Little Orphan Annie collection going public in hometown

Cartoonist Harold Gray penned the character Little Orphan Annie when he was living in a town now better known for its collection of lilac bushes than rough-and-tumble streets.

From her quaint suburban roots, Annie became a daily syndicated comic strip, a radio show, films and a Broadway musical, building a fan base far and wide.

“Annie is such an important part of Lombard history,” said Jeanne Schultz Angel, executive director of the Lombard Historical Society. “Not enough people know that Harold Gray lived here in Lombard and he created the character of Little Orphan Annie in Lombard.”

Annie's Lombard heritage is a fun little-known fact celebrated recently as the branch of BMO Harris Bank in the village's downtown donated a collection of Annie memorabilia to the historical society.

Bank manager Mark Bennecke donated items that span 70 years and include comics, mugs, badges, toys, lunchboxes and a bracelet.

“The collection was displayed in our branch for a while and it's time to share it with the community,” Bennecke said. “I am excited that everyone will be able to enjoy the memorabilia at the Lombard Historical Society.”

Schultz Angel said the donated items won't go on display right away, but they will play nicely with a collection of Annie-themed Christmas cards Gray sent back to friends in Lombard after leaving the Lilac Village in the early 1930s.

The newly donated Annie memorabilia could be shown in a month or two as part of other exhibits, but Schultz Angel said its main display will occur in about a year and a half. That's when the society will spend a $45,000 state grant on exhibit design and production, incorporating the new Annie collection into the plan.

“Annie has such a tremendous following worldwide,” Schultz Angel said. “We're happy that it's going to be here.”

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Information from: Daily Herald, www.dailyherald.com

Copyright 2013 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-WF-05-16-13 1048GMT

Teen has 3 days to find $15M to pay for Coca-Cola 'recipe'

Georgia antiques dealer Cliff Kluge listed the yellowing typewritten document—found among papers at a Tennessee estate sale—with an opening bid of $5 million and a buy-it-now price of $15 million as a publicity stunt.

"It would have been a wonderful thing" if it had found a genuine buyer, Kluge told AFP by telephone, "but some 15-year-old kid bid on it (at $15 million)—and it's not a legitimate bid."

Undaunted, Kluge said he will relist it after a three-day waiting period, required under eBay rules, on the off-chance that the adolescent buyer can somehow rustle up the cash.

"I wanted to draw attention to it, which worked," said Kluge when asked why he listed the document, dated January 1943, on the popular online auction website.

Coca-Cola, which traces its origins to a 19th century patent medicine, says its extract formula of natural ingredients is a closely held trade secret, kept in a vault at its World of Coca-Cola museum in Atlanta.

"We sleep well at night knowing the secret formula is safe and secure with us," Coca-Cola spokesman Petro Kacur told AFP.

Kluge, whose copy is in a safety deposit box, acknowledged: "I can't prove this is the original recipe. No one can because only two people (both executives of Coca-Cola) in the world know it."

In 2011 the public radio show This American Life came out with what it believed to be a handwritten original recipe for Coca-Cola, which in its earliest form had cocaine among its ingredients.

Collector remains loyal to locally made Parker pens

Its ballpoint nib is durable, and he likes the iconic clip and streamlined design.

“I appreciate how it writes,” he said.

In fact, Nelson appreciates just about everything about Parker Pens, The Janesville Gazette reported.

The 48-year-old Milton man has acquired 3,000 pens and accessories over the past two decades. Of those, about 95 percent are Parker Pens, which he said are probably the most highly collectible pens in the world.

Still, Nelson, who is an employee of the U.S. Postal Service, said he only has 10 percent of the pen varieties manufactured at Parker Pen in Janesville, Wis., between 1888 and 1999.

Initially a toy collector, Nelson was at an auction 21 years ago when he bought a box of old toys. Inside were 20 Parker Pens. After calling a local pen collector and asking questions, Nelson decided to keep the pens.

“I just knew they had to be worth something,” he recalled.

