Hurt feelings, loss and embarrassment loomed large in editor Mort Weisinger’s Superman titles, and a certain amount of fat-shaming went along with that.
It may well have all started here, in Superboy 24 (Feb.-March 1953). In The Super-Fat Boy of Steel, drawn by John Sikela, all Smallville’s teenagers mysteriously become obese while Clark Kent is off on vacation.
In the Julius Schwartz-edited title The Flash, the same thing once happened to the Scarlet Speedster. But it wasn’t presented as an embarrassment to Barry Allen, merely a predicament for him to think his way out of.
As superheroes faded in the early 1950s, horror comics flourished.
“What about National horror?” wondered Bill Schelly in American Comic Book Chronicles. “There was actually none. Editor Jack Schiff’s House of Mystery 1 (Dec.-Jan. 1951) was National’s first such title in the ‘mystery’ genre, the closest the firm came to a horror comic book. The company that published Superman didn’t want to taint its cash cow by associating with anything approaching Grand Guignol, and National wasn’t temperamentally suited to produce that kind of material, anyway.
“In House of Mystery, everything supernatural is a hoax or has a scientific explanation.”
And so it was here in the Leonard Starr story The Deadly Game of G-H-O-S-T (House of Mystery 11, Feb. 1953). The “ghost” turns out of be part of an extremely elaborate, highly unlikely but nevertheless ultimately successful scheme to expose a murderer.
Scooby-Doo would have seen through that hoax at once.
Bruce Kanin:
ReplyDeleteThe gal on the right on the SUPERBOY cover looked so much like Lois Lane. As for the fat-shaming, we also got Bouncing Boy, in the Legion, except he was fine with his girth (which he could control) and used it as a super-power to thwart bad guys. Plus he eventually hooked up with and married Triplicate Girl (or Duo Damsel)!
Paul Zuckerman:
ReplyDeleteFat shaming was not unusual back then. People were very vocal. We were watching a vintage episode of What's My Line and the panel members had no problems making jokes about the contestant. And, of course, fat jokes were par for the course on Jack Benny with his announcer Don Wilson. But Mort himself was on the heavy side, so I wonder if he felt like he was flogging himself.
In the early '50s, few if any DC books showed true supernatural elements. Phantom Stranger himself seemed a bit supernatural though he had no unusual powers in his original incarnation, but he was always debunking seemingly supernatural elements. Dr. Thirteen spent his entire career doing that. So did Roy Raymond, though sometimes there were actual SF resolutions. By the late 50s, the supernatural element began to be real but still in a benign way. A far cry from the late 60s/early 70s, where the supernatural at DC came into its own. And Dr. Thirteen, instead of being the rational person debunking hoaxes became the voice of the close-minded who refused to see what was in front of him.
Bob Doncaster:
ReplyDeleteDC characters were always turning into babies, obese or animals. They missed the mark with no obese baby gorilla.
I replied:
If the Silver Age hadn't ended, they'd have gotten around to it. Did you ever see the movie "Sky High?" They did a wonderful riff on Silver Age DC.
Johnny Williams:
ReplyDeleteDan - Hurt feelings, loss and embarrassment loomed large in editor Mort Weisinger’s Superman titles, and a certain amount of fat-shaming went along with that.
Me - Another trope that ‘loomed large’ (see what I did there?) during the Silver Age.
Dan - It may well have all started here, in Superboy 24 (Feb.-March 1953). In The Super-Fat Boy of Steel, drawn by John Sikela, all Smallville’s teenagers mysteriously become obese while Clark Kent is off on vacation.
The major characters in Weisinger’s Superman titles — Jimmy Olsen, Lois Lane, Lana Lang, Supergirl and Superman himself — all got plumped up at one time or another.
Me - They All also gained large domed ‘human being of the future’ heads at one point or another. That was such a popular trope back then that even The Flash had it happen to him, and he was outside of the Superman family of books.
Dan - In the Julius Schwartz-edited title The Flash, the same thing once happened- to the Scarlet Speedster. But it wasn’t presented as an embarrassment to Barry Allen, merely a predicament for him to think his way out of.
Me - So Barry suffered the same fates that some of the Weisinger edited characters had, two of the fates actually. One was becoming morbidly obese and the other was having his head expanded to a hugely not normal size (in his case courtesy of his pal, Green Lantern).
Dan - As superheroes faded in the early 1950s, horror comics flourished.
“What about National horror?” wondered Bill Schelly in American Comic Book Chronicles. “There was actually none. Editor Jack Schiff’s House of Mystery 1 (Dec.-Jan. 1951) was National’s first such title in the ‘mystery’ genre, the closest the firm came to a horror comic book. The company that published Superman didn’t want to taint its cash cow by associating with anything approaching Grand Guignol, and National wasn’t temperamentally suited to produce that kind of material, anyway.
Me - Having seen and possessed some of the pre-code EC horror comics, and the ones I had were pretty darn scary, I wasn’t bothered by National not publishing any horror titles. I was more into science fiction anyway and National’s anthology titles had plenty of those types of stories.
Dan - “In House of Mystery, everything supernatural
is a hoax or has a scientific explanation.”
Me - Yes, that was the age of rationality and enthusiasm for scientific achievements.
Dan- And so it was here in the Leonard Starr story The Deadly Game of G-H-O-S-T (House of Mystery 11, Feb. 1953). The “ghost” turns out of be part of an extremely elaborate, highly unlikely but nevertheless ultimately successful scheme to expose a murderer.
Scooby-Doo would have seen through that hoax at once.
Me - No doubt. None at all.