- Superman was never intended
to be a comic book character.
Comic books were a relatively new concept
at the time of his creation back in 1938.
Instead, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster
initially crafted stories of the Man of Steel
with the hope and intention
that he would get his own syndicated newspaper comic strip.
They drew up a dozen or so strips
and pitched the Superman character to publishers for years
only to be met with consistent rejection.
But then, there was finally a bite.
(lighthearted upbeat music)
An upcoming anthology magazine called Action Comics
was looking for stories to feature in its first issue
that would captivate the imaginations of readers.
The publisher was interested
in Siegel and Shuster's Superman character
to headline the book, but all their newspaper strips
would need to be cut up and rearranged
to fit the format of comic book pages.
And one of those images,
from inside the Man of Steel's first story,
would be lifted from the strips and used as the striking,
iconic, and instantly recognizable cover
of Action Comics #1.
It's an image that has spawned countless copycats,
homages, and parodies in the 80 plus years
since it was first published.
It's even on toy packaging!
But, as the visual introduction
to the most recognizable superhero in the world,
this cover didn't do a whole lot to make it clear
that Superman was meant to be the hero.
The men running away from this scene look like terrified,
unarmed civilians fleeing a bizarrely colorful menace
whose presence is announced
by a fiery aura of explosive energy.
With the context inside the comic, however,
readers learn the full story behind this scene.
Lois Lane and Clark Kent are on a date
when a lowlife named Butch wants to cut in
and dance with Lois.
She refuses, slaps the thug on the way out,
and leaves, abandoning Clark
who maintained his sheepish disguise
and didn't interfere in the conflict.
Later, Lois is kidnapped by Butch and his lowly crew,
but the Man of Steel has now shed his disguise,
becoming Superman.
He chases after the speeding criminals,
lifts the car effortlessly into the air,
carelessly shakes everyone out,
and then just hammers the vehicle against a boulder
for seemingly no reason.
If anything, this aggressive act serves only
as an opportunity for the villains to get away,
which is exactly what happens
before the Man of Steel catches up to them.
It may not make sense to the plot of the story,
but it's a dramatic, triumphant hell yeah moment
that showcases Superman's power!
I mean, back in these early stories,
the Man of Steel was all about tormenting villains
and striking fear into their souls.
So, destroying a car in an exaggerated show of force
just to make a statement isn't out of character
for early Superman.
But I think we can go deeper.
There's a stronger, more symbolic meaning
behind this iconic imagery, and it has less to do
with Superman, and more to do with
these things.
Buckle up, 'cause we're going for a ride
down over-analysis avenue.
Are these car jokes doing anything for you?
Are they gettin' y'all revved up?
Okay, I'll stop.
(upbeat music)
So, the motivation and themes
from early superhero comic books
can be described pretty succinctly like this:
- Technology! - Oh my god.
- As comics scholar Alex Boney wrote
in his essay Superheroes and the Modern(ist) Age:
- [Alex] The superhero is, and always has been,
a response to the rapid, dizzying forces
of early 20th-century modernism.
The first few decades of the 20th century
were marked in America by rapid industrial growth,
a shift from rural life to urban life, and worldwide war.
At a time when basic human functions,
labor, manual production, even running and walking,
were becoming redundant and obsolete,
superheroes were a refreshing assertion
of organic, physical accomplishments.
- Now this idea isn't anything new.
Literary critic Umberto Eco wrote
about the Myth of Superman back in 1972,
giving a similar analysis of superheroes
combating the spread of dehumanizing industrialization.
But what's interesting is that Superman initially started
out not as a hero fighting back against modern machines,
but as a personification
of dangerous technological advancements.
Siegel and Shuster's first take on Superman
from a short sci-fi story features a mad scientist who,
through innovative technology, creates a super-man
that goes on to kill its creator.
Certainly not a metaphor for anything I can think of.
But, of course, they kept tweaking the Superman character
until we got:
- [Announcer] Faster than a speeding bullet,
more powerful than a locomotive,
able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.
Look, up in the sky!
It's a bird!
It's a plane!
