Action Comics #14: Superman Meets the Ultra-Humanite

This is part of an ongoing series where I review Golden Age Superman, issue by issue, starting from the very beginning. 

Superman Meets the Ultra-Humanite is more or less the same story as Superman vs. the Cab Protective League: Clark finds out about an organized, criminal attempt to undermine transportation in Metropolis, chases down some crooks behind it as Superman, and then follows them back to their boss, who turns out to be Ultra-Humanite. Superman dispatches the crooks, but Ultra ultimately escapes. The title is a bit of a misnomer, as they have already met, though these are retroactive titles from reprinted editions, more for the sake of categorization than anything else. It also gives away the fact that this is an Ultra-Humanite story, while Superman vs. the Cab Protective League sounds more like a standard Superman yarn. It's sort of like all those "___ of the Daleks" Doctor Who stories that expect you to be surprised when a Dalek shows up at the end of the first episode.

This time, the subway system is being made with shoddy materials. Organised crime and construction have a long, interlinked history in North America. After Mussolini rose to power in Italy and began cracking down on the mafia activities, many criminal organisations moved overseas in the 1920s (Burrough). Prohibition offered an easy way to sell illicit product, allowing gangs to gain a foothold in the world of organised crime and remain in business long after Prohibition was repealed in 1933. Many of these groups were formed by ethnic immigrants, who lived in poverty and had less opportunity to make a living on the right side of the law. Al Capone, perhaps the most famous mafioso of the time, was arrested in 1931, but the problem wouldn’t go away overnight. In 1985, 9 Mafia leaders were indicted for several charges, including extorting construction companies (Lubasch). Here in Canada, the Charbonneau Comission was formed in 2011 and led to several key arrests surrounding Mafia influence in our construction industry, as recently as 2017 (Perraeux). Hollywood films of the 1930s such as Scarface and Little Caesar showed the violence and influence these organisations wielded. Organized crime was always on the popular conscious. 

Naturally, it makes sense that the threats Superman faced would reflect realm world crime and its depictions in popular culture. A justice system that was either incompetent, underfunded, corrupt, or even a bit of all three required an outside force to keep gangsters at bay, and the superhero genre grabbed onto that fantasy at the perfect time. The use of shoddy materials to save money is something that also appeared in Superman Declares War on Reckless Drivers and The Blakely Mine Disaster, a critical flaw in unchecked capitalism that clearly made Siegel and Shuster uncomfortable. 

From this point of view, Ultra-Humanite is not just a mad genius bent on world domination, he’s also a mob boss, ruling over Metropolis from the shadows as a corrupting force over a vulnerable populace still recovering from the Great Depression. He is a melding of two of the biggest anxieties of the era, both Hitler and Capone. They don’t mix very well, though. I’m sure power over the Metropolis underworld would give him greater influence to some extent, but racketeering doesn’t really have a logical progression to world domination. He claims he wants to deal with Superman before he takes over the world, which conveniently lets Siegel & Shuster off the hook for having him do anything that would actually advance his political influence to a global level, but it still doesn’t quite come together. There’s also just not a ton here that wasn’t already explored in the previous issue of Action Comics, so it’s not particularly memorable. 

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-quebecs-anti-corruption-crusaders-have-been-swift-to-arrest-but-slow/

https://web.archive.org/web/20191219212505/https://www.nytimes.com/1985/02/27/nyregion/us-indictment-says-9-governed-new-york-mafia.html

https://web.archive.org/web/20150323230443/http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/11/books/review/11burrough.html

Superman #1: The Complete Story of the Daring Exploits of the One and Only Superman

This is part of an ongoing series where I review Golden Age Superman, weekly, issue by issue, starting from the very beginning. 

The Complete Story of the Daring Exploits of the One and Only Superman

    It’s only natural that the first superhero would be the first to get his own book. In mid 1939, a year after his landmark debut in Action Comics #1, the very first issue of Superman hit newsstands. Instead of being padded out but the numerous other features of Action Comics, here was a book that had nothing but Superman for 64 pages. The catch, of course, is that the majority of it is reprinted material, collecting the first four Action Comics stories. 

