Early Stories in Action Comics | Krypton on Earth | The Fortress of Solitude | Kandor | Supergirl | Supergirl Adoption Stories | Super-Horse | Lena Thorul and Supergirl's Personal Life | Other Leo Dorfman Supergirl tales | Bizarro | Transformation Tales | Science Fiction Stories in Action | Role Reversals | Red Kryptonite | Robots | The Team Stories | Beings Stronger Than Superman | Perry White
Action
These best stories of the comic books are preceded by their issue number. They were edited by Mort Weisinger.
Action Comics was the home of Supergirl, the most important female super-hero of the Silver Age. Action Comics also featured stories of Superman. Like those in Superman magazine, they tended to be heavily science fictional. It is logical to group the two magazines together; in many ways the stories in Action look as if they overflowed from Superman. However, there are differences. Superman was full of stories with political themes, and Imaginary tales. These two types of stories rarely occurred in Action during the Silver Age.
Revolution in San Monte (1938). Writer: Jerry Siegel. Art: Joe Shuster. The first story about Superman. This is an astonishingly creative effort. It is the first of all comic book stories about super-heroes. It created an entire new industry and subject matter. Unlike some tales that are of purely historical interest, this tale is still gripping and delightful reading today. The tale expresses a sense of joy, and a sweeping look at the possibilities of super-heroes. The long story is episodic, and each section looks at another topic. There is tremendous use of imagination throughout. The story's idealism is still inspiring.
This story is profoundly anti-war. It is one of the major political stories in Golden Age comics. It seems to be the first story published by Siegel and Shuster with substantial political content. After this, the floodgates opened, and Siegel and Shuster wrote many more political stories, both for Superman and their other series. In this tale, Superman takes on vicious munitions manufacturers, who trigger wars in distant countries. This is not the first comic book story with such a theme. The year before, writer-artist Will Ely published "The Brain" (More Fun Comics #20-25, April-September 1937), a six part serial about a sinister conspiracy of arms manufacturers, part of the Sandra of the Secret Service series. Siegel and Shuster's Radio Squad tales appeared in More Fun Comics along side Sandra, and they almost certainly had read this story.
This story establishes that Superman arrived on Earth from the planet Krypton, which exploded. It does not go into much detail about this, but it does establish the key facts of Superman's origin. Siegel and Shuster would soon create the first elaborate version of the Krypton saga, in "Superman Comes to Earth" (January 16 - January 28, 1939). This is the first episode in the Superman daily newspaper strip. Siegel and Shuster differed from most Golden Age comic creators in their interest in science fiction. They regularly published elaborate sf tales set on other planets, or in the far future. The fact that Superman has a science fictional origin on another planet is nearly unique in the Golden Age. Although countless heroes were created in imitation of Superman and his powers, most were ordinary Earthmen who got super-powers, not people from other planets.
Krypton would play its biggest role in the Superman saga during the Silver Age of the 1950's and 1960's, rather than in the Golden Age of comics of the 1930's and 1940's. In general, the basic paradigm for Golden Age comics was the detective story, in which a hero, super-powered or not, used his skills to track down and capture criminals; while the paradigm for Silver Age stories in the comics was the science fiction tale. This is a generalization, with many exceptions, and it is undoubtedly too broad and oversimplified. Yet there is a core of truth to it. Krypton was a key factor in the science fictionalization of comic books during the Silver Age. It allowed the Superman saga to be the basis for an immense number of complex science fiction tales.
The Blakely Mine Disaster (1938). Writer: Jerry Siegel. Art: Joe Shuster. Superman goes after a rich mine owner, whose neglect of safety causes disaster for his miners. This story has a similar architecture as its immediate predecessor, "Revolution in San Monte". In both, Superman forces a callous industrialist to see the errors of his criminally irresponsible ways.
Superman, Football Star (1938). Writer: Jerry Siegel. Art: Joe Shuster. Superman impersonates a less than successful college football player, and makes him a star.
Superman showed the ability in his early tales to dominate and control other men. In the previous stories, these were corrupt members of the establishment, that Superman forced to live through the miserable lives of ordinary people. Usually they reformed, and changed their ways. Here, however, Superman applies his skills to an ordinary, morally decent person.
Superman is just as dominating here, but in a new way. He impersonates the player, while he physically coerced the older men into new roles. There is a whole blue print here, showing Superman take over his identity. It is quite ferocious, and done against the will of the young player. When Siegel and Shuster later wrote a similar story about Superman impersonating a boxer, they softened this aspect of the story. In the boxer tale, the impersonation is done with the boxer's full consent and cooperation. They also made the boxer older, roughly the same age as Superman himself, thus creating more of a relation of equality between the two men. The boxer story appeared in the Superman daily newspaper strip, "The Comeback of Larry Trent" (February 20 - March 18, 1939).
During the Silver Age, Siegel would write many mystery tales for the Superman family. Typically, these would involve some kind of impersonation. Often a super being would use his skills to depict himself as a drastically different character from what he really was. This tale is not a mystery. But it does show an early example of such an impersonation, with Superman passing himself off as a college football player.
Superman and the Dam (#5, October 1938). Writer: Jerry Siegel. Art: Joe Shuster. Superman intervenes when a dam bursts. This story is mainly notable for having Lois Lane fall in love with Superman for the first time. Superman's origin story "Revolution in San Monte" had established Clark Kent as Superman's meek alter ego, Clark Kent, and shown Lois despising Clark for his timidity. This story completes the triangle, by having Lois fall in love with Superman. She also tells Superman all about her feelings, in no uncertain terms. The bizarre Superman-Lois-Clark love triangle has always been one of the odder features of the Superman saga, and it is not any more appealing in its first appearance here.
Superman's Phony Manager (1938). Writer: Jerry Siegel. Art: Joe Shuster. A man who falsely claims to be Superman's manager starts licensing his adventures in advertising and multiple media, such as radio and the movies. Exuberant comedy spoof by Siegel, setting forth with gusto and well thought through detail what the media exploitation of Superman might be like. This story is only partly tongue in cheek. It also shows what Siegel and Shuster seriously thought about the marketing potential of their new creation, Superman. Most of the ideas in this tale would actually come to pass within the next few years. Other early Siegel and Shuster tales had depicted their heroes' success in show business: see the Radio Squad tale, "Harold Owens Makes the Grade" (More Fun Comics #24, September 1937) and the Slam Bradley tale, "The Broadway Bandit" (Detective Comics #16, June 1938). This was clearly a big dream of Siegel and Shuster.
This story is also the first use of what would become a major plot gambit in later Superman tales: the impersonation of Superman by a crook, to aid in some nefarious scheme. All kinds of impersonation would play a big role in Superman family tales hereafter.
This article concentrates on what is known as the Silver Age of comics: the Weisinger Superman magazines were especially rich in the years 1958 - 1965. But there were outstanding stories before this, that anticipated many of the themes of the later period. Action Comics had a Superman story in every issue in the 1950's, and their average quality was surprisingly high. Some of them were richly science fictional, with backgrounds of Krypton, a subject later to be of burning interest in the Silver Age. I don't want to convey the idea that these tales are only interesting for anticipating later works; they are good stories in their own right.
The Alien Who Conquered Superman (1952). Writer: Bill Finger. The super being Krag comes to Earth from Mercury, where he tries to usurp Superman's place. Wayne Boring draws Krag as one of his muscular heroes, and one can consider his replacing Superman as a plausible possibility. The end of this story also anticipates those of many Silver age classics, such as "The Super-Sword" (1958).
Superman shows more of a personality in this tale than he does in many Silver Age tales. While Superboy often emerges as a real person in early 1960's stories, Superman himself tends to be a bit bland, a hero without any feelings or desires. Superman ultimately shows a bit of an edge in this tale. The thread running through the story, of Lois Lane's reaction to these events, also helps here. One wonders if some of the events in the tale are an expression of Superman's unconscious desires, an attempt to express feelings that he cannot otherwise release. Finger's villains are loaded with bizarre impulses; occasionally he let his heroes express similar feelings, especially at the ends of his tales - in the early sections of his stories it is usually the villains who are triumphant, but at the finale, the hero prevails.
The Menace of Planet Z (1952). Writer: Bill Finger. Superman goes to the planet Zor, where he adopts a new secret identity and works to solve a mystery involving giant beasts. This nicely done story is an early example of a kind that will be popular later in the Silver Age (1958 - 1964): a visit to another time/planet/dimension, where the characters parallel those we are familiar with on modern Earth. Here Superman encounters a snoopy woman reporter named Lura Lajos, who bears a strong resemblance to Lois Lane, for example. This story is also an early instance of the popularity of characters with the initials LL.
This tale also resembles the Adam Strange tales to come (1958 - 1964). We have an Earth hero who goes to another planet; he encounters a scientific puzzle - why are giant beasts running amok; he has adventures, during which he solves the puzzle and captures the bad guy; and he encounters a lot of interesting alien customs along the way. All of this resembles Adam Strange. Adam encountered a number of situations in which robots went out of control; these stories especially resemble "Planet Z". The villain here also resembles those in Adam Strange: a behind the scenes schemer, sabotaging things so that he can gain illicit power. The emphasis on alien animals is a little more specifically Superman-ish, however. Superman often encountered alien beasts in his stories, and the two most familiar settings on Krypton were Jor-El's lab and the Krypton Zoo. The lying hoax by the villain, designed to make someone else look bad, is a favorite Finger plot device.
Zor lacks metals; the Zorians have developed a civilization based on plastics, without heavy machinery. Such looks at other planets' technological history and development anticipate non-series sf stories in the comic books, such as Otto Binder's "The Man Who Discovered the 'Earth'" (Mystery in Space #51, May 1959).
The New Superman (1953). Writer: ?. Art: Wayne Boring. Superman's powers mysteriously change: he stops being vulnerable to Kryptonite, but diamonds hurt him. Boring's cover shows a hood aiming a harmful ray at Superman out of his diamond ring. It reminds one of Green Lantern and his ring. Both the ray emerging from the ring, and the large starburst where the ray hits Superman's body, are shaped exactly like the rays and starbursts from Green Lantern's ring. Such rays do not actually occur in the story itself.
This story shows ingenuity it its look at what might happen if Superman's powers changed. The story takes us into a strange visual and mental "landscape", an odd world filled with new rules and events. The story reminds one a bit of Otto Binder tales to come. Binder's "The Super-Hallucinations" (Jimmy Olsen #22, August 1957) also looks at strange changes to Superman's experience, and similarly tries to find their root cause. And Binder's "The Day Science Ran Wild" (Strange Adventures #82, July 1957) and "Raiders from the Ultra-Violet" (Strange Adventures #71, August 1956) look at changes to scientific laws and perceptions, respectively. Also, this tale can be considered a transformation story, a look at what happens to a person who undergoes an sf change. Such transformation tales were Binder specialties.
The sea canyon makes an interesting setting for part of this tale. Later stories will show Superman as absolutely comfortable in such regions. But this tale makes it a place of suspense.
Plot material from this tale was recycled in Robert Bernstein's "The New Superman" (Action #291, August 1962). This version deletes the parts about Superman's vision, and ascribes the changes to Red Kryptonite.
The Return of Planet Krypton (1953). Writer: Bill Woolfolk. This story takes place on a duplicate of the planet Krypton. Such duplicates would return in several Silver Age tales. This story also makes ingenious use of Krypton's heavy gravity being the source of Superman's super powers of strength on Earth. The tale is inconsistent with the later Krypton saga in that it makes no mention of Krypton's red sun. Instead, it suggests that Krypton was a planet in Earth's own solar system. This idea startles anyone familiar with the later mythos.
The Outlaws from Krypton (1954) Writer: Bill Finger. Exiled outlaws from Krypton, led by the sinister Mala, come to Earth, where they form a super-powered menace. This is another good sf tale with Kryptonian characters. It seems to be a sequel to an earlier work. It shows Jor-El leading the expulsion of criminals from Krypton; this is a plot device that would often return in later years, eventually giving rise to the Phantom Zone. Even at this early date, Krypton has no capital punishment. The story also rings ingenious changes on the theme of Superman's secret identity, in ways that partly anticipate the great Pete Ross cycle of tales in Superboy. Both this tale and the Ross stories show another person taking on Superman's identities, aiding Superman's quest to preserve them in the process. Finger wrote a number of tales involving ingeniously scrambled identities: see also "The Great Clayface - Joker Feud" (Batman #159, November 1963). In these tales, one person takes on another's identity.
