"Superman Showcase"
This week I've been reading the DC SUPERMAN SHOWCASE thing, 500 pages of 1959 Superman stories in B&W for $10. Great value.
This is pretty much my first exposure to this kind of stuff, and it's pretty bizarre to someone who grew up reading Marvels and EC Comics and barely ever touched a DC story.
It's a great example of comics designed for 8-year-olds, with the simple plots and hokey emotions and science. Different than the Marvels which would come a few years later, aimed at teenagers.
One of the interesting things is that they seem to understand in these stories what to do with a character who is invulnerable and invincible. In the whole 500 pages, there are three or four super-villains. There's one Braniac, one Metallo, two Bizarro stories and two Luthor stories. (He wasn't "Lex Luthor", he was just "Luthor". When did he become "Lex"?)
Most of the stories are imaginary stories, practical jokes, or elaborate hoaxes designed to fool a criminal or a mob boss into foiling their own schemes. Superman spends most of his time stopping natural disasters, helping people perform vast engineering projects, or doing showcases of his powers for charity.
They realize that there's very little point in just having two guys fight, when one of them can't be defeated and can't be hurt. There's lots of kryptonite of course to add challenge, but it's relatively rarely used by a villain directly against Superman. Most of the time it's either by accident, or a freak of nature of something.
It was a great introduction to someone who's not really interested in modern superhero comics. I've studied the history of Marvel books and I have a couple of the DC Archives from the 30's and 40's origins of Batman, but I'd never read this much 50's Superman before.
Jeff
This is pretty much my first exposure to this kind of stuff, and it's pretty bizarre to someone who grew up reading Marvels and EC Comics and barely ever touched a DC story.
It's a great example of comics designed for 8-year-olds, with the simple plots and hokey emotions and science. Different than the Marvels which would come a few years later, aimed at teenagers.
One of the interesting things is that they seem to understand in these stories what to do with a character who is invulnerable and invincible. In the whole 500 pages, there are three or four super-villains. There's one Braniac, one Metallo, two Bizarro stories and two Luthor stories. (He wasn't "Lex Luthor", he was just "Luthor". When did he become "Lex"?)
Most of the stories are imaginary stories, practical jokes, or elaborate hoaxes designed to fool a criminal or a mob boss into foiling their own schemes. Superman spends most of his time stopping natural disasters, helping people perform vast engineering projects, or doing showcases of his powers for charity.
They realize that there's very little point in just having two guys fight, when one of them can't be defeated and can't be hurt. There's lots of kryptonite of course to add challenge, but it's relatively rarely used by a villain directly against Superman. Most of the time it's either by accident, or a freak of nature of something.
It was a great introduction to someone who's not really interested in modern superhero comics. I've studied the history of Marvel books and I have a couple of the DC Archives from the 30's and 40's origins of Batman, but I'd never read this much 50's Superman before.
Jeff
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