The Origin of Superman

    Superman #1 does open with an extended intro to the first story, though, replacing the one-page origin that first introduced Clark Kent to the world. This is also the first mention of Clark’s parents. He was found by an unnamed “passing motorist” in the initial origin, before being dropped at the orphanage. Here, Mary Kent and her husband adopt the alien baby and name him Clark, teaching him to use his abilities for good. Sadly, both of his parents died before he became Superman, so that means Ma and Pa Kent aren’t around to give this iteration of Clark advice. Still, unlike the first origin, most of this has stuck over the years, and it’s a much more recognizable backstory for Superman, even if it’s still a little brief. A lot of the captions are pulled directly from the original, but the added plot elements and expanded art allow the story to breathe a bit more and flesh out Clark’s history. The “scientific explanation of Clark Kent’s strength” is also expanded into a full splash page, giving a bit more detail about Krypton and Superman’s powers, though it’s now moved to the end of the story. 

Prelude to Superman, Champion of the Oppressed

    Aside from the revamped origin, there’s also a prelude to the first story proper, showing Clark trying to get a job at the Daily Star and ending up hot on the trail of a story, stopping the lynching of an innocent man and interviewing him in order to secure his job as a reporter. It does feel a bit forced that he only got his job seemingly the same day as when Action Comics #1 takes place, though it would explain why he seems somewhat incompetent compared to Lois. Then, we see him catch the real murder and run off to the governor, which is where Action Comics #1 began. This part I could honestly do without. It doesn’t really expand the characters much, and mostly just takes up space for the sake of it. In the issue itself, these three items are all printed in a row before Action Comics #1 began, so it’s relatively smooth if you don’t know the background of it and you were reading these stories for the first time here. The transition to the excessive shading lines of Action #1 does give it a way a bit, as does the move from red boots back to blue-footed pants, but it still flows nicely for the most part. In the reprints, though, where Action #1 is at the start and this is separated later on, it ends up feeling very odd and out of place. 

Biff Dugan

    This issue features a text story as well. In this era, the US Postal Service required comics to feature a minimum of 2 pages of text to qualify as magazines, which had cheaper postal rates (Beebe). So what did comic publishers do? they put 2-3 pages of prose short stories in each issue in order to save money. In anthology titles, these stories could be about anything, but in a character-focused book like this, they had to actually write something about Superman. These stories would often be reprinted in later comics, in order to hit the minimum prose page count without having to produce new content. Funnily enough, Stanley Lieber’s first published work in the comics world came in this form, as he wrote a Captain America short story for Captain America Comics #3, signing with the pseudonym "Stan Lee" in order to avoid the embarrassment of being associated with the comics industry.

    The text story here is actually pretty decent, though there are a few minor grammatical errors which make it obvious it wasn’t a particularly high priority. It’s written by Shuster, and features a banner by Siegel, with another small drawing of Superman stopping a moving car. We enter the story in the wake of a visit from Superman, as we follow Harvey Brown, Patent Attonery, who stole inventions from his clients and was warned to go out of business, or else. There’s some fun purple prose here, with “shining steel fixtures drooping in sad caricature of their former modernistic splendor” in Brown’s wrecked office. The cops are incompetent as ever, and Superman easily escapes. 

    After describing Superman’s powers, the Sergeant thinks to himself that “these were mere rumors, fantastic fairy tales. Probably SUPERMAN was just an ordinary person whose better than average strength had been immensely exaggerated”. Clark Kent is described as “a slim, nervous figure” with “meek eyes” that “blinked fearfully behind thick-rimmed glasses.” He is “no SUPERMAN… rather a very much frightened young man” (yes, they did write "SUPERMAN" in caps every time in this story). Though this story is largely forgotten because it’s not a comic, it actually gives quite a lot of insight into what life is like in Metropolis. Told from a third-person limited perspective, we see how Superman and Clark come off to outsiders, and how Clark’s body language and mannerisms make him seem awkward and non-threatening. 