But the value of the pens is only part of their appeal for Nelson, who is intrigued by the ingenuity behind them.

“To me, it's the uniqueness of the designs and how George Parker did what he did,” Nelson said.

He spoke as he ran the tip of his index finger over a pattern of closely spaced parallel lines with regularly spaced circular indentations in the silver stainless steel 75 series “teardrop” pen.

Nelson admires the inventive design behind Parker's Sonnet Sterling Silver Cisele ballpoint pen.

Its sterling silver was finely chiseled with a crosshatch pattern that received a touch of black lacquer in the grooves and was accented with a gold-plated trim and a top that twists to expose the point, he said.

“It was a heck of a process,” Nelson said.

Nelson, who also does pen appraisals, ships pens all over the world and just mailed a couple old pencils to Russia.

“I have a list of customers. So if I get something unique, I'll call them,” he said.

He even sold some items last year to the Parker Pen family.

“They bought a Parker Sonnet set that included a fountain pen and a ball point pen,” he said.

Scratches and marks on a pen can drop its value from $100 to $10, Nelson said.

Nelson owns pens that range in value from $2 to $2,000.

He said his most valuable and favorite pen is a Parker 75 series Presidential solid gold pen he stores in a lock box.

Among some of Nelson's interesting pens are:

– A 1965 Jotter Parker pen and pencil set with a gold Parker logo that rests in red silk lining of a black case given to Nelson by an Edgerton woman who served in the Wisconsin Legislature.

– A Parker Pen leather attaché case he bought from a Janesville Parker Pen salesman.

– End-of-day pens that had color pallets not found in manufactured pens that resulted from switching out the colors of paint at the end of the manufacturing day.

– A 1909 filigree solid gold fountain pen in its original green velvet case.

In addition to buying and selling pens at shows, Nelson has bought and sold pens as far away as Chicago, on eBay and through word of mouth.

“I've probably sold over 2,000 pens on the Internet over the past 12 to 13 years,” he said.

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Information from: The Janesville Gazette, http://www.gazetteextra.com

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AP-WF-05-09-13 1732GMT

Memory Lane: Couple donates Pa. Turnpike collection

“I called her over and said, ‘How did this get to Texas?’" Bob Miller recalled. The Millers would never know the answer, but the idea that souvenirs of their home state's turnpike once existed—and people bought them—intrigued the couple.

“That started it,” Alice Miller says of the couple collection of Pennsylvania Turnpike souvenirs. In the decades since that initial find, the Millers found and bought around 800 pieces, including hundreds of turnpike postcards.

In recent years, the couple, now both 81 and married 62 years, began to think of downsizing. They notified the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission of their proposal to donate most of the collection to the commission. The commission accepted, and when the South Midway service plaza reopens May 17, it will display a portion of the Millers' donated items for the public to peruse.

“The timing could not be better to acquire a collection such as yours,” William K. Lieberman, chairman of the Turnpike Commission, wrote to the Millers.

That's because the commission has been updating 17 of its service plazas. Turnpike Commission spokesman Carl DeFebo says the collection will fit nicely into the renovated South Midway service plaza outside Bedford, undergoing renovations since September in a “historically sensitive” way.

“We wanted to make sure some of the history of these unique plazas was preserved somehow,” DeFebo says. So the renovations included not only expansion, but preserving the original limestone service-plaza facade, meant to evoke a Cumberland County, Pa., farmhouse.

In addition to being displayed at South Midway, some of the Millers' artifacts might be placed at other turnpike commission locations, including the main office in Harrisburg and regional offices in New Stanton and King of Prussia. The Millers' names will be displayed at each location denoting their donor status, and they have been invited to the South Midway grand reopening. Items in the South Midway service plaza's lobby display case will rotate periodically.

“People don't understand why people would buy turnpike souvenirs at a stand,” Bob Miller says.

