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Morality in old Superman comics

Brainster said:
Actually it had more to do with selling comics than anything else. Mort Weisinger, the editor of Superman from about 1958-1970, did studies of why kids bought certain comics. One of the things he noticed was that if a kid picked a comic off the shelf to flip through it, that kid was much more likely to buy that comic. Hence the goal became to get the kids to pick up his comic and flip through them. Weisinger quickly hit on the idea of the puzzle cover. He would present the prospective reader with a cover showing one of the major characters acting in a way that was contrary to his normal manner--Superman acting as a total dick, for example. The hope was that this would furrow the brow of the youngster, who would then pick up the comic and (Mort was hopeful) eventually buy it.

It sounds crazy, but Weisinger sold a raft of comic books that way; his core six titles (Superman, Adventure, Action, Superboy, Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen) were consistently in the top ten for comics sold in the 1960s.

There was some pretty strong morality shown in the Superman books; for example, it used to be canon that Superman would never tell a lie. And of course he had the prohibition against taking life.

Cainkane1, can you provide me with an estimate of when you read that particular comic? I can probably track down the specific issue.
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Weisinger drew upon his editorial experience as an editor at Street and Smith ,the king of the Pulp Magazine's in the 30's and 40's when he started editing the Superman Family of comics.
THe most obvious example is Superman's Forteress of Solitude at the North Pole. That is lifted practically verbatim from Doc Savage. In fact the first volume of the excellent series of reprints of the Doc Savage stories published by Sanctum Publishers http://www.shadowsanctum.com
reprints "The Fortress of Solitude" and it's sequel, and has articles by Comic/Pulp historian Will Murray (who is editing the Savage series) on the influence of the Man of Bronze on the Man of Steel, including photos of Weisinger with Lester Dent, the lead writer of Doc Savage, at the Street and Smith offices.
 
My memories are all messed up, evidently. But, I only got to see Superman comics occasionally; at friends houses...we weren't allowed to "read that crap".
I don't recall gold kryptonite, either, though the red version was always fun.

In retrospect, it was all so very cheesy...the team of robots that superman had in his closet...they could all do anything he could do, making him rather superfluous.

And Clark Kent's amazing disguise! Jimmy Olsen worked with Clark, and was best friends with superman. He didn't notice a similarity? Those glasses worked wonders.
 
The glasses were made of Kryptonian glass and amplified Superman's low-level subconscious hypnosis that prevented people from recognising Clark as Superman.

No, really.
 
Doesn't Wonder Woman have the same type of glasses Superman's has to hypnotize people in not recongizing it is Wonder Woman with glasses?

But I have had some people not recongize me with my glasses off.
 
dudalb said:
Weisinger drew upon his editorial experience as an editor at Street and Smith ,the king of the Pulp Magazine's in the 30's and 40's when he started editing the Superman Family of comics.
THe most obvious example is Superman's Forteress of Solitude at the North Pole. That is lifted practically verbatim from Doc Savage. In fact the first volume of the excellent series of reprints of the Doc Savage stories published by Sanctum Publishers http://www.shadowsanctum.com
reprints "The Fortress of Solitude" and it's sequel, and has articles by Comic/Pulp historian Will Murray (who is editing the Savage series) on the influence of the Man of Bronze on the Man of Steel, including photos of Weisinger with Lester Dent, the lead writer of Doc Savage, at the Street and Smith offices.
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Another obvious swipe: Clark Savage and Clark Kent. That Fortress of Solitude story is often cited as the best of the Doc Savage tales; it's certainly high on my list.

Weisinger borrowed--okay, stole--from everywhere for his stories. I've been amazed looking through scans of old issues how many tales were directly taken from earlier Superman stories. Still, how much did Lester Dent borrow from elsewhere to create Doc Savage and his crew?
 
quarky said:
My memories are all messed up, evidently. But, I only got to see Superman comics occasionally; at friends houses...we weren't allowed to "read that crap".
I don't recall gold kryptonite, either, though the red version was always fun.
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Gold K didn't appear until 1963 or so, and its value as a plot element was fairly limited.

