What is Superman’s real Super-Strength? From Judge Dredd to Mahatma Gandhi…by Nigel Brown

Superman’s career, from the very beginning in 1938 to a pre-reboot ending in 1986, reveals an interesting moral convergence of his inner and outer strengths.

To appreciate this, we must first lay aside the standard explanation for differences in the same DC characters across the decades; the multiple-universe concepts of Earth-1 and Earth-2.

The truth is more interesting.

 

Superman’s use of violence evolved in three phases, driven by two outside factors.

The first phase was the most uncurbed level. When Superman first appeared in Action Comics #1 (June 1938) the concept of a hero meting out justice to evil-doers was a familiar one to readers of popular fiction, especially of the pulp magazines. The Shadow gunned down gangsters with monthly regularity. It would have been no surprise that, as early as the second issue of Action Comics (July 1938) Superman was seen hurling a torturer to his death.

 

                                [Action Comics #2, July 1938]

 

Superman seems to relish threatening criminals with his super-strength, and they would be wise to not call his bluff. These aren’t idle threats as a number of criminals died in these early Superman stories, without due process.

 

                                [Action Comics #16, September 1939]

 

                [Superman #2, Fall 1939 –reprinted from the newspaper strip]

 

Also, on several occasions Superman allowed, through inaction, for them to meet a horrible end.

 

                                    [Action Comics #13, June 1939]

 

                [Superman #2, Fall 1939 –reprinted from newspaper strip]

 

This first version of Superman doled out his personal justice like Judge Dredd, performing executions of criminals as he saw fit. To anyone brought up on the Silver Age and Bronze Age Superman, the epitome of morality, these acts of manslaughter (if not murder) are a shocking sight.

 

But very soon after this time, Superman’s attitude towards violence changed.

 

[Superman #5, Summer 1940]

                                    [Superman #5, Summer 1940]

 

                                    [Superman #5, Summer 1940]

 

By the summer of 1940, Superman is allowing justice to be served by the law of the land. So what actually brought about this second phase, this change of Superman’s mind?

Not specified within the narrative of the Superman stories at the time, the answer must lie with the outside world, and the imperative of maximizing financial success of the character for the owners: most notably Harry Donenfeld and Jack Liebowitz. Once they saw the success that they had in their hands, they were swift to exploit as many opportunities for ‘Superman’ as possible. Besides selling ‘Superman’ as a newspaper strip (the original ambition for Superman by Siegel and Shuster), the obvious move was on to radio – early films, cartoons, and later on to television.

 

The radio serial The Adventures of Superman began regular broadcasts from February 1940, just 21 months after the first appearance of Superman on the comic-book racks in May 1938 (although Action Comics #1 was cover-dated June 1938).

 

When Siegel and Shuster had first signed their contract to supply Superman to Detective Comics Inc. for publication, Siegel had a relatively free hand to write the stories. Shuster supplied the art (soon with the additional supporting artists in his ‘studio’: Paul Cassidy, Jack Burnley, and – even this early – the distinctive 1950s/1960s Superman artist Wayne Boring).

 

But once Superman’s unexpected success was apparent to Donenfeld and Liebowitz, they knew that they needed better editorial control over their lucrative comic books. They employed Whitney Ellsworth to get a firmer grip on the material. He became the second editor of Action Comics, replacing Vince Sullivan from Action Comics #21 (February 1940).

 

By this time, with a radio show, Superman’s popularity would have been limited if his moral code was not acceptable for family listening. It’s likely that word must have got back that Superman had to stop killing crooks with such abandon. I suggest that this first outside factor explains Superman’s change of attitude between the autumn of 1939 and the summer of 1940 (by which time the radio show was in full swing).

 

These concerns anticipated the growing alarm of parents who feared their children would be brutalized and corrupted by the material in the ‘funny books’. The comics industry eventually founded the Comics Code Authority in 1954, especially after the attacks by the psychiatrist Fredric Wertham. (But as we have seen now, Superman’s publishers had reeled in his more base instincts years before this happened!)

 

After this, hundreds of Superman stories embedded this strict ethical code of behaviour into the bedrock of Superman’s being: so much so that his oath ‘never to kill’ became a staple of Superman comics throughout the Silver Age of Comics – and also the plot engine of a number of stories themselves when he had to devise ingenious methods to keep this oath, yet defeat his enemies.

 

(Another interesting by-product of Superman’s new radio presence was the demise of Clark Kent’s editor in the comics, George Taylor. Taylor’s last appearance was in Action Comics #30 (November 1940) and Perry White (just ‘White’ then) was there in the next published Superman story in Superman #7 (November-December 1940). But the character of Perry White, as Clark Kent’s editor at The Daily Planet, had already first appeared in the second episode of the radio serial, broadcast back in February of that year. This was a case of the comics being brought into line with the radio show – as did also happen later with the introduction from radio to the comics of Superman’s vulnerability: kryptonite.)

