The Wikipedia says he was created in 1932. I'll buy that with a few reservation (as someone who wrote a good part of the Henry Kuttner entry) is that even when you are talking about something as documented as this (which was written about by among others Jim Steranko who knew Schuster and Siegel and Maurice Horn, most accounts of the science fiction pulps and its fandom are based on VERY fallible memory. Superman was based IN PART on Philip Wylie's Gladiator -- about essentially an anti-hero, though he's more complicated than that -- and underwent substantial revisions between his appearances in Siegal's fanzines and his appearance in Action Comics in '38. That professional appearance was the genuine debut of the Man of Steel as we know him today, so it's probably unfair to put a more specific date on him than what I've gone into.