The Stolen 'S' Shirts (Action #197, October 1954). Writer: Bill Finger. Crooks keep trying to steal uniform shirts with an S on them, including Superman's costume; no one can figure out why. This little tale shows Finger's affinity with the prose mystery tradition, in this case Agatha Christie's The A.B.C. Murders (1936). Both works deal with a series of crimes, and both involve the alphabet, although Finger's tale focuses exclusively on the letter S. The solution to both works is similar. Both Christie and Finger are in the tradition of G.K. Chesterton, and his "The Sign of the Broken Sword" (1911), which is based on a similar mystery principle. Other of Finger's works had evoked Chesterton, notably "The Case of the Mother Goose Mystery" (World's Finest #83, July-August 1956).
The story also shows another Finger specialty, the manipulation of people through schemes. The crooks keep doing things to get the men being robbed to take of their S shirts. Eventually Superman himself is tricked into taking off his shirt. He flies around shirtless; as the story itself points out, this is extremely unusual. These events show the bizarre subtexts one often finds in Finger stories.
Tests of a Warrior (1955). This tale shows Superman participating in the traditional life of an Indian tribe. It is one of several 1950's works that involve Superman with Westerns, then at the height of their popularity. This story is grounded in an early literary model of tribal life, one associated with Jack London, Stephen Vincent Benét, and other writers. While this model has now been superseded by more sophisticated accounts of Native American culture, it was the main literary model used by many writers who were sympathetic to Indian life and culture in the first half of the 20th Century. It is discussed further in the article on Tribal Detective Fiction. The authors of this story were clearly admiring of Native American culture, and were trying to convey it with dignity and respect to the mass readership of the comics. However, the story is not preachy; it is an exciting drama.
The Man Who Was Mightier Than Superman (1955). Writer: ?. Art: Wayne Boring. Superman is followed by a man while performing his feats; the man turns out to have powers greater than Superman's own. This is a well constructed story with many good twists. If I had to guess an author the pick would be Edmond Hamilton. Hamilton wrote other stories about people monitoring Superman and recording his activities. The tale is also Hamilton-like in that it looks at some alternative histories for Krypton and its inhabitants, a Hamilton concern in the later 1950's. See for example, Hamilton's "The Second Superman" (Superman #119, February 1958).
The Superman Calendar (1956). Writer: ?. Art: Al Plastino. A crooked entrepreneur puts out a Superman calendar for charity; Superman has to duplicate the spectacular feat shown for each month, or the charity will lose its funds. This tale reminds one of Otto Binder's "The 100 New Feats of Superboy" (Superboy #58 July 1957). In that story, Superboy has to perform 100 sensational new deeds, which will appear in a book that will be published; here, Superman has to bring to life twelve deeds pictured on a calendar. This story is just plain charming. It does not have the elaborate plot twists of Silver Age tales. It is just a series of Superman feats. There is a gap between the abstract feat shown in the calendar, and how Superman actually performs it in real life. This gives the story an interesting dual perspective. The story does have a happy quality, a picture of a sunny world.
The story includes Plastino's two page Superman calendar. Plastino also did the story on which the story was based; it shows pages from the calendar. Such a calendar is an interesting non-narrative strategy. It is integrated into the story's plot in interesting ways.
The First Superman of Krypton (#223, December 1956). Writer: Edmond Hamilton. Art: Wayne Boring. Diaries and videotapes found by Superman recount how his father Jor-El once temporarily gained Superman-like powers on Krypton. This story embodies one of Hamilton's favorite themes: a character, such as Jor-El, taking on the career of another character, in this case Superman. This story shows an early attempt to depict life on Krypton. Developing a richer look at Krypton was a major goal of the Silver Age Superman family. This mild, inoffensive story is largely lacking in inspiration, however. It will remain for Otto Binder in 1958 and 1959 to develop a much better inside look at Krypton. Its plot gimmick recalls Bill Finger's "The First Batman" (Detective Comics #235, September 1956), published three months before this tale, in which Batman learns that his father once filled the Batman role.
The best part of this tale is Wayne Boring's art. The splash shows high towers on Krypton connected by aerial ramps, in the tradition of Fritz Lang's film Metropolis (1926). There is also a beautiful image of Krypton in space (p3). One can see the outlines of Krypton continents. Boring is already following the tradition of Kryptonian woman's clothing looking like fancy evening gowns.
Superman's New Uniform (1958). Writer: Otto Binder. Art: Wayne Boring. When his old uniform is apparently destroyed in an explosion, Superman gets a new super-suit. I've only read the finale of this story in a partially preserved comic book. It is ingenious in Binder's best manner, and I'd love to read the whole thing. The finale involves some clever role reversals between Jimmy Olsen and Superman. Boring has done an inventive job with the new yellow and purple uniform. It looks completely different from Superman's original costume.
Superman in Superman Land (1955). Writer: Bill Finger. Art: Wayne Boring. A Superman themed amusement park called Superman Land opens near Metropolis. This tale is based on a spectacular cover by Boring, showing the park from the air. It is full of the Art Deco design that usually was reserved for Krypton and other advanced planets. But the buildings are also full of signs in English, which is something never seen on Krypton. The Deco lettering is 3D, with each letter standing out in depth against a flat background. This sort of lettering is common on real life Deco buildings, but it is making an almost unique appearance in the comics here. Boring has not gone in for rides or other typical amusement park machinery. Instead, most of the buildings are pavilions and halls, which seem to be featuring advanced science or reconstructions of Krypton. There are also narrow sidewalks, filled with pedestrians. Many of these are L shaped, and add to the elegant Art Deco mood. The whole scene look like early 20th Century Modernist illustrations of the City of the Future. The sidewalks, the buildings and the lettering together make a beautiful series of rectilinear and angled patterns.
The first half of Finger's story, a guided tour of the park, is better than the second, a routine crime plot taking place in the park. Finger shows pleasant ingenuity in his park attractions, and Boring continues the same beautiful Deco look of the cover on the inside art. A main attraction is a simulated space flight to Krypton. This recalls similar simulated rides at Disneyland, and the whole park is very close in feel to Disneyland itself. The story appeared the same year (1955) that Disneyland opened, so it was very topical.
The various rides show the mechanical ingenuity Finger often lavished on the high tech devices used by the Joker and other villains in his Batman tales. The rides tend to be designed to convince people they are somewhere they are not: e.g., on a spaceship to Krypton. This reminds us that Finger tales are often full of elaborate schemes to delude the hero, and manipulate his perceptions. Finger adopts the same approach here, in a less criminal mode. Finger has a real affinity with such sinister con games and mind manipulation; here his skills are being employed on an apparently more innocent approach.
Krypton on Earth (1958). Writer: ?. Art: Wayne Boring. A real estate developer creates a new community on an island on Earth, modeled on Krypton, where everyone wears Kryptonian clothes and lives in Kryptonian style buildings. Boring's beautiful architecture for Krypton Island looks a lot like buildings he created for "Superman in Superman Land" (1956). Boring also does a superb job with the Kryptonian clothes. The story is also notable for including the flag of Krypton. This might be its first appearance in a Superman family story. It will appear intermittently throughout the Silver Age, always in a format identical to the one here.
This tale is part of a trend in the Superman family, starting in mid 1958, to give much greater prominence to Krypton. The dialogue states that Krypton was "a paradise of happiness" for its inhabitants. Krypton was part of a Utopian vision by the creators of the Superman family comics.
At the story's end, Superman expresses a wish to go back to the island, and enjoy the Kryptonian images of his homeland. As far as I know, this sequel never took place. Krypton Island did not become a regular fixture of the Superman mythos. This is perhaps because it was not genuinely science fictional, but merely an all-human replica. Superman would instead visit Kandor when longing for a Kryptonian home.
The Super-Key to Fort Superman (1958). Writer: Jerry Coleman. Art: Wayne Boring. This story introduced Superman's "Fortress of Solitude", his private sanctuary somewhere in the Arctic. The story is full of terrific detail about the Fortress, and Superman's activities there. It looks like a great place to visit. The tale also has a well done mystery plot. Coleman stresses Superman's activity as a scientist. This is typical of Coleman's heroes, who often seem to be both scientists and public benefactors. Coleman's protagonists have a positive attitude. They are always working on something constructive, and trying to help other people.
Kryptonese script shows up here, a year before its prominent occurrence in such Otto Binder tales as "Superman's Other Life" (1959) and "How Jimmy Olsen First Met Superman" (1959). I was always fascinated by this as a kid, and wanted to learn more. At this early date, Superman and Krypto were the only known survivors of Krypton, and Superman is treated as the only person in the universe to know Kryptonese. All this would change in the very next issue, with Binder's introduction of the bottled city of Kandor. There is more Kryptonese in Binder's "The Lady and the Lion" (1958), two issues later.
The Super-Duel in Space (1958). Writer: Otto Binder. Art: Al Plastino. This is the story that told how the villain Brainiac shrunk the Kryptonian city of Kandor, and put it in a bottle. It is the origin tale of Kandor. The bottled city of Kandor is an extraordinarily poetic concept. It is perhaps the most imaginative element of the Superman mythos, along with Red Kryptonite, also a Binder invention. When I was growing up, it was my favorite part of the Superman series.
Binder also includes a guided tour of Kandor here, concentrating on the wonders of Krypton. He goes to his favorite location, a Zoo filled with unique Kryptonian animals. These sections recall his other great Krypton stories of 1958 - 1959.
Krypton and Kandor are not limited in their properties, unlike, say, the Phantom Zone, which is rigidly defined with a set of fixed characteristics. Instead, every time we visit Krypton, we see new wonders. This is perhaps a bit inconsistent on occasion - there are stories showing Kryptonians using moving sidewalks, and others showing flying vehicles. But the long range effect is to suggest Krypton as a place of limitless wonder. One always feels one is seeing just a glimmer of its possibilities and rich culture in each tale.
Binder was very interested in creating survivors of the planet Krypton. Soon he would create Supergirl, and introduce her surviving piece of Krypton (later named Argo City) as part of her mythos. In a more comic vein, Beppo the Super-monkey would also soon arrive from Krypton, in Superboy. Such survivals helped make Krypton a living presence in the Superman family series.
This story has a "Cosmic" perspective, showing cities being uprooted and sent through space. So does the tale of Argo City. Binder also wrote such stories outside of the Superman family, for other comic books as well: see "Amazing Space Flight of North America" (Mystery in Space #44, June-July 1958). Binder's outstanding sf tales for Mystery in Space are discussed in that article.
The Shrinking Superman (1958). Writer: Otto Binder. Art: Wayne Boring. Even before the invention of the "exchange ray", the Superman family featured stories in which people from Kandor and Earth traded places. In "The Shrinking Superman", the man who trades places with Superman looks exactly like him. Such exchanges between Earth people and their Kandorian doubles will also frequently be plot elements of the subsequent stories, many of which were also written by Binder.
The Super-Outlaw of Krypton (1960). Writer: Otto Binder. This three part tale filled the entire issue of Superman #141. This otherwise minor story is notable for introducing the exchange ray, a device that permits a person in Kandor and a person in the Fortress of Solitude exchange places. This was a useful plot device that showed up in later stories.
This tale manages to include a recap of the entire Krypton saga in one work. This must have been extremely useful for readers of the Superman magazine. It also helps cement the Superman family mythos. Here we see the destruction of Krypton and the sending of Superbaby to Earth; the survival of Kandor, and the saga of Supergirl, all in one story. It even manages to go to that favorite location, the Krypton Zoo.
All Supergirl stories have art by Jim Mooney, unless otherwise noted. Mooney had previously drawn the Tommy Tomorrow stories in Action, which Supergirl replaced.
The Supergirl From Krypton (1959). Writer: Otto Binder. Art: Al Plastino. Supergirl arrived on Earth in this story, her origin tale. It is structured partly as a mystery: Supergirl arrives astonishingly full blown, complete with costume and a command of English, and Superman asks some very logical questions on how this can be, questions that get equally logical answers. Such a full fledged initial persona has both its surrealistic and its comic aspects, which add an interesting tone to the story.
Superman's questions and Supergirl's story can be interpreted in other ways, too. Superman can be seen a posing the basic questions of a story, and Supergirl can be seen in the position of the author: someone whose job it is to come up with the tale, the tale that will have all the answers to the questions. In this sense, Superman is functioning like an editor, and Supergirl like the author of the story. This self-reflexive structure is not unusual in Otto Binder's tales: several of them have characters who function in the story in a way analogous to the author himself.
