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At 63, why does Superman have the
power
Bv
n
F neur
Superman, strange visitor
from another planet
-
Cleve-
land
-
who, created there by
mild-mannered cartoonists
Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster,
fights a never-ending battle
for...
Lovncn
OOK! Up in
the air-
waves! And
the movie
screen! And
the Broad-
way stage!
And the
printed
page! It's
Superman!"
Yes, it's
Qh,
you know the rest. And
that's the point. Superman
and almost everything about
him
-
the big "S," Kr5rytonite,
Lois Lane
-
are pieces of
Americana as recognizable
worldwide as Mickey Mouse,
cowboys, Coca-Cola and.ham-
burgers.
With extraordinary adapt-
ability to changing times
-
perhaps his most potent
superpower
-
Superman for
60-plus years has remai4ed a
symbol for part of how Ameri-
cans see themselves. For while
he's popular throughout the
world, this seminal superhero,
the first, the progenitor of all
to eaptivate us? It's the American way.
others, sprang from an art form
-
comic books
-
that is as
native to America as
jazz.
The latest incarnation of th'e
mythos, the TV series "Small-
ville"
(premiering Tuesday at 9
p.m. on WPIX / t1-), finds
l5-year-old Clark Kent
(Tom
Welling) a modern-day Kansas
farmboy awkwardly coming to
gnps with paranormal abilities
that have been developing since
he came to Earth amid a meteor-
ite shower 12 years earlier.
There is no costume and caPe,
nor is anything like that
planned.
The overriding metaphor is of
adolescent awakening. "The
notion of learning about and
coming to grips with superpow-
ers is directly associated with
coming-of-age stories with the
'superpowers' of adolescence
-
sexual desire, puberty, all this
sort of thing," says Dr. Robert
Thompson, director of the Cen-
ter for the Study of Popular
Television at Syracuse Universi-
ty.Al Gough, who created the
series with Mark Millar, says
that is
just
so. "He's a teenager
at the onset of puberty, his
powers are starting to grow
exponentially
-
yeah," Gough
says, chuckling, "I think it's safe
to say we're in metaphoric terri-
tory."
The Man of Steel has had
many incarnations and
continues to answer our
need tor a hero as he
changes with the times.
At left, it's Christopher
Reeve to the roscuo.
That territory has been home
to the most enduring of the
superheroes created since Super-
nlan's hirth in Action Conrics
N<1. 1, cover-dated .June 1938.
Batman speaks to the darker
impulses we all hitvc, the Hulk
to our inner rage. Spider-Man
could
just
as well be Ever;rman,
the well-meaning guy whose
dreams get dashed by life no
matter how smart and talented
he secretly may be.
Superman is the flip side of
that. If Spider-Man is who we
probably are, Superman is who
we'd like to be.
"It's
just
something that hap-
pens in most civilizations, that
there's a terrifically strong,
brave, heroic frgure people feel
they could rally around, that
exemplifres what they want
from their culture," says Les
Daniels, a novelist and the
author of several books on com-
ics, including "Superman, the
Complete llistory: The Life and
Times of the Man of Steel"
(Chronicle
Books, 1998).
"Most of those legendary
heroes, Samson, Hercules, are
in the past. Superman was not
only the Man of Steel but was
also known as the Man of Tomor-
row. That science-fiction concept
has kept him fresh," Daniels
says.
"He's such a perfectly versa-
tile superhero," says Thompson.
"He's probably the closet thing
we have to'one superhero fits
all.'His powers are vague
enough
-
super strength, flight,
invulnerability, super sens-
es
-
that he can fit into any
situation. That and the fact that
CoNTINUED ON D24
^;&-n:.-4t
-.!&-d
STIII GOING STRONG
he was the first made
him popular in the Gold-
en Age"
-
the period
from about 1938 to 1946,
when comic books con-
taining new material, as
opposed to comic-strip
reprints, defined them-
selves as a unique story-
telling idiom.
That uniqueness
evolved from a marriage
of form
(comic
strips,
which tell stories in
single or sequential
panels of art and text)
and content
(heroic
ad-
venture fiction in the
' tradition of Robin Hood
folk tales, Tarzan, cow-
boy magazine stories and
the protagonists of the
then-current rage, the
1O-cent pulp magazines).
Yet whereas pulp heroes
such as the Shadow and
Doc Savage were extraor-
dinary men, they were
still only human.
Superman creators
Siegel and Shuster, two
high school sci-fi fans,
made the leap to a super-
human hero, albeit in
more than a single
bound. With inspiration
from, among other things, Philip Wylie's 1930
science-frction novel, "Gladiator," a naturalistic
tragedy of a man with a degree of superhuman
strenglh and invulnerability, they first envi-
sioned an evil, non-costumed Superman in the
'
January 1933 isSue of a sci-fi fanzine they pro-
duced.
By the following year they created a Super-
man eomie strip with the basic elements of the
mythology and spent three years trying unsuc-
cessfully to sell it. After breaking into DC Com-
ics with characters such as their "Federal Men"
'and
"Dr. Occult," they sold the company "Super-
man."
Born of the Great Depression, Superman origi-
nated. as a Nietzschean strongman in the tenor
of the times.
