Reviews of Action Comics (1938) and related work
- Adaptation: Superman (1941)
- Adaptation: Superman: The Movie (1978)
- Sequel: Superman II (1980)
- Sequel: Superman III (1983)
- Sequel: Superman Returns (2006)
- Adaptation: Man of Steel (2013)
Action Comics (1938
)
Joe Shuster (artist), Jerry Siegel (writer).
Read in 2020.
This review refers to part of the first issue, specifically the 13 pages introducing Superman as “the most sensational strip character of all time”. This is a tiny fraction of the comic’s run, hence no rating.
Superman breaks into a governor’s mansion to stop an execution, not because it’s an execution but because the inmate was wrongfully convicted. After being tasked, as reporter Clark Kent, with investigating himself, he beats up a wife beater, then takes co-worker Lois Lane out on a date where he plays a coward so that other men abduct her. Finally, he starts to unravel the plot of a corrupt US senator who’s getting the USA “embroiled with Europe”, i.e. engaged against fascism.
In his first appearance, Superman has the following properties:
- He wears colourful tights and a cape. This remains canon.
- He’s superficially indistinguishable from a human. This remains canon.
- He’s an extraterrestrial. This remains canon.
- His planet was “destroyed by old age”. This has been retconned, in part.
- A passing motorist found him as a baby and turned him over to an orphanage. This has been retconned, replaced by loving adoptive parents.
- “Upon reaching maturity, the people of his race became gifted with titanic strength”, but “a bursting shell could penetrate his skin”. This has been retconned, and is contradicted even in the introduction, by Superman having fantastic strength as a toddler.
- His identity is secret, with Clark Kent as a stable cover identity. This has been changed, or inverted in John Byrne’s writing, and restored via retcon.
No Smallville, no Metropolis, no heat-ray vision, no X-ray vision, no hurricane-strength cold breath, no ability to hold his breath indefinitely, no flight, no ability to reverse time by spinning Earth backwards, no kryptonite, no Fortress of Solitude, no ventriloquism, no hypnotism, no memory-wiping kisses, etc., etc. Superman’s original powers are strictly racial in origin and athletic in nature, with an explicit rationalization: They are likened to those of bugs in a possibly deliberate misunderstanding of basic biophysics. The epithet “man of steel” (Swedish “Stålmannen”) is fitting, in this first outing. However, even here, the premises are internally contradictory.
In the episode with the governor, Superman is callous. “Make yourself comfortable! I haven’t time to attend to it”, he says to a scantily clad and tied-up woman he dumps on the ground. When the governor’s butler threatens to have him arrested and shows a locked door, Superman breaks the door and says, gloating, “It was your idea”, thus blaming the ordinary man for Superman’s criminal actions. There is no attempt to plausibly explain why Superman is alternately so hurried and so unhurried in this episode that he can do both. The only reason is extradiegetic: It’s a fantasy narrative for children to feel a vicarious sense of smug superiority. It extends The Scarlet Pimpernel (1905) with fantastic power, an even greater pretended weakness, and even more static situations.
Superman differs from the Scarlet Pimpernel in that his politics are less clear. He indirectly aids European fascists, but he is not obviously anti-democratic in the same way that the Scarlet Pimpernel is anti-democratic. Superman does not express empathy, yet there is a moral excuse for his asshole behaviour. He is fighting for innocent people against cartoon evil, for no known reason. This doesn’t explain why he tortures a lobbyist or why so much attention is paid to his masochistic courtship of Lois, but it does explain why he has a stable secret identity: As a reporter, he apparently hears of crimes in progress before the police arrive.
The plot makes sense only in its reading as wish fulfillment, including that of the authors. Joe Shuster based the weaker identity, Clark, on his time at the (Toronto) Daily Star (retconned as the Daily Planet when the character became an international hit). Clark represents the makers’ and the readers’ real weakness and anguish, while Superman represents the dream of fitness and revenge. This correspondence is expected to provide both thrills and comfort. That’s about it. As in Völsunga Saga (ca. 1250–1300), there is no meaningful heroic ideal here to admire, just a fantasy of innate superiority. The only other source of pleasure on offer in the first issue is a sense of whimsy, and that’s just the costume, along with the internal contradictions.
While Siegel and Shuster never really succeeded in other pursuits, Superman got popular, perhaps because the fantasy is so simple: An apparently ordinary guy has fun secretly being implausibly strong and important by fiat, as if he were daydreaming. The way the franchise evolved reminds me of Santa Claus: It became so implausible and so self-serving as a narrative that it must provoke disbelief and rejection as the reader ages.
References here: Batman (1940), “The Inner Light” (1992).
‣ Superman (1941
)
Seen in 2020.
