superman: golden age sundays 1943-1946 preview

8/13/2019 Superman: Golden Age Sundays 1943-1946 Preview

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SUPERMAN CREATED BY

JERRY SIEGEL AND JOE SHUSTER


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IDW PUBLISHING

San Diego


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SUPERMAN: THEGOLDENAGESUNDAYS

19431946

By special arrangement with the Jerry Siegel family

SCRIPTS BYJERRYSIEGEL AND DC COMICS

ARTWORK BYWAYNE BORING ANDJACKBURNLEY LETTERING BYIRASCHNAPP

[Although no records have been uncovered that specify which stories were written by Siegel,

a reading of the text reveal hallmarks of his style in all stories except the Supermans Service to Servicemen

sequence, which corresponds to his induction into the army on July 4, 1943.]

THE LIBRARY OFAMERICAN COMICSEDITED AND DESIGNED BYDean Mullaney ART DIRECTORLorraine Turner

ASSOCIATE EDITORBruce Canwell INTRODUCTION Mark Waid

COVERS Pete Poplaski MARKETING DIRECTORBeau Smith

STRIP RESTORATION BYLorraine Turner and Dean Mullaney

IDW Publishing, a Division of Idea and Design Works, LLC5080 Santa Fe Street, San Diego, CA 92109

www.idwpublishing.com LibraryofAmericanComics.com

Ted Adams, Chief Executive Officer/Publisher Greg Goldstein, Chief Operating Officer/PresidentRobbie Robbins, EVP/Sr. Graphic Artist Chris Ryall, Chief Creative Officer/Editor-in-Chief

Matthew Ruzicka, CPA, Chief Financial Officer Alan Payne, VP of SalesDirk Wood, VP of Marketing Lorelei Bunjes, VP of Digital Services

ISBN: 978-1-61377-797-8 First Printing, December 2013

Distributed by Diamond Book Distributors 1-410-560-7100

Special thanks to Mark Waid, Joe Linder, Joe Desris, Sid Friedfertig, John Wells, Mike Tiefenbacher,

Greg Goldstein, Jared Bond, Scott Dunbier, Justin Eisinger, and Alonzo Simon.

Artwork on page one by Jack Burnley from the cover to

Superman #24, September-October 1943.

LibraryofAmericanComics.com

Superman and 2013 DC Comics. All rights reserved. The Library of American Comics is a trademark ofThe Library of American Comics LLC. All rights reserved. With the exception of artwork used for review purposes, none

of the comic strips in this publication may be reprinted without the permission of DC Comics. No part of this book may bereproduced or transmitted in any form, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information

and retrieval system, without permission in writing from DC Comics. Printed in Korea.

The strips reprinted in this volume were produced in a time when racial and social caricatures played a larger role in society and popularculture. They are reprinted without alteration for historical reference.


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By 1938, Superman was dead.Dead, that is, by the standards of the various syndicates

that supplied comics strips to the hundreds of newspapers across

the U.S.A. These syndicates functioned as intermediaries (and,

thus, gatekeepers) between funny pages editors hungry for

content and up-and-coming cartoonists ravenous for the fame

and fortune a successful newspaper strip could bring them.

Harold Grays Little Orphan Annie, Chester Goulds Dick Tracy,

Milton Caniff s Terry and the Pirates, and Al Capps Lil Abner

were just some of the daily features that were turning their

creators into men of wealth and celebrity.

Naturally, the competition among would-be syndicated

cartoonists was fierce, but that hadnt deterred two Cleveland

teenagers from pitching samples of their creation to every

syndicate in the game. Time and again, however, they were

rejected. No syndicate was willing to take a chance on Jerry Siegel

and Joe Shusters Superman. It was, to the gatekeepers eyes, too

wild, too crude, too implausible. A costumed, caped crimefighter

from another planet with powers and abilities far beyond ours?Outrageous. Who would buy that?

