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Everyone has a place they retreat to when they need to recharge. It could be your bedroom, your library, your porch. For Superman, it's his fortress of solitude, the retreat carved out of ice in the Arctic. For Mike Meyer, it's the basement of his home in the small town of Granite City, Illinois. Mike is in his late forties, and for as long as he can remember, he has loved Superman. He bought his first comic as a ten year old when they were just twenty cents. He loves the nobility
of Superman, his desire to do good things. He buys as many comics, toys, and other collectibles as he can. It's not easy. Not a wealthy collector. Mike has been collecting Social Security for an intellectual disability since he was in his twenties. He works part time at a McDonald's in nearby Collinsville, but over time he's still amassed a pretty cool collection, over eighteen hundred items. There's stuff everywhere, but a lot of it fills the basement of his home.
He doesn't get down here as often as he'd like. Mike's knees give him problems, and navigating the stairs is hard, but it's worth it so he can be near his friend, his favorite fictional character. But today isn't like other days. Today, when Mike turns on the light, he's astonished to see the shelves are practically bare. The comics, the toys, the decades of collecting gone. Someone didn't just rob Mike of his stuff. They robbed him of the one thing that
brought him most of his happiness. Thinking of Mike in that moment, you wish you could tell him what happens next, tell him that something amazing is going to come out of this. But right now, all Mike can do is wonder what happens when you lose everything that matters. Welcome to Very Special Episodes and iHeart original podcast. I'm your host Danish Sports and this is Up, Up and Away.
Hey, everybody, it's Jason English here. We've got something a little different this week. A couple of years ago, a lot of the people who work on this podcast Very Special Episodes made another podcast called Stealing Superman. Dana hosted that one. It was written by Jake Rosson, Josh Fisher, John Washington, Beheid Frasier, All the greats who work here
behind the scenes worked on that as well. Stealing Superman is about a comic book heist that takes place at Nicholas Cage's bel Air mansion and follows the decade long odyssey to get his comics back. During that show, we made a bonus episode about a different Superman heist that, frankly, not a lot of people listen to. You put bonus in the title, and I guess people feel it's safe
to skip. But it is a wonderful story, a great standalone episode, and now that we're getting a nice audience for what we're doing over here, I wanted to re up that as a very special episode. If you haven't gotten around to Stealing Superman yet, that's okay. There's no spoilers. It's truly its own story, and I hope you enjoy it.
Over to you, Dana, There's no doubting a Superman was Mike Meyer's favorite pop culture character. His parents took him to see the first Christopher Reeve movie in nineteen seventy eight. His most prized possession, a twelve inch tall Captain action doll with Superman's costume, was acquired not long before Mike likes to draw too, and Superman was always taking shape on paper, his pencil forming a cape and the s. One of his dogs was named Crypto, after Superman's pets.
If you knew Mike, you knew he loved Superman as much as he did when he was a boy, and eventually that turned out to be a problem. Before Mike started working at McDonald's, he held a job at another fast food chain, Hearty's, in the nineteen nineties. While he worked there, he struck up a conversation with a coworker named Jerry, and naturally, the talk turned to Superman. Mike and Jerry lost touch for a long time. Then in August of twenty eleven, Mike ran into Jerry at a
comic book shop in Granite City. Jerry remembered Mike and his collection. He asked if he could come over and see it. Mike wasn't sure. It's not that Jerry was a bad guy, It's just that they weren't really friends, and maybe something about Jerry didn't seem right. So Mike said he was busy, sorry, maybe another time, But Jerry wasn't taking no for an answer. He got Mike's number and called him. Couldn't he please please come over and take a look. He was in the neighborhood, he could
come right over. Mike said, okay, and a few moments later Jay showed up. He wanted the tour, so Mike showed him everything. The comics of which he had hundreds, all the way back to issue number ninety nine, the toys, the action figures tacked to his wall, the lunch boxes and posters and shirts, even the handsown Superman costume Mike had tucked in his closet. Jerry was impressed. He left, and Mike thought that was the end of it. Maybe he even felt some pride in showing off his collection.
