Superman Sunday: Origins (Part 9)

Today, we're continuing our look at George Lowther's 1942 novel, The Adventures of Superman. When we left off, Eben Kent was about to enter an anvil-lifting contest against much younger men in hopes of saving the farm, and I'm pretty sure someone asked "what could possibly go wrong?" along the way.

The day of the State Fair dawned bright and clear, but there was little happiness in Clark Kent's heart. (p. 36)

Reading this, I can't help but think of "Casey at the Bat"--'but there is no joy in Smallville,' or something like that. Clark didn't sleep well, worried about his father, and trying to think of a way he could help. I get that Clark doesn't realize that he's super-strong yet, but why doesn't he consider entering the contest himself? He's a young man, and while he may not have the years of experience and exercise that Eben has, I'd think being a young, hard-working farm boy would count for something in the muscle department.

Eben and Clark head out to the Fair Grounds after a hearty breakfast¹, while Sarah stays at home. The hard times, it seems, have been harder on her than on Eben, aging her more obviously than him. The fair is an interesting sight to me, because aside from a couple of details ("horse-shoe contests, potato-sack races") it sounds like every local and state fair I've ever been to. Sixty-plus years later, and some things still don't change (p. 37).

The afternoon approaches, bringing with it the anvil-lifting contest. "Clark's eyes roved over the crowd, sought and found what he most feared--the faces of 'The Bull' and Fred Hornbach" (p. 38). The competition for the contest is stiff, and both Clark and Eben know it. "The old man realized, perhaps for the first time, the impossibility of his winning against such heavy odds" (p. 38). But Eben goes anyway, refusing to back down when he's already committed to the contest, and knowing how much they need the prize money. Willingness to strive against insurmountable odds in the name of responsibility and a greater good? In the education world, we call what Pa is doing here "modeling."

I'd like to step back once more and mention just how much I love the Kents. Orphans are the lifeblood of superhero comics, and Superman's no exception to that, but he's one of the few for whom that orphaning isn't his motivation for being a hero. Batman is driven by the tragedy of his parents' deaths, Spider-Man became a hero out of guilt over Uncle Ben, but Superman becomes a hero because he was raised by his parents to be one. The loss of his parents, even his adopted parents, plays a fairly minor role in his superhero career. He becomes a hero because it's the right thing to do.

In part, this is because in the origin stories where one or both of the Kents die, they aren't killed in some freak accident or mugging or anything. They generally die of old age, or related symptoms. The Internet's Leading Batmanologist argues that Bruce Wayne should be the happiest kid ever, and that his parents' death shouldn't be his fault, because that's the point of the story. Similarly, I think the stories where Clark inadvertently causes his parents' deaths (like in the Silver Age, where he accidentally infects them with pirate germs, or something) or where they die from some less natural cause (as in the modern age, where Pa overexerts himself during a battle with Brainiac) are missing a big part of the point. If Ma and/or Pa must die, it should be from old age-related symptoms; it should be tragic in the way that all loved ones' deaths are tragic, but it shouldn't be an event, if that makes any sense. The death of the Kents should be a reminder to Superman of his limitations, that no matter what he does, no matter how much power he has, he can't save everyone.

But I think, ideally, that Superman's parents ought to be alive. There's no reason that Clark's parents have to die, and if there's any superhero who should be able to go back home for Thanksgiving, any hero who should have a good relationship with his parents, it's Superman. The whole point of Superman isn't just that he's the ultimate immigrant, it's that he's the ultimate adoption story. He's an orphan, sure, but he's been adopted by the entire planet, and he sees himself as just another member of the family. And that's all because he had some solid parenting from good, kind, upstanding people. Which is why it's always nice to see Clark's parents walking the walk, and modeling for Clark what real heroes do.

Digression over, back to the book. Clark looks to the competition, seeing how obviously strong they are, and knowing that even his youthful muscles couldn't measure up. Eben ascends the stage, while onlookers snicker, not knowing the desperation that led him to this contest. Clark overhears a sour-faced aging city-slicker scoff aloud about Eben's foolishness, and the two exchange bitter glances. Afterward, the contest begins.

The first man to try is one who stepped up after Eben, and he's unable to get the anvil to budge in the slightest. Next is Fred Hornbach, who struggled to lift the anvil a full inch off the platform. "The Bull," a big broad shirtless man, took to the challenge like a smug prizefighter, and lifted the anvil three inches. Finally, Eben took his turn, much to the crowd's derision. The crowd goes silent when Eben manages to lift the anvil, but at two inches, it's obvious how much he's straining. Clark cries out: "Put it down, Dad! You'll never make it! You'll kill yourself!" (p. 43). The shout is in vain; Eben feels a sharp pang of pain and drops the anvil, but puts on a brave face even as the crowd jeers once more. "The Bull" joins in the mocking, until finally Clark loses his temper. He rushes the stage.

He stood before "The Bull" with tears of rage streaming down his cheeks.

"Let my father alone!" he shouted. "Let him alone--you hear?"

"The Bull" looked at him in mild astonishment and amusement. He reached out a powerful arm to push Clark away.

"Go 'way, kid, or I'll--"

He never finished what he started to say. As his hand reached out for Clark, the boy stepped aside and swung his fist against the other's jaw. "The Bull" shuddered and sank limply to the floor. (p. 44)

There's a trend in certain Superman origin stories that portrays the young Clark as having a temper; he's not quick to anger, necessarily, but he's shown to have a limit and a righteous fury when that limit is hit. We're seeing that here, and I've seen it pop up in Tom De Haven's "It's Superman" and "Smallville" as well. I really like this trait, because it's so believable. It's a flaw in Clark's character, a sign of his immaturity, but it also presages those rare occasions when we see Superman lose his temper--I'm specifically thinking when he fights Darkseid in "Justice League Unlimited" or when he comes out of the Black Mercy world in "For the Man Who Has Everything." It's very humanizing. It's also, when Clark is young, an opportunity for him to realize precisely why he can't cut loose all the time, and why patience and restraint are more important for him than almost any other person alive.

Still seething, Clark walks to the anvil, indignant about the crowd's treatment of his father. "He reached down, gripped the anvil in both hands, and lifted. He was almost thrown off balance at the ease with which he raised it and held it aloft, high above his head!" (p. 45). The crowd is silent in awe, and Clark finally cools down enough to realize what he's done, and moreover, that the anvil feels practically weightless. He puts the anvil back down, and the crows cheers. They mob Clark, asking him questions (again, I can't help but think that John Byrne read this book), until the sour-faced city-slicker pushes through to say that he works for the Daily Planet and wants to write the story of his remarkable strength. Clark is overwhelmed, unable to speak, so the reporter decides to write the story without Clark's help. But as a show of gratitude, he tells the boy to look him up if he ever needs anything. The reporter turns to leave, but Clark manages to stop him and ask his name.

"Eh?" He paused, squinting back at the boy. "Oh yes. Couldn't very well find me without knowing my name, could you? Well, son, if you ever come to the Daily Planet just ask fro Perry White. That's all. Just Perry White!"

A moment later he was gone in the crowd. (p. 48)

And much as I'd like to finish this book tonight, I think that's a good place to stop. Next week, we'll tackle the last two origin chapters, and then it's on to other media once again.

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1. No doubt one that included Kellogg's Pep, the Sunshine Cereal!²

2. If you don't get that joke, don't worry. I'll do some explanations soon.

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Superman Sunday: Origins Master List

Superman Sunday: Fall in love with spines

No Origins post today, sadly. I'm using this Sunday to catch up on some other writing projects whose deadlines are coming due. In the meantime, enjoy this awesome panel of Clark Kent¹.

I've been reading some late-'70s Superman comics recently, and it's amazing to see how much they were willing to shake up the status quo. It also makes me sad that the fanboys-turned-writers who grew up on the comics of this era (Meltzer, Johns, etc.) just want to return to those eras without restoring the attitude of change that made them interesting and memorable to begin with. Fodder for a future post, I guess.

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1. Technically, it's not Clark, but Don-El, leader of the Kandorian Superman Emergency Squad, who deluded himself into thinking he was Superman, so Clark let him live his life for a day to shock him out of it. From "Superman (vol. 1)" #337.

Superman Sunday: Origins (Part 8)

This week, we continue our look at George Lowther's 1942 novel, The Adventures of Superman. We left off at the destruction of Krypton, so naturally today's adventure brings us back down to Earth, starting in Chapter 3: Young Clark Kent.

