Superman was the first superhero. He debuted in the number #1 of Action Comics, which was launched in June 1938. Over time, the character has been assigned multiple nicknames: “The man of steel”, “The man of tomorrow” and “The Great Boy Scout Azul”. However, in his first appearance in the United States of the era of depression, the firm used to announce Superman’s debut was: “The oppressed champion.”
Created by the children of Jewish immigrants, the writer Jerry Siegel and the artist Joe Shuster, Superman is an example of compliance with youth male desires: an almighty figure dressed as a strong circus man, who uses the force to correct errors. However, the initial version of Siegel and Shuster’s character was a more defective character.
Appearing in a 1933 fanzine, Siegel The Reign of the Superman’s prose history, with Shuster illustrations, presented an imprudent scientist whose arrogance is punished when he creates the telepathic “superman” experimenting with a vagabundo taken from the poverty lines. Echoing the Frankenstein of Mary Shelley, the creator is dispatched for her creation.
Siegel and Shuster had an early success selling stories to National Allied Publications, the precursor of DC Comics. At this time, the comics were mainly collections of newspaper cartoons, the “fun”, stuck to create more portable anthologies. They presented the adventures of characters such as Popeye and little orphan Annie.
Inspired by the heroic stories of Pulp fiction adventurers such as El Zorro (1919) by Johnston McCulley and the science fiction novel of Philip Wylie of 1930 Gladiator, Siegel and Shuster further developed his Superman character. They transformed it into a hero and added the layer and logo “s” that are now familiar.
Having no luck selling their superhero to the newspapers, they finally sold Superman’s rights to DC Comics, where Superman achieved great success. After a year, there was a syndicated newspaper and a comic derived from Superman with the first superhero with its own exclusive title. Together with an extensive merchandising, there was a radio program in 1940, followed by an animation series in 1941, with the inevitable serial of action live in 1948.
In this first example of a property that crosses multiple media platforms, the apparent attractiveness of Superman resided in the fantastic aspects, since it fought against crazy scientists, criminal brains and giant dinosaurs.
But in the first numbers, Superman’s enemies were remarkably more tied to Earth and reflected the concerns of an audience that staggered the effects of the great depression. In one of the first stories, Guerra in Sante Monte, Superman faces a corrupt lobbyist from Washington, Alex Greer, who is bribing a greedy senator. It turns out that Greer represents a weapons trafficker who is benefiting manipulating both sides in a war abroad.
In a later story, Superman Fights Death Underground, our hero challenges the owner of a dangerous mine who is taking shortcuts with safety precautions.
In 1932, Siegel’s father, a tailor, died after the attempted theft of the family store, so it is not surprising that Superman had a low tolerance towards crime and its causes. In the Superman in the Slums story, dated January 1939, the social comment is simple. When the adolescent Frankie Clalllo is sentenced to a reformatory, Superman recognizes the impact of the child’s social environment:
Their solution is to destroy ruins buildings, forcing the authorities to replace them with modern cheap rental apartments. In the creation of new construction works, here is the extreme version of Superman of the New Deal of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
In the 1998 prologue by Superman: The Action Comics Archives Volume 2, the former DC Comics editor, Paul Kupperberg, comments that it is a Superman “who fought (mainly) against type suitable for the little one”. The form that the fight takes is interesting, since this Superman has no time for subtleties or due process, since happily intimidates and harasses anyone who gets in their way.
A man caught hitting his wife is thrown into a wall and is warned that there are much more where it comes. The corrupt lobbyist is hung from energy cables until it reveals who is working for. Any police officer who tries to obstruct Superman’s personal search is ignored.
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Refining Superman
Through his appearances on radio and cinema, Superman softened and became more patient. In popular culture, concerns about depression and social injustice moved to efforts to promote a national consensus as the United States put on a war footing in the early 1940s.
After the war, there were occasional returns to the most radical interpretations of Superman, but in general it is the clean and fantastic perception of the character’s Big Blue Boy Scouts of the character that has dominated.
Superman’s new movie seems to keep that image. In the trailer, the superman of actor David Korenswt faces several supervillans and a destructive Kaiju (a monster the size of a skyscraper similar to Godzilla), although it is suggested that behind all of them is the corrupt industrialist, Lex Luthor.
Timely, it is in the pages of the comics where a more progressive and militant representation of Superman has emerged. In 2024, DC restarted his family superheroes with his new most stark “absolute” universe.
Jason Aaron and Rafa Sandoval’s Absolute Comic (2024) emphasizes the status of the character as a worker immigrant isolated from the Krypton condemned planet. This is a young, less experienced superman, who gets angry quickly and is less likely to throw his blows. His interpretation is closer to Superman’s first righteous roots, including a story in which workers from a Brazilian mine from the claws of large exploitative companies.
Perhaps, at least in the comics, the oppressed champion has finally returned.
*John Caro is a film and media professor at the University of Portsmouth.
This article was originally published in The Conversation/Reuters
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