superman.nuMary Immaculate of Lourdes NewtonHolliston School Committeefacebook    
  •   forum   •   COUNTDOWN TO MIRACLE MONDAY: "IT'S REAL!" •   fortress   •  

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 

Superman in The Sixties - DC Comics Message Boards
Author Topic:   Superman in The Sixties
India Ink
Member
posted August 24, 2002 04:08 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for India Ink
As far as I know, the first Lois Lane comic I read was Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane no. 73, April, 1967.

In those days, on my Saturday pilgrimages to Ryan's with my sister, I could only buy two comics with my 25c allowance (or one Giant). I would first look for a comic with Batman on the cover--I had to go by covers, since Mrs. Ryan was watching like a hawk, and you couldn't go looking inside the comic, so your purchase had to be based purely on the cover--and then I would go looking for Superman on the cover, or Superboy. If I could only find comics with neither of these two on the cover (as sometimes happened, since it was unpredictable what would be in Ryan's on any given Saturday), I would look for something else--maybe a Tarzan comic if it was to be had--which accounts for some of the odd comics that made it into my reading at that time.

I can only assume that it was the presence of Superman on the cover of this Lois Lane that prompted me to buy it on that Saturday (if I in fact bought it and it wasn't a reward for a trip to the dentist). But the cover is truly disturbing. It has a menacing Lois Lane (wearing an orange jumper) whipping a Superman dummy shackled to a wall with a cat-o-nine tails, while a suffering real Superman looks on, held down on an examination table by green K shackles--"shock story of the year!" the cover declares, as if proud of that fact. The kinky absurdity of this cover could not possibly have prompted me to buy this comic, surely? Afterall, I was just a little boy.

It turns out that the cover story really isn't all that freaky as one might assume from the cover. Anyway, I was much more entertained by the second story, then as I am today.

Called "Lois Lane's Fairy Godmother!" this one like all the other Lois stories of those days has the name |Schaffenberger lightly scripted on a part of the splash pic (the | & the S making a K & S in one) (GCD tells me the story was by Dorfman). The splash shows Superman on bended knee, while a decked out Lois looks at him in surprise. And her fairy godmother whispers from hiding to Lois, "accept Superman's proposal."

The fairy godmother looks like "Bewitched"--I mean Samantha Stevens, I mean Elizabeth Montgomery. I knew that Bewitched was a witch, so I wasn't surprised to see Bewitched in a story doing magic stuff--but it was funny that she would be Lois Lane's fairy godmother.

The story proper opens with Lois working as a volunteer nurse in a hospital. She brings a guitar to one of her patients, and days later he's all better and playing his guitar like a real swinging hep cat as Lois wiggles her caboose, saying, "What a beat! I can't resist doing the watusi!" Volunteer nurse Lane is a real sweet heart, reading to the kids in the children's ward, who beg for stories of Superman. But then the volunteer nurse is confronted by an angry bandaged patient in a wheel chair, who points an accusing finger and tells Lois she should be out on dates yet she sacrifices herself to help the sick--that should be rewarded! And in an instant, the bandaged patient appears as Lois Lane's fairy godmother--"Dody." Lois doesn't believe a wordy of it, but Elizabeth Montgomery, I mean Dody practices some magic with her magic wand (hey she's Bewitched, why doesn't she wiggle her nose?) to convince Lois. Lois can't take it all in, and when she comes home that night she puts it all down to working too hard--a hallucination.

But when she walks into her apartment there's Samantha Stevens, I mean Dody, floating in the air. Next the fairy godmother uses her magic wand to make a grand feast appear. But the best is yet to come. Another flash of the wand and >POP!< Lois is dressed up in tiara, chinchilla wrap, jewels, and a glamorous gown. Then Dody tells Lois to answer the door as the doorbell rings. And at the door is Superman.

But it's not Superman in his usual garb. Superman, holding a box of candy and a bouquet of roses, appears at the door in black tails, with a white vest, white bow-tie, black tophat, and a red sash going across his white shirt--on the red sash is a gold 'S' shield. As drawn by Kurt Schaffenberger, Superman never looked more sophisticated.