In retrospect, it was all so very cheesy...the team of robots that superman had in his closet...they could all do anything he could do, making him rather superfluous.
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But for the most part whenever he needed them to do something, his landlady (an industrious and diligent woman) was always having Clark's apartment repainted, or there were sunspots or something preventing their use.

And Clark Kent's amazing disguise! Jimmy Olsen worked with Clark, and was best friends with superman. He didn't notice a similarity? Those glasses worked wonders.
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Well, let's not forget that Superman also had that curl in the middle of his forehead while Clark didn't. :D

But the point you raise made for a very funny cover in the mid-1960s, where Superman bursts into a room where Lois and Lana are chatting and scornfully notes how he could never marry either of them, because they're both such idiots that they never figured out he was really Clark Kent.
 
The two phrases I most remember from Superman are "it's a bird, it's a plane, no -- it's Superman!" (which I think is from the old radio show) and "truth, justice, and the American way".

Superman is basically a god who falls out of the sky into America's mythical heartland, Smallville. There's the sense that though he could have fallen anywhere, he landed on America, so this god (supreme fate) has chosen America. His strength comes from his alien birth, but his morality comes from his upbringing: "truth and justice" are rationalist ideals that in popular history lead to American democracy and industry: "the American way". It reflects the traditional mythos of small-town America: innocent self-belief in the values of hard work and honesty and friendship, being a good neighbor, keeping your word, sticking up for the little guy, patriotism, that sort of thing; free of both large-scale corporate bias (his arch-enemy, Lex Luthor, is science and greed gone mad) and importantly, any religious trappings.

His creators, Seigal & Schuster, being Jewish-American, maybe not surprising there's a sort of secular messiah quality to him. As an icon, Superman may be the comic book antidote to the founders' fear that some powerful single interest might one day dominate America; more powerful than selfish competing interests, beholden only to himself (altruistic in order to be true and just) and the ideal democracy he grew up in.

Plus it's just a comic book.
 
One of the very best scenes in the movie Superman II was when he was finally revealed to Lois. Once he realized he was caught, he let himself be Superman instead of Clark, with his back turned. There was a clear transformation in how he held himself--it was posture, as much as the glasses, that kept Clark seen as Clark, I think.
 
blobru said:
His creators, Seigal & Schuster...
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Not every typo or minor error on the internet needs to be corrected, but I think this one should be. Superman's creators were Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.

It is unfortunately common for newspapers, including the New York Times, to spell their names wrong in stories about Superman. (Even worse, DC Comics misspelled their names some years ago in the created by credits on a Superman story.)
 
Nova Land said:
blobru said:
His creators, Seigal & Schuster...
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Not every typo or minor error on the internet needs to be corrected, but I think this one should be. Superman's creators were Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.

It is unfortunately common for newspapers, including the New York Times, to spell their names wrong in stories about Superman. (Even worse, DC Comics misspelled their names some years ago in the created by credits on a Superman story.)
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Given my source was none other than The Complete Idiot's Guide to Jewish History and Culture, I guess I shouldn't be too surprised they repeated the misspellings. :p

Thanks for the corrections.
 
blobru said:
The two phrases I most remember from Superman are "it's a bird, it's a plane, no -- it's Superman!" (which I think is from the old radio show) and "truth, justice, and the American way".

Superman is basically a god who falls out of the sky into America's mythical heartland, Smallville. There's the sense that though he could have fallen anywhere, he landed on America, so this god (supreme fate) has chosen America. His strength comes from his alien birth, but his morality comes from his upbringing: "truth and justice" are rationalist ideals that in popular history lead to American democracy and industry: "the American way".
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Everybody gets that one wrong; Michel Chabon thought it was a bit of pro-US jingoism added in the Cold War era, so you're closer (and in line with the Wikipedia definition). In the early Superman radio shows, Superman stood for Truth, and Justice. "The American Way" was added to that list in 1945. In the wake of revelations about the Holocaust, there was a big push for tolerance for religious and ethnic minorities. The Superman radio show was in the forefront, as Superman battled not only gangsters, but the forces of hatred and bigotry in stories like "The Clan of the Fiery Cross" and "The Knights of the White Carnation."

Here's his Christmas message to the youngsters of America from 1945, hinting at his new focus:



Basically, he was saying that we are all of us, black, yellow, red or brown, Americans, and that we should treat each other with dignity and kindness and without prejudice; that's the American Way. I assume that Norman Lear was aware of that definition; hence his "People for the American Way".
 
quarky said:
Yikes!

