kwc@cvl.UUCP (Kenneth W. Crist Jr.) (08/25/85)
This is the first of three articles I will copy from Fantastic Films
#2, June, 1978.
The True Origins of Superman
----------------------------
by Alex Eisenstein
Superman was born in 1933, on a hot summer night in Cleveland, Ohio.
But he did not appear before the public until the summer of `38, in the pre-
mier issue of ACTION COMICS. His seventeen year old creator, Jerry Siegel,
spent a sleepless night dreaming up the story of the Man of Steel, every
couple of hours hopping from his bed to set his ideas down on paper. At dawn
he rushed over to his close friend and collaborator, Joe Shuster, who lived
about a mile away. Shuster loved the idea and immediately they set to work
devising a comic strip from the rough draft, using Shuster's rough and ready
drawing skills. Thus was Superman born before breakfast from the hearts and
minds of two teenage science fiction fans.
Shuster and Siegel met as a result of there correspondance in the
letter columns of AMAZING STORIES, the first true science fiction magazine.
Soon they got together to produce two amateur magazines in imitation of
AMAZING, called COSMIC STORIES and COSMIC STORIES QUARTERLY. According to
Sam Moskowitz, a leading historian in the field, these are the earliest
amateur journals devoted to science fiction. In October, 1932, they used a
mimeograph to issue another amateur magazine devoted to publishing SF, called
it simply enough, SCIENCE FICTION. This was in reaction to the leading SF
fanzine of the day, THE TIME TRAVELLER, co-edited by Mort Weisinger... who
wound up, in 1941, with a job at D.C. editing Superman. Somehow Joe and Jerry
never managed to get away from good old Mort, who was selling SF to the pulps
years before they managed to sell Superman to Harry Donenfeld. Weisenger went
on to be a literary agent and pulp editor before being offered the job
SUPERMAN.
For five years Shuster and Siegel submitted versions of their SUPER-
MAN strip to all of the newspaper comic syndicates, which invariably rejected
them as immature and crudelty drawn, and not having "extarordinary appeal"---
this from an editor at the Bell Syndicate. In the meantime, they both hired
on to do comic book work for Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson, under Harry Donenfeld,
doing various cops and robbers books like SLAM BRADLEY, FEDERAL MEN, RADIO
SQUAD, and so forth. Apparently, they never gave a though to showing their
brain child to their bosses.
Eventually Donenfeld took over the whole operation, recognizing it as
the Harry Donenfeld Comic Book Company, or "DC Comics" as it became to be
known. The first issue of DETECTIVE COMICS appeared in May of 1937, with old
standbys like Slam Bradley, but Donenfeld was on the lookout for new
material. Meanwhile, Siegel and Shuster had dusted off SUPERMAN one more time
to send it to M.C. Gaines at the McClure Syndicate, though they had little
hope of it being accepted. Indeed, Gaines considered the strip too outlandish
for his newspaper line. But instead of simply rejecting it, he forwarded
SUPERMAN to Donenfeld, whom he knew needed new material for a new book. And
so SUPERMAN came full circle; Donenfeld bought the strip for $130, including
all rights, and Siegel and Shuster were set to work creating new Superman
stories full time. That story was featured in ACTION #1 in June `38, and six
months later, a more elaborate version was indeed syndiacted by the McClure
Syndicate. The next summer Superman had his own book, and by 1940 it was
selling 1,300,000 copies and its creators were earning a reported $75,000.
SUPERMAN was not their first attempt to sell a comic strip. Early in
`33, they sent a cartoon adaptation of a science fiction piece to WONDER
STORIES, only to have it returned with a comment that it was "mechanically
inadvisable". This experience probably thaught Siegel that one could not
sell a straight adaptation, but he did not entirely forsake the inspiration
of published SF. For years it has been rumored that Superman was an offshoot
of Philip Wylie's 1930 novel, GLADIATOR, the story of an individual granted
colossal strength and virtual indestructibility by means of a prenatal serum.
This attribution is largely confirmed by the fact that Wylie's book was
lauded by Siegel in his early fanzine. In fact, the original concept for
Superman did not clothe him in the now familiar skintight costume: am early
sketch by Shuster depicts a beefy character in long pants and a tanktop work
shirt. He is holding a man aloft in his hands, while criminals behind fire a
tripod mounted machine gun at his back. The caption reads: "A genius in
intellect---A nemesis to wrongdoers---the Superman!" While that amy remind
one of the promo ads for Doc Savage, the pulp hero scientist, ("The Man of
Bronze"), the original Superman concept is just as reminiscent of old time
ethnic folk heroes like Mighty Joe Magarak. He might even have emerged from
the Labor Movement of the `30's.