Superman can't account for it--one moment he was lecturing at the space institute and now he's here "in this get-up!" He looks at Lois dumbfounded, and she can't begin to explain. He has no time for excuses and must fly off--terribly embarassed by it all, how will he explain himself to his audience at the lecture hall...

Lois scolds her fairy godmother, but Bewitched, I mean Dody, says she has decided to make Superman Lois Lane's husband.

The next day, at the dedication of the new Metrodome Stadium, when Superman engraves a special plaque it reads "Superman Loves Lois Lane." The mayor is none too pleased by this valentine prank. Lana Lang covering the event for TV news, breaks into tears and falls into Superman's arms--"Superman, how could you? If you had to choose Lois instead of me, why did you make a public spectacle of it?" "But Lana," Superman replies while fixing his accusing stare on Lois, "that's not what I meant to inscribe! Something...or someone...made me do it!"

Lois knows it's really Dody's work, and getting in her car with the fairy godmother she gives her heck, but Dody will not be stopped in her mission to wed Lois.

The following afternoon at a police convention, as Superman displays manacles made from a metal bird's talons, Dody fixes it so that Lois and Superman end up handcuffed together. They go over to Jimmy Olsen's apartment, and Lois drinks some Elastic Lad serum so that she can slip her hand out of the talon-manacles--but Superman who is immune to the serum has to fly around with those darned talons on his wrist.

Lois arrives back at her apartment and sees the cute nymph-like Dody slumbering on the couch in front of the TV. And Lois has an idea--

Later, after the fairy godmother awakens, the two play a game of scrabble. Then Dody gets up from the table and exclaims, "ZNSLTPZG? What kind of word is that?"

And Lois answers, "Don't you recognize it? It's your name backward, Miss Gzptlsnz! Good-bye to you and your 5th-dimensional monkey-shines!

The pretty fairy transforms from Elizabeth Montgomery into a homely aged imp, and pops back to the 5th dimension. The next day Lois explains to Superman that the imp used her magic to make herself into a "fairy godmother," but when Lois found her sleeping she picked up the magic wand and tried to use it to make her go away. However, the wand didn't work, which is when Lois realized that Dody was magical not the wand (well yeah, I'm thinking, because she's Bewitched right? Samantha Stevens doesn't need no stinking wand). But Lois Lane made the leap to thinking this must be "Miss Gzptlnz, the girl friend of that imp, Mr. Mxyzptlk."

A diary that Gzp (if you think I'm gonna try and spell that again you're nuts), that Miss G. left behind, tells the rest of the story. It was all part of her plan to get Mr. Mxy to marry her. Mxy won't marry Gzp because "it would interfere with [his] career of creating zany jests to annoy Superman and his friends in the 3rd dimension." Figuring that if Superman treated Lois differently and married her, Gzp could make Mxy do the same, she embarked on this elaborate scheme.

Superman asks Lois to forgive him for misjudging her and Lois says, "Hmm...if this wand really worked, I'd get a kiss out of the deal!" Superman answers, "Lois when the time comes, you won't need a magic wand to win me!" And Lois says, "Superman, I can't wait that long! Pucker up!"

Meanwhile, Gzp and Mxy watch Superman and Lois smooching on the interdimensional TV, and Gzp says, "Pay attention! That's how they do it in the 3rd dimension!"

A disgruntled Mxy answers, "Bah! Quit trying to brainwash me!"

***

This was the first and only time I ever saw Miss G., although it seems clear from the story that Lois had met her before.

IP: Logged

Lee Semmens
Member
posted August 25, 2002 07:18 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for Lee Semmens
Has anyone ever compiled a checklist of all Curt Swan's pre-1970 Superman stories?
I have tried using GCD, but they include covers, ads, PSA and non-Superman stories, so winnowing out Superman stories is a painstaking chore.

IP: Logged

Aldous
Member
posted August 26, 2002 11:03 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Aldous
quote:
Posted by Lee Semmens:
Has anyone ever compiled a checklist of all Curt Swan's pre-1970 Superman stories?

Someone is bound to know where to find such a comprehensive list on the Net. India?