 

By the Bronze Age, the cultural landscape of America had changed from the moral certainty of the Eisenhower era and the depths of the Cold War in the 1950s. This became the second outside factor to change Superman.

Vietnam and the countercultural pressures of the 1960s and 1970s began to have their effect on Superman’s new generation of writers. One of them was Denny O’Neil, who had begun to write the innovative socially-aware Green Lantern/Green Arrow stories. He was brought in to renovate the Superman title in 1970 by new editor Julius Schwartz, debuting with Superman #233 (January 1971) with a story defining a new direction for the character in ‘Superman Breaks Loose’. ((Spoiler Alert!)) The kryptonite on Earth is rendered harmless to Superman, but at the end of the story arc – over a number of issues – Superman himself is permanently physically weakened. Okay… he was still ‘Superman’: he just couldn’t toss planets around as easily as before.

After these physical changes, the moral certainty of Superman himself was challenged. A notable story was published a year later in Superman #247 (January 1972). Written by Elliot Maggin, ‘Must There be a Superman?’ was an exploration of the problem of Superman always being on hand to help planet Earth, thus potentially stunting the natural development of humankind. Perhaps Maggin got the idea from Star Trek’s well-known ‘Prime Directive’ – but no matter. He raised interesting questions about the relationship between the helper and the helped.

 

But perhaps a more significant story was also published in that landmark issue, one that marked a third phase in Superman’s relationship with violence.

 

The first in a short-lived series ‘The Private life of Clark Kent’, this Denny O’Neil written story describes how Clark Kent defuses by persuasion the kind of situation that Superman would have dealt with by force. Clark Kent muses, afterwards, that perhaps ‘Violence isn’t always the answer’. Note that it’s ‘Violence’, not ‘Killing’. He’s moved closer to Mahatma Gandhi’s personal practice of nonviolence with this new understanding.

 

                                    [Superman #247, January 1972]

 

Incidentally, that story also displayed another change in prevailing attitudes since the early 1940s. In Action Comics #21 (February 1940) Superman is considering a problem as he sits at home smoking his pipe.

 

                                [Action Comics #21, February 1940]

 

In Superman #247 (January 1972) he wonders if he’s been missing something by not trying tobacco – and the message to the readers is clear!

 

                                    [Superman #247, January 1972]

 

But returning to the issue of Superman’s changing attitude towards violence and killing, it was the perceptive writer Alan Moore who realized that, by the end of the Bronze Age, this was the foundation on which this version of Superman rested. Remove that, and it would be enough to end his career.

Moore got the chance to demonstrate this when he wrote the two-parter ‘Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?’ in Superman #423 (September 1986) and Action Comics #583 (September 1986). ((Spoiler Alert!)) Moore’s plot contrives to force the immovable object (Superman’s ethical code) to meet the irresistible force (the demand of the plot: he must kill the newly totally evil Mr Mxyzptlk to prevent countless innocent deaths). The immovable object breaks under the imperative of saving future lives, and Superman must be no more.

 

                                [Action Comics #583, September 1986]

 

This shift, from having such a cavalier attitude to criminals’ lives to Superman’s ‘oath never to kill’, illustrates a rather different conception of strength than what is usual in super-hero comics.

In the Book of Proverbs (16:32), it’s stated that ‘He who is slow to anger is better than a strong man, and a master of his passions is better than a conqueror of a city’. This is summed up by the sage Ben Zoma, who said, (in the Ethics of the Fathers 4:1): ‘Who is strong? One who masters his evil impulse.’

Here we have a philosophy of self-restraint as being the true marker of strength. Scale this up to the super-powers of a Kryptonian under a yellow sun, and we can see how it would take a super-strength of the mind, not the body, to resist the temptations on offer when living as a Superman on a non-Super planet Earth.

Yet Superman showed this inner strength from the very beginning, in his origin story. He was willing to live as a normal person and not to use his super-powers for any kind of self-aggrandisement, self-enrichment or power over others.

34 years later, his attitude towards his outer, physical strength finally caught up with that inner strength. He finally accepted that violence was not necessarily the answer to doing good – even if you’re Superman.

 

 

 

copyright. Nigel Brown

Key Comic Book memories – Justice League of America #99 – by Ian Baker

 Key Comic Book memories – Justice League of America #99 – by Ian Baker

 

I’m sure that many of us reading this can remember the experience of first reading or buying key comics in our collections. For some reason, some issues have special nostalgic value, or the artwork and story was so pivotal that they hold pride of place in our memories, burnt into our synapses for easy access in the memory banks. For me, JLA #99 (June 1972 cover date,  by the distinguished team of Mike Friedrich, Dick Dillin and Joe Giella) occupies that rarefied space. “Hold On!” I hear you say – “Those gentlemen are certainly talented, but really…..JLA 99…is memorable..????”.