The chapter opens on aging farmer Eben Kent plowing his field. There's a somewhat ominous flavor to the beginning of this chapter, the kind of thing you'd expect from the start of an alien invasion story rather than the happy accident of Kal-el's adoption:

There was something strange about that sky. He knew the weather, as well as any farmer born to the soil, and off-hand he would have said a storm was brewing. Yet he was not quite sure. It seemed to him there was the feeling of something more than just a storm in the air. (p. 20-21)

Eben shakes the feeling and continues plowing until he hears a rumble of thunder in the distance, which turns out not to be thunder at all. The strange sound increases in volume and the clouds open up to reveal a growing, blazing light. His horse gets spooked and runs off, dragging the plow behind it, while the roaring noise gives way to a series of explosions. Eben becomes dizzy, and the fiery object crashes into the ground nearby. He throws himself down and faints.

When Eben wakes up, the noises have stopped, except for the sound of a nearby fire. He sees the ship--"a strange, bullet-shaped object, almost completely enveloped in flames"--and runs toward it, sensing that someone might be trapped inside (p. 23).

Peering through the flames, he saw a child lying helpless behind the thick glass window of the door that sealed the rocket. Already Eben had come as close as the wall of heat would let him. He realized instantly that unless he broke through that searing wall the child would die.

He made up his mind quickly, took a deep breath, and plunged through to the rocket. When he emerged again from the flame and smoke, agony stood in his eyes, for he had been severely burned. But in his blackened arms he held the child! (p. 23)

I really like this take on the discovery. While it's a bit sad that Ma Kent isn't present, it gives Eben a nice heroic moment. In most versions of this origin, the Kents adopt Kal-el without much in the way of physical danger or difficulty--in some versions, the child saves them--but here, Pa Kent rescues the child with little thought to his own life and safety. It's pretty generally accepted that Superman gets his strong moral code from his parents, but usually that's just stated or it comes out in conversation or advice. Here is a fairly rare instance of showing, not just telling, the kind of people that the Kents are. That is, after all, the first rule of writing, and it's nice to see it put to use here.

Another interesting detail is one that had never really occurred to me before. I'm so used to this scene occurring as the Kents drive down the road in a beat-up pickup truck that it's a bit jarring to see the rocket crash down on the Kent farm in front of a horse-drawn plow. Even the earliest versions of the origin had a "passing motorist" discover the rocket, and I've not realized before how odd that really is. Imagine that Clark Kent is a conservative 22 when he leaves for Metropolis in 1938. That means that our motorist was driving through some unknown moderately rural town in 1916. It's certainly not impossible--the Model T was introduced in 1908--but it's definitely a bit unlikely. That's not really a criticism, mind you, just a reminder that the world has changed a great deal in the intervening seventy-odd years.

Eben Kent and his wife, Sarah, never knew where the child had come from, never pierced the mystery that surrounded his strange appearance on earth. Destiny perhaps played a part in directing the rocket to the Kent farm, for th eKents were childless and desired a child above anything else on earth. And here, like a gift from Heaven, was the infant Kal-el. The old couple took him into their home and raised him as their own.

They called him Clark, because that was Sarah Kent's family name. (p. 23-24)

I think this is the first mention we have of "Clark" being Martha's maiden name, a bit of trivial origin detail that remains even today. Clark grows up relatively normal until the last day of eighth grade, when he's thirteen years old. The school principal, Mr. Jellicoe, and Clark's teacher, Miss Lang, are giving out academic prizes to the various students (Clark was awarded a book of Shakespeare's plays due to his English scores and ambitions of becoming a writer), when one blue ribbon goes missing. Clark watches his teacher search the desk for the ribbon, and eventually realizes that he's also looking into the desk, where he sees it caught behind the drawer. Clark points it out, but when he's unable to explain how he knew where it was, everyone thinks that Clark had been rummaging around in Miss Lang's desk.

All at once, Clark learns that he has abilities which set him apart from others, and that such a difference alienates him from his peers. He learns an important lesson about secrecy and discretion the very first time he uses his abilities in public.

This scene is interesting for a few other reasons. First, it follows through on the "he has always been sensitive to the elements" foreshadowing line from the previous chapter, by making the super-vision abilities the first manifestation of Clark's strange abilities. Vision powers were a later addition to Superman's repertoire; he used some kind of super-vision in the Fleischer cartoons, and it's probable that X-Ray vision had showed up in the comics by this point¹. It's nice, too, that Clark has ambitions of being a writer. Even the earlier origins have treated reporter as something Superman chose to do for practical reasons; this is the first real glimpse (in an origin story) we've had of Clark Kent as a normal person with hopes and dreams and ambitions, rather than just a mask for the Man of Steel.

Also, one might note Clark's teacher's name, Miss Lang. This book was published a full eight years before Lana Lang made her debut. According to the introduction, the novel was pretty successful, so it's not unlikely that the use of the same last name is intentional. Still, Miss Lang makes an interesting forerunner to Clark's teenage sweetheart, just as Jimmy-not-Olsen in the radio program presaged the later Jimmy. Sadly, blue ribbon recipient Lucy Russell didn't stick around quite so consistently.

Clark returns home, where his father congratulates him on winning the book of plays. This is the first time Eben speaks in the book, and it's dialect dialogue worthy of Chris Claremont:

"Son," said old Eben, "ye've done a mighty fine job. That book--that book of plays--why, shucks, boy, that's one o' the finest things that's ever happened to yer ma and me. We're proud o' ye!" (p. 29)

Yes, in this episode, the part of Pa Kent will be played by Snuffy Smith. It's just so jarring to see the 'ye' and 'yer' from Pa, who I've never actually seen written or acted with an accent before, let alone one as cringeworthy as this. For better or worse, though, we don't have to deal with it long.

Clark looked up at them and felt everything going soft inside him. He loved these two, loved them as nothing else on earth. (p. 29)

I quote this last bit for humor. "Everything going soft inside him" is a really bizarre way of describing Clark's feelings, and "loved them as nothing else on earth" might as well be followed with "Eben had only one week until retirement." If you didn't know that Eben was going to die (perhaps from reading the Table of Contents: "Chapter V. The Death of Eben"), this brief paragraph paints a big red bullseye on him.

Ma and Pa give Clark a present, a homemade costume for a costume party that night. It's about what you might expect:

There was a tight-fitting suit of blue, a wide belt of leather, knee-length boots, and--most thrilling of all--a scarlet cape. (p. 30)

It's at this point that I really started questioning Roger Stern's declaration that John Byrne was "working without the benefit of Lowther's long-out-of-print text" (p. xix) when he wrote "Man of Steel" in '86. As in "Man of Steel," here Clark's powers don't really begin to manifest until he's a teenager, his costume is made on Earth by his mother, and his name comes from Martha's maiden name. I wouldn't be surprised if Byrne did have this book, or had read it at some point, because the details he chooses to bring in are eerily similar to the ones presented here. I suppose I could go to the Byrne boards and ask, but I'm not quite that brave/foolish.

In any case, Clark runs up to his room to try on the costume, and jumps for joy once it's on. Shockingly enough, the jumping leaves him on the other side of the room. Trying it once more, he discovers that he can fly. And with this discovery comes the understandable angst that launched ten seasons of "Smallville":

He was frightened at first and his heart beat like a triphammer. Just as his eyes could pierce the wood of Miss Lang's desk, so he could fly. What was the answer? How could he do these things when other boys, he knew, could not? Was he different from other boys? He had never thought so before and he didn't want to think so now. He had a feeling that to be different would set him apart, and he saw himself as a queer and lonely figure, shunned by all. (p. 32)

There's a lot of room for allegory here, but I think the X-Men have pretty much covered that. Still, it'd be interesting to see a Superboy story that made the secret identity/in the closet linkage intentionally, as the language in this paragraph suggests.

Clark tries to forget his powers in the ensuing months, to be a normal kid, but temptation would get the better of him, and he'd try them out, eventually coming to enjoy them. He was also developing superhuman strength, though he would not discover that until he was seventeen.

The Kent farm had fallen on hard times, and the family was in dire need of extra money. Despite his age, Eben decides to enter an anvil-lifting contest at the state fair, which would award a $500 prize. While he'd won the contest as a young man, his age and the presence of much stronger men in town made victory unlikely for the old farmer. But Eben was desperate, and so was willing to take desperate risks.

We'll finish the rest of the origin material here in the next installment, which (with any luck) will be sometime during the week. I'm really enjoying this book, but I'll be happy to move back into the comics.

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1. (Edit: 7/26/10) I don't know exactly how I missed it, but Superman's X-Ray Vision first showed up in Action Comics #11, cover dated April, 1939. That means that he'd been using the power for roughly three years by the time this novel came out.