There are other interpretations, equally structural. The introduction to the story stresses that the tale is adding new elements to the mythos of the Superman family books. The change will not be explained away at the end of the story; it will make a permanent addition to the mythos. This is indeed true: Supergirl would go on to be a permanent character, starring in many stories in Action and elsewhere. In this context, Superman can be seen as being in the role of the "gatekeeper of the mythos". He is standing there, challenging the entry of Supergirl and her story into the mythos. The questions he is asking are designed to point out apparent contradictions between Supergirl's appearance, and claim to be from Krypton, and what he knows about the "logical world" of the Superman stories. He makes it clear that he will only accept her as real, if the story she tells can explain away these contradictions. From the point of view of the mythos, this makes sense. One can and should add a new element to the mythos, only if it is logically consistent with what has gone before. The questions of logical consistency Superman is asking are precisely the questions the editor and writers of the Superman family need to ask before adding a new dimension to the mythos.
Superman's initial response is revealing: he claims that Supergirl must be an illusion. He denies her reality altogether. Reality is the Superman family is defined by the mythos: the "reality" of the stories is simply the content of the mythos. So a denial of reality is equivalent to the question of exclusion from or inclusion in the mythos.
Superman's asking these questions have a literal role in the story, too, of course: he will accept this stranger's tale as true, only he can get his logical questions answered. So his questions have a "realistic" interpretation, as well: the sort of questions a person would answer in real life, before accepting a stranger.
There are other aspects, as well. Supergirl erupts in the story like an irrational figure from the subconscious. She is just "there", without any history or rationale. She recalls the myth of the birth of Athena, sprung full grown from the brow of Zeus. Superman's questions represent Reason, stressing logical analysis and consistency; Supergirl appears like the Irrational, a sudden force that is just there and must be dealt with, as is.
A man (Superman) asking questions of a woman (Supergirl), recalls many classical myths in which men ask questions of women (Oedipus and the Sphinx), and in which a man asks a woman to tell him a story (the King and Scheherazade).
Superman is also much older than Supergirl. She can represent new ideas, imagination; and he can represent established reality, the question process through which new ideas are put before they are accepted.
Supergirl should also be seen in a context, where the Superman family writers were creating other survivors of Krypton. Later stories largely stuck to the mythos established in this tale, retelling it many times. One exception: here only Supergirl's neighborhood survives the explosion of Krypton; in later tales the entire Argo City survives.
The Girl of Steel (Superman #123, August 1958). Writer: Otto Binder. A wish by Jimmy Olsen on a magic totem causes a Super-Girl to appear in Metropolis to be Superman's helper and companion. The year before Binder created the "real" Supergirl, he created this trial run for the character. Super-Girl looks much like the later Supergirl character: she is a young woman with blonde hair, and an outfit much like Superman's. She also has powers identical to those of Superman, also a feature of the later Supergirl. However, she is not a native of Krypton, being created instead through a magic wish. And her personality is very different from the later Supergirl's. She has none of Supergirl's pluck, intelligence and resourcefulness. Instead, she is pretty inept, and keeps lousing things up for Superman through her clumsiness with her powers. The Superman family published a number of tales about "new" super-beings, people who have just received their super-powers, and who use them ineptly, creating messes that Superman must clean up. I never thought this was a very interesting subject for a story, here or elsewhere. In general, "The Girl of Steel" is notable only for being a half-way stop on Binder's road to the creation of Supergirl. He had some good ideas here, but he utilized them much better in "The Supergirl From Krypton".
Supergirl's Darkest Day (1960). Writer: Otto Binder. Several 1960 tales in Action Comics centered around the adoption of orphans from Midvale Orphanage, where Supergirl lived under her secret identity. In this story a boy gets adopted. The tale develops into some outstanding sf plotting, one of Binder's fortes. The title is misleading: nothing especially bad seems to happen to Supergirl in the tale.
Supergirl Gets Adopted (1960). Writer: Jerry Siegel. Supergirl gets adopted by a policeman and his wife. Supergirl herself is the adoptee in this tale and "The Day Supergirl Revealed Herself". These are minor but nice stories that have their moments of inspiration. These two stories have utterly different plots, despite their common premise. This shows the exceptional storytelling fertility of the creators of the Superman family magazines. Nor does either story use villainy to make any plot developments; in all the tales, the adoptive parents are good people.
The Day Supergirl Revealed Herself (1960). Writer: Jerry Siegel. Supergirl gets adopted in Smallville, where her existence is revealed to the community. This is one of the few Superman family tales set in "modern" times to look at the community of Smallville, home of Superman's youth in the 1930's. The story has elements of satire, something Jerry Siegel more often turned on the mass media, than on the Superman mythos itself. The story also has elements that link it to the Imaginary Tale, soon to be a Superman family specialty. Siegel was the author of many Imaginary stories, especially those which dealt with the personal lives of the continuing characters.
The Cave-Girl of Steel (1959). Writer: Otto Binder. Supergirl travels to the distant past, where she tames a Brontosaurus and helps a tribe of cave people. Charming time travel tale. Supergirl thrills to the fact that she does not have to conceal her presence on Earth in the past, and the tale gives her a chance to exercise her powers fully. A story like this serves as a dress rehearsal for Supergirl's eventual presentation to the world.
Binder is aware that in real life, the dinosaurs died out long before cave people. So he sets his tale in a special valley, where the dinosaurs somehow managed to survive.
Binder pioneered the time travel story in the Superman family. When Binder had Jimmy Olsen travel into the past in "The Feats of Chief Super-Duper" (Jimmy Olsen #14, August 1956), he had him comically flub all of his attempts to achieve things. Binder saw Jimmy as one of his comic Everymen. By contrast, he has Supergirl succeed with all her goals. This is an aid to characterization. Binder basically saw Supergirl as a genuine hero, someone who was going to become Superman's equal. A story like this has a strong feminist subtext.
The Girl Superbaby (1960). Writer: Otto Binder. A magical lake transforms Supergirl into an infant. This tale is very similar to the Superbaby tales, which featured Superboy as an infant. It is a unique, one-shot event. Since Supergirl came to Earth already as a teenager, there is no way to flash back in time and show her adventures as a super-powered infant on Earth. So the magazine has come up with the idea of a magical transformation into infancy, the sort of experience frequently encountered by Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, and other continuing characters in the saga.
The Mystery Supergirl (1960). This story is unusual in that it is a nicely done mystery tale, a genre more often associated with Lois Lane.
Supergirl's First Romance (1960). Writer: Jerry Siegel. Supergirl goes to Atlantis, where she meets Jerro, a young merman. Bill Finger had introduced Atlantis and Lori Lemaris into the Superman mythos. But nearly all subsequent tales involving Atlantis in a major way were the work of Jerry Siegel. Siegel wrote a series of tales in Superman, following up on Superman's and Lori's romance. He also had Superboy involved with Atlantis in the fascinatingly detailed "Superboy and the Mermaid From Atlantis" (Adventure #280, January 1961), which also links up Superman's mythos with Aquaman. Here, in his other most important Atlantis story, he connects up Supergirl. The story parallels Superman's romance with Lori with Supergirl's puppy love with Jerro. This tale is genuinely nice. It does not show the problems other Superman saga tales often had with romance. Instead, both Supergirl and Jerro treat each other admirably. Siegel's other main Supergirl romance, "Supergirl's Three Super Girl-Friends" (1961), in which she meets Brainiac 5, is also appealing and innocent. The tale is also notable for its pacifist theme, with Supergirl destroying forbidden weapons of Atlantis, and being celebrated by its inhabitants for that.
Supergirl's Busiest Day (1960). Writer: Jerry Siegel. Supergirl has to rescue Lori, Krypto, Batman and Robin. This delightful tale is a follow-up of sorts to "Supergirl's First Romance" of the previous issue; Supergirl returns to Atlantis, where she meets Jerro again.
Supergirl's Fortress of Solitude (#271, December 1960). Writer: Jerry Siegel. Supergirl builds her own Fortress, underneath the Sahara Desert. The first half of this minor tale is better than the second. It shows both the Fortress, and updates us on Streaky, Supergirl's pet super-cat. I especially liked Streaky's playroom in the Fortress. Siegel had created a series of tales in Action Comics about Streaky, including his origin in "Supergirl's Super-Pet" (#261, February 1960) and "The World's Mightiest Cat" (#266, July 1960). Although I am a major cat lover in real life, I have never been fond of most of these, feeling they lacked invention. Streaky is unusual in two ways: his super-powers come and go, and he is not from Krypton, so he is not affected by Kryptonite, something Siegel sometimes works into the plots.
This tale states that only living beings can time travel by Superman and Supergirl's methods; inanimate objects cannot be brought along. This is an aspect of the Superman mythos I do not recall from many other tales. It returns in "Supergirl's Three Super Girl-Friends" (1961), next year, but it was rarely employed elsewhere. It is consistent with the Superman family mythos: I cannot recall any stories where Superman brought objects from the past into the present, for example. Still, it mainly seems to have been implicit in the tales.
Supergirl's Three Time Trips (1961). Writer: Jerry Siegel. Supergirl travels into three past eras, where she takes on the roles of Annie Oakley, Betsy Ross and Pocohontas. Supergirl's time trips were different from Jimmy Olsen's and Lois Lane's. Those characters were always recreating their relationship with Superman by encountering some historical figure with super-powers. Supergirl's time trips have her taking on the role of some heroine of the past. These episodes clearly have a feminist sub-text; they are reminding readers that there were many heroic women in humanity's past. The tale is also notable for its dignified look at Native American life, in the Pocohontas episode.
Siegel introduces a small sf mystery here: how did Kryptonite get from the present to past eras? The story gives a logical look at this. It seems mainly intended to give a logical basis for future time travel stories, in which Superman would encounter Kryptonite as part of the plot.
Supergirl's Three Super Girl-Friends (1961). Writer: Jerry Siegel. Supergirl goes to the future, and tries for the second time to join the Legion of Super-Heroes. This story is discussed in detail in the article on the Legion.
The Battle of the Super-Pets (1961). Writer: Jerry Siegel. Streaky the super-cat and Krypto the super-dog have the ultimate cat and dog super-fight, to see who is stronger and more intelligent. The splash panel says that the magazine had had a deluge of letters requesting this story. It is a delightful comic gem. The fur really flies here. Siegel takes several steps to keep this tale innocent. Streaky and Krypto do not hate each other; each is just comically conceited and sure he is the stronger animal. The tale is a staged contest, refereed by Supergirl, not a real life fight. Siegel had had great success depicting Krypto's conceit satirically in "The Super Star of Hollywood" (Adventure #272, May 1960); here he done the same for both Streaky and Krypto.
This story is somewhat in the tradition of Siegel mysteries, in that once the locale shifts to the planet, the characters start undergoing a lot of strange transformations over which they have no control. This tale is different from other Siegel mystery tales in that there is no villain figure causing all the events in the tale. Instead the "villain" figure here seems to be the planet itself, to which all the bizarre transformations which take place are attributed. The story is also much more comic in tone than most other Siegel mystery tales. But the story does include the ingenious revelations which always conclude a Siegel mystery tale.
Supergirl's Secret Enemy (1961). Writer: Jerry Siegel. Since Supergirl lost her powers (in the previous issue) she is free to get adopted by the Danvers: their origin story.
The previous issue had marked a radical change of approach for the Supergirl stories. From now on, many would be groups of continuing serials. Issues would not be resolved at the end of each tale; instead, Supergirl's problems would go on and on (and on) from story to story. These Supergirl arcs are the only major serials in the Silver Age Superman family. There would be four Imaginary tales in Lois Lane about her marriage to Superman, but that serial was brief and irregular compared to Supergirl's. On the whole, the Supergirl stories suffered a nose-dive in quality at this point. They often depicted Supergirl as a victim of the machinations of some villain; in this tale an evil woman scientist from Kandor called Lesla-Lar. Supergirl comes across in many of these serial stories as a wimp. She seems helpless to figure anything out, or guard against these villains. This is a big step down from the highly competent Supergirl of the earlier tales. The best Supergirl stories from this point on would generally be the individual, non-series tales that were frequently interspersed among the serials.
This tale is better than most of the serial stories. Here Supergirl gets adopted, and it sets up the basic mechanism of her new life. The Danvers seem like nice people. But they also lack the rich personalities of Ma and Pa Kent. Mr. Danvers is a designer of rockets for the space program, an interesting touch. In the Superboy stories we often see Pa and Ma Kent at work, in the store or in their home. Both also take part in the civic life of Smallville, and have a profound influence of the exploits of Superboy. Little of this ever happens with the Danvers, who mainly are seen sitting around their house, beaming with pride at Supergirl. In the later stories in Action, Supergirl will frequently keep secrets from the Danvers. They never learn about Superman's secret identity, for example, according to a letters column, nor do they learn about Comet the Super-Horse. This too is different from the Kents, who knew everything about the mythos, and who frequently gave Superboy guidance.