Was it ever used?
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Twice that I'm aware of. In Superman #157, he frees a Phantom Zone prisoner named Quex-Ul, whose sentence has expired. Quex-Ul vows revenge on the son of Jor-El, the man who put him into the PZ, but he also shows some heroic qualities, making Superman wonder if he was a victim of a miscarriage of justice. He learns that Quex-Ul had been framed by another man. Meanwhile, Quex-Ul has prepared a trap for Superman. A submarine is stuck, and nearby is a Gold K meteor, which will take away his powers if he frees it. When Quex-Ul learns (from Supergirl) that Superman has cleared him of his original crime, he frees the sub, loses his powers (and his memory), but is saved by Superman, who gets him a job at the Daily Planet.

And in Superman #179, a ray from a passing satellite transforms a piece of harmless Red Kryptonite in his Fortress of Solitude into Gold K. Two members of the Superman Emergency Squad (Jay-Ree and his girlfriend Joenne), leave Kandor in an effort to beam the piece of Gold K into the Phantom Zone, but they are attacked by the metal-eater beast, who munches on their lead armor, exposing them to the rays, and costing them their powers. They do eventually beam the Gold K into the Zone, which means that if the crooks there ever get out they'll almost certainly lose their super powers.
 
Brainster said:
Twice that I'm aware of. In Superman #157, he frees a Phantom Zone prisoner named Quex-Ul, whose sentence has expired. Quex-Ul vows revenge on the son of Jor-El, the man who put him into the PZ, but he also shows some heroic qualities, making Superman wonder if he was a victim of a miscarriage of justice. He learns that Quex-Ul had been framed by another man. Meanwhile, Quex-Ul has prepared a trap for Superman. A submarine is stuck, and nearby is a Gold K meteor, which will take away his powers if he frees it. When Quex-Ul learns (from Supergirl) that Superman has cleared him of his original crime, he frees the sub, loses his powers (and his memory), but is saved by Superman, who gets him a job at the Daily Planet.

And in Superman #179, a ray from a passing satellite transforms a piece of harmless Red Kryptonite in his Fortress of Solitude into Gold K. Two members of the Superman Emergency Squad (Jay-Ree and his girlfriend Joenne), leave Kandor in an effort to beam the piece of Gold K into the Phantom Zone, but they are attacked by the metal-eater beast, who munches on their lead armor, exposing them to the rays, and costing them their powers. They do eventually beam the Gold K into the Zone, which means that if the crooks there ever get out they'll almost certainly lose their super powers.
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That's good stuff. You seem to know the story, off the top of your head. Is that so? Thanks for getting me re-educated.
Do you have anything to say about that miniature city-under glass that Superman kept on the north pole? I forget its name, but I think Braniac was responsible.
 
In the current continuity, gold kryptonite got changed. It now only takes away a Kryptonians powers for 15 seconds. In the recent return of Kandor storyline, there was a second Metallo that used it. 15 seconds being more than long enough to kill whoever he exposed.
 
quarky said:
Do you have anything to say about that miniature city-under glass that Superman kept on the north pole? I forget its name, but I think Braniac was responsible.
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The Bottle City of Kandor. Also featured several stories of a powerless Superman and Jimmy Olsen as the resident heroes Nightwing and Flamebird, modeled on Batman and Robin (intentionally).

Here's a nice Agony Booth recap of one of the more insane Supeman stories. Muscles for Money
 
Brainster said:
Everybody gets that one wrong; Michel Chabon thought it was a bit of pro-US jingoism added in the Cold War era, so you're closer (and in line with the Wikipedia definition). In the early Superman radio shows, Superman stood for Truth, and Justice. "The American Way" was added to that list in 1945. ...
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Good stuff, thanks: I wasn't aware of the precise history of the phrase. It's often been criticized as jingoistic, even by other DC artists (see Frank Miller's depiction of Superman as unthinking patriot in "Batman: The Dark Knight Returns"); my sense was it was tied to democratic ideals, which would include ethnic tolerance, though I didn't know that was the motive for its addition.
 
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