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Superman Sunday: Origins Master List

Superman Sunday: Origins (Part 7)

It's pretty common knowledge at this point that a lot of what we generally recognize as the Superman mythos originated in the "Adventures of Superman" radio program. One of the generally-uncredited writers for that program was a young man named George Lowther. In 1942, Lowther took his radio writing experiences to prose, writing The Adventures of Superman novel.

The 1995 printing of the book contained a nice introduction by Roger Stern, which, while not entirely accurate on all the minutiae, was a nice source of information on Lowther, the novel, and their significance to Superman's history. Rather than paraphrase, I'll let him explain it to you himself:

There are many firsts associated with this book. With its publication, Superman became the first comic-book character to have an original adventure told as a prose novel. Also, George Lowther became the first writer other than Jerry Siegel to receive a credit for writing Superman. (p. xvi)

It's not entirely accurate--Seymour Kneitel, Isidore Sparber, Bill Turner, Ted Pierce, Carl Meyer, Dan Gordon, and Jay Morton all received "Story" credits on the Fleischer "Superman" cartoons--but it gives a clear picture of how early on this contribution was. Judging by the titles of the "Adventures of Superman" radio episodes I can't track down, Lowther probably wrote the second version of the origin on that series, since the same titles are used for chapter titles in this book.

Up 'til now, the stories of the destruction of Krypton and Superman's upbringing have been kept largely separate. The comic books have focused almost exclusively on the latter (and that, only briefly); the comic strip almost completely omits the latter and fleshes out the former; the animated films glossed over both; and the radio program gave a full episode to the former while writing any "upbringing" out of the story entirely. Lowther's The Adventures of Superman would be the first incarnation of the Superman story to combine the two, and aside from the radio show retcon using the same material, would be the only such attempt until 1945. Later versions will overturn a lot of what Lowther establishes here, which makes it interesting for its brevity in addition to its novelty.

Additionally of note is that this novel is illustrated with several sketches and a few full-color pieces by Joe Shuster and his studio. The art is dynamic, even when unfinished, and really shows off Shuster's skill. It's clear to look at it how much later artists like Bruce Timm and Darwyn Cooke take from the clean, simplified style of the sketches, while the full-page illustrations look an awful lot like the artistic endeavors of later Superman artists like Wayne Boring (who was part of Shuster's studio) and Curt Swan.

So, let's begin:

The Great Hall of Krypton's magnificent Temple of Wisdom was a blaze of light. Countless chandeliers of purest crystal reflected the myriad lights into a dome of glass where they were shattered into a million fragments and fell dazzling over the Great Hall. (p. 3)

So begins the novel. Aside from "chandeliers," which I have a hard time imagining in any version of Krypton, I think it's interesting that this book associates Krypton with crystals a good thirty-six years before the first "Superman" movie.

Below the brilliant dome the Council of One Hundred waited. Attired in togas of scarlet and blue, they looked impatiently for the arrival of Jor-el, Krypton's celebrated scientist. (p. 3-4)

I'm beginning to wonder if Mario Puzo and/or Richard Donner read this book, since that's the only other major place I've ever seen where Kryptonians typically dress in robes. Here, the robes are "scarlet and blue," foreshadowing Superman's eventual costume. Jor-el has an "e" in his name now, even if it's lowercase, and the "Council of One Hundred" suggests a much larger political body than we usually see on Krypton.

Lowther really plays up Jor-el's prestige as a scientist, stating that despite his reclusiveness, "when Jor-el spoke all men listened."¹ This portrayal fluctuates over time, with Jor-el often being 'Krypton's foremost scientist', but he always seems to be treated as though he's a witless crank. There's an enduring message in that: no matter how much prestige and respect a scientist has, once he starts telling the people in power uncomfortable truths, they can dismiss him as a crackpot. Often to everyone's detriment.

Jor-el is described as tall and thin, with a handsome face that was nonetheless "drawn and haggard." That's an interesting contrast to his usual portrayal both before and after this story, where he's a square-jawed, barrel-chested lookalike of his son. He's wearing "the yellow and purple robes of his calling," presaging (and probably inspiring) the similar garb of Kryptonian astronauts Bar-El and Lilo in "All-Star Superman" #9.

Ro-zan, the white-haired supreme leader of the council, makes a return appearance. You may recall him from the radio origin.

Jor-el draws a breath to speak:

"Krypton is doomed!"
Had a thunderbolt crashed through the crystal dome of the Temple at that moment it could not have produced a more startling effect! (p.5)

Jor-el describes his long, difficult weeks of research, which have left him gaunt and prematurely aged. Several abnormal (and frankly, unlikely) disasters have plagued Krypton of late:

sudden showers of stars...have fallen upon our planet. Comets of great magnitude have appeared from nowhere, whirling dangerously close to Krypton...a monstrous tidal wave rose from the sea and roared toward our city. (p.7)

Somehow, all this leads Jor-el to realize that something is wrong. He and his research team can't figure out the exact cause, but it's clear that soon "the mighty Planet Krypton will burst into a million molten fragments!"

I don't know if this ever comes up again, but it makes perfect sense: Jor-el has a research team! Specifically, he speaks of the "learned men of science who work under [him]," which suggests that Jor-el isn't alone in recognizing the dangers plaguing the planet. That makes Jor-el's position far more believable (what scientist works completely alone?) and far more prescient. There's always been a lesson to learn in the story of Jor-el, of the danger of ignoring and scoffing at the warnings of scientists, but here Jor-el is no longer dismissable as a lone crackpot. Instead, you have to dismiss the converging work of his entire team, which requires a bit more willful ignorance.

Unfortunately, Jor-el's warnings come across as a little more raving than usual. I think his biggest problem was failing to identify a mechanism for the oncoming destruction; "I know what's going to happen, but I don't know why" is hardly compelling science. As you might expect, the council loudly and angrily dismissed his doomsaying, with some suggesting that he'd lost his mind or made a mistake, while the most charitable among them thought he was overworked and just needed some rest.

He pleads with Ro-zan to help convince the council, but even Ro-zan thinks he's unhinged. He asks Jor-el what they could do, even if his warnings were accurate. Jor-el says something a little unexpected:

"I have not come here with this tragic news," he said hastily, "without bringing with me a solution for it. You ask me where we can go? My answer is--to the Planet Earth!" (p. 9)

The council, Ro-zan included, laughs at the suggestion. Ro-zan explains in some interesting detail, underscoring again the notion that Kryptonians possess superpowers even on Krypton:

"How could we live there, Jor-el? You yourself--you who have studied the Earth for years through the great telescope--have told us how inferior to ourselves are the Earth People. They are thousands of years behind us in everything, mental and physical. Their cities are as nothing compared to the cities that have existed here on Krypton for centuries. Their minds are so far beneath the capacity of our own that actually, in comparison, they have no intellect at all! As for their bodies, you yourself have said that they are weaklings! It takes a hundred Earth People together to do what one man on Krypton can do alone! They have not the power to fly, but must walk at a snail's pace on the Earth's surface! They cannot breathe beneath the sea!"

Ro-zan shook his head slowly from side to side.

"Would you send us to live among such a people, Jor-el? Nay, I think not! Death is preferable to life in a world of such inferior people." (p. 10-11)

There's a lot to unpack here, including an interpretation of Krypton that seems timely for the era and surprising for any era. But first: Kryptonians can breathe underwater!

Seriously, Lowther has painted the Kryptonians as a puffed-up xenophobic master race, certain and secure not only in their superiority to humans, but also in their indestructibility as an empire. The idea of Kryptonians lording their superiority over the human race has been revisited time and again whenever Kryptonians other than Superman make their way to the planet, but rarely do we hear one declare that they'd rather die than live among humans--even if it were as their rulers. Ro-zan's rant here reeks of racist propaganda, and while the Kryptonians aren't simply space Nazis (no extermination program, for one thing), the association is pretty clear.

Ro-zan tells Jor-el not to return until he's regained his senses. Jor-el turns to leave, but then tells the Council of his plans to build a Space Ship, hoping to save the people of Krypton in spite of themselves. I like this aspect of Jor-el's character; it shows the same conviction and strong moral character that his son would eventually display.

Not a word was spoken as Jor-el turned and moved slowly out of sight through the high arched doorway--a tragic, beaten figure. (p. 12)

Thus ends Chapter I. Chapter II begins with a look at Jor-el's model Space Ship, "a long silver rocket," as he works intently in his lab. Lara (with an "a") enters, holding their infant child, and waits for Jor-el to notice her. Jor-el tells her that her warnings were right, the Council refused to believe him, but he still intends to finish the Space Ship, hoping to save all of them. He just has to finish the model first.