The Secret of the Time Barrier (#281, October 1961). Writer: Jerry Siegel. While suffering from amnesia, Supergirl works as an actress in the Kandorian film industry. This minor tale does give us an inside look at the movie world, a Siegel specialty. Siegel has a few satiric touches here, but it is not as zingy as his other media stories. We had seen a high-tech Kandor film as a member of the audience in the previous episode of this serial, "Trapped in Kandor" (#280, September 1961), also by Siegel. That tale also revealed that people in Kandor worked four hour days, a nice futuristic touch for this advanced civilization. Earlier that year, Jimmy Olsen had also seen a Kandorian film in "The Boy in the Bottle" (Jimmy Olsen #53, June 1961), also by Siegel; these Supergirl tales are a follow-up to that. Throughout 1961, Jimmy had had many encounters with Hollywood and the media. The same issue of Action that contains "The Secret of the Time Barrier" also holds Bernstein's "The Man Who Saved Kal-El's Life", with its Hollywood setting. Siegel also looked at the film industry on old Krypton in "Superman's Return to Krypton" (Superman #141, November 1960).
The World's Greatest Heroine; The Infinite Monster (#286, February 1962). Writer: Jerry Siegel. Supergirl's existence is revealed to the world, which acclaims her as a heroine. This story is most notable for its feminist elements. At the tale's end, Superman makes Supergirl his equal partner in all things. This sort of position of equality with a man, and a leadership position in the world, is very rare for a woman in 1962. Before that, many men in the tale, both honest and crooks, have expressed dismay about having a woman who is more powerful than they are. Siegel also includes a sequence, in the stories' second half, in which Supergirl has to prove her abilities to a group of skeptical army officers. Many of them doubt a girl can defeat the sf menace threatening to destroy the United States. Supergirl figures out how to defeat the villain menacing America, triumphantly. This is typical of her behavior in the Superman family stories. Supergirl often has to rise to serious occasions, and she usually does better in the stories than onlookers anticipate. She is definitely a male equal, a full fledged hero by any standards.
Siegel's story has the "procession" construction that will later be seen in his "The Death of Superman" (1962). We see the reaction of huge numbers of different people, and even alien beings, to the central news of the tale. This makes much of these tales virtually plotless. These stories' content is much more interesting than their form.
Superman's Super-Courtship (1962). Writer: Jerry Siegel. Supergirl plays cupid and tries to find Superman the perfect mate. This tale shows the exuberant possibilities of the Superman mythos, with numerous sub-plots reaching in all directions. It has the episodic "anthology" construction familiar in Siegel. There is also a great deal of tongue in cheek humor. The opening includes one of Siegel's movie spoofs. Siegel liked writing romance stories; this is the only spoof of a romance movie I know of in his fiction. The final episode is based on Curt Swan's cover; it also recalls Binder's "The Mystery of Mighty Boy" (Superboy #85, December 1960).
Supergirl's Greatest Challenge (1962). Writer: Jerry Siegel. Supergirl visits the Legion of Super-Heroes in the future, and strives to defeat a radioactive menace. This tale has affinities to Siegel's mystery stories. Instead of just one mystery plot, it has several, each one building on the previous one. There are also links between this story and other Siegel mystery tales. These tales share characters and approaches with this story; in some cases the roles are reversed here from other Siegel mystery tales. (These tales are not specified here to avoid spoiling the mystery.) The whole effect is complex and fascinating.
There is a pattern to the villains Siegel has Supergirl battling. First of all they are very powerful. They are science fictional beings, and they are charged with awesome powers. Usually they are terribly destructive, rampaging through everything in their path. They also seem to be male: here the menace is Positive Man. They represent male power at its most damaging. Secondly, Supergirl tends to defeat these menaces through brain power. She tends to come up with some ingenious, science based way to defeat the villains, and drain them of their menace and power.
Siegel does ingenious things with androids in this tale. He had earlier success with this subject in "Lois Lane Weds Astounding Man" (Lois Lane #18, July 1960), and had also created a whole planet of androids, the Krypton Memorial World in "The One Minute of Doom" (Superman #150, January 1962).
Supergirl's Super Boy-Friends (1962). Writer: Jerry Siegel. Supergirl's boy-friends Jerro the Merman and Dick Malverne temporarily acquire super-powers of their own. Siegel liked stories in which non-super-powered people got powers. Lois Lane and Lana did in a Siegel series starting with "Lana Lang, Superwoman" (Lois Lane #17, May 1960). So did Bizarro-Lois in Siegel's "Bizarro's Secret Identity" (Adventure #288, September 1961). Now, it is Supergirl's boyfriends who receive the powers. This is a complete gender reversal of the earlier tales, with Supergirl's boyfriends standing in for Superman's girlfriends. Siegel usually suggests that getting such powers is a lot of fun; this story is no exception. The men here do not realize they are rivals for Supergirl's affections, so there is none of the jealousy shown by Lois and Lana. All of these stories have affinities with Siegel's Imaginary stories, which typically also deal with romances of Superman and other super-powered characters.
The story involves another parallelism between Superman and Supergirl. It is the origin of the Supergirl Emergency Squad, modeled on Superman's, which first appeared in Binder's "The Mystery of the Tiny Supermen" (Jimmy Olsen #48, October 1960). It is part of the evolution of Supergirl's public role, now that her existence is known to the world. This is a thread throughout this tale.
The Bride of Mr. Mxyzptlk (1962). Writer: Jerry Siegel. Supergirl has her first comic encounter with magical imp Mr. Mxyzptlk, who brings her Kryptonian parents back to life, and who wants her to be his bride. Richly plotted tale, that includes an unusual look at the Bizarros, as well. Siegel was scripting the Bizarro World stories in Adventure, and here he gets to combine his two main humorous series, the Bizarros and Mr. Mxyzptlk. The Bizarros here, however, are on Earth, and they are ordinary people, not clones of Superman and Lois. This is very different from the entire history of the Bizarros in the Superman mythos. It is courtesy of the magic of Mr. Mxyzptlk, who can make anything happen.
The Fantastic Menace of the "LL's" (1964). Writer: ?. A computer sent by the Cybernians predicts that Supergirl will be affected by people with LL in their name. Superman often encountered people named LL, such as Lois Lane and Lana Lang; it was a running theme of the mythos. Supergirl rarely did, however, as is explicitly pointed out in this story. However, here she meets a torrent of characters with LL in their names. The Cybernians, an advanced civilization of aliens skilled at constructing computers, had previously appeared in Jerry Siegel's "Superman's Day of Doom" (Superman #157, November 1962), as the story points out.
This is one of the few Supergirl works of the period apparently not written by Leo Dorfman. It seems very different from most of the Supergirl works of its era. The tale is episodic. Part 2 shows Supergirl going undercover to solve a series of society jewel robberies; such undercover detective plots remind one of Robert Bernstein. So does the way Supergirl is aided in the third episode by a mysterious, non-super-powered strange who is looking after her. Mysterious strangers also are a specialty of Jerry Siegel and his mystery tales.
The Super-Steed of Steel (#292, September 1962). Writer: Leo Dorfman. Supergirl dreams of a noble white horse who can fly and perform super-deeds, then meets Super-Horse in person at a Western dude ranch. The first appearance of Comet the Super-Horse in Action, although he had previously appeared in Jerry Siegel's "The Legion of Super-Traitors" (Adventure #293, February 1962), which served as the origin of The Legion of Super-Pets. This story establishes Super-Horse's physical look, and many of his super-powers. It does not tell us where he came from, or how he got his powers; that is left for the story's continuation in succeeding issues. Basically, this is a girl meets horse tale. It is innocuous, but pretty mild and ordinary.
This tale marks the permanent start of Dorfman taking over script writing duties for Supergirl. Most of the Supergirl scripts will be his through Action Comics #333, February 1966.
The Secret Origin of Supergirl's Super-Horse (1962). Writer: Leo Dorfman. The life-story of Super-Horse, how he got his powers, and how he teams up with Supergirl. This is the true Origin story of Super-Horse. It is far and away the best of the initial trio of Super-Horse tales, showing considerable plot imagination. Hamilton's "Superman's First Exploit" (Superman #106, July 1956) had involved repeller rays on Kal-El's rocket. Dorfman does something similar here with Supergirl's. The trips to Earth are poetic moments. Key things happen during them.
The Mutiny of Super-Horse (#294, November 1962). Writer: Leo Dorfman. Super-Horse is sold to a Hollywood production company, who use him in a film. This is a tragic tale, which ends in scenes of great sadness. It completes the first three story arc of Super-Horse tales, although it leaves them on a sad, cliff- hanging note. The finale of the tale once again invokes Greek mythology, a personal interest of Dorfman's.
We associate Hollywood stories with Jerry Siegel, although both Dorfman and Otto Binder sometimes wrote them too. Here, we see two archetypal characters who appear in many Superman family tales: the glamorous actress, and the foreign born, colorful director. Also typical of the Superman comics: the movie is a science fiction film, allowing some satire on the 1950's sf film industry.
The Return of Super-Horse (#300, May 1963). Writer: Leo Dorfman. Super-Horse struggles to recover from his amnesia, and resume both her super-powers and his relationship with Supergirl. This is the start of a second three story arc of Super-Horse tales. In between this set and the first three tales came the four story series about Lena Thorul and Lex Luthor. This story is closely tied to "The Mutiny of Super-Horse". Basically, it simply tries to undo and reverse the effects of that previous story. At the end, Super-Horse is back exactly where he started at the beginning of "Mutiny". These two tales are pretty minor. Dorfman's best moment here: when Super-Horse realizes that his powers could be put to better use that he is currently employing them. This is a life lesson which we all can share.
Jim Mooney has some good art at the end, when Midvale inhabitants are all costumed as ancient Greeks for a festival.
The Secret Identity of Super-Horse (1963). Writer: Leo Dorfman. Super-Horse's powers get extended, when a magic spell causes him to temporarily turn into a human whenever he is exposed to a comet. This is the most important Super-Horse story. It is rich and complexly plotted. Super-Horse winds up with three identities as a result of this story: as a horse, as a human, and as a centaur, half man and half horse. I do not recall any other comic book characters with this sort of three way identity. It recalls the complex interweaving of identities in Frank L. Packard's prose mystery The Adventures of Jimmie Dale (1914-1915).
Dorfman develops a standard process that controls the passage of Super-Horse from one identity to another. This process is superimposed over other plot events in the story, such as Super-Horse's struggle with bag guys. The two sequences interact in ingenious ways. This sort of counterpointing effect is rare in fiction, and probably hard to create. Dorfman also wrote stories in which the events are seen from the point of view of two protagonists simultaneously; these tales also have a contrapuntal structure.
Dorfman was creating so many Comet tales that he was threatening to take over Action. He is much more the protagonist of these tales than Supergirl. Many of the stories are from his point of view, and he is the only one who understands all the secrets of the plot - two marks of a central character in the Superman family.
The first half takes place on the sorcerer's planet of Zerox, where magic has undergone the systematic development that science has on Earth. This idea is not too unusual in prose fantasy stories, such as Randall Garrett's Lord Darcy tales, which began in 1964. I have somewhat mixed feelings about this. Except for the comic tales of Mr. Mxyzptlk, almost everything in the Superman mythos is pure science fiction. Here Dorfman is introducing fantasy elements. It does not quite fit. On the plus side, Dorfman handles this material quite well. Zerox is a kingdom, and has many features reminiscent of The Prisoner of Zenda, such as scheming claimants to the throne and palace intrigue. Such Ruritanian romance was not uncommon in the Superman family. Dorfman had also used such conventions in "Clark Kent, Coward" (#298, March 1963), three issues before.
The Day Super-Horse Went Wild (1963). Writer: Leo Dorfman. A villain hypnotizes Super-Horse, forcing him to go on a rampage of destruction. The story's basic premise draws on Robert Bernstein's "Superman Goes Wild" (#295, December 1962), in which Superman is similarly hypnotized into a destructive rampage. However, this story adds a lot of sub-plots and background features not present in the earlier story. This tale is typical of Dorfman, in that it involves a riot of science fiction invention.
Dorfman uses Super-Horse's cycle of transformation from one identity to another to free him from the villain's hypnotic control. This reminds one of Gardner Fox's similar strategy in his Adam Strange tales, where Adam's use of the zeta-beam teleportation cycle allows him to interfere with various menace's schemes. Dorfman also includes a great variety of settings for this tale. This produces the rich mix of many of his sf stories.
