Action Comics Archives Vol. 2 Foreword

My foreword to 1998's Superman The Action Comice Archives, Volume 2.

The Man of Steel was beginning to grow up.

The Superman who debuted in Action Comics #1 (June1938) was one tough monkey, a hero who thought nothing of smashing through the governor’s bedroom door in the middle of the night in order to get what he wanted. Who would hang a bad guy by his heels high over the city to scare the needed information out of him. Who smacked around an abusive husband as a way of giving the man a taste of his own medicine. Who fought (mainly) guys in suits out to screw over the little guy.

Tough (and at odds with the local police, who, in those early days, were never quite sure which side of the law this super-powered madman was on, the answer to which, of course, was that Superman wasn’t so much on the side of the law as he was on the side of justice)...but, in his own way, mellowing.

Which isn’t to say that the Superman of those second and third years in Action was going soft. He was still a hero of the people, a post-Depression, pre-War populist who battled exploiters of child labor, insurance fraud targeted at the elderly, and crooked doctors who claimed to be able to cure polio, to name a few. There was no doubt that this, the greatest and mightiest hero of all times, was the creation of two “little guys.” literally, as Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were both far from examples of he-man physicality themselves, on top of being mid-Western Jews creating in an atmosphere of rising global anti-Semitism. Whatever wrong faced the honest citizens of the world, whichever bully threatened Joe and Jane Average was confronted head-on by the one guy who couldn’t be hurt, wouldn’t be intimidated. The hero determined to out-bully the worst bully. Superman.

But by the time of these stories, Siegel and Shuster were starting to think bigger. For all their populist ideals, they must have realized that Superman couldn’t go on fighting common mobsters and con men forever. They’d already established that Superman was smarter than even the most cunning crook, and he was certainly stronger than virtually any obstacle that could be thrown in his path by the typical gangster in suits. Let’s face it...this was Superman. How long could you pit him against wise guys with guns before even the most diehard fan would yawn, wishing for more?

Siegel and Shuster, the creators of the premier comic book superhero and the grandfather of the industry that was to grow up in his wake, were realizing that they had to take their creation further. Not only did the last surviving son of Krypton have to mature, but so did the manner and style of his adventures. Some of this was probably due to their deep submergence in their subject; do enough of anything for a while and you’re bound to keep getting better at it, and in this relatively short period of time, both writer Siegel and artist Shuster had learned a great deal more craft in their respective fields; you need only compare these stories against earlier counterparts to see the leap in quality. A lot also had to do, no doubt, with expediency; demand for Superman material was rising faster than any two non-super-powered individuals could possibly hope to turn out, no matter the level of their proficiency. Other minds and pencils were being applied to Superman’s adventures, new ideas and influences were certainly making their mark (as in #28, the first story by artist Jack Burnley, one of the best comics artists of the 1940s and one of the earliest members of the Siegel and Shuster “studio system”).

The biggest change one sees in reading these stories is in the nature of Superman’s foes. While the thugs in suits and con men with an exploitative angle did not vanish, they were increasingly replaced by a more fantastic and larger than life array of villains. The first of this category was the Ultra-Humanite, a being of such brilliance as to bedevil even Superman himself. The Humanite’s first appearance was in Action Comics #13, and he reappeared several times over the course of the next half dozen issues, always pitting his “most agile and learned brain” against the Man of Steel. Then in Action Comics #19, Siegel and Shuster began what was surely one of the first extended continued storylines in comics as the Ultra-Humanite (looking surprisingly like villain-to-come Lex Luthor, complete with bald pate and lab coat; odds are it had something to do with super-criminal-genius union rules) supposedly dies when an experimental weapon blows up in his face, only to be resurrected the following issue with his brain having been transplanted into the young and vital body of movie star Dolores Winters (!)... a fact Superman tumbles to when he gets a look at her eyes, “those evil blazing eyes... there’s only one person on this Earth would could possess them...!” Dolores/Ultra once again appears to bite the dust at the end of #20, only to return yet again in #21 to (and I don’t think I’m ruining any surprise ending here for anyone) go down in defeat.

Superman was also leaning towards a more global approach to his adventures, as Clark Kent and Lois Lane are packed off to cover the growing conflict between two fictitious nations that substituted for the real life conflict with European Fascism. This too was a continued story that ran in #22 and #23 but is most notable for introducing to comics the aforementioned Lex Luthor, although at this stage of his career as a man, “just an ordinary man,” he boasts to Superman, “but with the brain of a super-genius” ...and a full head of red hair.

Many of the modern elements that we take for granted in the Superman mythos were being introduced around this time as well. For example, Action #23 was the first time the newspaper where Clark is employed is called the Daily Planet; previously, including in the first part of the story just an issue earlier, it had been the Daily Star (obviously the name change occurred while Clark was off in Europe). And in #25, Metropolis, the city in which the Daily Planet is published, is first named. Even the familiar five-sided Superman “S” shield makes its first appearance during this period, in #34. Prior to this, the “S” had appeared in a triangular shield, or some other shape (when it wasn’t missing from his chest altogether). And just to prove that the shape of the “S” shield was arbitrary before it really began to mean something in terms of licensing, it went right back to triangular shape in the very next issue.

And speaking of licensing, #32 provides one of the earliest, if not the first, promotional tie-ins for a toy when the Man of Steel creates “in Clark’s laboratory,” whether located in the Fortress of Solitude or simply in the spare bedroom of Clark’s apartment they don’t say, the Krypto-Raygun, “a startling invention with which (he) can snap pictures—they are developed right in the gun—and can be flashed upon a wall!” Not surprisingly, ads for the Krypto-Raygun—a flashlight/projector—were soon appearing in the Superman line of comics. Take that Transformers and Power Rangers!

Today, 60 years later, the Superman mythos is huge, full of more characters, places, and concepts than any one person could hope to list. Superman has been there and done that, probably more than once in most cases. He has gone from “nothing less than a bursting shell could penetrate his skin” to being able to wade effortlessly through nuclear firestorms, from “faster than an express train” to speeds nearing that of light. But back then Superman still had a long way to go to becoming the Man of Steel we know today.

Read the stories that follow. Watch as the struggling young hero of 1938 starts out on his journey of growth to become the World’s Greatest Superhero of...well, of ever.

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Paul Kupperberg is an editor with DC Comics and would settle having nothing less than a bursting shell be able to penetrate his skin and for being faster than an express train.

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