Jay Morton, 92, writer and artist

By Los Angeles Times, 9/20/2003

LOS ANGELES -- Jay Morton, a onetime writer and artist for the Fleischer studios who coined the famous "faster than a speeding bullet" introduction for the animated "Superman" cartoons, has died. He was 92.

Mr. Morton, who lived in Boca Raton, Fla., died of a brain aneurysm Sept. 6 in a hospital in Charlotte, N.C.

Mr. Morton, who was born in New York City, studied art at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn before going to work for the Fleischer studio in Miami in 1937. As an artist, he worked on Felix the Cat, Betty Boop, Popeye, and other cartoon characters, said his son, Alex.

Mr. Morton also wrote about 25 of the early animated "Superman" cartoons, in which he initially described the comic book superhero as "faster than a streak of lightning, more powerful than the pounding surf, mightier than a roaring hurricane, this amazing stranger from the Planet Krypton, Superman."

He reworked the introduction to the now-familiar: "Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound."

Mr. Morton left Fleischer in the early 1940s and launched the Home News, a newspaper in Hialeah and Miami Springs, and later published several other newspapers and two trade papers, Florida Business Leader and Florida Grocer. He was a director of several bank boards and was a longtime member of Dade County's Planning Advisory Board.

He was also a sculptor. In 1997, his 8-foot bronze sculpture of Admiral Richard E. Byrd, the Antarctic explorer, was unveiled at the entrance to the courthouse in Winchester, Va., the town where Byrd was born.

In recent years, Mr. Morton and his wife, Dianne, developed two board games, "Winning on Wall Street" and "Fairway Frolic."

In addition to his wife and son, Mr. Morton leaves three grandchildren.