 

It was the last Thursday in May 1972, and as any 12-year old British comic collector in the 1970s worth his salt knows, that was the day that the new DCs appeared in the spinner racks of newsagents across the land, usually representing a random selection of the comics published in the US six or more weeks earlier, and transported in the holds of ships across the Atlantic to receive their T&P stamp of approval.  As inhabitants of Portsea Island, one of the most densely populated areas of England, yet close to maritime distribution hubs, my friends and I were blessed with many newsagents and second-hand shops carrying American comics.

 

                                

 
  So on Thursday May 25^th 1972 my Dad had picked me up from school and dropped me close to the top of Festing Rd in Southsea, where I could easily cross over (using the pedestrian Zebra Crossing) to the newsagents Churchill’s on the opposite side of the road. [ The photo above, taken some years earlier than the 1970s, is the best that I can find showing Churchill’s partially obscured by the trolley-bus.] The spinner rack was always placed close to the large front window pane, so a new comic delivery could be easily seen across the street.

  

Such was my enthusiasm to get to Churchill’s that I dodged between two parked cars to cross the road (rather than use the crossing) only to be immediately knocked down by a woman on a blue Moulton bicycle, and into the path of on-coming vehicles. Myself, the woman and her shopping bag went sprawling on to the road, and it was only through luck that we did not sustain injuries beyond cuts and grazes.

 

Rather shocked, I continued across to the shop, where the only comic of interest on the spinner rack was JLA #99 (I had already picked up the classic gems Batman #242, Brave & Bold #102 and Detective #424 on sale that month from Gardiner’s newsagents further along Albert Rd). I remember that the comic had a predominantly brown cover, and that it was somewhat creased from either water damage or from being over-stuffed into the spinner rack. The artwork did not involve the holy trinity of Neal Adams or Irv Novick or Jim Aparo, but , hey, it was another comic for the collection, and Batman was featured in the story.

 

                                                    

Looking at JLA #99 now, it is a perfectly serviceable issue touching on the socially-relevant subject of the need for maintaining the balance of Nature conservation vs Man’s construction. 

An Alien race visits Earth with their own plant seeds in an effort to restore balance to the ecosystem, but ends up causing unanticipated destruction with the seeds of alien fauna. The JLA, led by Green Lantern, comes to the rescue by planting more Earth-based plants, and then tell the Aliens to go home and let Earth deal with Earth’s own problems! The story is a bit preachy but looking back from a vantage point of almost 50 years, the issues discussed are just as relevant today. 

 

Interestingly, JLA #99 was to be the last hurrah for themes of social relevance within the pages of Justice League of America, and was in fact the swansong for “relevance” across the entire DC line, a concept that had tentatively commenced with the New Wonder Woman #78 in Sep/Oct 1968, and peaked in 1971 with the publication of the famous Green Lantern/Green Arrow “drugs” issues which resulted in plaudits from New York Mayor John Lindsay.

 

I’m convinced that if this issue of JLA had been drawn by Neal Adams and inked by Dick Giordano, it would have been a worthy companion to their run on the recently cancelled Green Lantern/Green Arrow, but the workmanlike artwork and unimaginative panel design of Dillin and Giella does little to enhance the story’s impact. 

 

The writer Mike Friedrich expands on themes of Earth suffering from pollution that Denny O’Neil, Dick Dillin and Joe Giella had themselves presented in JLA stories from 2 years earlier (JLA #78 and #79), but the lack of continuity between those stories and JLA #99, and lack of reference to the social issues targeted in the GL/GA run by O’Neil and Adams, represents a lost opportunity for a more cohesive approach to addressing these important topics.

 

                                              

 

In the final panels of JLA #99, Green Lantern effectively tells the Aliens to clear off and mind their own business. Friedrich asks the reader at the end “As the Aliens depart, Earth starts its collective breathing again – air that will be breathable…FOR HOW LONG?”. 

 

But once the Aliens had gone, and DC had determined that “relevant” stories had little impact on comic sales, there is no evidence that Green Lantern or the JLA ever bothered on following-up on protecting Earth’s ecosystem!

 

 

 

 

The First Victim in Super-Hero Comics by Nigel Brown

Who was the first-ever crime victim in super-hero comics? by Nigel Brown

Action Comics # 1 (June 1938), the comic book that introduced Superman to the world, begins with an exciting scene: Superman leaps through the night, a woman held under his arm like a parcel. ((Spoiler Alert!)) Superman is racing to the Governor’s estate to stop an innocent girl being executed for the murder this woman has committed.

                                                        [Action Comics #1, June 1938]



Superman succeeds, and… well, we all know the rest: a career lasting, to date, over eighty years.