Eventually, of course, Siegel and Shusters Superman samples

did see print, albeit in an altered and more obscure form than

originally envisioned. Pulp magazine publishers were, at the time,

experimenting by reprinting licensed collections of newspaper

strips into 64-page comic books for newsstand sale, often

peppering these collections with new material as licenses became

scarce. Vin Sullivan, an enterprising editor for the company known

today as DC Comics, talked Siegel and Shuster into selling the

rights to this moribund property, and the boys happily took the

offer. Its likely no one was more surprised than them when their

Superman samples, reformatted to become the first few pages of

1938sAction Comics#1, sparked a pop-culture revolutionpractically overnight. Within a few short months, Superman

proved to be a publishing bonanza.

The gatekeepers re-evaluated. The McClure Syndicate, which

had turned Superman down more than once, quickly offered DC

a contract for a Superman daily strip and had it in newspapers by

January of 1939. Impressed by its surging popularity, McClure

added a color Sunday page on November 5, which was so heavily

anticipated that The Washington Postannounced its imminent

debut on the front page of their Saturday edition.

By the time America entered the Second World War,

Superman was featured in nearly two hundred fifty papers

nationwide, with a combined circulation of twenty-five million

readers. Along the way, his powersand the evils he faced

had continued to evolve as Siegel, Shuster, and their assistants

churned out as many adventures as they humanly could to feed

the readerships voracious demand for more. Initially, Superman

could run faster than an express train, leap a twenty-story

building, and lift automobiles. By the war years, he was flying

across continents in less time than it takes to tell, shrugging off

grenade blasts and artillery fire, and in general doing anything

his creators could imagine

except enter the European Theater.

Once you link the ideas Superman and World War Two,

you quickly see the problem. If the mightiest hero in comics

applies his vast super-powers to ending all hostilities, which he

could do in a day, the world of his fantastic exploits ceases to

resemble the real world of his readers. But if he sits the war out,what kind of manwhat kind of Superman, what kind of

Americanis he?

His editors and writers approached this in the obvious

manner: they had it both ways. Superman would do anything

for the armed servicesshort of joining up. And he always stayed

out of the actual fightingexcept when he didnt.

In the stories, the Man of Steels failure to enlist was explained

away by a comical mishap involving x-ray vision (shown in strips

259 and 260 herein). But an earlier strip (212) put into Supermans

dialog a more authentic, more genuinely moving explanation than

has been proffered anywhere else:

How can you beat soldiers with that sort ofspiritthe spirit that makes Americans fight

against any sort of odds! For me to interfere

would bewell, presumptuous!

Underscoring this touching sense of a hero apart,

Superman comic books rarely addressed the war directly. Instead

they supplied steady escapist entertainment to servicemen and

women overseas, to whom copies were bulk-shipped. The covers

An Introduction by MARKWAID


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PAGE 6

were another matter. They became reliable monthly propaganda

posters in which Superman rode missiles to their targets, punched

German tanks, physically dominated Hitler and Tojo, and waved

the American flag.

The newspaper strips spoke more directly to the home

frontto friends and loved ones who worried and prayed but

were powerless to protect the young soldiers plucked from their

lives. Perhaps sensing an appetite for wish fulfillment, thecreators of this eras Sunday strips (believed written by Siegel

and DC editor Whitney Ellsworth, drawn by former Shuster

apprentice Wayne Boring) began in the summer of 1943 a series

called Supermans Service for Servicemen.

Ostensibly inspired by a real-life sergeant who wished

Superman could whisk him to his distant home and back on

his meager one-day leave, the strips editors staked out a simple

format. Real servicemen would send their real wishes to the real

newspaper, and the Man of Steel would use his powers to grant

them on the page. Breaking the fourth wall, Superman himself

invited soldiers, sailors and marinesand that includes you

women in service, too to submit any particularly tough

problems youd like me to help you solve.

For the next two years of Sundays, the Man of Steel

delivered mail (by air), did soldiers chores (at super-speed), and

interfered in romantic problems (with a grudging reluctance).