I saw most of the entries in this series in modern releases, apparently based on a censored 1998 restoration where some of the sexism was cut out without comment or replacement.
The premises are those of Shuster and Siegel, but not as they were in the character’s first appearance. There’s been power creep since 1938. Superman now flies under his own power. He can see through plate steel. He is impervious even to science-fictional weaponry of much greater power than a bursting shell and is never injured. This is roughly the mature form of the character in his pre-Code “Golden Age” continuities.
Despite Miyazaki Hayao’s judgement in “Thoughts on Fleischer” (1980) that work on this series was “masturbatory”, there is a lot of impressive animation in it, not all of it rotoscoped. It looks like the original comic in motion with better lighting and a lot of wonderful simulated out-of-focus whip pans; visually it’s a lot of fun. I especially appreciate that the “funny” animals and other caricatures typical of US cartoons are absent, except for non-whites, Jimmy Olsen and one dinosaur who looks goofier than Gertie.
☛ More
References here: Megamind (2010), One Punch Man (2015).
moving picture adaptation animation fiction series
‣ Superman: The Movie (1978)
References here: More experienced critics rate movies lower.
moving picture adaptation fiction
‣‣ Superman II (1980)
‣‣ Superman III (1983)
Imagine if Mel Brooks decided to parody the franchise and the original actors signed up.
‣‣ Superman Returns (2006)
Billed as an “homage sequel”. Terrible credits sequence.
‣ Man of Steel (2013)
Seen in 2020.
A version of the General Zod plot.
Snyder’s craftsmanship is good. The visual effects work is the best money could buy at the time, and worth a look, though the computer-animated fisticuffs are still dull. Representing a terminal stage in processing the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the film is even prettier than Fleischer’s 1941 adaptation. The climax repeats a motif in “The Mad Scientist” (1941) where Superman flies head-first into a cataclysmic beam weapon.
Like most big-budget superhero movies, this is filmmaking by committee. Some features of the original are changed for plausibility, such as Lois knowing Superman’s secret identity when he first introduces himself as reporter Clark Kent at the very end. At the same time, some of the most whimsical elements of various earlier entries, such as the costume, the sun producing superpowers in Kryptonians, and the heat rays from the eyes, are all preserved, while going for the gritty look and atmosphere of The Dark Knight Rises (2012). The colour grading is even more bleak than Nolan’s. The villains and their technology are pretty much all in black, down to the plot-token USB keys.
Snyder’s too smart to let this anglerfish of a concept just flop around on the deck. He seizes upon the Jewish Siegel and Shuster’s heritage and the celebrated subtext of their immigrant experience. The name “Superman” is not spoken until two hours into the movie and the “S” on the chest of his costume is retconned as the sign of his Kryptonian house, “El”. In Hebrew, as in its parent Semitic, el meant “god”. It ends Superman’s birth name as it ends the name of many Abrahamic angels because Superman’s a religious figure, a saviour. This is why he debates the possibility of his being betrayed (as by Judas) and turning himself over to Zod (as Pontius Pilate and Satan), in a literal Christian church. This is why choirs feature prominently in the score, and why Superman’s heavenly father, Russell Crowe as Yahweh, says:
You will give the people of Earth an ideal to strive towards. They will race behind you, they will stumble, they will fall. But in time, they will join you in the sun, Kal. In time, you will help them accomplish wonders.
That’s an Abrahamic sentiment, but especially a Christian sentiment. It makes sense on an extradiegetic level, as allegory. Like the heat-ray eyes, it does not make sense on an intradiegetic level. No reason is given for why Kryptonians and humans look identical, or why a member of another species, born with effectively magical racial powers, would “inspire” humans to follow his example. It’s like saying that the ants and grasshoppers, to whom similar superpowers are attributed in the original comic, should inspire humans to lift weights.
The Christian dimension rhymes with Superman in this version being brought up in Smallville, a 1949 invention that was apparently not canonized as Superman’s home town until the 1970s. Man of Steel’s Smallville is in Kansas, a safely Republican Bible-Belt state as of 2013. This choice, to have a secret Jesus from the rural US bursting through the pseudo-9/11 rubble, did not age with dignity past the 2016 election. There was some fan controversy over his decision to kill Zod, but even that detail is faithful to the orignal comics, to Christianity, and to rural US politics. It’s all about a vicarious sense of smug superiority.
It’s all too faithful to a broken franchise. It is as hard for me to buy into this as it is for an adult to believe in Santa Claus again. It feels very much as if some studio exec had ordered the guy who directed Dawn of the Dead (2004) and 300 (2006) to make a blue-chip blockbuster where Santa and Rudolph slug it out and the old man, screaming out his anguish, leaves the red-nosed reindeer’s broken body in the snow to get back on his magical sleigh and deliver the last billion presents in the dark.