Lara changes the subject:

"Little Kal-el has been strangely restless these past few days," she said. "He has scarcely slept at all. Jor-el, do you think he feels the approach of this thing you have foretold?"

"It may be," said Jor-el. "He has always been sensitive to the elements."

The scientist continued his work, his thin hands moving swiftly and surely over the intricate mechanism of the model Space Ship. Lara sat and watched, rocking the child in her arms. (p. 14)

That's our first mention of Kal-el in the novel. It'll be interesting to see if the "sensitive to the elements" thing plays out at all. At this point, I believe Superman had displayed some super-sensory powers, so it may be a little foreshadowing at that.

Jor-el works diligently, having nearly finished the model Space Ship, until a tremor sets the room rocking and cracking at the seams. Great cracks in the ground spew fire into the air, and Jor-el realizes that his time is up.

In seconds, night was turned into flaming day. Across the sky, countless comets whirled screaming through brilliant space. The stars began to fall, showering upon Krypton a rain of liquid fire. Asteroids of every color careened across the heavens. Lights of every size and hue, dazzling and eye-searing, scattered over Krypton.

Jor-el calmly observes the chaos, running through plans in his head. He realizes that he cannot save the people of Krypton, nor can he spare himself or Lara, but the model Space Ship would hold Kal-el. He installs the last part, and "as he worked, Lara stood with the child in her arms, gazing out at a crumbling world." There's a tragic, silent poignancy to Lara's conduct here. Her last word, just after Jor-el tells her there is hope for Kal-el, is her husband's name. She doesn't speak again, but hands Kal-el to him silently. Jor-el places the whimpering child into the model ship, seals the door, and pulls the lever. Then, the couple waits, until finally the ship launches.

Interestingly, we get no description of Krypton's explosion. Though the planet has clearly reached its doom, the chapter closes on the hopeful flight of the silver rocket.

And that seems as good a place as any to close this post. Next week, we'll see the rocket reach its destination, and what happens thereafter.

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1. Appatently this book was written during the war's comma rationing effort.

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Superman Sunday: Origins Master List

Superman Sunday: Origins (Part 6)

This week, we take another foray into a new medium, as Superman makes the jump from radio to film. For the very first time, you will believe a man can move!

As with our last installment, the "origin" bit of Fleischer Studios' first animated Superman film is pretty brief. In future installments, this is going to become a bit of an issue, since some versions (like "Smallville" and "Lois & Clark") spread the facts and details of Superman's origin across many different episodes. I'll take those as they come, but the "review of the whole episode, including the non-origin bits" is probably going to be a rarity after this post. This episode of "Superman" contains one of my very favorite Superman images of all time, so I'm going to go through the whole thing, because it gives me an excuse to post that image.



We might as well start with the opening sequence, not technically part of the origin story, but interesting in how it changes over time. Superman is drawn as a blur of colorful lines streaking across the screen, as the familiar onlooker introduction occurs:

Up in the sky, look! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Superman!

My research has suggested that the Fleischer intro recording eventually becomes the one used in the radio program, combined with the later description of powers. Ultimately, the intro used will be the one from later Fleischer cartoons, as here it's quite out of order.

An upbeat theme song follows, originating the basic rule that all good Superman theme songs since have followed: you should be able to sing the word "Superman" to it. You'll hear it as we go through the decades, but I know I've heard people (Bruce Timm, maybe?) talking about it before. All the great Superman theme songs, from Sammy Timberg's here to John Williams to Andrea Romano, have had some three-"syllable" bit where the word "Superman" would fit, if there were lyrics.

A bit of omniscient narration fills us in on the basics of the backstory:

In the endless reaches of the universe, there once existed a planet known as Krypton, a planet that burned like a green star in the distant heavens."

"Endless reaches of the universe" is the kind of poetic language you might expect to hear from Carl Sagan¹, a little purple science fiction prose. The "burned like a green star" bit is lifted directly from the radio program, but our glimpse of Krypton here is the first time that it's actually been colored green. The globe's only appearance in the comic books thus far has rendered it kind of pinkish.

There, civilization was far advanced, and it brought forth a race of supermen, whose mental and physical powers were developed to the absolute peak of human perfection.

So the origin story has changed little at this point. Krypton remains a world where everyone is super-powered, at least compared to Earth-humans. It also suggests that Kryptonians are, in fact, human (something which has been pretty consistent throughout the origins so far), which may be biologically unlikely but endured as a trope for quite some time. While modern science fiction trends tend toward developing increasingly inhumanoid alien races, there's a streak of early sci-fi which just kind of assumes that there are humans on other worlds as well. The most prominent such universe (now) is in Star Wars, where just-plain-humans populate a variety of worlds, like Corellia and Coruscant. I'm sure there have been justifications for that in expanded universe stuff, just as Star Trek has (at least once) suggested that the humanoid body plan is so common in the cosmos due to seeding by older races. I haven't read enough of the rocket-and-raygun era of sci-fi to know why (or really, if) the "humans are everywhere" trope at least seemed so common, but it does provide some easy answers to later questions about Superman, like why he looks so much like a human and whether or not he and Lois would be able to procreate.

There's another first here, which has carried on to several comic book portrayals of Krypton, and that's drawing the world with a number of geometric lines criscrossing its surface. I've never been entirely clear what these lines are supposed to represent, but I suspect they may be based on the mistaken observation of similar-looking canals on Mars. The idea had begun to be discredited as early as 1909, but persisted in science fiction until long after these Superman cartoons.

But there came a day when giant quakes threatened to destroy Krypton forever. One of the planet's leading scientists, sensing the approach of doom, placed his infant son in a small rocketship and sent it hurtling in the direction of the Earth, just as Krypton exploded! The rocketship sped through star-studded space, landing safely on Earth with its precious burden, Krypton's sole survivor.

Pretty conventional at this point. The destruction of Krypton isn't particularly spectacular.

A passing motorist found the uninjured child and took it to an orphanage.

But man, that is one well-drawn orphanage. There are two things to note, here: first, despite using the radio program's language and lead voice actor, this animated serial completely discards the radio version of Superman's origin, which seems a wise move. Knowing how comic books tend to adopt details from multimedia versions of the characters, if this had stuck with the radio origin, the Superman mythos might be wildly different.

Also, it's worth noting that the passing motorist has made a surprising return to the mythos! I suspect that the only reason the "passing motorist" hasn't achieved a position in the Superman mythos similar to the burglar's in Spider-Man or the gunman's in Batman is that he's been entirely supplanted by the Kents. Otherwise, he might have gotten a name like Joe Chill or a similarly-dressed nephew like Spidey's burglar.

As the years went by and the child grew to maturity, he found himself possessed of amazing physical powers.

I'm glad the modern versions of the origin keep coming back to this idea that Clark developed his powers as he grew, rather than sticking with the insane Silver Age notion that two elderly people could successfully raise a nigh-omnipotent child without anyone noticing. The age at which these powers started developing has been creeping steadily backward since 1986, but so far it's still within some degree of reason.

And so we come to the familiar display of said powers:

Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound!

The appropriate sound effects are inserted here for the first time, along with the appropriate footage. I've always been a little perplexed by that image of Superman jumping over the building. Why is this huge skyscraper out in the middle of nowhere? There's clearly a city in the background, but those buildings are nowhere near this lone skyscraper. Does it have the world's largest parking lot? Is it an example of 1930s urban sprawl? Is Superman demonstrating his powers in Central City? Inquiring minds want to know!

The infant of Krypton is now the Man of Steel: Superman!

"The infant of Krypton" is, fortunately, not a moniker that stuck with the character.

To best be in a position to use his amazing powers in a never-ending battle for true justice, Superman has assumed disguise of Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper.

I'm not sure about the "true justice" part, it could be "truth justice," given the ungrammatical nature of some of the rest of the sentence. Either way, it doesn't sound quite right without "and the American Way" after it.

Mr. White, Managing Editor for...well, some great metropolitan newspaper, anyway, calls Clark and Lois in about a note from a mad scientist. As is often the case with letters to the editor, the author threatenes to attack his detractors at midnight with an "Electrothanasia-Ray." Electrothanasia-Ray, of course, literally means "electric death ray," but sounds so much retro-cooler that I'm quite shocked never to have seen it in a Grant Morrison comic.