India Ink, for a small fee, might be able to compile such a list from off the top of his head....

IP: Logged

India Ink
Member
posted August 27, 2002 12:40 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for India Ink
I scratched around up top there and I couldn't find any list--must be that new shampoo I'm using. Betwixt all the indices on-line for different purposes, one might be able to cross-reference and come up with a list--something to do in a few weeks when I'm on vacation.

IP: Logged

India Ink
Member
posted September 13, 2002 11:30 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for India Ink
I've been sick for the last couple of weeks and haven't had much opportunities to post on these boards--or to read comics for that matter. It's disheartening to see that in my absence these old threads haven't gotten lots of input of late (although to be fair, these grim times of remembrance do not exactly inspire one to go on the boards and yap about comics nostalgia).

I shall try to turn around the mood a bit with yet another glimpse of one of those funny books from a long ago but very near time.

As I've posted countless times on countless threads, the period between 1966-1967 figures prominently in my fanciful memories as that was the first time when I really fell in love with comics--you never forget your first love. And as I've also posted, each week I was financially limited to two or less comics. This meant that there were far more comics than I could ever afford to have--and once I finished pouring over the covers, the stories, and the lettercolumns in my two or less comics, I would look over the house ads and Direct Currents (I'd later get round to reading all the other ads which provided their own entertainment).

Like an Innuit hunter who uses every last part of the seal he captures--I would entirely exhaust every dimension of the comics I bought each weekend--sucking the marrow even as the clock ticked toward nine pm and I had to slip under the covers on a Sunday night, anticipating school the next day, with that knot in my stomach.

I would also try to construct in my own imagination just what the stories might be like, that I had only gotten hints of from the covershots and blurbs in the house ads and Direct Currents. In some cases, I didn't just wonder about these comics for a weekend or a week. I spent years thinking about them, going back to those ads and those blurbs trying to decipher the story that I never read.

Recently I've made it a sort of mission to hunt down these comics (for the right price) and finally satisfy my curiosity. It has to be said that no comic could really live up to what I've imagined, but still the comics I've found so far often have provided unguessed delights.

One of these was an issue of World's Finest pictured in a house ad. I believe the house ad showed a big thumb pointing down and went on about how it's thumbs down for Batman in the latest WF. The cover shown had Superman standing holding a trident over Batman kneeling caught in a net, in an arena, with the alien spectators all pointing their thumbs down at the gladiatorial spectacle.

It was like an episode of Star Trek, or so I figured and I more or less constructed some such storyline in my mind.

I finally got this comic not so along ago at a swap meet, but I never found time to read it until today.

It's World's Finest Comics no. 163 (Dec. '66) and it really is sort of like a Star Trek episode (an amalgam of Star Trek episodes) in some respects. The title for the story on the inside is "The Duel of the Super-Duo!" (whereas the cover--as often happened--provides the title "The Court of No Hope!"). The art on the cover and inside is by Swan and Klein. (Jim Shooter is a good guess for the writer.)

After the required set-up that gets Batman and Superman together again (actually Batman happens to meet up with Clark Kent), a Boom Tube appears in the middle of the road as Clark rides along with Bats in the Batmobile. It's called a Space-Warp-Tunnel, but it looks exactly like the Boom Tubes that Kirby would draw a few years later in his Fourth World books, and it works just like a Boom Tube, too!

At first--like Kirk and Spock--Batman and Superman are not suspicious of this warp tunnel or the alien whose voice invites them to visit his world (Superman wants "to see what this is all about"). Like a Star Trek alien host on a mysterious planet, their host seems like a good enough chap. And his planet is wierd! Swan is great at drawing realistic settings and creatures, but this time he has to draw a truly surreal environment, where a super town floats high in the sky above the surreal natural landscape.

Their host, Jemphis, shows them his collection of duplicate secret hideaways of famous intergalactic heroes: Aeroman's skyscraper HQ, the floating globe hideaway of Solarman, the pit of Serpento, the iceberg fortress of Dr. Chill. As well as the Fortress of Solitude and the Batcave.