Dorfman examines the implications of the existence of Atlantis in this tale. If Atlantis existed in real life, we would have something like the "Zone X" he describes in his story. Zone X was created by the United Nations; Dorfman also looks at the interaction of Atlantis and the UN in his "The Girl Who Mourned for Superman" (Lois Lane #43, August 1963). Both of these stories show Dorfman thinking science fictionally, in intelligent ways.
The Black Magic of Supergirl (1965). Writer: Leo Dorfman. Supergirl gets a magic ring, which gives her sinister powers. Like the Super-Horse tales, this is a story which treats ancient myths as modern day realities.
The best part of this story is its finale. It has fine art by Jim Mooney. By 1965, Action was stressing large panels for some of its illustrations; Mooney takes advantage of this. Some of Dorfman's thinking here recalls his "Secret of Kryptonite Six" of the previous year, as well as the finale of his "From Riches to Rags" (1966). Both Mooney and Dorfman have come up with a genuinely poetic concept.
The Girl With the X-Ray Mind (1962). Writer: Leo Dorfman. Lena Thorul, a woman with ESP, joins the Supergirl saga as a continuing character and as Linda's friend. Lena was previously introduced in Jerry Siegel's "The Curse of Lena Thorul" (Lois Lane #23, February 1961). Much of Dorfman's story consists of flashbacks, that recapitulate the plot of Siegel's tale. As a later letter column pointed out, Lena was originally created as an adult, but here she is re-introduced in the series as a teenager, to make her a peer of Supergirl.
Dorfman really pushes the scientific validity of ESP here, something I've never believed in. The ESP cards have pictures of Superman's friends on them. This seems to be a way of getting more Superman mythos flavor into the tale. It evokes the Superman family as visual icons. Similarly, in this story's sequel "The Girl Who Was Supergirl's Double" we have a costume party in which some of the characters dress as Superman family characters.
The Girl Who Was Supergirl's Double (1963). Writer: Leo Dorfman. Linda's boyfriend Dick Malverne mistakenly suspects that Lena Thorul is the secret identity of Supergirl. This story takes place mainly among social events in Midvale. It is one of several tales appearing over the years that show Linda's personal life and that of her friends, all among everyday surroundings. There is much about dating and romance in these tales. This story contains a wealthy young classmate of Linda and Lena's, who has the terrific rich girl's name of Clarissa Giltedge. Dorfman shows a little tongue in cheek humor here.
This story has the serial construction familiar from Otto Binder, but much more rarely used by Dorfman. A series of four incidents persuades Dick that Lena is really Supergirl. Each incident is based on coincidence: fate ingeniously arranges events to make it look as if Lena is Supergirl's secret ID. This is classic Superman stuff. There have been countless tales of similar misunderstandings and twists of fate in the Superman saga.
The highlight of this story is the costume party. Costumes are used in a variety of ways here. Dick Malverne's conveys his leading man status. He always seems to be getting dressed up and going to parties: see his white tux in "Supergirl Goes to College" (1964). This is the Supergirl story in which he is most active, although unfortunately not in a good way - he goes the whole Lois Lane route here, trying to track down Supergirl's secret ID. Dick is skilled in engineering and science, always the sign of a sympathetic character in the DC Silver Age. But otherwise, he has few signs of a genuine Dorfman hero. He has no idealistic goals, and no secret identity. He often reminds one of the decent but dull boy friend of Nancy Drew and other girl's stories, someone who won't upstage the heroine. Even here, he is mainly deluded by fate. Lois Lane would never have settled for the illusions chance throws into his way. She would have seen to the bottom of them, and brought the story to a clever triumph.
The Great Supergirl Double-Cross (1964). Writer: Leo Dorfman. When Supergirl learns that Lena's new boy-friend Jeff Colby is secretly a spy, she tries to break up their romance. This story reverses the triangle plot of "The Girl Who Was Supergirl's Double". In that tale, Linda lost her boyfriend to Lena Thorul; here Lena loses her boyfriend to Linda.
Supergirl Goes to College (1964). Writer: Leo Dorfman. Linda enrolls in Stanhope College, where she duels with a snobbish sorority leader who puts her through difficult initiation tests.
This story explicitly hopes that Linda's getting a college education will serve as a role model for others, and encourage them to do the same. This is typical of DC's public service orientation during the Silver Age. However, college life is not depicted very sympathetically in Dorfman's tales. It seems to be full of nasty student snobs who control everyone's lives, and make them miserable. Dorfman likes the professors, but there is very little here about academic work. Around this time, Lois Lane's mythos started including the fact that she once went to Raleigh College, and she started having adventures set on that campus, which she would visit as an alumna. This theme of higher education for women is virtually the first look at university life in the whole Superman mythos, although there had been some flashback tales in the late 1950's dealing with Clark Kent's college days.
The Enemy Supergirl (1965). Writer: Leo Dorfman. Another super-powered woman mysteriously appears, who maliciously impersonates Supergirl. This tale is a sf mystery - where does the other, evil Supergirl come from? The best part of the tale is the solution, which explains the plot with considerable detail.
The Ugly Duckling Teacher of Stanhope College (1965). Writer: Leo Dorfman. Supergirl tries to help a dowdy but kind-hearted teacher who is the butt of student ridicule. This tale deals almost purely with romance, with very little sf or Superman mythos elements. It's a story of a social underdog who becomes a winner, and I've always had a weakness for tales like that. I could wish that this tale suggested valuing all human beings, not just beautiful ones. It does suggest the pain and the badness of the social pecking order, but it doesn't really offer concrete alternatives to our system of valuing people by their looks. Still, the story has plenty of appeal. Dorfman shows his sensitivity to people's feelings, and the importance of friendship and companionship, two of his basic themes.
The story does invoke Atlantis. Supergirl seems to have a special affinity for Atlantis, the way Jimmy Olsen is always heading for the bottled city of Kandor. Perhaps editor Mort Weisinger consciously encouraged this in his writers. Atlantis is some ways seems a female-oriented place. Its leading citizen is female, Lori Lemaris, and it is in the bottom of the ocean, a female symbol. It is based on the female legend of mermaids, and the telepathic power of its inhabitants is often associated with women in the mythos - for example, Saturn Girl and Saturn Queen.
Once again in this tale, Dorfman heroes seem to have multiple identities. This is a common feature of his male characters, including Super-Horse and Jeff Colby, Lena Thorul's boy-friend. These multiple identities seem to lead to romance. They make his heroes more marriageable. It also allows them to deal with all the evil and villainy in society. It gives them a way to escape and evade this evil, making them not part of social corruption, but rather an agent for its cure. Dorfman's heroes tend to be more intelligent, as well as more decent, than much of the society around them. Their lack of superficiality makes them want to help people and do good. They have perspective, a broader and deeper point of view than the other characters. This too helps them evade social evil. This perspective is increased by their multiple identities, which allow them to play different roles in society.
The Fantastic Secret of Superbaby II (1963). Writer: Leo Dorfman. Supergirl encounters an orphan baby, whose life mysteriously parallels that of Superbaby's many years before. Classic mystery tale, with Supergirl striving to understand how these strange events are happening.
This story reminds one of the "Fantastic Adventure" tales appearing in Jimmy Olsen during this period. Its great complexity, its maze like plot construction, and its surprising finale all recall the Fantastic Adventure tales. Its elaborate recreation of the original Superbaby saga can be considered an sf "landscape", one in which Supergirl is bewilderingly plunged. Such landscapes were characteristic of the Fantastic Adventures. And the mystery's solution also recalls features of the Fantastic Adventure tales. Another similarity: Supergirl solves her mystery, just as Jimmy does, by a mixture of shrewd observation and intelligence.
"The Secret Identity of Super-Horse" and "The Amazing Confession of Super-Perry White", also from this period, also have a similar plot complexity. Neither of these stories are in the Fantastic Adventure mold - they have neither a villain, a mystery nor a sf landscape - but they do have some of the same ambition and inspiration.
Much is made in "Superbaby II" of the two languages, Kryptonian and English, and the speed at which Superbaby II learns English under Supergirl's tutelage. This recalls Jimmy's mastery of Old Norse in Dorfman's "Jimmy Olsen's Viking Sweetheart" (Jimmy Olsen #69, June 1963). Dorfman does not use poetic license here and have everybody just speak one language. Instead, he weaves the two languages into the structure of the plot. There is a similar two language approach in a Fantastic Adventure tale, "Jimmy Olsen Meets Cleopatra" (Jimmy Olsen #71, September 1963), which uses Latin and English.
The Maid of Doom (1963). Writer: Leo Dorfman. Supergirl's touch causes a fatal blue aura to attack any super-being she touches, whether animals like Krypto, or humans. Superb sf-mystery hybrid, with a well-developed plot. The story's premise recalls Robert Bernstein's "Lois Lane's Kiss of Death" (Lois Lane #7, February 1959). But while Bernstein's tale has a fake "supernatural" background, everything in "The Maid of Doom" is purely science fictional.
Dorfman had just written a previous sf mystery starring Supergirl, "The Fantastic Secret of Superbaby II" (1963).
Supergirl's Wedding Day (1963). Writer: Leo Dorfman. Supergirl is romanced by Tor-An, who is secretly an escaped Phantom Zone criminal out for revenge. This story is rich in glimpses of Krypton. We see both true and false histories of Tor-An's life on Krypton, as well as a whole Kryptonian marriage ceremony. This makes it one of the mixed Krypton and Earth set tales that the writers of the Superman family loved.
Supergirl's Rival Parents (1964). Writer: Leo Dorfman. Supergirl tries to liberate her Kryptonian parents from the Survival Zone, leading to conflicts with her foster parents the Danvers. Well done soap opera. Dorfman stresses the theme of self-sacrifice. In the earlier "The Bride of Mr. Mxyzptlk" (1962) by Jerry Siegel, Supergirl's Kryptonian parents had been brought temporarily to life through the magic of Mr. Mxyzptlk. Everything that imp does is temporary and artificial, so the reader knew that it was not a real, permanent part of the Superman mythos. However, that story ended in a query, asking readers if they wanted to bring back Supergirl's parents for real. Dorfman also follows the earlier story, in stressing Supergirl's conflicted feelings about two sets of parents, and her parents' noble self sacrifice.
This tale has Dorfman's two part construction: the first part being set on another planet, the second part taking place on Earth. In the first part of such tales, we often see the science fiction origin of events. The second part then deals with the permanent consequences of such events, and how they are going to affect the heroes' lives on Earth. Dorfman used a similar construction for the origin story of Super-Horse's human identity, "The Secret Identity of Super-Horse" (1963). There are often plot echoes between the two parts of the story. Events in the second half might be either parallels or mirror reversals of events in the first.
The Survival Zone is typical of the innovations Dorfman tried to bring to the Phantom Zone. It seems to be a place like the Phantom Zone, but separate from it. In "The Duel Between Superwoman and Superboy" (1966), he introduced the idea of a partitioned off area in the Phantom Zone. "Secret of Kryptonite Six" (1964) contains devices designed to restrict prisoners released from the Zone.
The Man Who Broke Supergirl's Heart (1965). Writer: Leo Dorfman. Villains from another planet construct an android suitor named Randor to romance Supergirl. Like "Supergirl's Wedding Day" (1963), this is a story about a sinister romance. Randor has a similar name to the Tor-An of the earlier story, and like Tor-An, he has both a false and a true history.
This story is full of sf concepts. Early parts of the story involve clever sf extensions to spy concepts then popular in 1960's film. The creation of the android recalls Frankenstein. Later, the finale of the tale takes us to a whole planet of androids, the planet Calyx. Dorfman offers some intelligent ideas on this subject, in the democratic tradition of Silver Age comics.
How Superwoman Trained Superboy; The Duel Between Superwoman and Superboy (1966). Writer: Leo Dorfman. Two part Imaginary tale, exploring what might have happened if Superman and Supergirl's roles had been reversed. Dorfman's tale recalls Binder's "The Second Supergirl" (#272, January 1961), in that both involve a role reversal between Superman and Supergirl. Binder's is a parallel world story, while Dorfman's is an Imaginary tale. This means that Dorfman's takes place on worlds with which we are familiar, such as Krypton and Earth, while Binder's takes place on an invented planet. Binder's has a great deal of detail about his parallel planets; this sort of detail simply doesn't appear in Dorfman's story. Also, Binder's characters are all newly invented people who parallel Superman and friends; while Dorfman's are all characters with which we are familiar, but given new life histories. There are also differences of tone. Binder's story is nuttily comic, trying to come up with as many zany role reversals as possible. Dorfman's story is much more serious.