Mr. White utters the most commonly-heard phrase when dealing with newspaper letter writers, "This nut may prove dangerous," then sends Clark and Lois to follow up on a lead. Lois, because Lois Lane hasn't changed in seventy years, goes off on her own instead. She does her best Carol Ferris impression flying an airplane (!) off into the distance. We fade to the mad scientist, waiting impatiently for midnight in his obviously evil mountaintop laboratory with a purple vulture and the most uncomfortable chair ever devised.

He activates his Electrothanasia-Ray (which looks suspiciously like Spongebob Squarepants's house) but shuts it down when an airplane approaches.

Now, I don't know much about pre-WWII-era aircraft, but there doesn't appear to be a whole lot of landing space there next to the laboratory. Lois must be a pretty fantastic pilot. What a polymath, that woman. Of course, the scientist instantly kidnaps her and ties her to a chair, then fires his death ray at a suspension bridge.

All this time, Clark Kent has apparently just been sitting at his desk, waiting. when the radio report of the mad scientist's midnight threat came across the speakers. Hearing about the destruction secondhand, Clark decides that it might be a job for Superman. Gee, Clark, maybe the threatening note that said when the mad scientist would strike should have tipped you off to that idea. And didn't you become a newspaper reporter so you could stay on top of the news as it happened? Why are you letting radio reporters scoop you? Ah, Golden Age Superdickery.

Clark leisurely changes in the stock room, then flies out a nearby window. The animation, I have to say, is very nice and fluid, even if the style is a little inconsistent (shifting between more realistic and more Looney Tunes-ish character designs).

While Superman flies off, the mad scientist dials his device in on the skyscraper home of that great metropolitan newspaper, which starts it falling. Superman speeds back to stop it, though I have to imagine that if a building is bending like this one, it's suffered a lot more structural damage than could be saved by pushing and pulling it back to an upright position.

Having righted the building, Superman heads down to its foundation and interrupts the beam. The lurid colors and the style of the beam in this scene are just fantastic. Superman pushes against the ray, flying up along its length. At some point, though, just pressing forward isn't enough, so Superman starts punching the Electrothanasia-Ray.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is one of my favorite Superman scenes ever.

The mad scientist ramps up the power, which sends Superman tumbling, but if there's one thing Superman is good at, it's punching things. Eventually he reaches the barrel, ties it in a knot, and sets the whole lab exploding. Again, I have to comment on the colors here, because they're fantastic. All the light effects and bright flashes really add vibrance and movement to the scenes, and make even simple frames, like this one of Superman just standing, look impressive and iconic.

Superman grabs both Lois and the scientist and flies them to safety. He unceremoniously tosses the mad scientist into a prison cell, and Lois gets to file her front-page story...thanks to Superman. Clark looks to the camera and gives a knowing wink, setting the stage for roughly 83,000 years of the same.

It's a short little film to be sure, with an even shorter time spent on Superman's origin, but between the smoothly rotoscoped Fleischer animation, that Morrisonian Super-wink, and Superman punching a death ray, I'd say that this gives you just about everything you need to know. It may be awhile before this little blog series sees anything as fun as the Electrothanasia-Ray, and Superman comics could benefit quite a bit from more of the titular character punching death rays, but that doesn't mean there isn't a lot of entertainment in the near future. For instance, next week we'll see Superman enter the world of prose fiction for the first time².

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1. In The Demon-Haunted World, Sagan said that he read the adventures of Zatara as a child. Since Zatara's stories tended to appear in Action Comics (debuting alongside Superman's in the first issue) it's certainly likely that he read Superman as well. Given the character's popularity and the Fleischer films' longevity, it's certainly possible that this kind of flowery language influenced Sagan. Or not.

2. Assuming we ignore the prose short stories that have appeared occasionally in the Superman comic.

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Superman Sunday: Origins Master List

Superman Sunday Origins: The Master List

I've been using the preliminary list I made on this post as a kind of master list for the Superman Sunday posts. Since then, I've discovered a few more entries, and so it's time for an update. I'm going to use this post as both a master list for the origins I'm aware of, and as a linkfarm for the posts themselves. As I discover new origins, I'll add them here.

• Action Comics #1 (1938): Part 1
  
• Superman Daily Comic Strips #1-12 (1939): Part 2
  
• Superman #1 (1939): Part 3
  
• "The Adventures of Superman" Radio Program "The Baby from Krypton"/"Clark Kent, Reporter" (1940): Part 4 & Part 5
  
• "Superman" Fleischer Animated Serial Episode 1 (1941): Part 6
  
• The Adventures of Superman novel by George Lowther (1942)¹: Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, & Part 10
  
• "The Adventures of Superman" Radio Program "Superman Comes to Earth"/"Eben Kent Dies in a Fire" (1942)
  
• More Fun Comics #101 (1945)
  
• "The Adventures of Superman" Radio Program "The Meteor of Kryptonite" (1945)
  
• "Superman" Live-Action Serial (1948)
  
• Superman #53 (1948)
  
• Superman #61 (1949)
  
• Action Comics #158 (1951)
  
• "Adventures of Superman" Live-Action Television Series (1952)
  
• Superman #146 (1961)
  
• "Superman" Motion Picture (1978)
  
• Superman: Last Son of Krypton novel by Elliot S! Maggin (1978)
  
• World of Krypton #1-3 (1979)
  
• Action Comics #500 (1979)
  
• History of the DC Universe #1-2 (1986)
  
• The Man of Steel #1-6 (1986)
  
• "Superman" Animated Series (1987)
  
• The World of Krypton (vol. 2) #1-4 (1987)
  
• The World of Smallville #1-4 (1988)
  
• The World of Metropolis #1-4 (1988)
  
• "Superboy" Live-Action TV Series (1988)
  
• "Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman" Live-Action Television Series (1993)
  
• Superman #0 issues (1994)
  
• "Superman" Animated Series (1996)
  
• Superman: For All Seasons #1-4 (1998)
  
• Superman: Peace on Earth (1999)
  
• "Smallville" Live-Action TV Series (2001)
  
• JLA: Secret Origins (2002)
  
• Superman: Birthright #1-12 (2003)
  
• It's Superman novel by Tom De Haven (2005)
  
• All-Star Superman #1 (2005)
  
• 52 History/Origin stories (2006)
  
• Superman: Secret Origin #1-6 (2009)

I'll add more details as I come across them (such as which episodes of "Lois & Clark" and "Smallville" I'll be examining), and feel free to let me know if you find any origin stories I've overlooked. I'm especially interested in whether or not any of the omitted animated series tackle the story, since I'm not particularly well-versed in Super Friends or the other versions. Any insight is greatly appreciated.

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1. This story also appears to be the same story as the radio two-parter from the same year, "Superman Comes to Earth"/"Eben Kent Dies in a Fire," which (as of May 2010) I have not been able to track down.

Winding down

It's been a whirlwind week or two. I've been swamped with work, I've been traveling, and I've just committed to a new apartment. That being said, things are finally coming to a close, and the summer will open up vast new vistas of time. "Superman Sundays" was a relatively ambitious project to start at this point in my job, and I'm going to use some of my free time this week to bank some posts on that front (there's some really interesting bits coming up, I promise!).

So, regular posting will resume soonly! In the meantime, d'ya think I should put my Twitter feed back in the sidebar? I removed it mostly because it runs a little more blue than I usually allow on this page. But if people are interested, I'll pop it back up there.

One more delay

Sorry folks. Had a family emergency and a ton of work this weekend. Superman Sunday will return on Tuesday or Wednesday.

Superman Sunday on Miracle Monday: Origins (Part 5)

By my reckoning, today's the third Monday in May, which means (according to the Elliot S! Maggin Superman novel Miracle Monday) it's Miracle Monday¹. I'd hoped to have read that novel and prepared a review by today, but I've been swamped with work and complaining about Ryan Choi, and I'm still not quite finished with It's Superman, so instead I figured I'd give you the second part of Superman's radio origin. Brace yourself, folks: this is where things get weird.


The opening narration this time is different:

And now, Superman: eighth wonder of the modern world! Visitor from a distant planet whose strength knows no limits, whose endurance is beyond anything the world has ever known.

"Eighth wonder of the modern world" feels like the kind of thing you'd read on an old circus or show poster. It's even a little reminiscent of the early Shuster sketch that inspired this cover. The narrator gives us a brief recap of the previous episode's cliffhanger:

We have seen how the child of Jor-L and Lara was placed in the rocketship and sent on his way to Earth.

Nice, succinct, though it might have been nice to get the child's birth name in addition to his parents' names. Naturally, this leads to the familiar scene of the rocket crash-landing in a field somewhere in America, and the child's discovery. But will it be a passing motorist in this version, or the elderly Kents? Take a look:

During the long journey of the rocketship to Earth, the child has become a man. The rocket landed in the desert. Superman stepped forth full-grown, to explore this strange new world in which he found himself.