    In an era before cell phones and the internet, when even most cameras were expensive and not-so-portable, the public doesn’t really know much about Superman. Like in Superman’s Phony Manager, he’s dismissed as an urban legend, perhaps with some factual basis that’s been greatly exaggerated. Since he comes in and out of situations so quickly, people rarely have a time to speak with him or learn about him, and many are left puzzled about his true nature. Most of his stories up to this point are relatively low-key, or have him undercover in some way, so it’s pretty believable, although the mayhem of Superman demolishing an entire district and fighting the National Guard in Superman in the Slums does stretch it a bit (although since this issue is primarily around the timeline of the first four issues, perhaps it’s meant to take place earlier). 

    Though this story does a good job showing how Clark is perceived by others, he does actually become a bit more assertive than usual at points. For example, he blackmails Sergeant Blake in order to get an interview with a murder suspect, and even teases him about his vendetta on Superman at the end. It’s also another one of Siegel & Shuster’s mid-story pivots, as Harvey Brown is forgotten on page 2 and murderer Biff Dugan becomes the center of attention. Dugan escapes, and of course Superman catches him in the end. The description of Clark’s transformation is another bout of extravagant purple prose, almost sounding like a Dr. Seuss passage: 

Strange Tales #118: The Possessed!

 This is part of an ongoing series where I will be reviewing Stan Lee and Steve Ditko’s Doctor Strange, covering his appearances in Strange Tales #110-111 and #114-146. Returning after a brief hiatus, I once again strive to post weekly. 

The Possesed! is an Invasion of the Body-Snatchers-esque story about aliens attempting to infiltrate human society from within, though through possession rather than replacement. This was not the first story of its kind in Marvel Comics- the skrulls debuted in Lee & Kirby’s Fantastic Four #2 in 1962, 2 years earlier, but it is the first time Strange has encountered a foe outside of the world of sorcery. The possessors are said to have come from another dimension rather than from outer space, but functionally it makes little difference to the story, aside from making it easier to put them away at the end to restore the status quo. It’s a perfectly serviceable story, but it doesn’t do a ton with the premise and fighting aliens doesn’t quite fit with Strange’s tone and aesthetic.

Set in a small village in eastern Germany, the villagers don’t really get time to develop in such a short story. Strange’s telepathic abilities also mean that there’s never really any suspense as to who is or isn’t under alien influence, which is generally the main draw of this type of story (your neighbour could be an alien and you wouldn’t even know it!). In this period, these stories played off fears of communist infiltration, with communists imagined as a group of people who look and act just like us but whose ideology and values are entirely alien to the capitalist way of being. This line of thinking is often referred to as McCarthyism, after senator Joseph McCarthy, who spearheaded aggressive attacks on alleged soviet spies, a witch hunt which was highly destructive to many left wing thinkers and politicians, despite very few of them having a genuine connection to the soviets. The setting of this story reinforces these fears: Germany was very much in the middle of the East and West, with Berlin being divided in two and many of their neighboring nations being on opposing sides of the Cold War. It’s a backdrop that could be quite compelling if it wasn’t about an all-powerful sorcerer with no friends.

Action Comics #13: Superman vs. the Cab Protective League

 This is part of an ongoing series where I review Golden Age Superman, weekly, issue by issue, starting from the very beginning. 

Another cover with Superman, a mirrored drawing from the cover to #10

   Superman vs. the Cab Protective League begins as a pretty standard, issue-driven Superman story, as Clark runs into some racketeers who are “trying to victimize the independent companies” in Metropolis’ cab world. By page 8, it seems wrapped up- Superman is getting more and more efficient and dealing with mobsters at this point- but then the crooks break out, and Superman has to follow the trail to their boss. Here, we meet Ultra-Humanite, a bald mad scientist who plans to take over the world. He would go on to appear 4 more times within the next ten issues of Action Comics, before being supplanted by Lex Luthor and not appearing again in the golden age. 