It's Superman!
- That classic intro from the Superman radio program
makes it clear that the Man of Steel is superior
to anything our technology can throw at him.
And this idea was reflected in the opening pages
of nearly every early Superman comic.
The Kryptonian strongman would constantly display
his superiority to machines, with a special emphasis
on showing up vehicles.
He'd either outrace them, lift them into the air,
or outright punch anything with an engine.
Seriously, he loved punching vehicles.
Which brings us back to the cover of Action Comics #1,
the seminal comic that introduces the world
to Superman as he lifts an automobile,
an icon of America's industrial innovations,
and smashes just it against a rock.
I want you to remember that Superman lives in Metropolis,
a pretty on-the-nose archetype of a big,
technologically advanced city,
and yet he still found a rock
to hit a car against, like a caveman.
This is purposeful imagery.
It was the late 1930s.
Industrial assembly lines had continued
to grow more concerned with profits than people,
building machinery that phased out humanity,
making workers miserable or unnecessary altogether.
There were struggles and anxieties
that were masterfully expressed
through films like Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times,
which was somehow able to capture the life
of an Amazon employee all the way back in 1936.
- Hey!
Quit stalling, get back to work!
- Everything in this factory is being automated
to optimize production speed,
even at, or perhaps especially at,
the cost of the actual workers.
Even lunch breaks are considered inefficient,
so they bring in an eating machine in an attempt
to further optimize the workplace
while stripping away more and more
of the workers' humanity
until they effectively become machines themselves.
They would hit the same repetitive tasks
for long hours every day in the industrial assembly line
that was made popular at that time
by the commercialization of one revolutionary product:
the automobile.
So here's the thing, I'm 26 years old
and I've never really learned how to drive a car.
I'm a fake adult.
All YouTubers are.
Regardless, allow me to test my multitasking skills
by discussing the history of the automobile
while navigating the bustling city streets of,
actually, you know what, that sound like a terrible idea
now that I it out loud.
Can we go to someplace a little bit more?
Perfect!
How could I possibly screw anything up here?
- I want to move my car! - Oh my god.
I've already forgotten how cars work.
- Dude, dude, dude! - What?
(laughs) It's fine.
So, Brian Cremins, author of Captain Marvel
and the Art of Nostalgia,
describes the automobile specifically as,
"A harbinger of a sometimes ominous,
"inhuman future in American literature
"published in the first quarter of the 20th century."
So, think of F. Scott Fitzgerald's horrific imagery
that he penned in The Great Gatsby
as the character of Myrtle is brutally mangled
by Gatsby's gaudy yellow car.
Or, there's also this pertinent exchange
in Booth Tarkington's novel The Magnificent Ambersons.
- I said automobiles are a useless nuisance.
Never amount to anything but a nuisance
and they had no business to be invented.
- I'm not sure George is wrong about automobiles.
With all their speed forward
they may be a step backward in civilization.
But automobiles have come,
and almost all outward things are going to be different
because of what they bring.
- It's difficult to overstate
just how much cars have changed modern life,
though one of my favorite illustrations comes
from Swedish artist Karl Jilg
who shows just how little space in a typical modern city
is dedicated to pedestrians
versus the sprawling chasms of space
dedicated to automobiles.
So, when Superman takes an object synonymous
with callous American manufacturing processes
and the anxieties of technological innovations
threatening to change society in immeasurable ways
and then hits it against a rock, that means something.
To paraphrase Grant Morrison from his book Supergods,
this act by Superman communicates that he is a hero
of the people, a bold humanist response
to Depression-era fears of runaway scientific advance
and soulless industrialism.
I mean, heck, Superman's home planet Krypton
was a thriving technological civilization
that got too ambitious and destroyed itself.
Baby Kal-El was sent off to Earth
where he crash-landed in the heart of rural America
to be raised by humble farmers as Clark Kent.
But that's what's interesting about Superman.
Yes, he's a Midwestern farm boy from Smallville,
but he's also that alien from an advanced society
and a reporter in the bustling city of Metropolis.
He's simultaneously rural and worldly,
and other-worldly.