Above all, Dorfman seems to have reinvented the plot of his version from the ground up. He includes twists referring to aspects that he added to the Superman mythos since Binder's tale appeared in 1961, notably the fate of the Kents, from Dorfman's "The Last Days of Ma and Pa Kent" (Superman #161, May 1963), and the survival of Supergirl's Kryptonian parents, in Dorfman's "Supergirl's Rival Parents" (Action #310, March 1964). Dorfman is clearly very interested in the parents of his heroes. This is related to the emotionalism of his tales, and their emphasis on friendship. The tale also draws on ideas about Superboy's parents found in Jerry Coleman's "The Super-Family From Krypton" (Superboy #95, March 1962).
There is also much about Gold Kryptonite, another new feature of the mythos. Dorfman also revisits adoption from Midvale Orphanage and Supergirl's attempts to find an antidote to Green Kryptonite, two perennial plot subjects from the early Binder-Siegel years of Supergirl scripts.
Dorfman's tale is especially people centered. He looks closely at the continuing characters of the mythos, and tries to imagine them in new, alternative roles. One recalls that in "The Secret Identity of Super-Horse" (1963), he had Comet take on new roles; the effect here is somewhat similar.
The sequel is a well constructed thriller. While it lacks the torrent of invention of the first story, it has some good plot twists. As its title "The Duel Between Superwoman and Superboy" implies, the sequel is more a story of conflict between Superboy and Superwoman, than a mythos reversing story. Dorfman does include a startling twist on his plot at the beginning, however. This scene has a recursive quality, building on the original role reversal premise. The finale of the tale also has recursive qualities, offering what is essentially another Imaginary tale within the larger Imaginary tale of the entire story.
The Boy of Steel versus the Thing of Steel (Superboy #68, October 1958). Writer: Otto Binder. Art: George Papp. This is the first of all the Bizarro stories. It also seems to be the first three part story in Superboy, taking up an entire issue of the magazine. Bizarro is a strange, monstrous duplicate of Superboy. The monster elements in the tale recall the movie versions of Frankenstein. Binder would write many sequels to this story, and the Bizarros would evolve into a prolific series of tales in the Superman family. This first tale is a landmark in the building of the Superman mythos, but it seems awkward to me as a story.
The Battle with Bizarro (Superman #254, July 1959). Writer: Otto Binder. Art: Al Plastino. Lex Luthor revives the duplicating ray created by another scientist in the first Bizarro tale, "The Boy of Steel versus the Thing of Steel", and creates an adult Bizarro copy of Superman. This will be the permanent Bizarro of all future Superman family stories; he will later be known as Bizarro #1. Binder derives pathos from the way in which the kind hearted Bizarro is persecuted by everyone for his grotesque appearance. By contrast, the endless action sequences in this and other early Bizarro tales seem weak to me.
The Bride of Bizarro (Superman #255, August 1959). Writer: Otto Binder. Art: Al Plastino. This sequel is a direct continuation of "The Battle with Bizarro" in the previous issue. It concentrates on his one sided romance with Lois Lane, whom Bizarro loves. Lois feels pity for Bizarro, and treats him decently, but has no love for him at all. This tale recalls the love story in the origin of the teenage Bizarro Superboy, where he fell in love with a blind girl who could not see his grotesque features.
The conclusion of this tale was much imitated in future Bizarro stories: many problems among the Bizarros will be solved by a further use of the duplicating ray.
The World of Bizarros (1960). Writer: Otto Binder. Art: Wayne Boring. This is the third tale about the Bizarros. I have never been a big fan of Binder's early Bizarro tales, but this story, showing how they got their own world, is better than average. It had a sequel in the next issue, "The Superman Bizarro", with a nice finale: the terraforming here anticipates the later "Superman Under the Green Sun" (1962).
It is typical of Otto Binder, and his rich sf imagination, to take an idea such as the Bizarros, and transform them into a science fiction saga with their own planet. It is this story, and not the preceding tale that created Bizarro himself, which is the true key work in the evolution of this series.
The Son of Bizarro; The Orphan Bizarro; The Supergirl Bizarro (Superman #140, October 1960). Writer: Otto Binder. Art: Wayne Boring. Bizarro and Bizarro-Lois have a son who looks human, not Bizarro-like; they have to protect him from the hatred of the other Bizarros. This story gains considerable strength from its depiction of parental love for a child who is different. For all their faults, the Bizarros look like good husbands and wives, and good parents.
Binder was very family oriented. He created such new characters as Superman's cousins, Supergirl and Van Zee in Kandor; Lana Lang's uncle, Professor Potter; and Lois Lane's sister Lucy. Van Zee and his wife Sylvia manage to have children, as do the Bizarros. People who get married and raise a family are actually fairly rare in popular culture.
This is also the story in which Superman turns the duplicating ray on Green Kryptonite, creating Blue Kryptonite, to which the Bizarros are vulnerable. With this tale, Binder has completed the building of the Bizarro mythos.
The Super-Gorilla From Krypton (1958). Writer: Otto Binder. Art: Wayne Boring. A large gorilla from Krypton comes to Earth and gains super powers; he battles Superman. This is a beginning of a major trend by Binder during 1958 and 1959: the arrival on Earth of new survivors of Krypton. Later we will get Kandor and Supergirl from his pen. It is also the start of another, more minor Binder tradition: the tale of the super-powered primate. Soon, we will get "Titano, the Super-Ape" (Superman #127, February 1959) and Beppo, "The Super-Monkey From Krypton" (Superboy #76, October 1959). Both Titano and Beppo are good natured, if mischievous and awkward creatures. But the gorilla here is just a ferocious bad guy. Much of the story consists of duels between Superman and the gorilla. This emphasis on physical action is unusual for the plot oriented Binder. Towards the end of the story Binder wakes up, and produces the best parts of the tale. First, he introduces transformation elements, a familiar, but always welcome, Binder theme. These elements are quite ingenious. Lastly, the story moves to a memorably tragic finale. This invokes another Superman family theme of 1958: the effects of Green Kryptonite. This is one of the most powerful tales of the Green Kryptonite cycle.
Superman's New Face (1958). Writer: Edmond Hamilton. Art: Wayne Boring. An accident transforms Superman's face; he wears a mask so that people cannot see the changes. Transformation stories are typically associated with Otto Binder, but other writers also contributed to the tradition. Here is one by Edmond Hamilton. It differs from a typical Binder tale in that it is an sf mystery: we do not know what transformation has happened to Superman's face, and it takes much of the story till we find out. Science fiction mysteries were a Hamilton specialty. So were masked mysterious people. This is a theme we associate with Sir Walter Scott: for example, the helmeted Black Knight in Ivanhoe (1820), whose identity is unknown through much of the novel.
The Lady and the Lion (1958). Writer: Otto Binder. Art: Wayne Boring. A descendent of the ancient Greek sorceress Circe causes Superman to be transformed into a lion-headed man. This story anticipates Binder's classic "The Wolf-Man of Metropolis" (Jimmy Olsen #44, April 1960) in many ways. Both stories evoke the myth of "Beauty and the Beast", in speculating whether the kiss of a good hearted woman can end the hero's transformation into a hairy, animal like creature. Both stories show delicacy of feeling, and evoke vivid emotional moods.
Binder actually has Superman and Lois attend a play version of "Beauty and the Beast", incorporating its performance into his story. Similarly, in Binder's transformation tale "The Invisible Life of Jimmy Olsen" (Jimmy Olsen #40, October 1959), there is an explicit reference to H.G. Wells' The Invisible Man.
During 1958 Binder wrote several tales that contributed in a major way towards building the Superman family mythos. These include the first stories about Kandor, "The Super-Duel in Space" (Action Comics #242, July 1958), and "The Legion of Super-Heroes" (Adventure #247, April 1958). This story contributes to mythos building, but in another way. It is one of the earliest tales that reuse mythos components that were introduced in a previous story. It is early evidence that Binder and Weisinger were beginning to think of the Superman family, not as a series of independent stories, but as a group of connected tales, all based in a common mythos.
The Kryptonite Man (1959). Writer: Otto Binder. Art: Al Plastino. Luthor makes himself into a man who radiates Green Kryptonite rays. Radiating Kryptonite would be a theme of future tales. Binder's Titano has Kryptonite vision, in a story that appeared in the same month in Superman as this tale did in Action. Jerry Siegel would take up the subject in "The Dreams of Doom" (Superboy #83, September 1960), about the Kryptonite Kid; and "The Kryptonite Girl" (Lois Lane #16, April 1960). This story is different from most Binder transformation tales in that the focus is not principally on the transformed character, Luthor. Instead, much of the tale looks at Superman's attempts to protect himself from Luthor and his deadly Kryptonite radiation. This is the story in which Superman invents his lead suit to enable him to operate in the vicinity of Kryptonite. Binder would reuse this suit in some later tales, such as "Titano the Super-Ape" and "The Son of Bizarro" trilogy. Previously, Binder had had Superboy wear a knights' armor made out of lead in "The Boy of Steel versus the Thing of Steel" (Superboy #68, October 1958), although this suit lacked the high tech devices of Superman's lead suit here.
Another difference between this and a typical Binder transformation story: here Luthor controls his own transformation, deliberately converting himself to the Kryptonite Man at the start of the story. Most Binder protagonists get transformed either by accidents, or by other people. Similarly, Luthor has the antidote all along, while most Binder protagonists have to search for one.
The Menace of Red-Green Kryptonite (1961). Writer: Jerry Coleman. Art: Wayne Boring. Brainiac shines a ray on Superman combining Red and Green Kryptonite; a mysterious transformation of Superman ensues. The tale is constructed as a science fiction mystery. The reader learns right away in the splash panel that Superman has been transformed in some way he is keeping secret from the world, and the reader. The reader is challenged to figure out what has really happened to Superman. Counterpointing this, Superman is fooling the public into thinking that the effect of the ray is causing him to behave oddly; Lois Lane and the rest of the public, along with the reader, are trying to figure out the underlying pattern to this behavior. These two mystery plots intersect in interesting ways. This double mystery gives the story a rich construction. Jerry Coleman excelled at science fiction mysteries. Here is one of his most complex. Lois Lane serves as a detective figure here; Coleman was usually sympathetic and respectful of her.
Superman often suffers some catastrophe in Coleman's tales, one that is more apparent than real, but still one with whose effects Superman must live and cope. These challenges make Superman more human, and less of an all powerful stick figure.
Brainiac makes a big deal about the unique properties of the combination of Red and Green Kryptonite. However, as far as one can see, the effect on Superman is exactly the same as pure Red Kryptonite: a transformation of Superman, one that disappears by itself in around 48 hours. This is fine with me: I love Red Kryptonite stories, and this one is imaginative. And it is wise not to introduce too many variations on Kryptonite in the magazine. In any case, I do not recall any subsequent stories making use of the Red-Green combination. The art shows a fascinating checkerboard ray machine at the base of Brainiac's space ship. The alternating red and green squares are shining out the combined radiation. I also liked the lettering of the title on the splash panel. It shows the word "Red" in red and "Green" in green. The effect makes one wonder if our world of black and white typography could be greatly enriched by color.
Superman's Rainbow Face (1964). Writer: Otto Binder. Art: Al Plastino. Red Kryptonite cause Superman's face to change color to reflect his feelings: green with envy, blue for sadness, and so on. This is one of Binder's transformation tales, stories in which a person undergoes a temporary science fictional change. As is often the case, this tale focuses on Superman's effort to prevent the transformation from revealing his secret identity.
This story is built around Superman going through a series of emotional states. In this it recalls his "Lois Lane in Hollywood" (Lois Lane #2, May-June 1958). In that tale, Lois underwent a similar series of emotions, each clearly marked as a separate state in the story. The motivations underlying this were different - Lois was involved in a film industry plot - but the construction of the tales is similar. One can see a certain parallel here to the comics medium itself. A comic book is made up of a series of distinct panels. In each, the characters are drawn showing them having some emotional reaction to the events of the tale. They can be happy, romantic, sad, in pain, amazed and so on. The story line consists of a series of such well defined emotional states. Action Comics even had a contest, in which Curt Swan drew Superman's face in a variety of forms, and the readers were invited to write in, identifying Superman's emotion in each image. Readers were surprisingly good at identifying Superman's feelings in each illustration - Swan was very vivid and concrete in his portrayal of various emotions. Binder's two "emotion" tales seem to build on this structural feature of the comics medium, constructing an entire plot around it.