But in its early years, the Pennsylvania Turnpike—the nation's first four-lane, limited-access highway when it opened in 1940—was itself a tourist attraction, he says. A souvenir would show everyone that the motorist drove the turnpike, which opened 15 years before President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the bill creating the interstate highway system, DeFebo says.

The service plazas do not normally sell turnpike-specific souvenirs. The Millers bought everything in their collection secondhand, mostly at flea markets. Alice Miller even had a T-shirt made, “I buy Penna Turnpike,” so flea market vendors could see her coming yards away and start looking in their stashes for turnpike mementoes to sell her. Eventually, she was known at flea markets as “the Turnpike Lady.”

Among the items in the Millers' collection are a Decca 45 rpm recording, Pennsylvania Turnpike, I Love You, by Dick Todd with the Appalachian Wildcats; many turnpike banners; a child's tea set with teapot, cups and saucers; a charm bracelet with bridge, car, toll booth and Liberty Bell charms; and two antique cars, one a salt shaker, one a pepper shaker. The shakers sat on a tray with sloping sides, one of which had an arch-shaped hole that resembled a turnpike tunnel.

The collection also includes the original plate that intrigued the Millers. It depicts turnpike attractions such as the Midway Plaza; “Little Panama,” an earthmoving cut so large it was reminiscent of earthmoving necessary for the Panama Canal construction; and the Susquehanna River Bridge.

The renovation of the 17 turnpike service plazas is part of a $170 million public-partnership with HMS Host of Bethesda, Md., which paid $100 million, and Sunoco, which paid $70 million, for the redevelopment, DeFebo says. The two corporations signed a 30-year agreement, under which each will provide services to travelers.

The Millers—parents of three, grandparents of seven and great-grandparents of 11, with one on the way—once used the turnpike on a daily basis. Before they retired, Bob Miller would drive Alice to her job as a geography teacher at the former Norwin Junior High School, and use the turnpike to commute to his job as a research scientist at U.S. Steel Corp. in Monroeville. Somerset natives, the Millers frequently traveled the turnpike to visit their relatives. Alice Miller even played in the Somerset High School band at a 1949 turnpike event.

“It's very generous of them to share this marvelous collection with the public,” DeFebo says. “Thousands and thousands of people are going to appreciate the items they have collected.”

“We felt good about” donating the items, Bob Miller says, “so future generations will know more about ‘America's superhighway.’”

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Information from: Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, http://triblive.com/

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AP-WF-05-11-13 1157GMT

New generation of music lovers discovering vinyl

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) – When Nate Niceswanger opened ZZZ Records in 2000, he figured baby boomers would be his vinyl store's target demographic. An entire generation whose moms had tossed out their vinyl, baseball cards and comic books would come in and start their new collection from scratch.

Instead, The Des Moines Register reports he has found a generation of young music fans who are embracing their parents' old vinyl alongside digital music. Today, collecting vinyl combines old-school cool, while offering the convenience of MP3 downloads in most newer record releases.

“It seems like there's a new audience,” said Niceswanger, whose store is among those around the country participating in Record Store Day today.

According to Nielsen SoundScan and Billboard, sales on nondigital physical music were down 12.8 percent in 2012. Vinyl is the lone bright spot in that group—sales rose 17.7 percent, its fifth straight year of growth. And 67 percent of vinyl purchases are made at independently owned music stores.

Those independent record stores teamed up to create Record Store Day in 2007. On the third Saturday in April stores get special vinyl releases to sell. Bands releasing special material on Record Store Day today include The White Stripes, Ani DiFranco, Ben Harper, David Bowie, Elliott Smith, Bon Jovi, Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd and dozens of others.

Lines often form hours early for fans looking to snap up those limited and exclusive records. Premium items end up going for high prices. Phish's ``Junta'' three-song LP released last year now sells for about $150 on eBay.

When Niceswanger opened ZZZ, no other local shops focused on vinyl. Now Des Moines has five shops with a vinyl focus, and Jay's CD & Hobby on the south side also has a section for new and used records.

