Brian Cronin
Page 1
Table of Contents
A PLUME BOOK
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part One - DC COMICS
Chapter 1 - SUPERMAN
Chapter 2 - BATMAN
Chapter 3 - DC COMICS MISCELLANEA
Part Two - MARVEL COMICS
Chapter 4 - THE FANTASTIC FOUR
Chapter 5 - SPIDER-MAN
Chapter 6 - THE INCREDIBLE HULK
Chapter 7 - CAPITAIN AMERICA
Chapter 8 - THE X-MEN
Chapter 9 - MARVEL COMICS MISCELLANEA
Part Three - OTHER COMIC BOOK COMPANIES
Chapter 10 - WALT DISNEY COMICS
Chapter 11 - VARIOUS COMIC BOOK COMPANIES
Recommended Reading
List of Artist Names Along with Issue Numbers
A PLUME BOOK
Was Superman a SPY?
BRIAN CRONIN is the writer and producer of the Comics Should Be Good blog at Comic Book Resources (www.cbr.cc). He has been writing the online column “Comic Book Urban Legends Revealed” since June 2005. He has a JD from Fordham Law School and is a practicing attorney in the state of New York. He lives in New York, where he enjoys writing about himself in the third person. For more legends about the world of sports and pop culture, check out www.legendsrevealed.com.
PLUME
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First published by Plume, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
First Printing, May 2009
Copyright © Brian Cronin, 2009
All rights reserved
REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Cronin, Brian.
Was Superman a spy? / Brian Cronin.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
eISBN : 978-1-101-04656-2
1. Comic books, Strips, etc.—Unites States. 2. Comic strip characters—United States. 3. Common fallacies—United States. I. Title.
PN6725.C76 2009
741.5’973--dc22 2008030601
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For my grandfather, Bernard Flynn
“Knowledge is the food of the soul.”
—PLATO
Acknowledgments
Love and thanks to Meredith, my parents, and my siblings for their love and support.
Thanks to my agent, Rick Broadhead; my editor, John Mihaly; my editor at Plume, Branda C. Maholtz; Rob Williams; Joanne Lue; Celly Ryan; the Grand Comic Book Database for supplying cover images (www.comics.org); Jonah Weiland and Comic Book Resources; and the rest of my gang at Comics Should Be Good! (the Gregs, Brad, Bill, Mark, Pol, and Danielle).
Thanks specifically to the following people who helped suggest or provide information for the stories in this book: John McDonagh (easily the number one reader for suggesting legends), Mark Evanier, Roy Thomas, Michael Eury, J. M. DeMatteis (the most generous creator I know), Paul Newell, Todd VerBeek, Jason, Marc, Linda Burns, Greg Theakston, Reilly Brown, Jim MacQuarrie, Daniel Best, TV’s Grady, Hoosier X, Michael Bailey, Tom DeFalco, RAB, Michael Grabois, Todd Gilchrist, Randall Bytwerk, Jeremy Goldstone, Glen Cadigan, Robert Pincombe, LtMarvel, Mark Arnold, Tony Isabella, Roger Stern, Jim Shooter, Michael E, Mark Seddon, Daniël van Eijmeren, Joe Simon, Randy Schueller, David Gerstein, Scott Rowland, Jakob, Matthew Johnson, Jim, and Edward Summer.
Finally, thanks to all my English teachers and professors for getting me this far: Eleanor Spillett, Kevin Kavanah, Lizabeth Cooke, Ann Slocum, Randall Craig, Teresa Ebert, Jonathan Schiff, Donald Faulkner, Mike Hill, Carolyn Yalkut, and Judith Fetterley.
Introduction
A musingly enough, it all began with falling for an urban legend myself. A few years ago, I wrote on my comic blog, Comics Should Be Good! about comic writer-artist Walter Simonson’s run on the comic book title Fantastic Four in the late 1980s and early 1990s. I made a comment regarding Simonson’s distaste for the ways some writers had handled the Fantastic Four’s most famous villain, Doctor Doom, over the years. Simonson had written a story that could explain away many of these appearances as having been made by impostors. I had read more than once that Simonson privately kept a list of the character’s appearances that he specifically felt should be ignored. Well, sometime after my comments were published, I received an e-mail from—who else?—Walter Simonson!
Simonson kindly pointed out that he had never made any such list but that he repeatedly had heard people refer to the supposed list! Simonson specifically noted how bemused he was at the fact that he himself was the subject of an “urban legend.” While chagrined over my error, it occurred to me that there were plenty of comic-book-related stories out there that have been passed around for years without being checked out, so I decided it would be a great idea to either confirm or debunk them. In June 2005 I began a weekly column on the topic.