Jemphis invites his guests to go in and inspect their duplicate HQs and then come back and tell him if he got anything wrong. In the Batcave, Batman finds a big eyeball device that hypnotizes him. In the Fortress, Superman finds another such eyeball device, this one armed with Kryptonite, but reacts quickly enough to destroy the device with his heat vision before it can hypnotize him.

The Man of Steel then crashes through the duplicate Fortress and grabs hold of Jemphis, asking what he's up to? "You'll see in a minute after I press this remote-control button to activate Plan B!" Jemphis states, to which Superman gives a glib response, "What happens when you run out of the alphabet!"

[you just gotta love that line--]

But Jemphis turns the yellow sun of his planet into a red one and Superman is now without his powers. Then he is confronted by the mesmerized Batman (in part II "The Super-ComBat!"--Super/Bat get it?)--and after three pages of struggles, both heroes end up knocked out. Later in the castle of Jemphis, Superman awakens to find that he is scheduled to battle Batman to the death the next day in the arena.

Jemphis may be a maniacal overlord but he provides well for his "guests," as Superman finds his guest suite has its own conservatory garden, in which are many of the strange plants of this "paradise planet." From these plants, the ingenius Man of Might constructs his own utility belt of devices with which to battle the Caped Crusader.

In the arena, Superman often gets the advantage over Batman by surprising him with these strange utility belt items, but in the end it is Batman who fells Superman. However, when Jemphis commands Batman to kill the Metropolis Marvel this breaks the hypnotic spell because hypnotism cannot make someone do what their conscience would not allow them to do.

Next Jemphis commands an army of super-heroes (brought there from other planets, all hypnotized into believing that Batman and Superman are villains) to attack the World's Finest Duo, but using his Bat-flash, the Masked Manhunter breaks the hypnotic spell that Jemphis holds over the cosmic champions.

Escaping into the duplicate Batcave, Jemphis happens to trip and is subdued and mesmerized by the eyeball hypnotic device--commanded to only obey his master Jemphis. And so he ends up cowtowing before himself in front of a mirror, driven insane by his own machine.

As the adventure concludes, Superman and Batman meet up with several of their intergalactic compatriots--Zardin the Boy Marvel (a Robin look-alike who provides them with a new Batmobile--the old one being wrecked during their previous struggles--to get them home through the Boom Tube/Warp Tunnel), Dr. Chill, Aeroman and his bride-to-be, Windlass. Plus a few unnamed background figures.

As the World's Finest Duo drive off into the tunnel, Dr. Chill says, "We'll have to do this again...and bring your Justice League friends next time!"

Batman answers, "We will! Good luck on your journeys to your own worlds!"

***

Well, I guess that Justice League meeting with the intergalactic heroes was never recorded in a comicbook. I guess we never got to see Superman and Batman at the wedding reception for Aeroman and Windlass on their home planet of Marr. But that doesn't mean I can't picture it--oh yeah, I can picture it all in my mind, and it's wonderful!

IP: Logged

Osgood Peabody
Member
posted September 20, 2002 12:15 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Osgood Peabody   Click Here to Email Osgood Peabody
Thanks to Scott Shaw's Oddball Comics, here's a glimpse at an early Lois issue guest starring, of all people, Pat Boone!

The plot is to say the least, a convoluted Weisingeresque doozy. You've got to see it to believe it:
http://www.comicbookresources.com/columns/oddball/index.cgi?date=2002-09-13

IP: Logged

India Ink
Member
posted September 22, 2002 07:44 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for India Ink
Bump for Two Face 22.

IP: Logged

India Ink
Member
posted September 22, 2002 08:48 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for India Ink
At the risk of being too L 7 and not C moon enough, while I enjoyed most of that Scott Shaw summary of the Lois Lane Pat Boone story, I don't relate to a lot of trivia the way most folks--or so it seems.

Some years ago, watching a bunch of Dougles Sirk movies at a local art-house I was irked by the fact that most cineastes who came to these movies just seemed to want to laugh at
the movies and not appreciate their humanity.