    Ultra explains that “a scientific experiment resulted in [his] possessing the most able and learned brain on Earth”. He is paralysed from the waist down, and serves as an intellectual foe who can trap and outwit Superman rather than a physical threat- there wouldn’t be any villains who could go toe-to-toe with the Man of Steel for quite some time. He does manage to knock Superman out with his trap, though; an electrified floor that “was enough to kill five hundred men”. It’s the first time we’ve seen the Man of Tomorrow in any real danger, so it does a decent job establishing Ultra as a threat. A couple of the henchman get killed off pretty violently, not directly by Superman but he is quite non-plussed about it, saying that they got what they deserved. The death penalty was still quite common at this time, and views on justice were quite different. The whole “superheroes don’t kill” trope is something that evolved over time, but in the early days heroes killing villains was not seen as something scandalous or rule-breaking. 

 

    This is Superman’s first recurring villain. Most comics of this era were essentially large collections of short stories, so one-off foes and supporting characters were very common. Flash Gordon had Ming, but aside from that I don’t know of any other arch-nemeses in comics of the 1930s. The Joker wouldn’t debut for another year, and there were still not many other heroes around in general. Giving Superman a recurring foe was a decent idea, even Ultra-Humanite was relatively underdeveloped and eventually left aside. It allows the book to shift from the more grounded crime stories of the early issues into more fantastical, pulpy territory (although madmen with dreams of world domination may have felt a bit less far-fetched in 1939). 

    The unusual structure of it is also something Siegel & Shuster have done a few times, linking small vignettes together rather than a more traditional, 3-act setup for every story. The variations help keep things fresh, and though I often find these fantastical stories less compelling than Siegel & Shuster’s brash takedowns of political injustices, the series does need to be able to tell these kinds of stories as well in order to branch out and keep going. It’s just that if you want larger-than life Superman stories with mad scientists and crazy gadgets, it’s been done better by later writers and artists. 

Strange Tales #117: The Many Traps of Baron Mordo!

This is part of an ongoing series where I will be reviewing Stan Lee and Steve Ditko’s Doctor Strange, covering his appearances in Strange Tales #110-111 and #114-146. 

    The Many Traps of Baron Mordo! once again pits Strange against his rival sorcerer. Out of 6 stories to this point, all of them have featured either Mordo or Nightmare as the main antagonist. While recurring villains can be useful in building up a heroe’s life and tribulations, there is a bit of a lack of variety so far. Still, it looks great, with most of it taking place at night, playing up the gothic undertones of the arcane arts, and bringing Strange and Mordo’s magic duels into a more firmly surreal conflict, rather than just punching eachother in astral form. It also makes for another intimate chamber drama: the Anicent One shows up very briefly but otherwise it’s just the two of them. 

    Mordo traps Strange’s house in another dimension, which Strange exits in his astral form. Mordo traps him again in a “ethereal cylinder”, which Strange escapes by tunneling through the Earth, and then he proceeds to pose as the Ancient One to catch Mordo off guard, defeating him in a magical duel.

 

    Ditko sticks primarily to 9-grids here despite the 8 pages, using smaller panels to speed up the pace of the action, even breaking down further into a 4-panel row on page 6 as Strange tunnels into the ground to escape Mordo’s prison (shown above). The final page is probably the most visually striking, as the conclusion to their battle takes on abstract clouds of red and purple, and Strange returns to his shadowy sanctum to ponder the results. There’s also pretty heavy use of different colored speech bubbles rather than just white, which is something that pops up in a couple of Marvel books around this period: here you get yellow, orange, green, and purple, fitting within the story’s colour palette while making things look a bit more dynamic. I would’ve liked for them to stick with it longer, honestly. Overall, I still tend to enjoy the Nightmare stories more than the Mordo ones, but these have been steadily improving, each one better than the last. Next week begins a long stretch of brand-new villains, which is sorely needed. 

                 

 

New York World’s Fair Comics #1: Superman at the World's Fair

 This is part of an ongoing series where I review Golden Age Superman, weekly, issue by issue, starting from the very beginning. 