The next night, Jerry was back, this time with his girlfriend. He wondered if Mike would like to watch a movie all three of them, and Mike, being a non confrontational kind of person, said fine. He noticed Jerry got up and left during the movie, leaving Mike and his girlfriend alone,
but he didn't think much of it. And then two days later, Mike went into his basement expecting to find everything the way it always was, everything arranged, everything in its place, but it was all almost gone, and it was obvious who had done it Jerry, his supposed friend. He reported the theft to police, but he didn't really know much about Jerry, just that they had worked at Harty's years ago, and that he drove a silver car When he apparently filled up with thousands of dollars worth
of Mike's Superman collection. Someone tipped off local reporters, and pretty soon Mike was giving interviews, expressing regret that he had ever let Jerry into his house, his fortress, that the things Jerry had taken had meant a lot to him. Keith Howard was one of the people who read about Mica. The story had been picked up by local newspapers in and around Granite City and in nearby Saint Louis, Missouri, and already people were trying to contact Mike to send
him things. Keith was a nurse and a fellow Superman fan. In fact, he had taken to making personal appearances in costume at the Saint Louis Children's Hospital with a costume tailored after his favorite Superman, George Reeves. Keith saw the story on the super Friends of Metropolis Facebook group, which keeps Superman fans in touch with each other before, during, and after the annual celebration in Metropolis, Illinois, every year.
One of the group's members, Don Janie, posted the story here's Keith.
I just kind of got a gut feeling that, you know, this is our wrong thing to happen, and the fact that he had this metal challenge made just that much more despicable.
Like most people who heard the story, Keith felt it in his bones. Burglarizing someone is one thing, but someone as trusting as Mike and sealing a collection of Superman stuff it was ugly. Keith had never met Mike, never heard of him until the story, but he decided something ought to be done about it, so he made a post of his own in the group.
I said, how would you guys feel if we took up a collection and people could just give what they want to get? Maybe send a card, send a note, if you have a Superman Action figure that you've got land around that you wouldn't mind donating, or just anything, you know. Just kind of threw that out there.
Just getting some unwanted comics or inexpensive toys would have been plenty generous, but that's not what happened. The first thing Keith got took him by surprise.
So we set up a time and I then posted to everybody that here's my address, and posted on our page. That address got out to people that I have no way of knowing how they got it, and all of a sudden, within three four days, I got my first delivery. And it was an envelope like they had an eight x ten in it, and it was from Noel Neil. She was the Lois Lane from the TV show Adventures
of Superman and she was still alive. She was like eighty nine back then, and it was a autographed picture of her with George Reeves in costume, and she signed it Noel Neil, Lois Lane or Lois I think it quotes to Mike. And I was like, oh my gosh, I don't even have one of those. And I was just like, oh man, this is we we just I mean, they came out swinging already. This is such a cool first gifts. And if that's the only gift that he gets, I'm sure he would treasure it forever.
But that was far from the only gift.
And so then the next day there was like three boxes, and then the next day there'd be three or four more boxes, and every day I'd come home, there would be boxes and boxes laid up outside my door.
It wasn't just fans sending in stuff either.
DC Headquarters has sent me two big, heavy boxes. One of them was a run like a series of comics that was run from like I don't know. This box had to be maybe twenty four long and sixteen wide and sixteen tall. Maybe it was full of comics. And they said those were all the comics in that run of stories. They were all brand new. They were all wrapped in the the plastic that you wrapped comics in. And then the other one was a bunch of like collectibles,
figurines and plush dolls and the little bubble heads. I mean, there were some really expensive stuff in that other box too, that came from DC Headquarters. How'd they find out, I don't know.
Something about Mike's story resonated with people the way it had resonated with Keith. More than eighty boxes of stuff poured in from everywhere.
Things were coming from all over the world. Am I mean When I say all over the world, I mean pictures painting, Like people were painting pictures of Mike because they saw an image of Mike in the newspaper, and they were coming from like China and Brazil and Chile and the Netherlands, and I'm like, oh my gosh, this isn't just local. This story has got international.
And as it piled up, Keith began thinking about what he was going to do with all of it. He'd give it all to Mike, of course, but how.
So I just kind of broached the idea, you know, how cool would it be if this guy got a visit from quote Superman bearing some gifts of some sort. And I said, and says, I lived so close, I can show up as Superman. I'll do all the legwork here locally, I'll find where he is at, and I'll deliver these gifts.
Keith reached out to Bill Smith, a friend of Mike's, and told him what he had planned to do.