The main object of fun seemed to be Rock Hudson who starred in a lot of those Sirk movies and was clearly taken as a serious actor by the director (while it's kind of obvious that Sirk knew about Hudson's alternate lifestyle and deliberately put some subtext in the movies to cast Hudson in a queer light). I looked at those movies as complex constructions, whereas most movie fans seemed to regard them as simplistic fifties kitch.

Of course, maybe I'm a bit hesitant to gafaw at Pat Boone because he was such an icon in our house when I was growing up. My parents both respected him and were happy whenever he showed up on TV--like doing a cameo on a Beverly Hillbillies episode. If they were happy, then I was happy. But I also began to appreciate old Pat Boone movies for their own charms, regardless of my parents's sentiments. "April Love" remains a very happy memory for me--even though I first saw it on TV about a decade after it was in the movie theatres.

I also think poor old Pat has been made to bear the white man's burden for copying black music, when he was only one of many (but the many have either died, sunk into obscurity, or become so radical in later life that the copying angle doesn't quite fit). And it's not really right to pigeon-hole Boone in this way since he started out as a crooner in the early fifties, following in the tradition of other crooners like Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Mel Torme, Dean Martin, Perry Como, and Tony Bennett. If you hate crooners, or you think he was a bad crooner in comparison to the greats--that's one thing, but to put him down just because he wasn't a real rock and roller or he wasn't black, I just don't accept that kind of attack.

I might not share Pat Boone's conservative moral majority values, but I still like the old tunes and it gets my back up when people attack someone for not being what they think they should be.

All that's probably a bit too serious for this thread, but it's analogous to how I feel about the classic Lois Lanes and a lot of old Superman comics. While I do smile at the absurdities, I'm not apt to dismiss these stories as silly romps and nothing more. They did mainly try to entertain and should be appreciated on that level, but nine times out of ten there's some greater complexity at work in the stories.

I think a lot of the complexity just comes from unconscious intentions on the part of the writers. But maybe writers did put in some stuff just for their own amusement.

Then there's Schaffenberger. Kurt draws things in such a way that you can't just dismiss them as silly, there's always some third angle going on in his stories.

But this Lois Lane story seems to be by Ross Andru, who is a more straight forward artist. That approach to the art probably leaves the story open to derision, whereas if Schaffenberger had drawn it one would get the feeling that Kurt was having a laugh himself.

L7 >sigh<

=>

IP: Logged

Aldous
Member
posted September 23, 2002 12:05 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for Aldous
Well, well... I never would have suspected you had a raw Pat Boone nerve...

What "black music" was he supposed to have copied? Are you talking about Rock 'n Roll? "Black music" was but one element in the synthesis that became Rock 'n Roll. There would be no Rock 'n Roll without "white music". Is this what you're talking about? Maybe Pat could share the "blame"... with Elvis and Bill Haley.

quote:
They did mainly try to entertain and should be appreciated on that level, but nine times out of ten there's some greater complexity at work in the stories.

I think a lot of the complexity just comes from unconscious intentions on the part of the writers. But maybe writers did put in some stuff just for their own amusement.


I might not go so far as "nine times out of ten," but I know what you're talking about. As I've said before (you know): a lot of those old time comic book writers were just simply good writers.

IP: Logged

Osgood Peabody
Member
posted September 23, 2002 12:34 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Osgood Peabody   Click Here to Email Osgood Peabody
I got a kick out of the panels depicting Lois' "shrine" to Pat Boone - amazing she'd have room in her apartment for anything besides Superman memorabilia, based on other glimpses we've seen over the years!

But I'm always fascinated by the almost painful gyrations Weisinger put his characters through - presumably to fit the cover concept as I think they did the cover first in those years. It would seemingly have been easier for Clark to just own up to an ego trip while he was writing the lyrics (I couldn't resist enscribing my name in the song, Lois!) than trying to suppress its release! But where would the fun have been in that, right?

It seemed like these Weisinger zingers were more twisted in the Lois Lane comic. Do you remember another story from around this time where Lois has to execute "Plan L" to save Superman by kissing members of the Justice League? Ah, those were the days!

IP: Logged

Aldous
Member
posted September 23, 2002 05:26 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Aldous
quote:
Do you remember another story from around this time where Lois has to execute "Plan L" to save Superman by kissing members of the Justice League?

