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bloodygranuaileBook group decided that instead of struggling through another very dense book of theory during the darkest and busiest part of the winter, we were going to have some fun and read Jerry Seigel and Joe Shuster’s Superman: The Golden Age, Vol. 1, a collection of the earliest Superman comics, from 1938 and 1939.
I am not a big superhero fan and as such I admit that I did not expect to enjoy them all that much, but I did. They are goofy and quick to read and contain a lot of corrupt, powerful folks getting what’s coming to them. Our titular hero combines his Superman ability to punch people in the face and squish their guns with his bare hands with his Clark Kent investigative reporter role to give many of these terrible people multiple levels of comeuppance, and to direct money, resources, and positive press to the deserving.
Superman’s choices of targets are definitely where things get politically interesting–the very first adventure takes on war profiteers, and involves dropping a munitions magnate into the middle of an active battlefield until he has a change of heart about what his company ought to be manufacturing. Other adventures feature additional Christmas-Carol-esque lessons to the rich and powerful, including one where he temporarily imprisons a rich coal baron inside his own unsafe mine after a worker got trapped there, one where he takes a fast-driving mayor on a trip to the morgue to view auto fatalities until he promises to start enforcing traffic laws, and a second weapons manufacturer who dies by inhaling the deadly gas he had until then been so stoked about manufacturing. In some adventures, dastardly criminals are apprehended and dropped off at the police station for prosecution; in other adventures, Superman takes on cruel and corrupt policemen and prison wardens. Obviously I like the ones where Superman fights cops better than the ones where he delivers people to them. Some of the adventures get a little after-school-special-y, especially the ones where Superman decides to Do Something About reckless driving, juvenile delinquency, and gambling.
Tacked onto the end of many of these adventures are bits of life and physical fitness advice for the younguns reading the comics, which, shall we say, vary in quality. They are however extremely fuckin’ funny.
The bit here that has probably aged the most awkwardly is the love triangle between Clark Kent, Lois Lane, and Superman, who for the purposes of mapping out the dynamics here are in fact three different people. Lois hates Clark and she is entirely justified in doing so because her “meek” and “mild-mannered” co-worker keeps hitting on her at the office, and if he’s going to be an enormous coward about everything else he could at LEAST stand to ALSO ever exhibit any hesitation about sexually harassing his coworkers, please. If I were Lois I would also want to punch Clark’s lights out. However if I were Lois I would also have a better personal security plan for my reporting exploits than “be surprised every time I wind up with a gun in my face, then be surprised when I am conveniently rescued by Superman” because, while he has in fact shown up 100% of the time thus far, you can only wind up with a gun shoved in your face so many times before a sensible person would start assuming that to be a normal job hazard and try to account for it.
The bit that has aged the second-most awkwardly is the plotline where Superman impersonates a hurricane and deliberately destroys several blocks of tenement housing so the government is forced to rebuild the neighborhood with nice modern public housing projects. Somehow, I don’t think things would play out quite like that these days.
Overall, a fun and satisfying Robin Hood-esque power fantasy, highly entertaining.
I am not a big superhero fan and as such I admit that I did not expect to enjoy them all that much, but I did. They are goofy and quick to read and contain a lot of corrupt, powerful folks getting what’s coming to them. Our titular hero combines his Superman ability to punch people in the face and squish their guns with his bare hands with his Clark Kent investigative reporter role to give many of these terrible people multiple levels of comeuppance, and to direct money, resources, and positive press to the deserving.
Superman’s choices of targets are definitely where things get politically interesting–the very first adventure takes on war profiteers, and involves dropping a munitions magnate into the middle of an active battlefield until he has a change of heart about what his company ought to be manufacturing. Other adventures feature additional Christmas-Carol-esque lessons to the rich and powerful, including one where he temporarily imprisons a rich coal baron inside his own unsafe mine after a worker got trapped there, one where he takes a fast-driving mayor on a trip to the morgue to view auto fatalities until he promises to start enforcing traffic laws, and a second weapons manufacturer who dies by inhaling the deadly gas he had until then been so stoked about manufacturing. In some adventures, dastardly criminals are apprehended and dropped off at the police station for prosecution; in other adventures, Superman takes on cruel and corrupt policemen and prison wardens. Obviously I like the ones where Superman fights cops better than the ones where he delivers people to them. Some of the adventures get a little after-school-special-y, especially the ones where Superman decides to Do Something About reckless driving, juvenile delinquency, and gambling.
Tacked onto the end of many of these adventures are bits of life and physical fitness advice for the younguns reading the comics, which, shall we say, vary in quality. They are however extremely fuckin’ funny.
The bit here that has probably aged the most awkwardly is the love triangle between Clark Kent, Lois Lane, and Superman, who for the purposes of mapping out the dynamics here are in fact three different people. Lois hates Clark and she is entirely justified in doing so because her “meek” and “mild-mannered” co-worker keeps hitting on her at the office, and if he’s going to be an enormous coward about everything else he could at LEAST stand to ALSO ever exhibit any hesitation about sexually harassing his coworkers, please. If I were Lois I would also want to punch Clark’s lights out. However if I were Lois I would also have a better personal security plan for my reporting exploits than “be surprised every time I wind up with a gun in my face, then be surprised when I am conveniently rescued by Superman” because, while he has in fact shown up 100% of the time thus far, you can only wind up with a gun shoved in your face so many times before a sensible person would start assuming that to be a normal job hazard and try to account for it.
The bit that has aged the second-most awkwardly is the plotline where Superman impersonates a hurricane and deliberately destroys several blocks of tenement housing so the government is forced to rebuild the neighborhood with nice modern public housing projects. Somehow, I don’t think things would play out quite like that these days.
Overall, a fun and satisfying Robin Hood-esque power fantasy, highly entertaining.