11-07-2025
- Entertainment
- New Indian Express
Superman wasn't always so squeaky clean – in early comics he was a radical vigilante
Superman was the very first superhero. He debuted in Action Comics issue #1 which was released in June 1938. Over time, the character has been assigned multiple nicknames: 'The Man of Steel', 'The Man of Tomorrow' and 'The Big Blue Boy Scout'. However, in his first appearance in ravaged Depression-era America, the byline used to announce Superman's debut was: 'The Champion of the Oppressed'.
Created by the sons of Jewish immigrants, writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster, Superman is an example of youthful male wish fulfilment: an all-powerful figure dressed like a circus strong man, who uses brawn to right wrongs. However, Siegel and Shuster's initial version of the character was a more flawed character.
Appearing in a 1933 fanzine, Siegel's prose story The Reign of the Superman with accompanying illustrations by Shuster, featured a reckless scientist whose hubris is punished when he creates the telepathic 'super man' by experimenting on a drifter plucked from the poverty lines. Echoing Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the creator is dispatched by his creation.
Siegel and Shuster had some early success selling stories to National Allied Publications, the forerunner of DC Comics. At this time, comic books were mainly collections of newspaper cartoons – the 'funnies' – pasted together to create more portable anthologies. They featured the escapades of characters like Popeye and Little Orphan Annie.
Inspired by the heroic tales of derring do of pulp fiction adventurers such as Johnston McCulley's Zorro (1919) and Philip Wylie's 1930 science fiction novel Gladiator, Siegel and Shuster further developed their Superman character. They transformed him into a hero and added the now familiar cape and 'S' logo.