Bill told me that Mike worked as a I think the title ist porter for the McDonald's in Collinsville, which was literally like fifteen minutes from my house. And I thought, oh, how cool would it be to make this delivery at his work? So I called them, and I talked to his manager, this young lady, and explained again who I was. Everybody's kind of always you know, apprehensive to talk to
you first. But the minute they heard what our intent was, everybody just overwhelmingly was like, oh my gosh, this is so cool. So she broke down crying. She was in tears the whole conversation, and I said, I'm anxious to meet Mike. You know, I've talked to his friend Bill and this story. You know, it was ugly. Bill even told me, you know, Mike just feels so depressed. Bill's hoping that this kind of brings him out of that depression.
And Keith wasn't alone.
In the meantime, I've got a couple of people on my page, this Facebook Superfrins page that had volunteered to dress up in costume and be there to make the delivery as well, including Don Chance, the guy who shared the post. So I said, okay, let's go ahead, and you guys. One of the guys was taking pictures of everything. And there are about five of us, including my daughter who dressed out a Supergirl, that went to make this delivery. This will be the first time I've ever met Mike.
They're expecting us. He doesn't have any idea that we're coming. Thank goodness, you didn't stumble the process on the internet.
Just a couple weeks after the darkest day in Mike's life, Keith pulled up to the McDonald's.
And we get there and there's some news media there, and the store people are just all like, oh my gosh, that's so cool. And we take pictures at the front counter with Mike and he's I don't know him well
enough to know how to read his reaction. Later he would tell me that it was just like the greatest thing that he'd ever experienced, and how depressed he was prior to that, and then for him to see Superman, you know, he kept calling me Superman standing right there in his store and telling him that he was there to make delivery was just more than he could process. You know.
Keith showed up with everything, the dozens of boxes they were all for him, a bunch of awesome things given to him by complete strangers. Mike was overwhelmed. Keith helped him take it all back to his house with multiple cars full of Superman items, a caravan of generosity, and little by little, Keith got to know more about Mike that deep down he identified more with another pop culture character.
We got to be decent friends after all of that, and he would open up to me and he would share some thoughts that he had about himself and his life and who he was. And Mike was a kind of a sad person. Unfortunately, Mike, he always wanted a girlfriend. He had had a girlfriend, you years ago. The things didn't work out, and he was he was lonely, and he shared that with me. And Mike sort of lived
in the fifties and sixties. Still in his house were all sorts of DVDs of Popeye and the Monsters and you know those old TV shows, obviously Superman and Batman, and he said he would just watch that over and over all the time. He said, you know, you know who I really connected with and who I feel like
I am most like. He said, I feel like I'm like Herman Muster, just kind of big and clumsy and misunderstood, and that he would do the laugh, you know, Herman Muster had a kind of a unique laugh and he imitated very well.
Keith left thinking that would be the end of it, but it wasn't. There was another twist coming. Mike's friend turned foe, Jerry, turned out to be a serial offender, just a month or so after stealing Mike's collection, he was accused of robbing an elderly man he was supposed to be doing renovations for. That led to the police, which led to their discovery of Mike's stolen Superman items. Authorities were able to return virtually everything Jerry stole from him.
Now Mike had a problem, although for a Superman fan it was the best kind of problem to have.
So you got eighty five gifts from us, this many gifts from Cleveland, you know. So now he's got like extras of everything. And he calls me up one day and he says, Keith, I am starting to feel guilty. You know, I got all my stuff back, and you guys all gave me stuff, and some people didn't know what the others were given. I got two or three in the same thing, and I just have so much. Now I just feel guilty. And I said Mike, first, please don't feel guilty. Those people gave because they wanted
to give. It made them feel good to give. They didn't realize they were giving you duplicates. So if you want to sell those or give them away, by all means, do what you want with them, and don't feel guilty about them, and he said, yeah, yeah, I don't know. I don't know, I don't know.
Nobody who donated to Mike wanted any of it back, even after his collection had been returned to him. They were happy to see him with all the Superman stuff he could fit in his house. So Keith made a suggestion.
