Superman Saved the Day Financially Too
How Clark Kent's Alter Ego Came to the Rescue of Comic Books
Sep 21, 2009
In those thirteen short pages, which made up Action Comics #1, the publishing industry was to be forever changed. Although no one involved with those first few pages knew it at the time, those simple words and images would bring profound changes to such industries as wartime propaganda, radio, marketing and merchandising while, simultaneously, creating a value-laden symbol which is (or perhaps more aptly, who is) as thoroughly woven into the American cultural fabric as George Washington, John F. Kennedy, or Martin Luther King. Those simple thirteen pulpwood pages comprised the first Superman story published in Action Comics #1 in June of 1938.
Saving the Comic Book Industry
The American comic book industry, in 1938, was in financial trouble. The foundling industry had been making money, at first, by merely reprinting strips from newspapers and only later did publishers lower themselves to producing original material based directly on (and often swiped directly from) the pulps, dime novels, and swashbuckling film heroes of the day. Comic book publishers thought they had something with this new publishing format; but, they still were searching for the alchemical formula that would consistently bring readers to this new medium.
As a result of this search, the contents of a single comic book could vary from a few pages of hard-boiled detective tale, followed by a few pages of shoot-'em-up war stories, a tear-jerking teen romance, or even “funny animal” style humor strips, all in the span of a few pages and all in the same book. By the late thirties, most major publishers had zeroed in on the heroic vein of Western tradition and they were running books which were derived from the heroic tales of the pulps and radio serials of the day. Despite endless recreations of “Doc Savage” and “Flash Gordon,” readers were looking for a brand new kind of hero to save the day in an America which was still attempting to recover from the great Depression as ominous war clouds loomed in Europe.
Slam Bradley
It would take two teenagers from Cleveland to revolutionize the comic book industry and start a change in American popular and corporate culture, when they introduced a strip based, in part, on an earlier action strip named “Slam Bradley,” which they had originally sold to DC for the first issue of Detective Comics.
This new tale featured the story of a young infant being sent away in a futuristic rocket ship, by his scientist parents, as his home planet is destroyed by a horrendous explosion. The infant lands safely on a new world, where he is found by the perfect loving couple who raise him as their own. The youth quickly discovers he is “more than” those around him, but his adoptive parents have taught him well and he uses his powers to protect his hosts in his newfound home.
This new tale, entitled “Superman,” first appeared in Action Comics #1 in December of 1938. The formula Seigel and Shuster created was instant gold and it took only four short years for the red-caped avenger to become an American icon. By 1942, Superman books were reaching an estimated 12 million readers and they had become such an integral part of the American consciousness that the Department of the Navy deemed that, according to the April 13, 1942 issue of Time Magazine, Superman comic books were essential supplies for U.S. Marines.
Superman's Jewish Roots
This is only Superman's publicly known history, there is also the little known "secret history of Superman" which tells of his links to Jewish and the tales of Greco-Roman gods.
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