Current Events > AlisLandale reads Superman, from the beginning

(+) Yeah! (+)

I was thinking of starting with post-crisis, since that's the version of Superman that most are familiar with and (after Superman Reborn in 2017) is the current canon Superman. But screw it, the recent "Superman Smashes the Klan" mini got me interested in the Golden Age so we're going to do this from the very beginning.

My rules (developer for my own sanity):

I'm only going to read on-going (no minis) Superman titles. No team-ups (JLA) or crossovers (Crisis). I'm not going to be fussy about reading order unless it's integral to the story.

And we start with Action Comics #1:

I love classic superhero writing. We're given one page that explains what Superman is. We don't need six issues about Jor-El and Smallville. "Here's this guy, he's an alien who crashlanded on earth as a baby, he's crazy strong."

One detail I find curious is that "By the time he reached maturity...he learned that his skin couldn't be penetrated by anything less than a bursting shell!" I'm really interested in knowing the story about how a teenage Clark Kent learned that only live artillery could hurt him. <_<

Also interesting is that it states that everyone on Superman's home planet was as strong as he was. (With "physical structure were millions of times ahead of our own"). So the yellow sun isn't in play yet.

After that, Superman's first story is more a series of short vignettes. He's got a woman tied and gagged, carrying her to a governor's house, at which he breaks through a wood door, a steel door, tanks a bullet, and convinces the governor to call a prison and stay an execution of another woman who was wrongly accused. (The real culprit turns out to be the tied up woman he came in with.) Then in another story, he beats the shit out of a wife beater ("You're not fighting a woman, now!")

Then, as Clark Kent, he tries dancing with Lois Lane at some restaurant, only for some thug to cut in. Lois calls Clark a coward, leaves both, only to get kidnapped by the thug. Superman wrecks their shit too, leaving one of them hanging from an electrical pole. (This is also the story where the famous "smashing a car into a rock" image comes from).

First issue ends with Supes investigating a mysterious "lobbyist", who has something to do with passing a bill that will "embroil America with Europe". To get answers about who is pushing for this, Superman carries him across rooftops, only to jump to another building and...miss the jump lmao. As he's falling it's "to be continued."

What I love about this is that Superman has no chill here. He's so impossibly smug, taunting everyone around him while either shrugging off their attacks or punching them across the room. I'm interested in seeing how this "no time for your bullshit" character evolves into the "boyscout" persona that sort of took over eventually. >_>
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AlisLandale posted...

Then in another story, he beats the shit out of a wife beater ("You're not fighting a woman, now!")

Supes likes doing that.

There was the time when he shoots a gun at a dude then catches the bullet an inch from his face to scare him.

I don't recall exactly why he did that.
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This is the superman we need.

I got a few of those collections of golden age Superman. Those old stories are a fun read. There's just something special about Superman beating up wife beaters and slum lords.
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Oh shit lmao. This doesn't even make sense but I love it.

Action Comics 2:

Superman gets intel that a munitions manufacturer is behind the government corruption. So he chases him down to, somewhere in the Philippines, or something. But he doesn't beat the crap out of this guy. No, he makes him join the army, and then, enlists himself, and makes him fight on the battlefield to scare him out of the munitions business. By the end of the story the guy all but retires.

But it doesn't end there. After rescuing Lois from nearly being executed for espionage (she was framed), Superman kidnaps the two political leaders in charge of two opposing armies and forces them to fight each other. Of course, the actual men ordering their armies around are big pansies who don't want to get hurt, so the agree to end the war.

Like, shit, that's hilarious. And Superman is a smug jerk, I love it.
"You can't do this, it's impossible!"
"Thanks for letting me know!"

Southernfatman posted...

I got a few of those collections of golden age Superman. Those old stories are a fun read. There's just something special about Superman beating up wife beaters and slum lords.

There really is. I know street level stuff is Batman's turf these days, but it'd be cool to see Superman tackle more stories where the villains are blatantly oppressing or exploiting others. Bring back the "Champion of the Oppressed", I say.
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Action Comics 3-5:

There seems to be two types of Superman stories in these early comics. A) Superman beats the shit out of somebody. B) Superman forces some jerk to endure what he puts others through. One of these stories, he forces a cheapass businessman to suffer in a collapsed mine, the twist being that none of the emergency escape equipment works, because he was a cheapass who never paid to maintain it. Didn't bother him that his workers suffered, but now that it was his balls on the fire, he changed his tune. Just complete escapist power fantasy, of an invincible dude dishing out karma.

It's interesting to see the conflict between the wealthy and the working class as a Superman story.

We see quite a bit of Lois and Clark's relationship too. These two deserve each other. >_> Lois is a bitch who goes out of her way to steal Clark's story leads, knowing that doing so would cost Clark his job at the Daily Star. And Superman, what a dick. He's constantly hitting on her while pretending to be this absolute Beta Male, playing up this lovesick puppy dog caricature of himself, specifically to manipulate her into manipulating him to...fuck it. They're both manipulative dicks and they're perfect together.