I wouldn’t like to imagine how many victims of crimes there have been in all the super-hero stories since then, but there had to be a first one: the man murdered by that woman seen in that opening comic book panel. The story in Action Comics # 1 moves on, and we never discover his name.

But it turned out that this Superman story was missing its beginning pages as it first appeared. Siegel and Shuster had originally hoped to sell their ‘Superman’ concept to the newspapers, and had cut up and repasted their ‘Superman’ newspaper strip to fit into the format of the comic book page needed for publication in Action Comics #1.

In truth, this was no disadvantage. The story begins in a gripping way which benefits the introduction of a brand-new concept to readers. No explanation is needed to explain what a ‘Superman’ is: we see him – as the comic title promises – in action!

A year later, after the success of Superman in Action Comics, the publishers – Detective Comics Inc. – decided to capitalise on this by producing a Superman comic to be sold at the New York World’s Fair in the summer of 1939. They simply named the comic book ‘Superman’ (it didn’t even have a #1 on the cover). It debuted in May, 1939.

Given the heavy demand for Superman comic strips (by then featured in the newspapers as well), they used Superman story reprints from Action Comics #1, #2, #3 and #4 to fill this issue. But they did add a new, two-page Superman origin story to replace the rushed one-pager seen in Action Comics #1 the year before.

And they also provided a ‘proper’ beginning to that first Superman story. These extra few pages don’t add to the excitement of the tale, but they do fill in some missing back-story.

[Incidentally – as pointed out by my friend, Superman fan extraordinaire, Richard Morrissey (1954-2001) – there is cross-hatching drawn in the Action Comics #1 panels of the story, as you’d expect for a comic strip produced originally for newspaper publication and printed in black and white. But the cross-hatching is gone in those extra few pages printed in Superman #1. So were these not the original panels of this first Superman story?

Perhaps Joe Shuster re-drew them for comic book publication.]


And in answer to the question: Who’s the first crime-victim in all super-hero comics?

Readers were told this after a year’s wait as the victim was named in these new pages.

                                                        [Superman # 1, Summer 1939]



And remember, Superman #1 was published in 1939, 24 years before this name was – tragically – familiar all around the world.





copyright. Nigel Brown

How the pulps influenced Batman '66

 Batman – the one sane man in a world of madness and the macabre

 

Can you remember that quickening, that frisson of fear and excitement, of being six years old and peering into an adult world of action and adventure, where the villains were sadists or mad (or a combination of the two) and only our heroes stood between anarchy and a return to orderly society? 

 

Thinking back beyond the start of Bronze Age, to that period of the mid nineteen-sixties when Batman first hit the television airwaves, the popular conception of Batman was shaped by three sources : 

• firstly, by the campiness of the TV show and the contemporary comics with their pop-culture influence ; 
• secondly, by three sets of trading cards reflecting elements of sadism and horror heavily prevalent in 1930s and 1940s pulp magazine covers ; 
• and finally the rather more wholesome approach taken in the 1950s as evidenced in NAL/NEL paperback reprints and DC 80-page Giants. 

For a six-year-old consumer of Batman in 1966, this was a heady (and confusing) mix. Also, as a 6-year old with rather limited disposable income, the Batman trading cards become the early overriding influence in entering Batman’s world, being easily swapped in the school playground.

 

The Batman trading cards printed by Topps in the US, and licensed by A&BC in the UK, were my gateway into a Batman world. The primary artists Norm Saunders and Bob Powell (I believe there were others) created 143 images of not-infrequent sadistic peril inspired by many of the situations depicted in spicy pulp covers they had painted in previous decades. According to Heritage Auctions, Powell was responsible for the original pencils while Saunders would finish them off with his masterful painting.

 

It would be interesting to learn if either National Periodical Publications or 20^th Century Fox had any say in the choice of subject-matter on the cards, especially as Norm Saunders’ previous oeuvre had more recently included the infamously grisly Civil Wars News and WWII “Battle!” cards which had attracted the wrath of various concerned citizens’ groups a few years earlier.

 

Images of Robin about to be bisected by a circular saw, or strung up on a rack, or Batman tied down being threatened by multiple metal spikes, were par for the course, and have been the images that have stuck with me for the past fifty-some years. I’m certain that the scenes depicted would not have been approved by the Comics Code Authority if published in the pages of a comic book at that time. Many images depicted imminent pain, usually accompanied by a gloating madman, some with a subtext of bondage and cruelty. Take a look at “Black Bat” card # 31 “Threat of the Catwoman” which shows a tied-up Robin being approached by the Catwoman carrying a sword. Freud would have a field day with that image.

 

The 3.5” x 5” original paintings of these trading cards now sell at auction as prices around $5000. I was lucky enough to see an original painting of one of the more acceptable cards at the American Comic Book Company in Fullerton, CA back in 1979, and was amazed at how small the original painting was.