I have that story, Osgood. The story's eventual explanation is a degree or so more plausible than the Pat Boone one! (OK, I know that's not difficult.)

IP: Logged

India Ink
Member
posted September 23, 2002 07:13 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for India Ink
I think there was one Pat Boone song that was a "white" copy of a previously recorded black song (perhaps one by the truly fabulous Little Richard), but I can't remember it off hand. Anyway both Elvis and the Rolling Stones outdid Boone in ripping off--I mean deriving--their songs from black music. But I was never trying to assert that Boone did this overly much--it's in the Scott Shaw website blurb, and I was just reacting to that (defensively I'll admit). But there were lots of white rip-offs of black music (usually a bit too polished and lacking any real energy), the Crew Cuts cover of "Sha-boom" comes to mind (the Crew Cuts were a Canadian harmony group--and no I don't remember the original do-wop group that recorded the tune). I usually listen to "Finkelman's Forty-Fives" (hits from the 50s, 60s, and early 70s) on Saturday nights when I have a chance and my brain has just sorta picked up this stuff like lint.

While it does seem like the cover ideas forced the Superman family to do absurd things, this just seems too easy as an explanation (although it's an important part of the explanation). My feeling is that Lois Lane is in Hell--or at least in some realm like that of Job where both God and Satan toy with her. In Weisinger's mind I expect he thought himself a god, and in the minds of his employees he was probably looked on as Satan.

To be more scholarly and less flipant: I find a lot of correlations between Film Noir movies and Lois Lane stories. In Film Noir, characters go into a kind of Underworld (usually at night) and meet up with certain stock characters--like the Spider-Woman who is a temptress (Superman may be the converse representation of this character in a Lois Lane story). The weak central character (sometimes thought of as an anti-hero) goes through certain trials and doesn't always emerge victorious--often he winds up defeated and even dead.

Film theorists have proposed an alternative genre to the Film Noir and label it as Film Blanc. "Insomnia" is one of the most recent examples of this loose genre. I say loose because there are lots of different elements that might describe a Film Blanc--although taking place during the day seems to be the most obvious. I would submit Eric Roehmer's "The Aviator's Wife" is a true Film Blanc, because it is light in tone whereas true Film Noir is dark in tone. This movie concerns a postal worker who works the graveyard shift, and after work (in the early morning) gets dragged along into one misadventure after the other (mainly because of a pretty young lady he happens to meet), when really he should be getting to bed because he's so tired. Woody Allen's "Broadway Danny Rose" is another (more well-known) movie that I would put in the Film Blanc category.

At the middle of a Lois Lane story (usually during the middle of the day), Lois finds herself in a kind of hell, wondering how she got there and not knowing how to get herself out of this terrible fix. The conclusion of these stories usually turns the tables on Lois, often leading her to realize everything she thought was true was false, and everything that seems a lie is actually the truth.

IP: Logged

India Ink
Member
posted October 19, 2002 07:19 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for India Ink
About time this topic had a bump.

IP: Logged

India Ink
Member
posted November 23, 2002 05:02 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for India Ink
^

IP: Logged

India Ink
Member
posted November 25, 2002 12:24 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for India Ink
Last week I went to a swap meet and bought several comics. The most expensive purchase was Superman 181, Nov., 1965, which I got for about $16. Being it was a good copy, and a very special issue, I figured it was worth it.

The cover introduces the Future Superman of 2965. And this is why I bought it. But in fact that story is the back-up. The lead story is not cover featured, but it's pretty entertaining. The cover and both stories in this issue are by the incomparable Swan & Klein.

The lead story is in two parts, with the first part being "The Super-Scoops of Morna Vine!" and the second part called "The Secret of the New Supergirl!"

Morna Vine has set her sights on capturing the affections of Superman and aims to do so by being the best "girl" reporter on the Planet.

In turn she shows up Jimmy, Lois, and Clark--scooping all of them. And so, naturally enough, they all suspect she must have super-powers--maybe she's from Krypton--because they can't believe that someone could so handily outdo them.