He delivered a fresh cake to a lucky birthday boy, flew a busload

of showgirls to a military base dance party, tamed a horse, and

whisked an expectant father home just ahead of the stork. He

undertook most of these feats at the urging of Lois Lane, who

read all the incoming requests with a special eye toward uniting

sweethearts. Superman also seemed to be dramatizing pleas

from the War Department, as when he influenced one town to

write letters to its lonely soldiers and another to evict a gang of

gremlins whispering temptations that would weaken wartimemorale.

This Man of Steel anticipates later interpretations. He

is welcomed everywhere by law-abiding people, like the

Christopher Reeve Superman who delivers a sputtering Gene

Hackman to appreciative prison guards, due process be damned.

He rubs elbows with the highest rungs of authority, like the

Silver Age Superman who arranges for President John F.

Kennedy to preserve his secret identity by impersonating Clark

Kent. Even the wartime enemy looks up to him...and thats

where things get ugly, and not at all like the latter-day

Metropolis Marvel.

In a storyline beginning April 23, 1944, a Japanese army

commander invites Superman to a Pacific island to provide

entertainment for his weary troops. Pretending to honor the

request, the Man of Steel cheerfully sets them up for a lethal

ambush by allied forces. But thats not the ugly part; this is

war, after all.This is where we should warn readers of Asian descent

and/or nervous dispositions and/or a speck of human decency

that these were different times, a period of American history

where patriotism and outright racism were too often, too easily

conflated in popular culture. Most entertainment of the day

trafficked heavily in mocking Americas enemiesparticularly

the Japaneseand the funny pages was no exception. That such

treatment makes an enemy seem less human and therefore easier

to kill is an unsettling idea all these decades later, and it makes

you wonder how we apply it in our wars today. But the really

upsetting thing is seeing Supermanthe friendly cop, the

gentle older brother, the very symbol of power merged with

kindnessbuy into this trope as the war wears on, culminating

in a scene where he pulls off a gleefully nasty impersonation

(strip 307). We can say in the Man of Steels defense only that

he and his writers and artists knew theyd gone too far; after the

war and to this day, Superman has appeared in dozens of public

service announcements preaching brotherhood and tolerance

for all races, and today the character is practically synonymous

with fairness and equality.

World War Two ends before this volume does, and we get

to cleanse our palates with a retelling of the origin. This is a

compact version that faithfully merges all of the agreed-upon

elements up to this point, even revisiting the Jack Kennedy

(that name again!) murder case from Jerry Siegel and JoeShusters very first Superman story.

From there the mood lightens considerably. Superman

watches over Lois Lane as she embarks in an experimental

rocket on a space exploration that ends up on an advanced

planet ruled by a tyrannical queen. After that, its off to the

circus, where a sad clown risks his life for the love of a

glamorous acrobat. With the wars lasting consequences yet to

be felt, we gaze at the Man of Steels feats under the big top with

amazement and relief.


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The Superman Sunday page began on November 5, 1939 and the first 183 Sundays

were reprinted in a handsome horizontal edition by DC Comics and Kitchen Sink Press.Our series begins with Strip #184 from May 1943 and will continue until the series

ended in May 1966. At that time, we will return to the first 183 Sundays and present

them in a vertical format that matches the rest of the series.

We invite you to enjoy these marvelous Sunday pages that have never been

previously reprinted.

Dean Mullaney, Editor


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STRIP 184 MAY9, 1943 PAGE 9


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STRIP 185 MAY16, 1943PAGE 10


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STRIP 186 MAY23, 1943 PAGE 11


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STRIP 187 MAY30, 1943PAGE 12


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STRIP 188 JUNE 6, 1943 PAGE 13


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STRIP 189 JUNE 13, 1943PAGE 14


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STRIP 190 JUNE 20 1943 PAGE 15

superman: golden age sundays 1943-1946 preview

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