Huh? sound bite  Scooby Doo sound bites

Kal-L aged in the rocketship from infancy to adulthood? That's not Superman's origin, that's Lion-O's². This is, obviously, a pretty radical departure from what was established in the comics and comic strip. Clark's boyhood may only have been introduced in "Superman" #1, but every origin up to this point has agreed that he arrived on Earth as a baby. This detail also calls into question whether the last episode actually intended Krypton to be a Counter-Earth world, since I doubt even at this point before the space race that they'd think a journey of 186 million miles would take 20-plus years. This is the first instance of a superhero comic book being adapted for another medium, and thus this is the first instance of superhero Adaptation Decay, setting the stage for everything from 'Holy Noun, Batman!' to 'Spider-Sentai'.

So, why the drastic change? I suspect it's a matter of budget and time. Recording the Superman origin from the comics would potentially require actors for young Clark, Ma & Pa, and at least one worker at the orphanage. They could do some more narration to cover the gap, I suppose, but instead they choose to jump right into the action. It's a show for kids, after all, and while the kids might be confused by how different this detail is from the comics they've been following (if they've been following the comics), they probably don't care much about the details of Superman's adoption. Still, it's certainly an oddity, it's certainly worth commenting on, and it'll certainly raise some questions later on.

And it's not the last oddity, either.

The story proper opens with Superman, "hovering with his curious power above a quiet highway in Indiana." So that's episode two, and we've left "leaping" behind. Say what you will about Adaptation Decay, folks, but it'll make you believe a man can fly.

Indiana may be an odd place to start from a modern perspective, but remember that Superman's home state has never been given at this point. Kansas hasn't even been mentioned, let alone "Smallville," and there's no indication of where Metropolis is located. This is, in fact, the first time Superman is explicitly placed in the Midwest--although a little further East than usual.

Superman watches as a trolley picks up the Professor and his son Jimmy (not Olsen), but the car begins to move without the driver. The doors are jammed shut, so Jimmy breaks a window, but they can't jump out because the car is going too fast. To make matters worse, a tree has fallen onto the track! Just in time, Superman arrives, tearing the roof off the trolley and grabbing the two passengers--"one under each arm." He flies them to safety, just before the trolley car crashes, and lands in a field.

After recovering from their fear, Jimmy asks some pertinent questions: "Who are you? Where do you come from." Superman responds, "I have no name. I come from a world that no longer exists. Here in this world of yours, men would call me a Superman."

It's fair to say that we don't know how long Superman has been on Earth at this point. There's an exploitable gap between 'arriving as a full-grown man' and 'saving the trolley riders,' during which he might have observed humans and learned the language and so forth. Still, how does he know his planet no longer exists? And if he knows that, why doesn't he know that his name is Kal-L?

Superman makes the duo promise to keep his existence a secret, not yet ready for the world to know about him. After they agree (one wonders what he'd do if they didn't!), he asks for some advice:

Superman: You know this world; I am a stranger. You know the people in it, and I have still to find them out.

Professor: You want to meet men, is that it?

"I know just the place."³

Superman: Not meet them, professor, observe them, study them, see them at their best and their worst.

"Ah, that might cost you extra."⁴

Know which to help, and when help is needed. If you could tell me that--

The professor thinks for a bit and suggests that the best place Superman could go to see what he wants to see is "a newspaper, a great metropolitan daily." Eventually, Superman decides to take this advice as literally as possible. The Professor suggests that he join their staff and be a reporter. This generally fits with the Golden Age justification for Superman's civilian career--in the earlier stories, he saw working at a newspaper as a way of keeping abreast of crime and trouble (because the newspaper would know of those things before anyone else--oh, how the times change). But Jimmy sees a glaring problem with that plan:

Oh, but you can't do it in those clothes, not that blue costume with the cloak and shield on your breast! Gee, you couldn't!

Though we might have guessed, this is our first indication that Superman is wearing his traditional costume. It's a brief description, and I suspect that the scriptwriters were banking on their audience being familiar with the costume already from the comic books, comic strips, and promotional campaign. In any case, this raises some further serious questions, namely where did the costume come from? Was he dressed in the costume when launched from Krypton? The Silver Age held that his costume's fabric was super-stretchy, so it fit him as well when he was Superman as it did when he was Superboy, but for the fabric to still fit him as a baby? And wouldn't that mean (in either case) that his cape was once much longer in proportion, because why would it stretch (and hold its shape)? Again, there's an unknown period of time between Kal-L's landing on Earth and rescuing the trolley, so I suppose he could have learned to sew and acquired fabrics for a costume in that span, but it's still odd. Wouldn't it be far easier to acquire normal clothes, then make a flamboyant costume? In any case, Superman explains that his primary-colored garb is the costume of Superman, and that he'd dress like a normal man if he became like one of them.

The Professor says that Superman will need some kind of a name, and asks what people call Superman. Superman says that he has no name, and I've got sudden déjà vu. The Professor apparently wasn't paying attention earlier when Jimmy asked that question and Superman gave basically the same answer. That's okay, he's just had a traumatic experience. He deserves a little slack. The scriptwriters, on the other hand...

Jimmy, ever the helpful sort, says this:

Well, how about 'Clark Kent'? That sounds all right.

Really. That's how Superman gets his name in this version. I remember reading "Just Imagine Stan Lee Creating Superman" years ago, thinking that it was ridiculous for having Clark pick his name from looking at a truck and a street sign, but this is worse. Why that name? Why was Jimmy able to supply it with so little hesitation? It'd be better even if they went with the real-life logic that produced his name: "How about Clark, like Clark Gable? And Kent, like Kent Taylor? 'Clark Kent'!" But for Jimmy to just have that name on the tip of his tongue is fairly odd.

The Professor says the name is "usual enough, won't attract attention." That's probably true, in-universe. Here on Earth-Prime, where Superman and Clark Kent are household names, I can't help but wonder how much the decreasing popularity of "Clark" as a first name has coincided with the popularity of Superman. It's kind of odd to be naming your kids after fictional characters, you know, and I suspect that's a lot of why you don't meet many Clarks, Bruces, or Lukes these days. Unfortunately, we don't have a "control" Earth where the characters never existed, so we could see what the popularity variations would be in their absence. Superman decides to follow their advice, to become a reporter by the name of Clark Kent (which, strangely, Superman says twice each time he says it). Having lingered too long, he bids the duo goodbye, then takes off.

I could end the post here, since it's really the end of the "origin" part of the story, but I might as well stick it out for the last six minutes. We're quickly introduced to Perry White for the first time ever (the newspaper editor in the comics is George Taylor), and he doesn't object to being called "Chief." He receives a phone tip about a railroad story, warning him specifically of a man called "The Wolfe," who will ultimately be one of the main villains for this arc. Perry's secretary, Miss Smith (no Betty Brant, but she'll do) informs him that there's a man still waiting for an interview, and Perry realizes he doesn't have anyone available to take the railroad story. He tells Miss Smith to send the man in, and we get our first auditory glimpse at Clark Kent.

While Bud Collyer's characteristic inflection and accent is present, he's raised the pitch of his voice and softened it significantly to portray Clark, which would become a pretty standard tactic for future portrayals of the Man of Steel. Collyer played Superman for decades, on radio, animated movie serials, and television, so it's not surprising that he set the bar. Collyer walks the careful line between making the voices distinct and making it clear that they're the same person; it's really quite impressive.

In any case, Kent runs into an unsurprising problem: he has no experience whatsoever. I'm glad they addressed this, because anything else would have been a pretty big stretch of the old disbelief suspenders. Perry doesn't have time or patience for rookies, so Clark plays the only trump card he has: offering to bring in a big story, specifically about The Wolfe. This is the first indication in the radio show that Superman's senses might be more acute than a human's, though the comics described his "sensitive ears" over a year ago⁵, making super-hearing one of the first new powers Superman would gain over the decades.

Clark plays coy with the story--likely because he only knows as much about it as Perry does, since he heard the same phone call--but Perry takes the bait and describes the situation: The Wolfe has sent threats to "tie up every railroad in the country"--threats which went unheeded until one train went off a bridge. The warnings are being kept secret until they've been thoroughly investigated. With impeccable timing, The Wolfe chooses that moment to call in, warning Perry that the Silver Clipper will not make it from Denver to Salt Lake City.