It all ends in tears, though, as Morna sobs on her pillow, "Superman! >sob< I thought you'd learn to love me if I became a famous reporter. I'm so ashamed!"

And the ever paternal Superman says, "I'm glad you admit your mistake, Morna! Super-powers must never be used selfishly!"

So there. That's telling her.

Of course, a woman should never try to be the best reporter she could (thanks to some advanced technology)--and to do so is just outright criminal! But Superman showed her. But all women are just children of course--they need men to give them direction or else they'll do the stupidest things!

"The Superman of 2965" (written by Edmond Hamilton) is only eight pages, but it sets up the sequels that followed (in a circle on the splash page it says "No. 1 of a New Series").

It was Weisingers pattern to continually find new ideas for the Superman world--introducing Supergirl, the Legion, Bizarro World... This was yet another such series, but the old Weisinger magic seems to falter by this time. Future Superman is a good idea, but it doesn't appear to have been as successful as previous Weisinger concepts.

IP: Logged

India Ink
Member
posted November 25, 2002 12:36 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for India Ink
There are many intriguing aspects to this future Superman--although I'm short on time right now, so I can't discuss all of them.

When this story was reprinted in the early seventies, some things were changed (probably by ENB)--most importantly the date--the story was retitled "The Superman of 2465!" and it was now a story set 500 years in the future instead of 1000. Bridwell clearly understood the confusion that is represented by having a Superman 1000 years in the future--at the exact same time as the Legion. Why Weisinger allowed this contradiction must wait for a future discussion.

Also on the splash one can just make out the date of Superman I's birth--1920!

This raises all sorts of questions and I'll return to this matter in the future. But for now I'll simply point out that 1920 was the year of Curt Swan's birth!

IP: Logged

Aldous
Member
posted November 25, 2002 03:41 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for Aldous
My favourite take on the "future Superman" idea is "The Superman of the Future" story from Action #256 (1959). That was a one-off, when the "Ultra-Superman" warned of four terrible disasters about to occur in our immediate future which he would try to prevent, even though he would be attempting to change history.

IP: Logged

Lee Semmens
Member
posted November 25, 2002 06:09 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for Lee Semmens
Does anyone out there know of any website listing reprints of all Superman stories from between 1938 and about 1970?

IP: Logged

India Ink
Member
posted November 26, 2002 07:51 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for India Ink
quote:
Originally posted by Aldous:
My favourite take on the "future Superman" idea is "The Superman of the Future" story from Action #256 (1959). That was a one-off, when the "Ultra-Superman" warned of four terrible disasters about to occur in our immediate future which he would try to prevent, even though he would be attempting to change history.

Aldous--good to see you're still around--there's no way my collection of Actions goes back that far. GCD doesn't show that this was ever reprinted. I certainly don't remember it. So I'll have to take your word for its charms.

=>

IP: Logged

India Ink
Member
posted November 26, 2002 07:55 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for India Ink
quote:
Originally posted by Lee Semmens:
Does anyone out there know of any website listing reprints of all Superman stories from between 1938 and about 1970?

That would be nice to have, hey Lee? But I don't know of any such website. In the All-Star Companion, Roy Thomas was good enough to list all reprints of the stories referenced in the contents (at press time). A Superman Companion of some kind would be swell--but a monumental task. Still, maybe someone has compiled all this data and I just don't know of it.

IP: Logged

India Ink
Member
posted November 26, 2002 08:00 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for India Ink
"The Superman of 2465 [sic]" was reprinted in Superman 244 (Nov. '71). While the sequels, featuring the Superman of 2466 [sic, again] from Action Comics nos. 338 & 339 (June & July '66)--"Muto, Monarch of Menace" & "Muto vs. the Man of Tomorrow"--were reprinted in Superman nos. 247 & 248 (Jan. & Feb. '72).

IP: Logged

India Ink
Member
posted November 26, 2002 08:08 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for India Ink
Those sequels were published in 1966 originally--and thus the Future Superman was called the Superman of 2965. But as with the first story, ENB changed the dates when the stories were reprinted so as to have the Future Superman five hundred years in the future.