 

Contrasting with the perilous, near-salacious imagery of some of the trading cards, and the pop-culture trendiness of the TV show and current comics, New American Library & New English Library (4-Square) had embarked on reprints of largely 1950s Batman stories in paperback form in early 1966, printed in Black & White (content not unlike the semi-annual Batman 80-page Giant comics from DC, which were of course in color). I believe that I received my copy of “BATMAN – The Best of the Original Batman” paperback for my birthday in July 1966. These stories were more wholesome fare than the trading cards, yet were selected from the era just prior to the arrival of the Comics Code Authority. Sadistic death traps and topics of madness were still to be found, with the imagination of writer Bill Finger and the artwork of Dick Sprang and Charles Paris leaving an indelible memory. 

 

In “The Crime Clown’s Crazy Crimes” (reprinted from Batman 74) we find the Joker faking madness to get sent to an asylum for the purposes of locating money owned by one of the inmates.  Batman takes on the guise of an insane Swami to infiltrate the looney-bin. It is a very strange story, and I found the idea of Batman trapped in the flooding padded room of a mad-house quite unsettling at a tender age. Dick Sprang’s artwork was spot-on, and I especially liked the surreal scenes of Batman & Robin chasing the Joker through the fog, as well as the classic splash-page of Joker sitting on a beach, stealing a bawling child’s mud-pies – a scene incidentally no-where to be found in the story!

 

Of the other two Sprang/Finger stories, “The Testing of Batman” reprinted from issue 83 stands out as a classic, as Batman & Robin undergo rigorous tests, of which one is running on a conveyor belt away from huge spikes! There is some fantastic Sprang imagery in this story with shots of Batman & Robin climbing a skyscraper unaided, as well. My 6-year old heart was in my mouth.

 

New American Library and NEL/4-Square were to publish 2 more 1950s comic collections in 1966, but this period of the influence of pulps and horror comics in depicting Batman’s world was not to last long.  The Topps trading cards transitioned their content from paintings to TV show publicity shots for the final 2 sets by late 1966/early 1967, with the final episode of the campy TV show airing in March 1968.  

 

Batman was soon only to be found in the single media of comics. As comic stories matured with the transition from the Silver Age to the Bronze Age, Batman was soon to undergo a transformation as well in June 1968 in Batman #204, with the emergence of the character as foremost a detective in a world largely devoid of costumed villains – at least for the next few years. 

Copyright Ian Baker

What’s in a Name? Superman’s greatest enemy we don’t hear about. by Nigel Brown

As I’ve already mentioned on this blog (The Mad DC Comic Hunt – or Tales of the Fabulous Bronze Age/posted on July 10, 2011  http://superstuff73.blogspot.com/2011/07/mad-dc-comic-hunt-or-tales-of-fabulous.html ) my first American comic book was Superman No. 190, cover dated October 1966.

Although this encounter took place 54 years ago, I remember it well; you never forget your first love! My father ran a market stall selling cheap clothes for children in Charlotte Street, Portsmouth. The market ran from Thursdays to Saturdays, and every now and then I would be hanging around, bored. The stall was situated on a street corner, just opposite a large newsagent, August’s.

(Photo of August's in Charlotte St, Portsmouth credited to Shane Michael Barker)

One day, in an attempt to keep me occupied, I was allowed to enter the shop and choose something to read. My eyes alighted on the Thorpe and Porter rack just inside the doorway (to the left, I recall) and I picked out that Superman comic from amongst the colourful Silver Age DCs packed therein. For me, it was like that first pebble that rolls down a slope, leading to an avalanche of rocks thundering along for the next half-century.

But there are also several remarkable things about that particular issue of Superman, beyond my personal attachment to it.

To start with, the featured story ‘The Four Element Enemies’, was one of the first Superman tales written by fourteen-year old Jim Shooter. He’d already begun his career in comics earlier that year, aged thirteen, when he began to sell Legion of Super-Heroes stories to Superman editor Mort Weisinger. Their relationship has been well documented elsewhere (I would recommend Shooter’s own website as a starting point http://jimshooter.com/category/02-early-life/?order=asc); suffice to say that Weisinger recognised this schoolboy’s immense talent and was eager to use Shooter’s skills as a bulwark against the growing assault on DC’s market dominance from the ‘Marvel’ous competition.

Another point of interest is that the Curt Swan cover of Superman No. 190 has a character, a humanoid ablaze with fire, that might be confused with Marvel’s Human Torch. But this isn’t what today would be called a ‘cross-over’ between comic book publishers.

I think Swan was careful not to copy Johnny Storm’s ‘Human Torch’ too closely, although the early Kirby illos of the Torch, especially from Fantastic Four # 1, are a closer ‘match’ (to use a Marvel-ous pun…).