The Highland Park neighborhood around Euclid and Sixth avenues has become a miniature vinyl district for the city. There are four shops within walking distance of each other: Red Rooster Records, 509 Euclid Ave., Wayback Records, 3524 Sixth Ave., The Underground Rock Shop, 617 Euclid Ave. and Uncle Moe's Records, 516 Euclid Ave., which opened earlier this month.

“It's great, because it makes it a destination for collectors,” said Steve Radcliff, who owns the Underground Rock Shop. “People can walk around and check us all out.”

Increasingly, vinyl is a go-to option for Iowa bands. It's more expensive to produce than a CD, but fans are often more willing to shell out extra money for the larger art, especially when the album includes a digital download code inside. CDs have become just a delivery system for MP3s, while LPs can be a memento of a favorite show.

Poison Control Center guitarist Patrick Fleming said the band's double LP Sad Sour Future offers the best profit margin at its merchandise table at shows. The central Iowa band makes $6 off each CD, but $8 off the vinyl version of the album.

“The only thing bands could possibly make more money on than vinyl is digital download cards, because they cost you pretty much nothing to produce,” Fleming said. “But for a touring band it's pretty hard to sell those cards, so vinyl is the preferable format to sell music on tour.”

The Iowa label Maximum Ames Records was founded in 2011 by a collective of musicians who wanted to release albums on vinyl. Label co-founder Chris Ford (of the band Christopher the Conquered) said the cost of physically making vinyl is much higher than CDs (around $7.50 per record compared to $1.10 for a CD). But for fans of an artist, vinyl represents something more.

“The higher profile physical item with the beautiful art implies a higher value,” Ford said. “It's sort of resistance to everything being compartmentalized on a hard drive. Vinyl feels like something people can pass on to their kids.”

Maximum Ames Records started with enough capital to fund just one album, Mumford's Trinities. The label will release its 10th disc, Papoose, by the Iowa musician HD Harmsen on April 27. Ford said he expects two more Maximum Ames releases by the end of June.

Collector Daniel Bosman, 31, hasn't missed a Record Store Day. He started a vinyl collection about a decade ago, not long after getting his first iPod.

“As I got more into digital, I also got more into records,” Bosman said. “Then I got my mom and dad's collection, then my grandma and grandpa's and before you know it I had a couple thousand records and am a collector.”

Bosman has five record players around the house, but still uses an iPod for listening in the car. He said he's lost some of the excitement for Record Store Day this year, because while the day once focused on independent stores and labels, more and more big labels have gotten involved and prices have risen as a result.

“Major labels are putting out vinyl for $35-$40 a disc, while the indie acts have kept things around $16-$20,” Bosman said. “Once it gets up to $35, it feels like you're taking advantage of the fans a bit. That's what drove people to download in the first place.”

Doug Harmer, 30, started collecting vinyl while growing up in the '90s. He would read about a hip-hop act sampling an older obscure song and dig through bargain bins of vinyl to find things. Over the last decade he's worked at record stores specializing in vinyl in Baltimore, Chicago, and most recently Half Price Books in West Des Moines.

“When the first CDs were coming out, they kind of had a hollow, tinny sound,” Harmer aid. “But vinyl definitely had a different type of warmth. You get addicted to the way they sound.”

Harmer said you can get a different feel from every record store you visit, with each store having its own bin of oddities and specialty discs. Harmer also notices different feels for stores in different cities. He said there was more focus on jazz in Chicago, while he's more likely to find a unique Pink Floyd bootleg in Des Moines.

“It makes you wonder how records get where they are, and how people find them,” Harmer said.

Niceswanger sees a definite trend toward vinyl, especially over the last five years. When he opened, CD sales remained strong. Early on, he would order four to five copies of each CD. Now he's deciding whether to order zero or one. And that one is not always a sure bet.

“When I started, everyone thought I was nuts. It didn't seem like the right format to be focusing on in the year 2000,” Niceswanger said. “Now we've gotten to the point where CD stores have fizzled out. The common denominator seems to be that stores that focus on vinyl are the ones surviving.”