And I said, well, let me tell you what I do. I said, I go over to Saint Louis Children's Hospital because I work at Barnes as a nurse in the operating room. Every Wednesday, it's every two weeks or every month, they have bingo for these kids. And I've been going over there like twice a month, sometimes twice a month, mostly at least once a month, and I dressed up as Superman and I call bingo and it's so cool,
I said. You know, they have a camera and kids will be in therapy or they'll be in their room because they're too sick to come down to the big playroom where we're at doing the bigo day. So they're watching me call off the bingo and then they'll call the room and they'll say I got bingo, and so then we'll run the board and yeah, yeah, that's bingo. And so then the camera pans over to this table that's got three tiers to it, and on every tier
there's all these donated gifts. And I said, Mike, I thought just came to me, and this is just an idea. I said, I can talk to these guys and ask them if they'd be okay with it. But maybe you could come with me to one of these bingo days and you could bring a couple of those things that you got as extra. And so if you've got like extra comics that are new went nice, and maybe like you've got like two or three of the same action figure and you want to donate that to these kids.
How did you feel about that? He said, Oh, it's a wonderful idea.
At the end of twenty eleven, Mike and Keith went to Saint Louis Children's Hospital bearing gifts, a lot of gifts. Keith was in costume, but Mike was the hero, wearing a Superman T shirt and a big smile. They played bingo with the patients, handing out prizes. That something so good had come out of what happened was indescribable. Maybe Mike saw flashes of himself in those kids. Maybe he turned some of them into lifelong Superman fans that day.
So I called them and they said, sure, yeah, come on. So one Wednesday we went up to Sales Children's Hospital and we called Bigo and I introduced the group there to Mike, who was the reason why all that Superman stuff was there, and he was given that to them, and they just showered Mike with love, and Mike felt
like the king of the world that day. And I just loved it because here's a guy who just stood a couple of months earlier, was depressed, felt big and clumsy and unloved and everything was going wrong for him. To now people are making a fuss over just being around him. They have special events and people come and turn up for it to meet him.
Around the same time, Mike had gotten an invitation to visit Cleveland, Ohio, the home of Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster, the co creators of Superman. A comic book store owner named John Dudas offered to pay for the trip.
And I was like, oh my gosh, you guys can't be serious, and he said yeah, and we've included airfare for two all expenses paid. Three days We've got your hotel, we've got your meals, we've got your transferation. And whilst Mike gets here, I have six other comic bookstores in the area. All have donated a fifty dollars gift certificate that Mike can go, and we will take you to all six of these comic stores and he can spend that gift certificate in every comic bookstore that donated.
Mike was excited. He really wanted to go, but Mike worried his close friend Bill Smith might not be able to accompany him.
At one point, I pulled Mike aside and I said, Mike, I want you to know that in one of these boxes there are airline tickets for two to go to Cleveland. And he said, I've never flown before and I said I wondered about that. Yeah, I said are you Are you still interested in going? And he said, well, yeah, who am I going to take. I said, well, I talk to your friend Bill Smith. I know you're good friends with Bill. Maybe Bill kids and get some time
off work and he go with you. He kind of paused and he said, you're like George Reeves to me, and I said, well, that is the costume I'm were and he said, yeah, I recognize that costume. He said, I never got to meet George Reeves, obviously, but he said, in a weird way, I feel like I'm talking to him standing here talking to you. And I said, I don't know what to say to that. Mike. I mean, that's it's flattering that that you know, you would think that I look enough like him, and and but I
get it, I know what you mean. And I said I did. I've had a number of people tell me that I sort of have brought that childhood character back to life for them. He said, what about you? And I said, what do you mean? He said, well, you know that remember that episode where Superman takes that girl and he flies her around and he gives her like a tour from the air. And he said, I know you can't live, but if you flew with me to Cleveland, it would be kind of like that episode with that girl.
And I said, Mike, if Bill can't go, I'd be honored. I'd be honored to go. And he said, I think I'd like you to go. And I was like, wow, I just met Mike.
Mike and Keith went to Cleveland and got the full tour, They saw the boyhood home of Jerry, saw the tributes to Superman. Mike even sat down at the same table where Joe Schuster used to draw Superman, and the community's affection for Mike didn't stop there, not even close.
Brandon Ralth from Superman returns back in two thousand and six. He finds out about this Mike story and he is somehow he finds Mike's phone number and calls Mike on the telephone and for thirty minutes Brandon Ralph talks to Mike Meyer on the phone. He told me, oh my gosh, Keeeth, I can't tell you how cool that was. I got to talk to Superman for a half hour, and I said, oh my gosh, Mike, that is amazing. And then a few weeks after we came back from Cleveland, Mike gets
a letter from or call from Warner Brothers. They're making a Man of Steel movie with Henry Cavill and they tell Mike that they heard about his story and they would love to fly him and the person of his choice to Georgia Air Force Base or Edwards, one of those out in California where they were filming this tarmac scene and They said, bring whoever you want. We would like to have you on the set that day and you'll get to meet Henry in costume. And sure enough,
Mike goes out there. He is sitting in like one of those director's chairs, and he gets to meet Henry Cavill.