Three years and over 500 urban legends later, here we are with a collection of 130 comic book stories—65 of my favorite legends from the column plus 65 brand-new legends! Some of them are false and some of them are true, but all of them demonstrate the fascinating history of comic books.
In an effort to make it easier to find the legend you’re looking for, I’ve split them into three parts: one for legends related to DC Comics, one for those related to Marvel Comics, and one for legends related to all the other great comic book companies out there.
I had a lot of fun compiling these stories, and I hope you have a lot of fun reading them!
Part One
DC COMICS
DC Comics began in 1937 as a deal between pulp magazine publisher Harry Donenfeld and comic book publisher Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson, who needed Donenfeld’s financing
to publish his latest project, Detective Comics #1 (hence the DC part of DC Comics). Donenfeld owned DC Comics and had a partnership with Wheeler-Nicholson’s original comic book company, National Allied Publications, as well as with Max Gaines’s All-American Publications. (Another early comic innovator, Gaines may have been the very first person to actually think of charging for comic books—the earliest comic books were designed as promotional giveaways.)
All three companies published together under a loose partnership, calling themselves National Comics. Donenfeld soon bought out Wheeler-Nicholson, and in 1944 he bought out All-American Publications as well. By this time, while officially going by the name National Publications, the company was known colloquially as DC Comics, and DC is what appeared on the logos of the books. The company would not take the name officially, though, until the late 1970s.
Donenfeld and his former accountant Jack Liebowitz ran the company (though Donenfeld’s son, Irwin Donenfeld, eventually took over for his father) until, in 1967, it was purchased by Kinney National Services, which quickly changed its name to Warner Bros. after it acquired the famed Warner Bros. movie studio as well. DC Comics is currently a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Entertainment, which has turned a number of its comic book properties into films and television series.
1
SUPERMAN
Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, two teenagers from Cleveland, had pitched their idea for a comic strip called Superman to a number of different comic strip distributors, but to no avail. Their story about an alien who came to Earth from a dying world and (while secretly pretending to be a meek newspaper reporter) became a hero thanks to the extraordinary powers he possessed did not seem to have a place on the market at the time. However, in 1938 National Publications was starting a new, ongoing comic book anthology called Action Comics, and they were desperate for features. An editor-acquaintance recalls rejecting the comic strip pitch and recommending Superman to National. After some changes were made (Siegel and Shuster had to turn their comic strip samples into a thirteen-page comic book story, which required some cutting and pasting), “Superman” was ready to be the lead feature in Action Comics #1, and the comic book industry was never the same again.
Superman was soon one of the highest-selling publications in the whole country, selling over a million copies a month, and in no time every comic book company was rushing to put out its own superhero comic book. Siegel and Shuster went from being a pair of unknown teens trying to break into the comics industry to being two of the most famous creators in the United States. Eventually, though, they began to resent the fact that they had sold the rights to their character for only $130, while Superman was making National Comics millions of dollars. In 1947 the pair sued National, to recoup their rights to Superman, and lost. They were fired from the comic and had their “created by” credit stricken from the books. It was not until the late 1970s, due to public outcry over their treatment during the publicity leading to the release of Superman: The Movie, that Siegel and Shuster were given a stipend for the rest of their lives (originally around $35,000 and believed to be more later on), medical benefits, and a “created by” credit from that point forward.
By the time the film was released, Superman had already become an American institution, with comic books, movie serials (both animated and live action), a popular radio series, and a popular television series (not to mention as many licensed products as you could imagine). The film, though, brought a brand-new wave of popularity and went on to spawn three sequels during the 1980s and a relaunch of the film franchise in 2006.
When Siegel and Shuster sold the rights to Superman in 1939, copyrights lasted for only fifty-six years (an initial twenty-eight-year period followed by a twenty-eight-year renewal period). In 1976 the United States Congress passed a new copyright act, which extended the protection period from fifty-six to seventy-five years. In part, the act allowed people (or their heirs) who sold their copyrights to cancel the transfer of their copyright and get it back for the additional nineteen years, under the theory that when they sold the copyright it was only for fifty-six years, so it would be unfair for the buyer to gain the benefit of those extra nineteen years.