Human Torch in Fantastic Four No.1 Art by Jack Kirby

As stated in the story’s own introduction, the eponymous ‘Four Element Enemies’ in Superman No.190 are based on the ancient Greek belief that the world was constructed of the four basic elements of Earth, Air, Fire and Water.

Although, on the surface, Marvel’s Johnny Storm ‘Human Torch’ was derived from one of the two first Marvel superheroes published in October 1939 in Marvel Comics No.1 (the other hero was the Sub-Mariner), there actually is a connection between the fiery humanoid on the cover of Superman No.190 and Marvel’s Human Torch; Stan Lee did reveal an inspiration for the Fantastic Four’s powers was also this ancient Greek concept of the Elements, with the Human Torch representing Fire, the Invisible Girl as unseen as the Air, Mr Fantastic being able to flow and change shape as easily as Water, and the rugged, boulder-looking Thing representing the ancient Greek element for Earth.

But the most remarkable aspect of Superman No.190 is the name and identity of the villain in this comic who created ‘The Four Element Enemies’ to fight Superman: the space pirate Amalak.

Amalak in Superman No.190 Art by Wayne Boring

After this first appearance, Amalak resurfaced for a second bout with Superman in another Shooter-scripted story ‘The Fury of the Kryptonian-Killer’ the following year, in Superman No.195 cover dated April 1967.

Then Amalak seemed to be incarcerated in his Space Prison for the next nine years.

Amalak in Superman No.195 Art by Curt Swan

Amalak only came back briefly in Superman No.299 in 1976, and then again for the final time in the Earth One Universe, in a Martin Pasko 4-part story in Superman Nos. 311- 314 in 1977.

Those readers with Old Testament Biblical knowledge have already spotted the difference between the villain Amalak and all the other more well-known Superman enemies such as Lex Luthor and Brainiac. Uniquely, the name ‘Amalak’ is found in the scriptures, first, as an individual’s name, in Genesis chapter 36, verse 12, as Amalak, a grandson of Esau.

But, more pertinently, in Exodus chapter 17, verse 8: Then came Amalak, and fought with Israel. The people of Amalak attack the Israelites without cause, an action piratical in nature.

And later on, in Numbers chapter 24, verse 20, Amalak is described as the first among Nations, taken by commentators that Amalak is the leading force of evil.

All of this indicates that Shooter, or perhaps Weisinger himself, didn’t just pull this space-pirate’s name out of a hat, but there was an awareness of the resonance the name Amalak would have with well-versed Sunday school attending American youngsters (and remember, this was in 1966, when religious education across America would have given American youngsters a familiarity with the Old Testament).

And there’s yet more resonance here. It’s been noted elsewhere that Jerry Siegel’s naming of Superman’s Kryptonian family line, –El’, is also a Hebrew term for ‘of the God of Israel’.

So perhaps the war between Amalak and Israel was being played out in that Superman No.190 at a deeper level than was noticed by a lot of readers at the time, including me.

Copyright. Nigel Brown

It all began with Kryptonite: Today’s Tidal Wave of Superhero Culture by Nigel Brown

In November 1966, readers buying the 80 Page Giant Superman # 193, reprinting “The Greatest SUPER-stories published during the last 28 years!” were also treated to three original art panels in the 10 year old story “The First Superman of Krypton” (first published in Action Comics # 223, for sale in October 1956).

Why did those three original panels replace the three that were there before? And why did DC bother to do this when most of the readership wouldn’t notice, or care?

The answer reveals one of the earliest rumblings of a seismic change in the comics industry, the effects of which are still being seen around the cultural world today.

To understand this, we must first consider the comic book industry of the 1940s.

Compared to today, comics were then mass-market items, with sales of the most popular titles (Superman, Action Comics, Fawcett’s Captain Marvel and the Timely Captain America etc) regularly attaining circulations above 1 million. In comparison, a popular comic book today will only sell in the region of 100,000 copies – that’s a drop in the scale of one tenth (of course, there are the odd exceptions).

The reasons for this are well known, involving the demise of comics distribution from commonplace outlets into specialist comic stores (but that’s not under discussion here).

Being mass-market, the aim of the comic publishers was to appeal to the greatest number of consumers. Editors like DC’s Mort Weisinger, with his roots in the world of the science fiction pulps (along with one of his favoured Superman writers, the respected science fiction writer Edmund Hamilton), well understood the primacy of entertainment in his comics.

A cursory search of the Internet, and anyone can see the impressive array of comics and magazines (pulps and other) that covered walls of newsstands in the 1940s and 1950s. Every comic was in a Darwinian battle for survival against its competitors.

Julius Schwartz (another DC editor) confirmed in his book ‘Man of 2 Worlds’ p.87, that the early comics industry was serving children with an average age of 8 to 12 ie. pre-teenagers, as we think of them today (the notion of ‘teenager’ didn’t exist until it was created as a marketing term in 1944).