Clark is really terrible with his secret identity here, tipping his hand to Perry that he could hear what the voice on the other end of the phone was saying. Perry finds it odd at first, but mostly brushes it off so he can take a chance on Clark and send him on the story.

Miss Smith takes Clark around the building, ultimately leading him to the anteroom to the cashier's office, so she can get him an advance for a plane ticket. When she leaves, Clark goes out the window, twenty stories up. Miss Smith returns and panics, realizing that Clark has jumped out. Clark's taking a very cavalier attitude toward his secret identity, and I suspect that this won't be the case for very long in the radio program (we already know it's not the case in other media).

So ultimately, a fairly conventional ending to what started (or more accurately, middled) as a very unconventional version of the Superman origin. The drastic changes deal only with the sort of thing that needn't be mentioned ever again, and that's about the same time I think we'll hear about Jimmy and the Professor. The end scene, where Clark gets a job by pitching a story that no one else could get, shows up frequently in these origin stories (although usually the story involves an interview with Superman). This whole segment is particularly interesting because of what's been left out. I mentioned the Kents (and any childhood) earlier, but more significant, I think is that there's no Lois Lane. Four new characters are introduced, two of whom will likely never show up again, and yet the one major mainstay is nowhere to be found. She'll turn up eventually, it's just interesting that the scriptwriters left her out of this "introduce the main characters" episode. There may have been behind-the-scenes reasons for this, since there was apparently some difficulty in nailing down an actress for the part of Lois.

It's a good pair of episodes, especially the Krypton segment, and it's the strength and intriguing interpretations of these early programs that got me hooked on the "Adventures of Superman" radio program when I first started listening to it a couple of years ago. The cast is top-notch, especially Collyer, and I highly recommend taking a listen to further episodes. I'd especially like to track down some of the ones that aren't in the commonly-available sources, especially the first appearance of Kryptonite and the revamped origin story from a few years down the road.

As a final point, since I didn't know it in time for the last post, it's worth mentioning that even though this origin didn't have Lois, it did have a Lane. Lara was portrayed by veteran actress Agnes Moorehead, famous now for her roles in Citizen Kane and Bewitched, but at the time this was recorded, her most notable role was Margot Lane, confidante to The Shadow. I have read that Margot Lane was a major influence in the development of Lois's character, right down to the surname, but not only can I not find a reference for it, but it seems unlikely given the account of her creation in Les Daniels' Superman: The Golden Age. I'll amend this if I can find a source, otherwise it remains an interesting curiosity.

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1. Also notable: Tomorrow is the 71st anniversary of the release date of "Superman" #1.

2.Interestingly, there's a lot of Superman in "ThunderCats," largely because I think both were particularly influenced by Judaism. While Superman can be seen as the story of Moses's birth--the child set adrift to be raised by outsiders, who would become a great hero--the ThunderCats story is the other side of the Moses tale: the Exodus and journey to the Promised Land. Jaga plays the role of Moses (most of the time) in the latter, appointing the new leader and guiding his people safely to their new home, but dying before they arrive. There's an incredibly geeky dissertation in this, I think.

3. Sorry, I just couldn't resist.

4. I have no willpower.

5. In "Action Comics" #8, cover-dated January, 1939, which means it was probably released in November, 1938.

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Superman Sunday: Origins Master List

Superman Sunday: Origins (Part 4)

"Boys and girls, your attention please. Presenting a new exciting radio program featuring the thrilling adventures of an amazing and incredible personality!"

With that brief introduction on February 12, 1940, Superman made his way off of the page and onto the airwaves, taking the first small steps into a multimedia empire that would span decades (so far). I think it's fairly common knowledge that a lot of the Superman mythos started with the radio program--everything from Kryptonite to the Daily Planet to "Look! Up in the sky!"--and made its way into the comics later. It's a process that continues to this day, as comics incorporate characters and details from other media into the print continuity¹, generally reflecting either the actual greater visibility and popularity of non-comic media, or the comic writers' perception that that's the case.

What's less common knowledge, I think, is that such elements weren't in place from the start. There's some incredible adaptation decay involved here, which never quite made the leap from broadcast to print--and that's probably for the best.

But the first episode contains a version of the destruction of Krypton that could easily be taken straight from a modern portrayal. Give it a listen:


Frankly, I'm not entirely sure how to go about describing this show, since there's no convenient way to reference discreet bits like panels or even scenes. I think I'm just going to listen through and write up what seems significant. I'll also take a moment to say that I imagine the posts will tend to get either longer or less in-depth as time goes on, since the origin stories get longer as time goes on. Sure, these early years, even up through the Kirk Alyn serial and the '50s comics, have stories that are confined to relatively short time periods and page counts. But 1978 brings a 45-minute origin story; 1996's is nearly 90 minutes, and by 2003 we have 12 full issues to contend with. I'm not made of blogging.

The first significant portion is the introductory narration.

Faster than an airplane! More powerful than a locomotive! Impervious to bullets!
"Up in the sky, look!"
"It's a bird!"
"It's a plane!"
"It's Superman!"

And now, Superman.

It's clearly the rough draft of the opening that we're all used to from the cartoons and TV shows, which is so frequently referenced in pop culture that I suspect most people can rattle large parts of it off the top of their heads, even if they've never seen a Superman show before. Hearing it this first time, the same but subtly different, is a lot like reading the original U.S. Pledge of Allegiance after reciting the revised version in school my whole life. "More powerful than a locomotive" and the bird/plane/Superman bits are the only full lines that make it to the more familiar introduction intact. Eventually, as you know, the first and third lines are combined to become "faster than a speeding bullet," and we get the added "able to leap tall buildings in a single bound," trading a description of invulnerability for leaping/flight. I'll be curious to see if the "leaping" bit is introduced before or after he gains sustained flight as a power. It's hard to say whether "faster than a plane" (vs. bullet) is meant to be a description of his limits or not; as far as I can tell from very cursory research, military planes around the time had top speeds around 450 mph, and Chuck Yeager wouldn't officially break the sound barrier (761.2 mph) for another eight years. I haven't found any official specs on bullet speeds from guns of the era, but bullet speeds in general can easily outstrip that depending on conditions, ranging from 400 mph at the low end to over 3000 mph. Not that Superman's powers have ever been quite so clearly defined, that is, I'm just interested to know if this is meant to be an "impressive but not preposterous" description of his speed, where the change to "faster than a speeding bullet" was an extension of his power, or if it's just that "faster than a speeding bullet" is more impressive and poetic.

Moving right along, there's a second paragraph to the introduction, which again is like a first draft for the version that becomes immortal². It's an interesting mix of what we've seen at the end of the origin stories in the comics and lines like "strange visitor from another planet" that show up in later iterations. Here it is, for posterity and the hearing-impaired:

And now, Superman: a being no larger than an ordinary man, but possessed of powers and abilities never before realized on Earth. Able to leap into the air an eighth of a mile at a single bound! Hurdle a twenty-story building with ease! Race a high-powered bullet to its target! Lift tremendous weights and rend solid steel in his bare hands, as though it were paper. Superman: a strange visitor from a distant planet, champion of the oppressed, physical marvel extraordinary, who has sworn to dedicate his existence on Earth to helping those in need.

The "eighth of a mile"/"twenty-story building"/"raise tremendous weights" has been pretty well consistent in the different origin stories, as has the "champion of the oppressed" and "helping those in need." Frankly, I really like the "champion of the oppressed" moniker, and I'll be interested to see when it gets phased out. "Rend steel" eventually becomes "bend steel," "distant planet" eventually becomes "another planet," and "race a high-powered bullet" eventually gets streamlined into the first-paragraph zinger. For how much of this is taken directly from the comics, it's significant to note that they don't mention that his skin is impervious to anything "less than a bursting shell." And, for that matter, though they keep the "leaping," the sound effect they use sure sounds like flying to me. There's also no mention of Clark Kent, though I think the reasons for that will become obvious in the second episode. This first installment is just about the sci-fi.

There's some nice poetic language in the description of our auditory journey, to "where the planet Krypton burns like a green star in the endless heaven." Here, as in all the previous versions of the story, the denizens of Krypton are highly-evolved supermen at the peak of human physical perfection. The story proper opens on "Krypton's foremost scientist" Jor-L addressing "the planet's governing council" in the Temple of Wisdom. Through his "solar calculations," Jor-L has determined that Krypton is doomed. He lists a litany of natural disasters that have been plaguing the planet, leading to the inevitable conclusion that the planet is facing its final days. Members in the crowd dismiss his doomsaying as mad, and Rozan is sure that he's made a mistake. On the contrary, says Jor-L, Krypton is being drawn ever closer to its sun, and within a month the gravitational stresses will cause Krypton's complete destruction. The council laughs, but Rozan humors him: "Assuming for the moment, Jor-L, that what you say is true, how are we to avoid it? What can we do to stop it?" Jor-L explains that he's been working on a space-ship, and with time and the combined effort and resources of the council, they might be able to evacuate the entire population of Krypton to Earth, which has a similar atmosphere.

