As thrilled as I was by Superman’s first annual in 1960, I was even more excited to see this “All-Menace” issue — finally, foes worthy of Superman’s stature and some real super-powered action!
Oddly, despite his science fictional origins, Superman went for a long stretch of his early career having few science fictional adventures. Mundane criminals and crusades against social injustice and political corruption occupied much of his day.
By the time Superman 87 arrived in February 1954, things had started to change.
Klaus Wolf werote, "Excellent post Dan.
ReplyDelete"I'm very interested in the cultural cross-fertilization between the cinema, comic and tv media.
"As you have pointed out, sci-fi started to dominate from the early fifties due to the great sci-fi movies and tv shows. Even Batman started to feature off-world and alien crooks in the fifties onwards though it became a bit silly in the sixties and sales started to fall. Batman was always better suited to fighting Earthbound crooks and Infantino brought a new freshness to Batman/Detective."
Paul Zuckerman wrote, "What a great issue this was! So many classic stories. I had read the first Titano and Metallo stories in their original appearances but everything else was brand new. The Thing story was a real battle royal, something that was rare in the 50s, even before the Comics Code. Interestingly, Superman's powers increased tremendously from the story's original appearance and the reprint that they had to change the line about the bomb to make it more powerful. Wayne Boring was rarely better than on this story.
ReplyDeleteThe first Bizarro story was also a classic. I had just missed it when it first appeared but in the first adult Bizarro story they mentioned it, so it was nice to finally read it. But so sad--Bizarro was already starting to become a humorous character when the reprint appeared but he was a truly tragic one in the Superboy story.
The Invulnerable Enemy was another classic, again drawn by Boring.
"All around--one to keep!"