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Information from: The Des Moines Register, http://www.desmoinesregister.com

Copyright 2013 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-WF-04-28-13 2053GMT

Bob Hope items to be auctioned for Calif. charity

The Daily News of Los Angeles reports proceeds from the sale Saturday will help the family service center at St. Charles Borromeo Church in North Hollywood, where Dolores Hope was a member for 70 years.

The couple's daughter, Linda Hope, says memorabilia from Bob Hope's long show business career will also be up for sale.

Prices will range from $10 to several hundred dollars an item.

An auction of additional property from the couple's Toluca Lake estate will be announced by Julien's Auctions of Beverly Hills later this year.

Dolores Hope died in 2011. Bob Hope died in 2003.

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Information from: (Los Angeles) Daily News, http://www.dailynews.com

Copyright 2013 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

First Australian banknote offered privately for $3.6 million

The 10-shilling note, with the serial number M000001, was issued on May 1, 1913 and presented by Prime Minister Andrew Fisher to Judith Denman, the five-year-old daughter of the governor-general at the time, Lord Denman.

It was discovered in 1999, nearly 12 years after Denman died when her effects were being sorted out, and acquired by a private collector in Sydney for Aus$1 million in 2000.

It then sold at auction in 2008 for Aus$1.9 million.

Melbourne dealer Coinworks, which is handling the sale, said the note symbolised one of the most important periods in the country's history -- the establishment of the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901.

Coinworks chief executive Belinda Downie said that after consulting with experts, her expectation was that it would sell for at least Aus$3.5 million, which would be the highest price paid for an Australian coin or banknote.

"It would be by far the highest price paid," she told AFP, adding that private collectors and institutions were expected to show interest.

"I would love it to be on permanent display somewhere as it is a great piece of Australian history and everyone should savor it. It is unique," she said.

The note was the initiative of the prime minister of the day, Fisher, and his Labor government who wanted post-colonial Australia to have a better sense of national identity.

Fisher's other nation-building initiatives included the establishment of a government-owned bank, the Commonwealth Bank, the introduction of Commonwealth postage, and the founding of the capital Canberra.

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ABBA The Museum opening soon in Stockholm

After ABBA The Movie in 1977, the Mamma Mia musical and movie, and a 2010 traveling museum exhibit, the world's first permanent ABBA museum will open in central Stockholm on May 7.

"We're going to offer visitors a unique experience," museum director Mattias Hansson tells AFP, revealing that they may even get a chance to speak live with a band member.

After months of construction, the modern, blond wood building in the leafy Djurgaarden neighborhood is nearing completion.

As opening day looms, convoys of trucks roll up to the site to deliver the furnishings and items that will make up the collection: flamboyant sequined costumes, gold records, and recreations of their recording studio and dressing rooms, among other things.

Workers bustle to finish what will be a temple to the creators of some of the biggest hits of the 1970s, including Voulez Vous, Dancing Queen and Waterloo, the song that won the band the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest and thrust them onto the international scene.

Through the museum's big windows, passersby can catch a glimpse of a large main room. Few people have been authorised to enter the premises, as organizers are intent on keeping things under wraps until the official opening.

But they have let slip a few details.

For example, fans who have dreamt of becoming the fifth member of the band will be able to appear on stage with the quartet and record a song with them thanks to a computer simulation.

And in another room dedicated to the song Ring, Ring, a 1970s telephone will be on display. Only four people know the phone number: ABBA members Agnetha Faeltskog, Anni-Frid (Frida) Lyngstad, Benny Andersson and Bjoern Ulvaeus, who may occasionally call to speak live with museum visitors.

"It was Frida's idea ... so of course she'll call," says curator Ingmarie Halling.

The museum will naturally pay homage to ABBA's music.

"We have to have the best isolation in the world to be able to play different music in each room," Hansson jokes.