Rozan is, again, dismissive. Of course they "have the utmost respect for your [Jor-L's] knowledge and integrity," but he's obviously been working too hard. "Planets as large as Krypton do not explode, Jor-L." So the government recognizes that Jor-L is the world's foremost scientist, respected for his knowledge and integrity, but they patronize him, dismiss his findings as "impossible" and laugh him out of the building, calling him crazy, because they don't like his conclusions and obviously they know more about science than the world's foremost scientist. There's a relevant lesson in all that, even seventy years later.

Another earthquake hits, and Jor-L repeats his warnings.

Jor-L: Wait! Do you hear that, gentlemen? It's the forewarning of doom! Every moment is precious now! Quakes like that are sounding the death knell of Krypton! It will happen, gentlemen, and happen soon! When the last great eruption comes--

Rozan: When it comes, Jor-L, it shall find all of us ready. If Krypton is to die, we shall die with it. The parting would be much too severe. [The council laughs].

And there you have it. The Council of Krypton has chosen its fate, and dismissed Jor-L's science as a joke. Jor-L chides them for their flippant attitude: "Laugh all you like, Rozan, and you members of the Council. I have no time to laugh. My wife, Lara³, and my infant son are dear to me. It is not my wish to stand by and see them destroyed!" He then ends his speech with a hearty 'you'll all be sorry,' and they laugh once more. On one hand, Jor-L is acting a bit like a classic crackpot, and it's often hard to tell the difference between reasonable warnings and irrational doomsaying. On the other hand, you can see Jor-L trying every tactic he can think of to convince the council: he starts by explaining his scientific findings in a fairly calm manner and laying out the potential solution, he moves on to trying to scare them into action, and finally he resorts to an appeal to their humanity, using his own family to try to evoke the council's sympathies. None of it works; the old men are too set in their ways, and so Rozan calls a vote with some pretty loaded language: "You have heard Jor-L speak. Is it your wish that we devote time and money to the building of space-ships, for the transportation of Krypton's population to another planet?" The vote goes about as well as you'd expect.

Jor-L tells the Council that they've signed the death warrant for every living thing on the planet, and says he'll proceed with building his own spaceship to save his family. "As for the rest of you: May the gods have mercy on your souls."

Jor-L returns home, where Lara complains about the heat, wondering if it's because of Krypton's increasing proximity to its sun. Jor-L responds in the affirmative, which raises some scientific questions. I'm no astronomer, but I think if Krypton is getting close enough to the sun that it's affecting global temperature, then there should be other, more obvious signs that its orbit is changing. I think the days should appear to be getting longer, seasons should be getting out of whack, the sun should appear larger in the sky. I suppose those changes might not yet be drastic enough, depending on the astronomical conditions, and one should never underestimate the ability of people in positions of power to rationalize away the obvious. Lara asks him how the Council responded to his news, but Jor-L says he didn't mention it. He doesn't have the heart to tell her that they won't support him (or his pride was wounded by being laughed out of the room). He's just finished building his model rocket, and if it works, he'll build a much larger version for the three of them.

There's a really tragic comment here, from my perspective: "Can't you come in and look at him [Kal-L]? You scarcely see him these days, what with working all hours on the spaceship model." Not only will Jor-L miss his son's childhood and adulthood, sending him off into the cosmic wilderness, but he's sacrificed what little time he does have with the boy to ensure that the child will have a future. That's heartbreaking, and it makes me almost angry that other versions of this origin story have changed this detail, have missed this point, making Jor-L into an artificial intelligence who raises or educates or manipulates his son from beyond the grave. This is the tragedy of Jor-L: he sacrifices everything to give his son a better future than he'll have, up to and including having a relationship with his child.

Suddenly, I have a much more positive opinion of Jor-L.

Jor-L explains how the model craft will work. This is where the Silver Age went wrong, I think, by retconning multiple test-flights into the origin story, rocketing a dog and a chimp into space. It makes the baby-sized rocket look like the next phase in the testing process, rather than a model that was never meant to be used to carry anyone anywhere. After the chimp lives, why not make a full-sized rocket for the whole family?

Anyway, the rocket is pointed at Earth, "a planet, smaller than our own, situated on the other side of the sun." This is the origin of the idea that Krypton was "originally" meant to be in our solar system on an orbit opposite to our own, so we can never detect it. There are some serious astronomical problems with that notion, made odder by the fact that Krypton's rapid descent toward the sun never has any stated effect on Mercury or Venus. I think there's enough ambiguity and poetic license in Jor-L's description here that you can't necessarily peg Krypton's location, but regardless it's not a part of the "original" anything. We're four origins in, folks.

Jor-L explains to Lara what Earth's humans are like, how they're less developed and weaker and more limited than Kryptonians. His illustration is worth quoting:

Jor-L: Something like this: You know how far you step when you want to go somewhere?

Lara: Practically as far as I want. Why, one step takes me to Bruta's house, near the fountain.

Jor-L: Exactly. But down where I'm sending this spaceship, it's quite different. An Earthman steps only three feet at a time at most, and everything else is in proportion.

Lara: And that's where we're going? Oh, how dreadful.

Another little detail that Byrne would eventually restore: Lara's revulsion at the planet Earth. I do like Lara's romantic resignation: "It doesn't matter whether we live or die, as long as we're together." It recalls some of the poetic melodrama from the newspaper strip version.

Jor-L plans to test the rocket at dawn, watching to ensure that it reaches Earth safely. They are about to head back into the house to escape the oppressive heat, when the ground starts trembling once more due to a series of subterranean explosions. Jor-L realizes that the end has come ahead of schedule--"Oh, what a fool I've been to delay!" The other tragedy of Jor-L: despite his warnings, despite his careful studies and calculations, despite his meticulous testing, even he overestimates how much time Krypton has left. Lara asks if the model is large enough to carry one of them, then goes to retrieve Kal-L: "If one of us can be saved, Jor-L, it should be the boy!" Jor-L disagrees--he wants to send Lara. I have a hard time describing why I like this, but something about it rings true. There's something both romantic and pragmatic about Jor-L's position, and something both optimistic and maternal about Lara's. Jor-L provides the means of salvation, Lara provides the hope for the future--shocking that those two elements would go to produce someone like Superman.

On an amusing note, Jor-L can't help but get in an 'I told you so' before the end: "just as I foretold!" Take that, Rozan! They put Kal-L in the rocket and start the launch process. The house begins to sway, smoke pours from the center of the planet, while the rocket builds power. Just when Jor-L thinks it might be too late, the rocket launches. Jor-L declares that their son is on his way to Earth. Lara cries out his name: "Kal-L! KAL-L!" And the planet crumbles.

So the tiny rocketship roars into the uncharted heavens, as the mighty planet of Krypton explodes into millions of glowing fragments, glittering stars to remain forever in the night sky.

I wonder, if they hadn't said that Krypton's fragments were "glowing," would anyone have thought up the idea for Kryptonite? I'll ignore the word "stars" (and for that matter, the word "forever") here as poetic license.

As for Kal-L's ship, as the closing narration says, "Does it reach the Earth? Does it find its mark in all the far-flung darkness of space?"

I guess we'll find out in episode two. Don't miss the next installment of Superman Sunday!

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1. For example, Harley Quinn, Live Wire, Spider-Man's organic webshooters, Wolverine's claws extending from between his knuckles, Iron Man not being a jerk, etc.

2. I'm actually going through some of the radio archives, and it's very interesting to hear the intro develop. To me, anyway. I'm skipping ahead story arc by story arc, and each one gets a little closer to what I'm familiar with--adding lines, subtracting words, and interestingly enough keeping the phrase "champion of the weak and the oppressed" pretty consistently. The familiar "CRACK! Faster than a speeding bullet!" beginning and "the American Way" at the end appear to have been added in 1942, probably during one of the large gaps in my archive--or possibly introduced by one of the portrayals in other media, since the first Fleischer cartoons aired in 1941. At some point, this might be a worthwhile post or series on its own. Mental note: made.

3. Yes, "Lara," with a long "a" at the beginning (though that fluctuates throughout the episode). "Lora" is gone, presumably never to be seen again.

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Superman Sunday: Origins Master List