Superman is surprisingly crafty, quite skilled with makeup and disguises.This isn't even a superpower, he just straight up disguises himself as a football player in one of these stories, and takes that guys place on the team for a while until he can get the information he needs to stop the villain.

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So yeah, not much meat to these stories so far. But the themes they explore are different enough from any modern Superman story that they're pretty interesting.
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tag
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Avoiding purge. Gonna update later
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yea Golden Age Supes was just this crazy powerful dude imposing his will on people. he didn't care about laws like modern Superman. he just did what he felt like

Action Comics 6-10:

So Ill start with 10 because its really kind of surprising how relevant a one-off childrens comic from 80 years ago can still be today.

Clark Kent is approached by an escaped convict, begging to expose the corrupt warden of a prison, who, had subjected his prisoners to violent, cruel, downright barbaric conditions. Kent does what any reporter would do, and published the story.

When the governor hears about these conditions, he confronts the warden, who gives him a tour of the facilities to prove how comfortably and humanly the prisoners are treated.

The story continues along, eventually leading Superman to pose as a drunk driver to get himself arrested, go to prison, and troll the shit out of the warden as a prisoner, all the while collecting hard evidence of the wardens crimes.

Its actually pretty cathartic. The kind of thing you still hear about on the news today and only wish would happen to the people responsible. >_>

Issue 8 is another pretty decent one, dealing with a corrupt junk-shop owner who commands a bunch of juveniles to commit robberies for him. The story is pretty basic, but what makes it interesting is...well there are two things:

The first is that it confronts the idea that a lot of young criminals are corrupted to crime as a part of their environment, even going so far as to criticize the governments role in the state of the slums.

The second. Well, at the end of the story, Superman sees a newspaper that headlines about Florida getting wrecked by a cyclone. So Superman, so inspired by this, well...

What I THOUGHT was going to happen was that hed organize the troubled youth to go down and aid in reconstruction or something. I dunno, but what he does instead is destroys the slums. Like, he evacuates the entire district and just punches down the entire slum area. The army gets called, hail on him with airplane bombers and machine guns, but none of that stops him.

But of course, this was all a part of Supermans plan, you see, because now the slums are destroyed, they were replaced by modern apartment buildings.

...not entirely sure Siegel and Schuster thought this one all the way through lmao. But its a nice sentiment.

Also of note in this issue, its the first time we actually see Superman outspeed a bullet. The narration explicitly details that first the trigger is pulled, and then the sound is heard, and Superman manages to outrace the bullet to its intended target and takes the blow.

I mean, Golden Age Supes is certainly no slouch, (he held up a collapsing bridge in an earlier issue), but its just cool to see.

The series is also dabbling with continuity really early, too. Besides the first issue ending in cliff hanger, issue #9s story directly follows up on the fact that Superman is a wanted fugitive for the destruction of public property when he blew up the slums.

Lois and Clark continue to be dicks to each other lol. Lois is constantly castigating Clark for being a beta. But the dialogue sort of implies that shes aware of Clarks affection and just leads him on. (I dont know if thats a Lois Lane thing, or a 1930s thing lol) When confronted by about loving a man, she confesses she loves Superman. And, after getting to a room all by himself, Clark just bursts out laughing at her, lmao. These two are so savage to each other.

The other stories were pretty fun. One of them, Superman joins a failing circus as a strongman act to get them publicity. Just goofy fun.

Im digging these. I might start digging into Superman soon. I checked the first issue, but it was just reprints of the first few Action Comics stories.
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Superman # 2

Lol this one was pretty wacky. Couple of stories, none of them as gritty as the ones in Action Comics, these are mostly just fluff.

In one of them Superman saves a man falling off of a bridge.



Welp...

Turns out the man was a disgraced boxer who was sabotaged by his coach in a game-fixing conspiracy. Superman dons a disguise and pretends to be the boxer to reclaim his title, honor, and will to live.



Weve all been there, bro.

In another story, some war profiteers steal a formula for a powerful new gas weapon and Superman steals it back. And then this happens.





Freaking savage. Superman jumps out of the building effortlessly in the nex page so you know he could have saved him if he wanted to. Fair, next.
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Action Comics #11

Jeez, Clark!

So Clark investigates a suicide of a guy who lost everything on scam stocks. Some sham oil company.

So what does Superman do? He buys all the worthless stock from the other people who got scammed, then goes to the defunct well and manages to drill for oil. The well is now worth millions.

After getting the scammers to buy back his stock for a paltry one million, he goes and TRASHES the oil well. After all the equipment is destroyed he LIGHTS THE UNDERGROUND OIL ON FIRE.

Thatll teach people to sell phony stocks, I guess. Wowsers.

Of course, the 1 Million Clark got paid in 1939 adjusted for inflation is close to 18 mil in modern currency. So add super rich to the list of Supermans powers.

(Trivia: this issue is the first time he uses x-ray vision).
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