But he doesn't expect visitors to flock to the museum to hear the group's hits, since fans already know them by heart.

Rather, they will get to relive the band's active years and get a sense of their lives behind the scenes.

ABBA last appeared on stage together in 1982, and split a year later.

They have repeatedly refused to reunite.

"We will never appear on stage again," Ulvaeus said in a 2008 interview with Britain's The Sunday Telegraph.

"There is simply no motivation to regroup. Money is not a factor and we would like people to remember us as we were," he said.

After the split, the band members each went their own way and they've rarely appeared in public together—in 2008, they attended the Stockholm premiere of the movie Mamma Mia—so getting all four involved in the making of the museum is a coup.

Halling—the band's stylist from 1976 to 1980, an era she describes as "fun and magnificent"—has been instrumental in collaborating with them.

"They've lent us lots of stuff and I call them to tell them my ideas and they say, 'sure, go ahead,'" Halling explains.

As the person behind some of their glitzy and flamboyant costumes, Halling has made sure that many of their outfits are included in the exhibit.

Visitors will also be "able to experience how the ABBA members' lived their

lives," she says. The four will recount their own side of things in the museum's audio guide.

The group dominated the 1970s disco scene with their catchy melodies and kitsch dance routines.

But their popularity has grown over the years beyond those seeking a little nostalgia from a bygone era.

The 1999 musical Mamma Mia, and the 2008 film of the same name starring Meryl Streep, brought their music to a whole new generation of fans who weren't alive in the 1970s.

The group has sold some 378 million albums worldwide, outdone only by Elvis Presley and the Beatles.

"Our office is right next to Benny Andersson's. When I tell people in other countries that, and that I pass him on the street sometimes, people are like: 'No! Really? He walks in the street just like that?'" says Jeppe Wikstroem, an editor working on a book of previously unpublished ABBA photographs.

The museum's website says it expects to attract a quarter of a million visitors in 2013.

"It's very exciting," says Micke Bayart, a 45-year old who headed the band's official fan club in the 1980s.

"ABBA is part of Sweden's musical history, it's only right that there be a museum dedicated to them: they deserve it," he said.

Tickets for the museum—which cost 23 euros, or $30—are almost sold out for the first few weeks, going primarily to tourists from abroad, museum director Hansson said.

Those who can't get their hands on a ticket will have to be content with a glimpse of some of the band's costumes on display at the arrival hall of Stockholm's Arlanda airport.

Superman's 75th birthday puts spotlight on Cleveland roots

Fans hoped Thursday's anniversary, including lighting city hall with Superman's colors, will raise the profile of co-creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.

The city is making a start with a Superman day proclaimed by the mayor and giving out birthday cake at the airport's Superman display.

The June release of Hollywood's latest Superman tale, Man of Steel, also should renew fan interest. The film offers a fresh start for the kid from Krypton, with Henry Cavill as the boy who falls to Earth and becomes its protector.

Siegel and Shuster labored on their creation for years in the throttling grip of the Great Depression before finally selling Superman to a publisher.

The Man of Steel became a Depression-era bootstrap strategy for the Siegel/Shuster team, according to Brad Ricca, a professor at nearby Case Western Reserve University who uses Superman in his classes.

“They really just saw it as a way out,” he said.

In his upcoming book Super Boys, Ricca says the story of Superman's creation is mostly about their friendship: two boys in the city's Glenville neighborhood dreaming of “fame, riches and girls” in a time when such dreams are all the easier to imagine because of the crushing economic misery.

Ricca said Siegel and Shuster reflected Cleveland's ethnic mix: both were sons of Jewish immigrants, struggled during the Depression and hustled to make something of themselves.

Superman's first appearance, in Action Comics No. 1, was April 18, 1938.

The first and greatest superhero has gone on to appear in nearly 1,000 Action Comics and has evolved with the times, including a 1940s radio serial, a 1950s TV series and as a reliable staple for Hollywood. Pop culture expert Charles Coletta at Bowling Green State University said Superman ranks globally with George Washington and the Super Bowl as American icons.