Combining the factors of a customer base aged 8 to 12, along with a mass market product, along with every comic book being offered as the most entertaining item the editors and publishers could possibly make it, it’s not surprising that any concerns about minor breaks in continuity between comic book issues was of relatively little importance.

The comic book publishers were in the business of making money by selling as many comics as they could; they weren’t interested in pursuing a higher calling of constructing a detailed, intricate ‘secondary fantasy world’ as postulated by JRR Tolkein (who spent most of his life detailing the intricate stories of Middle Earth, including The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit and, most especially, the writing that made up his Magnum Opus of the imagination, The Silmarillion).

When Edmund Hamilton sent Mort Weisinger his script for a new Superman story “The First Superman of Krypton”, that Weisinger later placed as the lead story in Action Comics (the comic title where Superman began), it was another of Hamilton’s science fiction based tales.

Superman discovers a fragment of his destroyed home planet containing part of the laboratory of his father, Jor-El. He salvages Jor-El’s laboratory films. When he plays them it’s revealed that Jor-El constructed an Earth-like environment on Krypton to test Earth as a potential new home for the doomed Kryptonians. There, Jor-El discovers he has super-powers, defeats similarly super-powered evil Kryptonians, and therein lies the story.

But our interest lies with the first page of the story. Superman lands on the fragment of Krypton, roots through the wreckage and discovers a find that takes the story forward. The kryptonian ground he stands on is a luminescent white, showing to their best effect the colourful pieces of skyscraper, an orange rocket and Jor-El’s desk and desk chair.

No doubt the story, featured in Action Comics # 223, dated December 1956, was a hit with readers. And no surprise that when DC decided to produce an 80 page giant, featuring “The Greatest SUPER-stories published during the last 28 years!” (ie. since the first Superman story in 1938), Hamilton’s “The First Superman of Krypton” was reprinted in the 80 Page Giant Superman # 193.

But not quite a reprint. Unnoticeable by readers at the time, and unless they happened to have that, by then, decade-old copy of Action Comics #223, three of the panels on the first page of that story had been re-drawn by the original artist of the story, Wayne Boring.

Wayne Boring was available at the time to do redo his artwork. He started drawing Superman since the early days of the Joe Shuster studio, directly working for DC from 1942, and continued through the 1950s as Superman’s main artist, not officially leaving DC until 1967. (As an aside, given Weisinger’s now notorious reputation for badly treating his creative staff, one wonders if Weisinger paid Boring for those extra panels.)

But why, only 10 years after the original publication, did Weisinger bother at all?

The first answer that springs to mind is that, as any Superman fan – or even non-fan – will tell you, the atomic explosion that destroyed the planet Krypton changed its material composition, and any kryptonian remnants (including artefacts) into ‘kryptonite’, generally a green glowing material fatal to super-powered Kryptonians. For a Kryptonian, you can’t go home again.

So, for the reader of early 1967, it was expected that Superman – in the redrawn panels – can’t approach the deadly wreckage of his father’s laboratory. Instead, lucky for him (and the rest of the story!) Superman in the redrawn version finds a lead box from Jor-El’s laboratory that’s drifted away from the main body. As Superman explains to the reader:

“Fortunately they drifted away from the kryptonite… and they were saved from the explosion in this lead box.”

And so the rest of the story continues on, unchanged from its debut in 1956. And continuity with the established Superman mythos of 1966 is saved, after the pre-kryptonite era of 1956, when the story was first published.

But it’s wrong to think that 1956 was a pre-kryptonite era.

The concept of kryptonite, as a deadly substance to Superman, first appeared in 1943, a full thirteen years before the Hamilton story’s first appearance. That was in the Superman radio show ‘The Adventures of Superman’, in the episode ‘The Meteor from Krypton’, first broadcast in June 1943 (a mere 5 years after the first appearance of Superman himself).

It took another six years for kryptonite to appear in the comics (in the story “Superman returns to Krypton!” featured in Superman #61 Nov/Dec 1949) written by Batman co-creator Bill Finger. Kryptonite was coloured red in this first appearance (NOT ‘Red’ kryptonite). It became its signature green colour in Action Comics # 161, by Aug. 1951.

So the concept of kryptonite was established by the time of Hamilton’s 1956 “The First Superman of Krypton” story.

Was this an oversight by Hamilton? And if so, why wasn’t it corrected by editor Mort Weisinger? There’s no doubt that the story of Superman finding the wreckage, as depicted originally, is a slightly more straightforward version. The core of the story is Jor-El’s adventure as a ‘Superman’ of Krypton. The beginning, with Superman himself, is only a framing sequence. (There’s an argument that, dramatically, it’s not required. The story could have been part of an ‘Untold Tale of Krypton’ story, and had it been produced in the 70s, it may well have been. I suspect editor Weisinger felt that the presence of Superman himself was necessary at the beginning of the story (in 1956) as the readers would have expected to see him there, and to give them confidence to buy the comic in the first place (remember that Darwinian newsstand struggle I mentioned earlier?).