He's the big, blue Boy Scout and the Man of Tomorrow.
There's an inherent duality built into the character,
and I think this image on Action Comics #1
helps establish these seemingly contradicting ideas
inherent to Superman and America as a whole.
Like, I'd argue Superman is pretty American.
Yes, there are interpretations of the Man of Steel
that have him renouncing his citizenship
and effectively becoming a citizen of the world,
and there are other versions
that change him even more significantly,
but the classic tagline I'd wager
almost everybody can recite from heart
is that Superman fights for truth,
justice, and the American way.
But much like Superman, at the heart of the American way
lies two very different, rivaling concepts
of what America is
and what its role in the world should be,
which goes all the way back to the foundation
of the country, and yes, this does have to do
with him smashing a car into a giant rock.
Okay?
Just, follow me.
(tires screeching)
First, we're going to have to go to early America,
and I mean really early,
like when George Washington was still President early.
The United States was brand spanking new,
and many of the shapers of the country had different ideas
about what this young nation would become.
And these competing opinions coalesced
into roughly two major schools of thought
in early American politics.
First up were the Federalists,
who believed a united country,
with its robust manufacturing sector,
strategic distance from Europe,
and vast land to expand into, steal,
they thought America could become one
of the great powers of the world.
This thinking was popular in a lot of modern urban centers
and still resonates with those who see America
as a nation of big business, a world leader.
Many of the ideas the Federalists proposed
were found in the creatively titled The Federalist Papers,
a collection of essays written by James Madison,
John Jay, and, (laughs) you know what I'm gonna do.
♪ Alexander Hamilton ♪
- However, not everyone was down with Hamilton
and the Federalists, and this rival group was burdened
with an abundance of creativity
and called themselves the Anti-Federalists.
The intellectual head of this movement
was the founding father and eventual third president
of the United States, Thomas Jefferson,
who imagined a very different America,
one they called an agrarian republic.
Instead of trying to be a big shot on the world's stage,
Jefferson though that America should be as loose
and decentralized as possible,
but still one where every white man would be free
to own his own plot of land,
and live self-sufficiently off it with himself,
his wife, his kids,
a couple dozen slaves.
This idea of America as a place
where people could live the simple life of their dreams,
free and beholden to no one
is also very much at the core of the American identity.
And this tension between these two American ideals
is arguably the core of the American way
that Superman supposedly fights for.
We're simultaneously supposed to be
a superpower of innovators at the forefront of technology
and good, old-fashioned farm boys.
And this brings us back to Superman,
who embodies both of these seemingly contradictory ideals
in one figure.
He's an immigrant and a simple square-jawed man from Kansas.
He's a farm boy in the big city.
He's a powerful, influential leader
and he also secludes himself in the fortress of solitude.
He's the shiny, new automobile,
and the humble hunk of land that battles it head on.
Superman is America, contradictions and all.
And when readers saw this now iconic image on the newsstands
back in 1938, maybe they merely saw an exciting,
colorful illustration exploding with action and intrigue.
Or perhaps they looked a bit closer
and found something that resonated with them
a little deeper,
something that tapped into their fears,
or their values
about how the world could be,
or how it should be.
And at the heart of it all
was this strange character
dressed in blue tights and a red cape
whose creators had no idea
how much they were about to change the world.
And it all comes back to this cover,
the one that started it all,
Action Comics #1.
Jordan, I'll buy you a new car.
I won't, actually don't hold me to that,
it's not in the budget. (Jordan laughs)
What do you think?
Is there more to this image
than Superman simply smashing a car against a rock?
Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
And if you want more deep dives
into comics and culture like this,
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I would like to give a huge thanks to Cristoffer Lange,
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and Jonathan Lonowski, Sonali Manka,
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Link in the description.
Click or tap right here to learn
about Superman's uncomfortable history with nuclear weapons,
or right here to see why Spider-Man
and Doctor Strange make the same hand gesture.
Once again, my name is Scott
reminding you to read between the panels
and grow smarter through comics.
See ya.
(soft upbeat music)
Wee.