Of course, Superman's powers were much more limited in 1938 than they
later became--they were precisely in fact, the powers and abilities of Hugo
Danner, hero of GLADIATOR. Absent is x-ray vision, or any other form of
super-sight. Also absent is the power of flight as such, though the comic
hero, like Danner, is able to take mighty leaps into the air. The initial
story in ACTION says "he could hurdle skyscrapers/leap a eigtht of a mile/
raise tremndous weights(depicted with an upheld auto)/run faster than a
streamlined train/Nothing less than a bursting shell sould penetrate his
skin!" Eventually this became, "Faster than a speeding bullet,etc." on radio
and television.
All the versions of Superman's origin agree that his powers derive in
some way from his home world, Krypton. Later accounts imply this is a func-
tion of the great mass and special composition of Krypton, (but) the first
episode in ACTION is rather vague on the matter. It compresses the entire
"origin" into a single image in the splash panel, showing a small rocket
escaping a non-descript orb. The legend reads: "Just before the doomed
planet, Krypton, exploded to fragments, a scientist placed his infant son
within an experimental rocket-ship, launching it toward Earth!" This single
caption expands in the newspaper version, into a series of strips dealing
with the life of Superman's parents on Krypton, the birth of their son, Kal-L
(note: the article in Fantastic Films says "Kal-El" but the original spelling
was "Kal-L", just as later spellings of his father's name is "Jor-El" when it
originally was "Jor-L". I have changed them while coping the article over for
accuracy.--Ken), etc. Here, however, one is told that ALL the people of
Krypton are Supermen--beings which represent the human race in its "ultimate
peak of perfect development!" Jor-L zooms by faster than "the fastest express
train" and then leaps "hundreds of yards into the air" to his penthouse bal-
cony.
Not so gradually, Superman's powers increased from issue to issue and
returning to his roots in science fiction. Yet, for all his temporary far
flung escapes, Superman remains a strangely earthbound figure, forever fall-
ing back on the staples of crimefighting and disaster control. A good half of
his most fantastic adventures wind up as dreams or are otherwise illusory,
especially if they mean any great change in the Earthly status quo. Now and
then the films and TV series would reach out to embrace SF motifs, but even
more than the comics, they stuck him in the soothing rut of setting right the
workaday social wrongs. For all his magnificent prowess, which leaves open so
many doors on the Universe at large, Superman nevertheless goes on bending
steel in his bare hands and changing the course of the occasional mighty
river. But never the course of history, of course, nor the major aims of his
own existance. (note: Definitely written before the first two Superman movies
of 1978 and 1980).
In the comics of the 50's, he flew off to other planets and alien
cultures, and back and forth through time, and into other dimensions...
returning to the wonder of the pulp era that brought together his young
creators; year to year, but he did not actually begin to FLY until he crossed
over into other, more active media. With Bud Collyer's voice, SUPERMAN went
on radio in February of 1940, and the second stanza of the lead-in, ("Look--
up in the sky!" , etc.) and special effects of high-velocity winds, certainly
SUGGESTED that his natural domain was high above everyone's head. But
explicit waited on the first animated cartoons in `41, produced by Max Fleis-
cher at Paramount. The animators decided that leaping tall buildings at a
single bound would simply look silly, and so, from then on, the Man of Steel
truly soared among the clouds, both in and out of the comics.
Such a fantasti creature, perhaps, cannot often chase after marvels,
lest he tarnish his own marvelous presence. He must rule absolute in an ordi-
nary world of Earth, Air, Fire and Water, a world in which he moves mountains,
but changes nothing. And if he vacations in another galaxy, or goes hunting
in the Jurassic, still he must return to Earth and America and Metropolis,
once again to be put through the usual paces on the old, familiar treadmill.
To remain a super-cop, and sometime super-janitor, has always been
his super-curse. Doubtless this is aprtly a hangover from the days when he
was just improbably superhuman, rather than nigh-omnipotenet. He remains the
God who walks like a man, who pretends to be a man, and who cleans out
noxious elements in the social body when and where they emerge, like a super
white blood cell. Somehow, he couldn't even win World War Two singlehanded,
thought he did his level best.
And for all this, the kids continue to buy his exploits for Truth,
Justice and the American Way. The same old candy sells to the same old sweet
hungers, satisfying that child in all of us.
Kenneth Crist
Computer Vision Lab
University of Maryland
Coming next: Kal-El's powers explained.