(In
a nod to this, "Smallville" shows
Clark with a copy of "The Portable Nietzsche"
and has Lana Lang teasingly ask if he's "man or
superman.") The earliest stories depict Super-
man as a swaggering, even thuggish champion
of the people: In early adventures he roughs up
wife-beaters,
petty criminals and union busters.
What kept him from a purely Nietzschean
stance was that "superman wasn't a figure of
authority," says DC Comics publisher Paul Lev-
itz. "He was a figure of solution. A figure of
authority is when people are looking for someone
to tell them what to do with their lives, and
there was certainly a lot of that around the
world in the '30s. But Superman wasn't there to
tell anyone what to do. He was there to solve
things people couldn't solve."
The mythology continued to develop
-
not
just
in the comic books, but in a radio show,
movi6 serials, a 1942 novel and 17 acclaimed
theatrical cartoons. It was the 1940-51 radio
The image ol the original Superman as he
appeared in DG Comics, starting in 1938. Over
the
years he has also soared on radio, in mov'
ies and on television.
show, for instance, that
gave us the character of
cub reporter Jimmy
Olsen and the phrases
"IJp, up and away!" and
"This looks like a
iob for
Superm.an!"
(Future
TV
game-show host Bud
Collyer provided Supe's
voice on radio and in the
cartoons; actor-dancer
Kirk Alyn was the first to
embody him on film.)
The 1950s and early
'60s brought us, depend-
ing on one's point of view,
either the silly Superman
or the sci-fi Super-
man
-
and in this way,
from the ridiculous
(the
impish Mister Mxyzptlk)
to the sublime
(the
utopi-
an vistas of legendary
Krypton), Superman
stayed with the times.
"Adventures of Super-
man,' the highly popular
TV series starring George
Reeves, kept the charac-
ter
going strong during
this.time.
During the'60s and
early'70s, when DC
Comics found itself out-
paced in the public con-
sciousness and eventual-
ly in sales by rival Marvel and its revolutionary
'buperheroes in the real world" approach,Super-
man remained a steady presence,
joining
Bat-
man and others in the animated superhero car-
toons in vogue at the time.
Pushed to new prominence with the hit 1978
Christopher Reeve movie and its sequels, Super-
man underwent a tie-the-loose-threads-together
revamp in 1986 anil has continued in popularity
on telef ision and in such iconic e\-ents as Clark
Kent's headline-making marriage to Lois Lane
and, later, his death and resurrection.
Says Daniels: "I remember Mike Carlin,
-who
was Supennan editor.at that time, saying Super-
man's death proved to people hon'much they
wanted Superman afber all."
We still seem to today, although "'today'is a
weird concept," cautions Daniels. "'Today' is a
different concept than it was a month dgo,"
before the Sept. 11 tragedy. Since then, says
David Bushman, a curator at the Museum of TV
and Radio, "the answer to Superman's
populari-
ty is more apparent than maybe ever. It starts
with Superman's tremendous appeal among
kids, having to do with their own fantasies and
wish-fulfrllment. But even adults, in times like
these, kind of think,'Wouldn?t it be nice to have
Superman right now?"'
That's today. Tomorrow the Man of Tomorrow
may remain r-elevant for other reasons, especial-
ly in America. '
"He's sort of the ultimate American dream,"
says "smallville's" Gough. "An immigrant who
enied up in the Midwest and raised with good
old-fashioned American values who goes to the
city and becomes a hero."
I
Franh Louece is a
freelance
writer.
$u GFmil Wffimwffiffimw
June 1938: First appearance,
"Action Comics" No. 1.
Jan. 16, 1939: First daily comic
strip (through May 1966).
Summer 1939: First issue of
"supermhn" comic book.
Feb. 12, 1940: First radio show,
"The Adventures of Superman"
(syndicated).
Sept. 26, 1941: First of 17
theatrical cartoons.
Au9.31,1942: Radio show goes
network.
January 1945: Superboy's first
appearance, "More Fun Comics."
1948: First movie serial.
March 1949: "Superboy" comic
book debuts.
Nov. 23, 1951: First feature film,
"Superman and the Mole Men."
Fall 1952:
First TV
series, "Ad-
ventures ol
Superman"
(first-run
syndication
through
1 e57),
March 29,
1966: Broadway
musical, "lt's a Bird,
It's a Plane, lt's
Superman."
Sept. 10, 1966: First
animated TV series,
"The New Adven-
tures of
Super-
man."
Sept. 8,
1973:
Animated
"Superman"
movie opens.
June 19,
1981: "Super-
man ll"
0pens.
June 17,
1983: "Super-
man lll"
0pens.
Nov. 23,
1984: "Super-
girl" opens.
TV series,'"Super
Friends."
Dec. 15, 1978:
July 24, 1987: "Superman lV:
The Quest for Peace" opens.
Fall 1988: "Superboy" syndicat-
ed TV series debuts
Sept. 12, 1993:
"Lois
& Clark:
The New Adventures of Super-
man" TV series debuts.
September 1996: Animated TV
series "Superman"
debuts.
January 1998: Superman lJerry
Seinfeld American Express
commercial airs during Super
Bowl XXXIl.
0ct. 16, 2001:
"Smallville"
debuts on The WB.
The Man of Steel has had
many incarnations and
continues to answer our
need lor a hero as he
changes with the times.
At lelt, it's Ghristopher
Reeve to the roscuo.
WB Photo / Brian Cyr