But it wasn't just hardscrabble circumstances that tempered the Man of Steel, Siegel's daughter said.

Laura Siegel Larson said Cleveland's public library, comic pages and high school mentors all nurtured her father's creativity.

“The encouragement that he received from his English teachers and the editors at the Glenville High School newspaper and the literary magazine gave my dad a real confidence in his talents,” she said by phone Monday from Los Angeles. She plans to be in Cleveland for the Thursday anniversary.

The tale of Superman's first moments begins in Siegel's bedroom. He once recalled coming up with the idea while looking up at the stars and imaging a powerful hero who looked out for those in distress.

Today, Siegel's home is easy to pick out on a street with a mix of renovated and dilapidated homes: a stylized red Superman “S” adorns the fence and a sign identifies the home as “the house where Superman was born.”

And like the Man of Steel, the neighborhood is tough.

“You better have ‘S’ on your chest if you come out after dark,” grinned Tommie Jones, 50, helping move furniture several doors away.

Hattie Gray, 61, who moved into the home nearly 30 years ago unaware of its history, has gotten used to the parade of Superman fans walking by or knocking, trying to savor a piece of comics lure.

“I get people all the time, people all the way from Japan, from Australia,” she said. “It's a great joy to live here.”

The top floor, where Siegel went to write, still offers the nighttime view of the sky over Lake Erie that inspired Siegel.

Gray has heard the talk about Glenville being tough, but said crime that might merit Superman's attention can be found anywhere. “The neighborhood is not really bad, it's just the people are poor. That's all,” she said.

Shuster's home has been demolished and replaced by another, but the fence has oversized Superman comic book pages displayed. The nearby commercial strip has a state historic marker detailing Superman's Cleveland roots.

But there isn't an outsized Superman profile in Cleveland like the way the city celebrates its role in music history with the iconic Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum.

Comic store owner Markus Benn thinks hometown fans want to see the Man of Steel rendered in granite.

“I don't understand why Cleveland won't own up to owning Superman,” he said. “What do I suggest for a Superman statue? He should be downtown, he should have the shield or the eagle, that classic pose where he's standing up there with the eagle on his arm.”

The low Superman profile in Cleveland may be because Siegel and Shuster weren't self-promoters and sold their rights to Superman so early, according to Mike Olszewski, a longtime Cleveland broadcaster and president of the nonprofit Siegel & Shuster Society.

Last year the $412 check that DC Comics wrote in 1938 to acquire Superman and other creative works by Shuster and Siegel sold for $160,000 in an online auction.

Funky Winkerbean creator Tom Batiuk shares roots in the Cleveland area with Superman and that inspired him.

“When I was in elementary school, I found an entry in a school encyclopedia about Jerry Siegel,” Batiuk said in an email to The Associated Press.

“The fact that he was the one of the creators of Superman immediately caught my attention, but what was even more astounding to me was the fact that he was from Cleveland. The fact that someone from my area could do something like that was revelatory and inspirational.”

Copyright 2013 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-WF-04-17-13 1648GMT

Superhero museum acquires TV Batman costume

ELKHART, Ind. (AP) – Holy getup, Batman! A costume worn by Adam West who starred as the Caped Crusader on the 1960s TV show is on display at the Hall of Heroes Super Hero Museum in Elkhart.

Museum founder Allen Stewart tells the Elkhart Truth the costume valued at $75,000 was a partial donation. He says the museum paid $7,500 for the costume. He says the previous owner wanted the costume to go somewhere it would be appreciated.

The costume included the blue boots, the brass buckle on the yellow leather utility belt and comes with a certificate of authenticity and a letter signed by West warning the new owner that “wearing it in public can bring some strange looks and the chance of being permanently institutionalized.”

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Information from: The Elkhart Truth, http://www.etruth.com

Copyright 2013 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-WF-04-15-13 0804GMT