The grave markers on the splash page for "Superman of 2965" show memorials for seven Supermen. IF there were just seven generations of Supermen prior to the one in that story, then five hundred years makes more sense than one thousand. But Weisinger and Hamilton didn't work out the math for Braniac 5 (the fifth generation Brainiac, yet one thousand years in the future), so they probably didn't pay attention to the generations of Supermen.

One thousand is just more impressive than five hundred. And I'm sure that was the point. Mort likely didn't care about the Legion contradiction in all this. But the lack of any link to the LSH probably hurt Future Superman. If the continuities of both series had been tied together, Future Superman surely would have stayed around a lot longer.

IP: Logged

India Ink
Member
posted November 26, 2002 08:17 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for India Ink
quote:
Originally posted by India Ink:
Those sequels were published in 1966 originally--and thus the Future Superman was called the Superman of 2965. But as with the first story, ENB changed the dates when the stories were reprinted so as to have the Future Superman five hundred years in the future.

That should read "Those sequels were published in 1966 originally--and thus the Future Superman was called the Superman of 2966. But as with the first story, ENB changed the dates when the stories were reprinted so as to have the Future Superman five hundred years in the future."

IP: Logged

India Ink
Member
posted November 26, 2002 08:36 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for India Ink
I'm sure that Swan and Klein (George had to be in on the joke since he inked it) were just having fun by giving 1920 as the birth year for Superman I on that splash page. And it seems like Mort didn't even notice. I'm sure that no one was insisting that Superman's birth year was 1920. Yet, I think this is a serviceable year for his birth.

On the face of it, since the story was originally published in 1965, this makes Superman 45 years old. Surely too elderly for Superman, right? But not quite.

There's a sense in many Weisinger edited tales that all the Superman stories happened when they happened stretching back all the way to the first issue of Action. The Superboy stories (since their inception practically) remained grounded in a long ago time around the 1920s or 1930s--and this continued to be the case all through the sixties, and even at the beginning of the seventies.

1920 gives us an eighteen year old Superman with that first Action ish. A little on the young side, but just a little. And this means that the Superboy stories all work out just about right if Superman was a teenager in the thirties.

The strange case of Superman and his entire cast is that they don't age. Time does go by, but they don't age.

In the lead story of 181, when Perry gives Morna Vine a $10 raise after she scoops Jimmy, Olsen thinks to himself--"Grrr! Can you beat that? It's two years since Perry gave me a raise!"

But just how old is Jimmy? 18? 25?

Somehow time does pass by for Jimmy yet he never clearly advances in age. And so it is for all the cast.

This might seem strange to readers of current comics, but the DCU is just as surreal in its concept of time. For the current comics, while they remain recent time passes in a fairly realistic manner. But as events recede into the past, the timeline compacts. And while the timeline compacts it also at the same time moves forward. So that events that happened months apart in the eighties, now have happened weeks or days apart in the late nineties.

None of the characters in the current DCU seem to be aware of this metaphysical warping of time around them--just as characters in the sixties Superman world never seem to understand the wierd stasis of their existence as the years go by and they grow no older.

=>

IP: Logged

India Ink
Member
posted November 26, 2002 10:26 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for India Ink
By the way, as of the date of this post, this is the link for Through the Ages...
http://theages.superman.nu/welcome.php

And the Fortress of Solitude Super-Network can be found here...
http://superman.nu/sites/

Happy hunting.

IP: Logged

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 
NEXT PAGE

BACK TO DCMB ARCHIVES  -  ACTIVE FORUM

Entrance ·  Origin ·  K-Metal ·  The Living Legend ·  About the Comics ·  Novels ·  Encyclopaedia ·  The Screen ·  Costumes ·  Read Comics Online ·  Trophy Room ·  Creators ·  ES!M ·  Fans ·  Multimedia ·  Community ·  Supply Depot ·  Gift Shop ·  Guest Book ·  Contact & Credits ·  Links ·  Coming Attractions ·  Free E-mail ·  Forum

Superman created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster
The LIVING LEGENDS of SUPERMAN! The original!
Return to SUPERMAN THROUGH THE AGES!
The Complete Supply Depot for all your Superman needs!