It was well, it was perfect. It's how you want all stories like this to end. Mike became something of a celebrity. Jerry was sentenced to six years in prison for his theft of Mike's stuff as well as the other incident, and Mike and Keith stayed friends.
Things kind of died down after all that. Obviously, Mike got his stuff back and goes back to life as normal. But Mike's normal as a new normal now. He starts going to Metropolis every year. He asked me to help him make a Superman costume, which I did. It was very meager, but he had to wear Superman out to Metropolis. One year, he dressed up as Jimmy Olsen. In a few years, people in Metropolis made a big fuss over
Mike like he had been everywhere else. All those friends of Metropolis that donated and got to meet Mike in person.
In twenty twenty two, Keith got a call from Mike.
That his health started going and he reached out to me a few months ago. He asked me questions about his kidneys. He knew I was a nurse and just wanted to get advice, and I told him what I felt, but had no idea he was so far gone because after a few more calls of you know, just yeah, not Fianna Rouell, and then all of a sudden, I hear the news that he's gone. I thought, man, the stings, you know, I got robbed of my chance to at
least see him and say goodbye. And he just he just was not there anymore.
In September of twenty twenty two, Mike Meyer passed away at the age of fifty eight. The tribute came pouring in, with people filling his Facebook feed with photos of Mike at conventions, photos of Mike's artwork, or just sentiments from people who miss Superman's biggest fan. There's an element of this story that makes it easy to see why people pulled for Mike. He had certain limitations in life, but that's not the whole story. Superman is just a fiction character, sure,
but there's an aspirational quality to him. It's hard to be a fan of Superman and not want to emulate what he stands for. Honesty, justice. People would have helped Mike no matter what. But would it have been the same if he collected punish our comics or baseball cards or horror movies? Or did Superman bring something deeper out of the people who heard Mike's story, something that led people from around the world to write to him and try to help replace what he had lost.
I got many calls from other news reporters and radio celebrities wanted to interview me online. The story just got so big, and finally asked somebody, I said, what is it? I mean, I'm thrilled that you guys are interested in this story. I'm just curious, how is this a story for you? What makes this a story for you? And on more than one they said, we write about horrible events daily, and we do year after year, and it
is so rare to have a feel good story. And what you guys are doing is just like, when have you ever heard about anything like this? When have you seen a story similar to what you guys are living on? And I said, I don't remember reading a story like that, and they said, that's what it is. It's rare, it never happens. And so what you guys have done has spread like wildfire because you've turned this out of a
situation into something beautiful. And the fact that I had this connection to Superman and how Superman in portraying that character made me want to do better and be better and exemplify everything that Superman is the driving force as much as anything.
When Mike's family organized his memorial, they told friends and family to come wearing casual clothing or if they wanted their favorite superhero costume.
That was a very special episode. At the end of these we usually like to name a very special character. Dana and Zaren are better at this than me, but this time, almost everyone in this story could be nominated. Mike, Keith, all the people who send stuff to Mike and Keith, the staff at the Saint Louis Children's Hospital, Henry Cavill, not Jerry. Jerry would not be in the running for this particular honor, but there's a lot of people doing a lot of good here. I will name Mike my
very special character. And if this was the first time you've heard of the Stealing Superman podcast. The rest of the show tells a very different story about a different Superman heist. That one involves Nicholas Cage and his comic books, and you can go and binge that one from the beginning, and we will see you here next week. Very Special Episodes is made by some very special people. This episode was written by Jake Rawson. Our producer and sound designer
is Josh Fisher. Additional editing by John Washington, mixing and mastering by Beheid Fraser. Original music by Alis McCoy. Show logo by Nick Turbo Benson. Your hosts are Danish Swartz, Zaron Burnett, and me Jason English. I'm your executive producer, and we'll meet you back here with something special next week. If you're enjoying Very Special Episodes, leave us a rating, give us a good you. Tell your friends text them right now, tell them listen to this. You'll enjoy it.
Then go check out the back catalog. Very Special Episodes is a production of iHeart Podcasts.