September 1958: The Sword that Stabbed Superman

For one, brief shining moment, DC Comics had something of an Arthurian ambience. Even Superman ran into it.

In Superman 124 (Sept. 1958), the Man of Tomorrow unearthed a warrior of yesterday from a glacier.

“I thank thee, sir flying knight,” said the masked, armored figure. “The magic of your strength hath broken the spell of living death which Merlin cast over me when he entombed me in this gaol of ice a thousand years past!”

Later, in Metropolis, the Black Knight sets about pillaging with his purportedly enchanted sword, cutting open a safe and slicing through a police car. When Superman confronts the knave, he’s apparently wounded in the arm and leg.

In fact, as you may have guessed, it’s all part of a complicated scheme to catch a crook, in this case gangster Bull Mathews.

“Perry White poses as the evil Black Knight of Arthurian legend and pretends to wound Superman with his supposedly ‘enchanted sword’ in order to entice Mathews into attempting to purchase the sword with identifiable loot from a previous bank robbery,” recounted comics historian Michael L. Fleisher. The Daily Planet editor had conveniently left on vacation in the first panel of the story.

Two years later, the tale would be retold in the Superman newspaper strip.

The same month that The Super Sword was published, the Silent Knight was fighting for Camelot over in DC’s Brave and the Bold 19.

Swashbuckling Arthurian adventure was also popular on screen in the 1950s, with Knights of the Round Table (1953) and The Black Knight (1954) on the big screen, and The Adventures of Sir Lancelot (1956–57) on the small one. The Black Knight film probably inspired Marvel’s comic book of the same name (1955-56). 

In 1960, the musical Camelot would debut on Broadway, running for 873 performances. That beat the 129 performances of a musical that would open six years later on Broadway — It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s Superman.