New York World’s Fair Comics was a two-issue series, published yearly during the World’s Fair. The first issue starred Superman, Zatara, the first appearance of the golden age Sandman, along with a few other comedic characters, while the second added Batman to the mix (the first was published before Detective Comics #27 unleashed the Caped Crusader on the world). It brought DC’s biggest stars together for a 96-page blow-out issue (Detective and Action were 60-70 pages), though without any direct crossover, so the stories could all be produced separately by their original creators. The format proved successful, eventually leading to World’s Finest Comics, a quarterly book that would run separate Superman and Batman stories in the same issue for over a decade until it finally teamed them up in the 1950s.

I'm sure Shuster took some inspiration from Flash Gordon, but this is ridiculous...

Both issues feature the Trylon and the Perisphere on the cover, two modernist structures that were the centerpiece of the fair, which boldly proclaimed to show “the world of tomorrow”. A fitting destination for the Man of Tomorrow, then. In the story, Clark is sent to cover the World’s Fair for the Daily Star. As Superman, he halts a train crash, helps an exhibit get built, and saves Lois from a criminal on the run. There’s not really an overarching plot or theme to it, it’s just a bunch of standard Superman beats vaguely linked together by the Fair itself. Although it’s an architectural exhibition and not an out-and-out commercial, it still feels pretty tacky. Clark really wants to go, basically looking directly at the viewer at the end and telling you to go, and Superman even stands atop the Perisphere (incorrectly captioned as “the Trylon”) to locate Lois at one point, in a very oddly drawn panel. On the cover, Superman has blonde hair and a red shirt. The interior colours are overly high contrast and garish. It’s functional, but it all feels rather slapdash and strung together, second rate compared to the main book.

seriously, what the hell is this silhouette?

Strange Tales #116: Return to the Nightmare World!

This is part of an ongoing series where I will be reviewing Stan Lee and Steve Ditko’s Doctor Strange, covering his appearances in Strange Tales #110-111 and #114-146. 

Return to the Nightmare World! is a sequel story to Strange Tales #110, as Strange once again must go into the dream realm and battle Nightmare. These dimensional stories give Ditko free reign to create arresting, kaleidescopic imagery, without the constraints of anything resembling the real world. There’s a suitable eerieness to it. Here, Ditko begins to use bigger panels to tell the story, taking advantage of the less restrictive page count. It’s a cross between 6-panel and 9-panel grids, opening with a 6 to set the stage and often alternating between rows of 2 and 3 for the rest of the issue, while sticking to 3 columns. The closeup on Nightmare on the first page is especially unsettling.

Spider-Man and Dr. Strange, together at last!

 The term “Lovecraftian” gets thrown around a lot when it comes to godlike alien beings, generally referring to influences of the godlike alien entities of the Cthulhu Mythos, and while there are elements of that with the pit creature, The Dream Cycle is a bigger point of reference here, with an entire realm populated by strange creatures, only accessible through dreaming. The plot is a bit more straightforwardly heroic than #110, with Strange delving into the nightmare realm in order to save innocent civilians from Nightmare’s clutches. It’s a bit of a change in characterization for Nightmare, who seemingly haunted the dreams of guilty men in a Dickens sort of way in his first appearance, even dressing up like the Ghost of Christmas Past.

 We get the second appearance of Wong, again shown as a passive man-servant who answers the door for Strange. There’s a brief panel showing the Ancient One, who is also portrayed with yellow skin, unlike in previous issues. Strange is contacted by the police here, as several people have slipped into unexplained comas around New York. Like in #110, Strange doesn’t actually fight Nightmare, instead avoiding him long enough to accomplish his goal and then escaping. It gives the feeling that Strange is out of his depth, and unlike with Mordo, he can’t win through a head-on fight. There’s not much in the way of overall character growth or progression, it’s just a good-old fashioned monster of the week type story that lets Ditko’s artwork do the talking, and is all the better for it. Honestly. the hardest part of writing these is trying to stop myself from just posting every single panel of Ditko's art.