Friday, July 9, 2010

Superman's history

I've read some Superman histories over the years, but thanks to that late, free comic book Web site that existed earlier this spring, I was able to read or scan most Superman comics from the late 1930s to the early 1960s -- effectively "completing" my Superman history course.
It was amazing to see that some "Adventures of Superman" show stories, that I always thought to be original, weren't — they came from the comics! Yet, there were a few comics plots that spun off the TV show's story too.
From seeing Superman evolve, to his involvement in World War II, were priceless vantage points I found, while reading early comics on the Web.
There were also so many early 1940s comic covers where Superman stopped a U-boat or a Japanese Zero plane, where the story inside had nothing to do with the war.
I know I read some sci-fi type stories in those old Superman comics that were ahead of their time and I wish I'd made notes about them.
But, overall the comic stories of the 1940s and 1950s weren't all that good. Neither was most of the artwork. It was only from the 1960s on that the Man of Steel really took off.