This story is not to be confused with Binder's "The Rainbow Superman" (Lois Lane #3, August 1958). In that tale Superman had a rainbow aura; here his face turns colors. But these two tales have much in common. Both are mainly concerned with Clark Kent trying to conceal his secret identity from Lois Lane after Superman undergoes a transformation. Both stories are among the purest expression of the Lois - Superman duel over his ID. Both tales involve light and reflection from mirrored surfaces. Both have a setting of everyday life around the Daily Planet, and both visit restaurants. Binder was interested in the spectrum of colors in light: see his "Raiders from the Ultra-Violet" (Strange Adventures #71, August 1956). The whole thing reminds one of Jule Styne's and Yip Harburg's wonderful song about a painter and his use of color, "I've Got A Rainbow Working For Me", from their musical Darling Of The Day.
This story marks Binder's return to doing occasional scripts for Action after a long absence. Here, he is reverting to his personal traditions of long ago. He will do another Red K and secret ID tale next year, "Superman's Kryptonite Curse" (Superman #177, May 1965).
This tale refers to Green Lantern by name, although he does not appear in the story. Action was also promoting the Justice League in Hamilton's "The Day Superman Became the Flash" (#314, July 1964) of three issues before.
After 1960, Action Comics was always the poor relation of the Superman family. The average quality of the Superman stories in it was not as good as the other magazines. The Superman stories tended to be less central to the ongoing saga, and major new plot developments in the series rarely originated there, in contrast to the role it played in the rise of Supergirl. Several of its stories tended to imitate and echo plot ideas used earlier in Lois Lane, Superboy and the other magazines. Its biggest virtue was that it tended to have a science fictional emphasis. This permitted the best of its tales to achieve distinction.
The "Superman" from Outer Space (1960). Writer: Otto Binder. Art: Curt Swan. This story, in which Superman meets the friendly "Hyper-Man" from a world much like Earth, anticipates the soon to come Superboy classic "The Mystery of Mighty Boy" (Superboy #85, December 1960), in which Superboy meets a similar figure from another world, whose life parallels his own. It also reuses plot ideas from the recent Superman comics tale "Superman's Other Life" (1959), notably the Super-Univac computer that can predict one's future life. Like both of these stories, this tale was written by Otto Binder. Binder liked science fiction tales about world's slightly divergent from Earth.
Hercules in the 20th Century (1960). Writer: Otto Binder. Art: Wayne Boring. The ancient Greek hero Hercules comes to modern Metropolis. This story incorporates Greek mythology into the Superman saga. Its plot anticipates that of Robert Bernstein's "Superboy's Big Brother; The Secret of Mon-El" (Superboy #89, June 1961), by showing how Hercules is provided with a secret identity on modern Earth. Binder had a fascination with such ancient heroes as Hercules and Samson, frequently comparing them with Superman in his stories. Hercules had shown up in his "The First Two Supermen" (Adventure #257, February 1959), although the Hercules of the two stories are different characters: the two stories are not part of a common mythos.
Superman's Rival, Mental Man (1961). Writer: Jerry Siegel. Art: Curt Swan. Mental Man, the fictional hero of a comic strip created by Lois Lane, comes to life and performs feats in Metropolis. This story draws on an earlier Bill Finger / Wayne Boring tale, "The Adventures of Mental Man" (#196, September 1954). This earlier tale is about a Daily Planet comic strip artist who creates a Mental Man comic strip that comes to life. Finger's tale is pretty decent. It has the ingenious "comic strip within a comic book story" idea, a nice twist about Mental Man, and the same super-powers for Mental Man, those involving pure mental will. It is in Finger's tradition of creating rivals for Superman who might surpass him. Siegel has kept all of Finger's good ideas in his version. He has added several good ideas of his own, and I think that Siegel's version is considerably improved over the original. Lois Lane is now the artist, and reflected in the comic strip by a Lois Lane double. The mystery ideas are greatly extended. And there is much satire and comedy in Siegel's version.
This tale fuses two Siegel traditions. One is the spoof of another medium, in this case comic strips; the other is the mystery tale. These approaches are usually separate in Siegel's work; this is the only tale of his that combines both. Siegel has made some modifications in both traditions, partly in order to facilitate their combination. Usually his media spoofs are comic and satiric, and his mysteries start out with grim seriousness. Here Siegel has compromised on a serious but cheerful tone for the entire work. Comic strips are spoofed much less than other media in Siegel. Siegel instead concentrates on an "inside look" at their production, showing Lois creating them at her drawing board, discussing suspense in the strip and its effect on readers continuing to follow it, the merchandising of the strip to various newspapers, etc. This gives the young readers of Action a look at the whole business of creating a comic strip. He limits his satire largely to a single subject: Lois including her own wish fulfillment fantasies within the strip. This is funny and clever, but it does not lampoon the comic strip medium as a whole. One might note this is a comic strip, that appears in newspapers, not a comic book.
Similarly, Siegel has altered his mystery paradigm, to make it less grim. Most Siegel mysteries start off with the arrival of a villain, or at least a very angry character. This person turns the hero's world upside down. Here, however, Mental Man is not a villain, but a hero. He is friendly, and not disruptive to Superman and Lois' existence. He is as vastly super-powered as the typical Siegel guest villain, but much more good natured. Siegel has also preserved the best part of his mystery tradition: the ingenious solution that reveals the truth about the guest star at the end. Siegel really goes to town on this: the solution here takes many pages. It also includes a mini-mystery with a direct Challenge to the Reader. All in all, this mystery tale is very clever.
Siegel's tale once again involves the ocean: he is the most marine oriented of the Superman family writers, and one remembers he did most of the Atlantis tales in the Superman saga, for instance.
The media aspects of this tale are among the most Pirandellian of Siegel's tales. Mental Man is a version of Superman, of course, and a Lois Lane clone is also involved in the strip. This sets up a fascinating series of echoes. This recursive effect is one of the chief subjects of the tale. Siegel later did "The "Superman-Lois" Hit Record" (Lois Lane #45, November 1963), which also looks at a medium version of Superman and Lois. In "Mental Man", the fact that the characters come to life adds to the Pirandello effect. As in "Record", the comic strip here can be viewed almost as an Imaginary Tale involving Superman and Lois. Nearly all of Siegel's Imaginary Tales concentrate on romance; this one is no exception.
Siegel's dialogue throughout this tale is excellent. It is one of the most sharply written of his stories.
Mental Man supposedly comes to life due to the combined concentration on his exploits by millions of readers. This is a similar gimmick to one used in Otto Binder's "The Legends That Came to Life" (Jimmy Olsen #33, December 1958).
The War Between Supergirl and the Supermen Emergency Squad (1961). Writer: Robert Bernstein. Art: Wayne Boring. Clark Kent is summoned to the bed side of a dying philanthropist. This tale shows similarity in subject matter to "The Super-Clown of Metropolis" (1960). Both involve a sick rich man who summons people to his mansion near Metropolis; both involve Superman performing for him. Both stories ultimately have a comic tone; in both the performances by super-beings involve some memorable comedy. Bernstein wrote the great Pete Ross tales, in which Pete learned the secret of Superboy's identity. This tale pursues a similar theme. Once again, the key events of revelation take place within a sleeping area, this time a bedroom.
Bernstein also introduces the Anti-Superman Gang here. This tale might be its origin. He also introduced the Superboy Revenge Squad. Such sinister, powerful gangs, bent on complex schemes to attack Superman, were a persistent part of his world.
The title characters only appear toward the end; this is mainly a Superman tale. The Supermen Emergency Squad had only been created the previous year, in "The Mystery of the Tiny Supermen" (Jimmy Olsen #48, October 1960). The splash panel refers to them as Lilliputian, underlining their relationship to Gulliver's Travels. Boring sets up his monitor in Kandor to display Superman as a very large figure relative to the Kandorians. There is no absolute need for this - the Kandorians could set their monitor to any proportions - but it does visually express the fact that Superman is much bigger than them.
Boring's Kandor architecture is full of minarets. It has a very Arabian Nights feel. The towers also contain Art Deco windows, with curving, frameless, multi-rectangle sub-panels. Boring emphasizes the military aspect of Kandorian men's costume, stressing their resemblance to Mittel European military uniforms. His Kandorian men are extremely macho. Most of the uniforms are either red or green. The red-haired Kandorian in a red and orange uniform is particularly striking. The Kandorians are also aggressively posed on the splash panel, with folded arms, hands on hips, and a leader pointing to a rocket ship.
The Man Who Saved Kal-El's Life (1961). Writer: Robert Bernstein. Art: Al Plastino. Superman goes after crooks who teleport from Metropolis to Hollywood to establish alibis; meanwhile, he meets a professor who claims to have visited Krypton before its explosion. This is a richly plotted tale. It brings in many aspect of teleportation into the Superman world. It is a one time only event: at the tale's end, Superman decides that humanity is not ready for teleportation. One could debate that, but it is clear that a permanent introduction of teleportation would drastically change the Superman mythos. Gardner Fox did a very rich look at the implications of teleporting in his Adam Strange and Atom tales.
The mixture of a crime plot and an outer space one is typical of Bernstein. Bernstein is especially comfortable with urban thrillers. He can use them as the base for the rich mix of his stories, which often bring in very disparate elements. Bernstein's "The Superboy Revenge Squad" (Superboy #94, January 1962) fuses Pete Ross and his relationship with Superboy in Smallville, with the cosmic melodrama of the Superboy Revenge Squad. Even Bernstein's non-fantasy mysteries often bring in wildly different elements into their stories: "Miss Jimmy Olsen" (Jimmy Olsen #44, April 1960), for instance, has a lot of wild animals as pets. These mixes seem odd, but they are also deeply satisfying as reading experiences. They are perhaps related to Surrealism, and its doctrine of juxtaposing very different ideas in order to liberate the subconscious.
Bernstein's "Olsen's Time Trip to Save Krypton" (Jimmy Olsen #101, April 1967) would later get Jimmy Olsen involved with a visit to Krypton just before its explosion, just like the professor in this tale. Both of these non-super-powered Earthmen will try to save Krypton's population from the explosion of the planet. Both stories will also contain heart-felt warnings about the dangers of nuclear war. These are among the most explicit and deepest commentaries about this subject in the comics book medium.
The Invasion of the Super-Ants (1963). Art: Al Plastino. This is a science fiction story, one warning of the dangers of atomic war. It contains a heartfelt plea for peace, and for humanity to turn away from atomic conflict. The letters column several issues later expresses Weisinger's hope that the story would influence the children who read the magazine, and that when they grew up they would do something to prevent nuclear war. The story is in the tradition of such films as The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951). In that film, aliens came to earth to warn about nuclear war. Here the aliens are giant ants, come to Earth with a similar message. The cover shows Superman joining the ants, having an ant head replacing his human one. It is a striking image. Superboy later had a story in which Superboy becomes the leader of a wolf pack: "Superboy, King of the Wolf-Pack" (Superboy #116, October 1964). The desire to join animals is a basic human trait. Science fiction stories allow us to explore it.
Superman Under the Red Sun (1963). Writer: Edmond Hamilton. Art: Al Plastino. Superman gets trapped in the deserted, ruined Earth of the far future, a red Sun world in which he has no super powers. The imagery of this tale recalls the final sections of H.G. Wells' The Time Machine (1895), which also showed a similar Earth future. It is full of advanced beasts which have evolved to adapt to conditions on the far future Earth. Hamilton often looked at evolution in his stories: see the Nightwing and Flamebird tale "The Dynamic Duo of Kandor" (Jimmy Olsen #69, June 1963), the Legion tales "The Legionnaire's Super-Contest; The Winner of the Super-Tests" (Adventure Comics #315, December 1963), "The Super-Tests of the Super-Pets; The Pet of a Thousand Faces" (Adventure Comics #322, July 1964), "Hunters of the Super-Beasts; The Menace of Beast Boy" (Adventure Comics #339, December 1965), and the Superman and Batman teamup, "The Infinite Evolutions of Superman and Batman" (World's Finest Comics #151, August 1965). This story seems to be the first of such Hamilton evolution stories in the comics. The Batman article discusses some of Hamilton's prose sf stories about evolution from the 1930's.
Hamilton had an affinity for stories about lonely people in sf landscapes - see "Last Stand of the Legion" (Adventure #310, July 1963). As usual, Superman is the only human in this tale, but not the only being - there are animals and androids around.
The tale is also part of a series of Hamilton stories that examine the long-range implications of the Superman mythos, how it will transform over time. These tales include "The Three Generations of Superman" (1965) and "The Superman of 2965" (Superman #181, November 1965).