So I think that Weisinger simply wasn’t bothered too much about this discrepancy over kryptonite. It’s even possible he would have felt this gave some unnecessary complexity to the beginning of the story, not trusting the 8 year old target audience to fully understand why Superman should be harmed by fragments of Krypton, but his father Jor-El wasn’t.

You might excuse Weisinger due to the expectations of the comic book industry that the readership was aged 8 to 12. That meant that there was a 4 year window whereby there would be a general turnover of reader every 4 years, so comics more than 4 years old (and these disposable items weren’t expected to be kept around for long, in those days) would be unread by the current readers. The Action Comics # 161 Aug. 1951 kryptonite story was published five years before the “The First Superman of Krypton” story, so who cared?

But not so fast. Superman’s vulnerability to kryptonite was well-known even outside the realm of the comic-book.

By the 1950s, Superman had begun to feature in television’s popular ‘Adventure of Superman’, with George Reeves as the eponymous hero. Television is undoubtedly mass-market, especially across America in the 1950s. The TV show was first broadcast from 1952-1958, and kryptonite first appeared in the episode ‘Panic in the Sky’ (originally broadcast Dec 5, 1953). More significantly, it also appeared in the episode ‘The Deadly Rock’, first broadcast June 2^nd 1956, which was about the time Hamilton’s story would have been worked on.

So Weisinger not only ignored previous comics’ continuity, about also Superman’s background as established on radio and on television.

He did this, because it REALLY didn’t matter.

So something happened between 1956 and 1966.

In a word, fandom.

Letter columns in DC comics were only introduced in 1958. Similar to the way that Hugo Gernsback’s inclusion of letter writer’s names and addresses in the letter column of the first all science fiction magazine Amazing Stories, this allowed numbers of comic book fans to find each other and to grow a fan network. The first comic book convention was held in the USA in 1964, so by November 1966, when the 80 Page Giant Superman # 193 was published, a vocal and letter writing group of comic book fans was present on the scene.

Little did Ian Baker and myself know at the time, but those who had their letters printed were often rewarded by editor Julie Schwartz with a gift of original artwork. Otherwise, incredibly, it was incinerated in a furnace in the basement of DC’s office. So, for the cost of a scribble on a blue air mail letter, we could have received original art from our revered comics… an exception to the doomed artwork were those pieces which were secretly rescued by comic fans who’d taken temporary jobs with DC. They smuggled them out of the building under their clothing.

But one of these comic fans had a more permanent job at DC, as Mort Weisinger’s assistant. His name was E.Nelson Bridwell. Unlike the other long-time staff working at DC, he was a keeper of the flame of the Superman mythos. He took the concept of Tolkein’s secondary world seriously, and became an expert in all things Superman. Weisinger was happy to use his expertise, and to use his knowledge of Superman stories to pick out the stories for the occasional themed reprint 80 pagers that DC produced at the time.

Which brings us to 80 Page Giant Superman # 193. The theme of “The Greatest SUPER-stories published during the last 28 years!” pointed easily to Edmund Hamilton’s 10 year old story.

But Bridwell and Weisinger (by then) knew that if they hadn’t altered those early panels of Superman standing unaffected on a fragment of Krypton, the Action Comics letter column would have been hotter than a heat blast from Superman’s infra-red vision. So Boring supplied the new artwork, and maybe Bridwell himself wrote the new dialogue.

So the key point is that this change was primarily fan orientated.

Later years would see more and more fans of the comic books joining the comic book industry itself. As the older group of original creators retired, they replaced those that had grown up without comics with their fan-orientated perspective.

At the other end of the comics industry, when comics – for reasons not concerning this article – found themselves without the general distribution they’d enjoyed for decades, they found refuge in the willing arms of fandom itself. Direct distribution of comics to dedicated comic shops meant that, on the one hand, they were assured of a guaranteed ‘sell through’ of their comic books (with the juicy opportunity to sell more premium items to the fans in the comic shops to make up for the loss of volume sales to the general public), but on the other hand they lost a potential general readership who had access to a general distribution, but didn’t live within reach of a comic store.

But that’s not the end of the story. Consider the ubiquity of comic book characters today. The Marvel film franchises, and the DC films, and the TV series, and the cartoons… everyone’s heard of ‘super-heroes’. And the movers and shakers behind these cultural waves are – in many cases – fans of comic books, not just general readers.

And this cultural wave, a global tsunami in the film industry, shows little sign of receding.

Yet its first ripple was the replacement of three panels in a Superman story, that was barely noticed at the time.

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Addendum : Dec 10 2020

Thanks to quadibloc's comments re another change spotted in the republished version, as shown here.

copyright.Nigel Brown