’re staying within the trademarks and branding they’re allowed to use for the Superman festival.
“We are allowed to do the Superman Celebration that was part of the agreement, along with our Superman that represents the character,” Ogle said. “Everything else, we just have to make sure we're following the rules as far as how he's portrayed, and anything that's printed up has to have all the correct copyrights and their legal lines on it.”
One of the biggest attractions – aside from the literal 15-foot statue of Superman in the city’s downtown square – is the opportunity for event goers to meet Metropolis’s own Man of Steel.
“Getting in cape shape”
Joshua Boultinghouse doesn’t hail from the planet Krypton, but he plays a guy who is.
The Texas-based personal trainer – – has played the role of Superman exclusively for the city of Metropolis since being plucked out of a worldwide casting search for the superhero in 2008, even earning a stamp of approval from DC Comics.
Boultinghouse described himself as a “big Superman fan” growing up and cites Christopher Reeve as his favorite actor to don the tights and cape. He said that the way the late actor embodied Superman always stuck with him, and gave him something to emulate.
“The first rendition I saw was the Christopher Reeve movies, and just his portrayal — he was kind and strong, and he had that remarkable smile, just the way that he helped people is what drew me to the character itself,” Boultinghouse said.
Being Superman, while not a year-round job for Boultinghouse, has its demands. Ahead of the Superman Celebration, Boultinghouse does some prep work – what he and others describe as “getting in cape shape.”
“When you put the suit on, it just kind of takes over, the embodiment, at least for me, it does,” Boultinghouse said. “Being comfortable in the suit, and then just knowing what the character stands for and just trying to emulate that. It's just always being positive, smiling, wanting to just lift another person's day.”
Actually being at the Superman Celebration in Metropolis, Boultinghouse said, reminds him of the times he went before he’d been cast in the role. He said that getting to bring a character beloved by so many to life is something he doesn’t take for granted, posing with kids and adults alike to give them their moment with Superman.
“I have to say the adults that come up and say they've been a longtime fan of Superman, that's a little bit more flattering,” Boultinghouse said. “The kids, it’s funny. It's kind of the same reaction to Santa Claus; either they love it or they just get scared and don't want to have anything to do with me.”
Over the years, he’s also gotten to meet some of the celebrities who have attended the celebration. One that stands out for him is meeting Margot Kidder, who played Lois Lane in the Christopher Reeve movies, in 2013. According to Boultinghouse, Kidder had told fans she had to wrap up taking photos before pushing herself too far as she had thrown her back out the day before. Boultinghouse felt he had to take a chance to really be Superman at the moment.
“Something in my head says, ‘If you don't do this, you're gonna regret it for the rest of your life,’” Boultinghouse said. “So I wrap my arm around her, look down at her, and said, ‘Don't worry, I've got you.’ And then without, without missing a beat, she said her line. She goes, ‘You got me, who's got you?’”
“A mecca for Superman collectors”
A short walk from the town’s giant statue of Superman sits the Super Museum, a historic collection of memorabilia that traces its own history in comic lore.
Jim Hambrick started buying comics at the young age of five, financing his habit by working as a paperboy, and built an impressive collection.
“By the age of 10, he was charging his friends a nickel to come into his Superman collection, so he was a very young entrepreneur,” Hambrick’s daughter, Morgan Siebert, said.
At 19, Hambrick was being recognized in the press for his collection and people started to send him items or tip him off to where items were for his growing collection, Siebert recalled. Hambrick went on to create a traveling museum with the first Superman of film Kirk Alyn and he was the first museum attraction to be welcomed to the San Diego Comic Con.
Bob Westerfield, who led the original effort to make Metropolis the official hometown of Superman, reached out to Hambrick in 1986, asking him to bring his collection to the city. Siebert said the move appealed to her dad as a safe place to move outside of Los Angeles. In 1993, the Super Museum opened.
“When I was seven, I had the choice to stay with my mom in California or move here, and this sounded like a lot more fun, like an adventure,” Siebert said.
As she started connecting with the fans and seeing the joy it brought them, Siebert became more and more of a Superman fan herself.
“It's just contagious when people come out of the museum and they are immersed in the collection, and they start sharing their childhood memories and telling you how much Superman means to them,” Siebert said. “That tells you I'm doing the right thing, I'm making people happy, and I mean, I don't know what other career paths you can go down where you just bring people joy every day, but that's why I stuck with it, and why I wanted to be here.”
Hambrick passed away in December 2024. At this year’s Superman Celebration, the town is unveiling a historic marker in his honor.
Siebert now runs the family business, working alongside her young daughters in the museum she’d been working in with her father since she was seven.
Some of the stand out items in the collection include costumes worn by Christopher Reeve, George Reeves, Dean Cain, Helen Slater and Henry Cavill. There’s also a variety of merchandise that was branded with Superman such as Velveeta cheese and peanut butter.
The museum currently has 70,000 items on display and Siebert said that’s not the entire collection. There’s been renovations to the museum building over the years and she hopes to expand to the second floor in the future.
“The museum is kind of like a mecca for Superman collectors and Superman fans, where they can come in and see items that maybe they only saw in their childhood, and can connect to things that they've admired on screen,” Siebert said. “I feel like the celebration and the museum go hand in hand.”
While Superman-related celebrities sometimes find their way to the Super Museum, Siebert said one of the most special experiences she has is seeing people and families grow and return to the festival over the decades
“You have doctors and lawyers and you have people that work at fast food; you have every scope of people, but our common bond is Superman and superheroes,” Siebert said. “A lot of them cosplay, and everybody just kind of meets in the middle and celebrates this thing together and I just think that's a really beautiful thing.”
The Superman Celebration will be held June 13th through 15th. A complete schedule of events is available on the event’s website.