This story is deeply geographical. Its geographical layout forms a mandala, a figure to meditate on. The vast expanse of time is also extremely thought provoking and emotional. It makes one wonder about the ultimate shape of things. This story concentrates on all the regions of Earth that were added to the real world by the Superman mythos. In this tale, only the Superman mythos seems to have survived into the far future. We encounter five different loci of Superman family stories in this tale. Superman's visits to these make up much of the plot of the story.
Superman emerges as a tiny figure at the end of this tale, just like the hero of Hamilton's "Search for a Lost World" (Strange Adventures #67, April 1956). This has a poetic quality, in addition to its role in the sf plotting. It seems to suggest something about the lonely nature of the quest, and the feeling of fragility and smallness of man in the universe it engenders. It also gives poetic expression to Hamilton's heroes and their outsider role in society. It is perhaps not so much the universe as society that makes Hamilton's heroes feel small.
The Monster from Krypton (1963). Writer: Edmond Hamilton. Art: Curt Swan. When Red Kryptonite turns Superman into a huge, dragon-like Kryptonian animal, he can't convince anyone he is really Superman. This is a simple but effective tale that combines a number of Hamilton themes. As the monster, Superman becomes one of Hamilton's outsiders, valiantly struggling to show skeptical social authority figures that he has value. Here the struggle is in the simplest possible terms: everyone thinks that the dragon is simply a menace in the 1950's monster movie tradition, attacking Metropolis is the Godzilla Vs Tokyo tradition. The dragon is subjected to full range of 1950's movie style assaults from the armed forces.
The tale also shows the role swapping that is a main Hamilton story basis. Here Superman takes on the role of a 1950's movie monster.
Superman Meets the Goliath-Hercules (1964). Art: Al Plastino. Superman travels back to ancient Greece on a world parallel to Earth, in which Earth history is scrambled. The story builds up an odd mixture of time travel and parallel world tales. This unusual premise allows the writer to create a series of inventive little plot ideas. Although the end of the story promises a sequel, I have never seen it, and suspect it was never written. Otto Binder wrote several stories about worlds parallel to Earth in the comics, such as "The "Superman" from Outer Space" (1960), and he wrote a number of time travel tales involving Hercules, as discussed above under "Hercules in the 20th Century" (1960). However, this anonymous tale is not on Binder's list of claimed stories.
Secret of Kryptonite Six (1964). Writer: Leo Dorfman. Art: Curt Swan. Based on a cover by: Curt Swan. Jax-Ur, a villain from the Phantom Zone, exploits a new kind of Kryptonite: Jewel Kryptonite. This is the sixth kind of Kryptonite to be introduced into the Superman mythos, the others being Green, Red, White, Blue and Gold. All six kinds are on Swan's cover, and the story is clearly built around them.
Superman, King of Earth (1964). Writer: Robert Bernstein?. Art: Curt Swan. After Red K splits Superman into a villainous Superman and a good, non-super-powered Clark Kent, Superman makes himself dictator of Earth. This two part tale had a sequel in the next issue, "King Superman versus Clark Kent, Metallo". The sequel is definitely by Bernstein; I suspect that the original tale is as well. The original involves such Bernstein themes as doubles; a non-super-powered character who intervenes in the life of a super-powered one; and the reuse of Red Kryptonite for a second time. The sequel revives Bernstein's Metallo concept, which he originally put forth in "The Menace of Metallo" (#252, May 1959). I didn't like the original Metallo tale, and its use in the sequel is not interesting either. However, the first part "Superman, King of Earth" is pretty good. The story is more political than many in Action. Its anti-dictatorship theme, and sympathy for the UN, remind one of Superman magazine.
Bernstein had also written "Superman Goes Wild" (#295, December 1962), in which Superman is hypnotized by villains into having a bad attitude, and going on destructive rampages. He attacks the UN in one sequence. This story resembles "Superman, King of Earth" in showing the consequences of an anti-social but all-powerful Superman running amok. Superman's attitude gets downright nasty in both tales. He expresses a lot of negative, selfish feelings very powerfully. The stories seem like an outlet for anti-social feelings from the id. They resemble a bit those Bernstein tales in which Jimmy Olsen goes undercover and becomes successful in various outlaw gangs. These 1960's stories are also a bit reminiscent of "Superman, Super-Destroyer" (#214, March 1956), in which a millionaire persuades Superman for complex reasons to go on a destructive rampage. Perry White is horribly uncomfortable throughout that tale, wanting Superman to build, not destroy. I share his feelings.
The Day Superman Became the Flash (#314, July 1964). Writer: Edmond Hamilton. Art: Al Plastino. A computer shows Jor-El what might happen if Kal-El (Superman) is sent to five different planets; on each he grows up to take on the role of one of the heroes of the Justice League of America. This is a series of Imaginary tales. They follow the format of Otto Binder's classic "Superman's Other Life" (1959). As in the Binder tale, each deals with an alternate life history for Superman, and each section is a futuristic prediction by a computer, not an officially labeled Imaginary tale, as such. Unlike Binder's story, we do not see Superman's familiar friends and relatives in new story lines. However, each tale has an adopting couple of foster parents, who remind one a bit of the Kents.
Hamilton is pursuing one of his favorite story springboards: what might happen if one familiar character takes on the role and persona of another. Each of the sections in this story is very brief - there are five all told. The whole thing is schematic and under developed - what Hollywood calls "high concept": a clever idea, but simple execution. The tale nonetheless has charm. It also has more detail than what most writers would be able to include, in such a restricted format. Hamilton does a good job with the varied conditions on the five planets. Each one is interesting in its own sake, and also plays a role in the development of the hero's new persona. Hamilton shows a logical approach to Kal-El's growth and development, in each case. On each planet, Kal-El also tends to wind up as the other perennial Hamilton hero, the outsider. The whole story has a poetic quality, showing the possible strands of fate, and the varied possibilities of life. The varied sf backgrounds greatly assist this poetic feel.
The cover here shows Superman taking on the powers of the Flash. It has no science fictional background; all this was presumably added by Hamilton. The cover is unusual in that the Flash was a Julius Schwartz character. These almost never appeared in a Weisinger edited Superman family book. Batman regularly guest starred; so did Aquaman and Green Arrow, although less frequently. These two heroes were part of Weisinger's world, being backup features in Action and Adventure Comics. But the Flash, Green Lantern, the Atom, Adam Strange and the rest of the Schwartz heroes were from a different cultural universe.
The planet with the giants here reminds one of the exact opposite in Hamilton's Legion tale, "The Doom of the Super-Heroes" (Adventure #310, July 1963). The way Superman is sent videotape by Jor-El reminds one of Hamilton's earlier "The First Superman of Krypton" (#223, December 1956). Hamilton comes up with an ingenious way for the tape to travel to Earth.
The Death of Luthor; The Condemned Superman (1964). Writer: Edmond Hamilton. Art: Curt Swan. Superman is put on trial for murder on the planet Lexor when Luthor accidentally dies during a fist-fight. This two part story appeared in successive issues of Action. Hamilton had previously created Lexor in "The Showdown Between Luthor and Superman; The Super-Duel" (Superman #164, October 1963) and "Luthor -- Super-Hero" (Superman #168, April 1964), and he was the main person who wrote stories about it.
Superman is the familiar Hamilton hero who is completely isolated in a society that does not want to listen to his ideas - it this case, his innocence of murder. Lexor is a civilized place, and its democratic institutions turn out to be the best guard for unpopular opinions in this tale. The right of every accused person to be defended by a lawyer gradually saves the day here. Hamilton does not make it look easy - he shows what a struggle both Superman and the lawyers go through against Lexor society. A tale like this shows why civilization is important. It guards people against their baser instincts, and raises them to a new level of behavior. Adora also emerges here as a genuine heroine - this is one of her finest hours. She too upholds the standards of civilization.
Curt Swan has some interesting futuristic architecture on Lexor. Unlike most Silver Age artists, his work is closer to Bauhaus style Modern architecture than to Art Deco. Swan does include large curved walls, which on rare occasion pop up in real life Bauhaus style buildings, e.g., the United Nations. There are also some fascinating spherical windows, something which is original to Swan. It is not part of either Modern or Art Deco traditions, either in comics or real life. People tend to underestimate comic book architecture. There are probably more Art Deco buildings in the comics than have been built in real life, for example. Many are larger and more unusual than many real world Deco structures. Comic book architecture forms a whole parallel world, an alternate world of architecture.
The Three Super-Enemies (1965). Writer: Otto Binder. Art: Curt Swan. Based on a cover by: Curt Swan. Hercules, Atlas and Samson travel to the present day, where they have new super powers and battle Superman. This story has some of the most extensive tie-ins between Greek mythology and super-hero comic books. It reminds us that comics did not invent the idea of beings with special powers: Greek mythology was full of them. Binder had previously invoked classical mythology in his Captain Marvel tales. And as this story itself reminds us, Superman had previously encountered Samson and Hercules (Atlas seems to be something new): see Binder's "The First Two Supermen" (Adventure #257, February 1959), for a pioneering story in this vein. And as far back as "The 100 New Feats of Superboy" (Superboy #58, July 1957), Binder's dialogue was comparing Superboy to all three of Hercules, Atlas and Samson, although they do not show up as characters in the story. See also Binder's "Hercules in the 20th Century" (1960) in Action.
The concern with different kinds of super-powers seems like a Binder tradition. He invented the Legion of Super-Heroes. And such Binder stories as "The Mystery of Mighty Boy" (Superboy #85, December 1960) and "The Story of Superman's Life" (Superman #146, July 1961) stress the varied origins of different kinds of Superman powers.
Swan depicts the three as some of his mature macho men. Hercules has a circular band around his hair, a feature of some Kryptonian men. Swan has some interesting diagrammatic art, showing an architectural location and its technical features (p2).
Superman -- Weakest Man in the World (1965). Writer: Edmond Hamilton. Art: Curt Swan. Based on a cover by: Curt Swan. Superman is tricked into going to the planet of the Thorones, where he has no super-powers, but whose criminal inhabitants are all super-powered. This story shows Hamilton traditions. It deals with a whole world in which Superman is hated and despised, such as in Hamilton's Lexor tales. Both Superman himself, and the heroine Lahla who is the only one to sympathize with him, are examples of Hamilton's outsiders. Lahla reminds one somewhat of Luthor's wife on the planet Lexor. The detailed look at the planet, with its many unique features, also is in Hamilton's traditions of creating whole science fictional worlds for his stories. The different ways in which the planet is involved with light, are carefully thought through by Hamilton. All events and customs on the planet seem logically interconnected, in Hamilton's best logical tradition. The story does not show the actual evolution of alien animals, a Hamilton specialty, but it does show the concern with logical grounding of a planet in its environment that is a parallel concept to the evolutionary ideas in other Hamilton tales.
Curt Swan has created a distinctive look for the planet: see pp. 4,5,8. In some ways, this is his typical planet with an advanced civilization, with Art Deco / Modernist towers, and costumes that look like those worn on Krypton. However, interwoven with this is a different design motif: that of holes. The buildings often look as of they have holes in the shape of geometric figures in them: triangles, squares, polygons. These are often repeated in series. The wholes are black. It is hard to tell if these are actual holes in a wall, or simply black designs painted on the wall. But they are everywhere. The men's clothes, too, have similar designs on their sleeves, in a way atypical of Swan, and Kryptonian-style costume in general. A sleeve might have a small square on it, or one or more black triangles. These emblems echo the designs on the buildings. It gives both the clothes and the buildings of the Thorones a distinctive visual look. It is both somewhat similar to other advanced planets, and unique in its own right. There are also some close-ups, showing giant holes in the aerial passages between buildings. These are certainly real holes: we see people passing through them. These too are atypical of futuristic cities in comic books: they make a distinctive addition to the planet of the Thorones.
The Man from the Phantom Zone (1966). Writer: Edmond Hamilton. Art: Curt Swan. A man released after thirty years in the Phantom Zone for a youthful crime has problems reintegrating with Kandorian society. This look at outsiders rejected from Kandorian society recalls Hamilton's earlier "Superman in Kandor" (Superman #158, January 1963). In that tale, Superman adopted his Nightwing persona when rejected by the other Kandorians. This is not a Nightwing tale, but it has much of the same feel.
The Superman family regularly worried about criminals serving their time in the Zone, and being released into an unsuspecting world, where they will have super-powers. This started with "The Super-Revenge of the Phantom Zone Prisoner" (Superman #157, November 1962). Here the thief claims just to have been committing the theft as a youthful prank, and not to be a real criminal at all. The story keeps us