Just recently, the heirs of Jerry Siegel (Joe Shuster had no heirs) successfully regained their half of the Superman copyright, giving them one-half of the Superman copyright in the United States (retroactive to 1999). However, in 1998 another new copyright act was passed, this time extending the copyright-protection period from seventy-five to ninety years. This time around, not only can heirs cancel the transfer, but also the estates of the original copyright holders. Therefore, the estate of Joe Shuster will be able to regain his half of the Superman copyright in 2013 (seventy-five years after the publication of Action Comics #1) for the extra fifteen years of copyright protection, meaning DC might very well lose the copyright to Superman in only a few short years.
AS YOU MIGHT imagine, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, as two Jewish men from Cleveland, were no fans of the Nazis during World War II, so I am sure they took great pleasure in the offer they received from Look magazine in early 1940. Look wanted the pair to draw a short story demonstrating how Superman would handle the war in Europe, which was still almost two years away from directly involving the United States.
Their story involves Superman getting fed up with the war, so he flies over to Europe, smacks around the German troops for a little bit, then flies into Hitler’s bunker and captures Hitler. Superman then makes a stopover in the Soviet Union, to capture Stalin as well. He then flies the two men to Geneva, for a war-crimes trial before the League of Nations, where both Hitler and Stalin are found guilty of “modern history’s greatest crime—unprovoked aggression against defenseless nations.” It is particularly interesting to note just how Stalin was viewed at the time, as presumably Siegel’s take on Stalin would not be much different from the average American’s prior to the uneasy alliance struck up by President Roosevelt and Stalin later in World War II.
While you might imagine that Nazi Germany would not be a fan of this story, you would probably also think that a two-page comic book story would not draw much attention, but surprisingly Siegel and Shuster’s tale drew a response from none other than Das Schwarze Korps, the official newspaper of the Nazi Schutzstaffel (also known as the SS—Hitler’s elite military force), a month after the story appeared. In the piece, the author decries the story and Superman in general (while, interestingly enough, showing a certain amount of admiration for the comic’s sheer novelty) as an example of American aggression and for stressing brawn over brains—particularly the simplicity of Superman kidnapping two world leaders and dropping them off at the League of Nations. He further explains how Siegel uses the character to undermine the minds of the youth of America (naturally, there are also more than a few unkind epithets directed toward the Jewish Siegel) by feeding them hate, suspicion, evil, and criminality rather than courage and justice. It’s fascinating to see the Nazi propaganda machine so concerned with something as simple as a short superhero story.
DURING THE WAR, the covers of the Superman comics prominently displayed advertisements urging the purchase of war bonds and radiated overall pride in the troops “over there,” but the comics inside rarely dealt with the war—mostly, I suppose, because of the sheer disjunction of having a superpowerful hero interacting in an all-too-real war. A few stories here and there attempted to explain why Superman was not fighting on the European battlefront, but for the most part, it was simply ignored until, toward the very end of the war, Clark Kent began serving as a war correspondent on a Naval vessel, the USS Davey Jones.
Jerry Siegel, though, who was drafted in early 1943, managed to get one dramatic war story into the Superman comic strip before departing (drawn by Joe Shuster and a team of assistants because of Shuster’s increasingly deteriorating vision, which had kept him from being drafted for military service). And what a story it was! In the monthlong tale, readers marveled as Superman invaded Nazi Germany to re
scue no less of a figure than Santa Claus!
The story opens with three leaders of the Axis—German führer Adolf Hitler, Italian premier Benito Mussolini, and Japanese general Hideki Tōjō—gathered together as Germany’s head propagandist, Joseph Goebbels, delivers a message to the people of the world: Santa Claus has been captured by Nazi forces! The readers see the devastation that the news brings all over the world, but they also see Superman quickly make the decision to rescue Santa, even if it means invading Germany.
Along the way, Superman saves the lives of some French resistance fighters, and they aid him in his mission. During his time as a prisoner, Santa Claus gets in a number of speeches explaining how evil the Axis powers are.
Eventually, Superman rescues Santa Claus and gets him back to the North Pole just in time to help him deliver toys around the world (including an empty gift box for Hitler).
ALMOST SIXTY YEARS later there was another Superman story involving the Nazis, only it went over a bit less successfully. In 1998, in celebration of Superman’s sixtieth anniversary, each of the four monthly Superman titles spent a few months telling stories set during different points in Superman’s history. For instance, one title told a story that evoked the Superman stories of the 1960s and another told a story that evoked the stories from the 1970s. In the pages of Superman: The Man of Steel, the longtime creative partnership of writer Louise Simonson and cowriter/artist Jon Bogdanove unfurled a story set in the 1940s, at the time of the Holocaust.