I loved this particular story, and I wasn’t alone.
The tale’s popularity was demonstrated by the number of times it was reprinted — in Superman Annual 2 (Winter 1960), in Superman 196 (May 1967) and in The Best of DC 42 (Nov. 1983), among other places.
In The Thing from 40,000 A.D.!, first published in Superman 87 (Feb. 1954), a shape-shifting blob monster from Earth’s bleak far future invades Metropolis, generally wreaking havoc and finally duplicating even Superman, complete with super powers.
Writer Bill Finger and artist Wayne Boring gave us a super-battle that remained a thunderous standoff until the Man of Tomorrow maneuvered the Thing to a nuclear test site. In 1938, Superman could be knocked for a loop by a “bursting shell,” but by the 1950s he could shrug off H-bomb blasts.
The Thing, however, could not.
Science fiction menaces had begun challenging Superman with more frequency during that era — among them The Three Supermen from Krypton in Superman 65 (July-Aug. 1950), It from Action Comics 162 (Nov. 1951), The Machines of Crime from Action Comics 167 (April 1952), the dragon-like Beast from Krypton in Superman 78 (Sept-Oct. 1952), the Return of Planet Krypton in Action Comics 182 (July 1953), the asteroid Menace from the Stars in World’s Finest 65 (Jan.-Feb. 1954, a story also featured on TV as Panic in the Sky).
I suspect it was Hollywood that put the science fiction back into Superman’s stories. Once relegated to movie serials for kids, the genre had reemerged in popular, critically acclaimed films like The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) and The War of the Worlds (1953).
Superman’s Thing, specifically, owed a lot to the 1951 Howard Hawks film The Thing from Another World. The menace there was an extraterrestrial vegetable monster played by James Arness, but in the 1938 story on which the film was based, John W. Campbell’s Who Goes There?, the Thing is an alien shape-shifter from 20 million years ago.
Bruce Kanin:
ReplyDeleteThing is (sorry), I always wondered why they would reprint stories as if they were being told for the first time. Often the Superman comics would identify a reprint as a "Demand Classic" but in this one, there is no such identification on the splash page. At least we got an all-new Swan-Klein cover vs. the original.
Interestingly, the next issue was an 80-pg. Giant full of reprints, so perhaps Mort Weisinger was giving most of his staff a two-month vacation?
I replied:
Even then, I suspected it was because the new material was weak.
Alan Bryan:
ReplyDeleteamong the first comic books I ever bought.....THIS ISSUE. WOW.
ReplyDeleteRobert Beck:
One of my favorite covers. It was getting rare to see Superman in a knockdown dragout fight as opposed to the frequent gimmick covers.
I replied:
That was the appeal to me, too. That's why I loved the second annual, featuring the super-menaces.
Bob Bailey:
ReplyDeleteSuperman 196 seemed odd in that it was the 1954 reprint that was cover featured. You are right about the connection to sci-fi movies and the excellent Howard Hawks’ The Thing from Another World. Yet another connection is Howard Hawks’ favorite screenwriter was Leigh Brackett whom was married to longtime Superman and Batman writer Edmond Hamilton!
ReplyDeleteRichard Meyer:
I read this in a reprint and thought “Superman actually killed a villain!”
I replied:
I guess blobs don't count.
Paul Zuckerman:
ReplyDeleteYou can trace the advent of reprints in the Superman titles (beyond the reprints in the giants) with Weisinger assuming control of World's Finest Comics in 1964. Until then, his six titles-Adventure, Action, Superman, Superboy, Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen-had nary a reprint in site (though many retread stories.) The addition of the extra workload led to the Superboy Hall of Fame series in Adventure, which began with the Feb 1964 issue, but the issue before had a mostly-reprint feature about the Legion. From the beginning, Weisinger had reprints-the Editor's Round Table-as the back-up feature in WF. When Legion stories expanded to the full issue, those eight pages of reprints got moved around to the other titles.
I have a slightly different take on the quality of the books. By the mid 60s, Mort had lost some of his best writers--Ed Hamilton, Otto Binder, Jerry Siegel. Too many stories were juvenile. There was always a certain amount of that in Superman titles because, after all, Weisinger was targeting readers who were a lot younger than we were by that time. But, as we got older, Krypto's adventures with the super-powered animals were just not interesting me. While I always preferred DC's storytelling, Marvel had hit on a formula of making you care about the characters in-between all of the fighting, and that was appealing to me more and more. Most of the early Silver Age tropes were just getting tired.
Boring returned to the books when his stint on the Superman strip ended when the Batman strip replaced it, but Boring's art had deteriorated in the years since he had been on the monthly title. I found the same with other artists such as George Papp, and the addition of artists like Pete Costanza was not welcomed either. He had been a great Captain Marvel artist, but his work looked old-fashioned and more cartoony than what we expected in Superman titles. The final straw was when DC fired George Klein. I don't think I knew Klein's name at the time--I don't recall the inkers ever being mentioned in the letter columns-but I could discern right away that Swan's new inkers were different and hampering his work--even as his pencils began to take on a more dynamic look! Having Ross Andru --who had been fine on Wonder Woman and Metal Men -- draw Superman was just adding insult to injury.
I quit comics in mid 1968 but when I later returned, I found that there were some good stories in the later Weisinger period. With Jim Shooter, Cary Bates and other new young writers, I think that there was some good stuff in those later years, but also do much reliance on imaginary stories. Mort was tired of Superman and, tired of comics, and it showed.
Still -- Superman has never been as successful on the newsstand again!
Anthony Picco:
ReplyDeleteI grew up with the "sci fi" era of Superman stories and I loved them... weird unusual problems followed usually by Superman figuring out solutions... as "super" as he was, he had to use his wits to solve it...
James Burbine:
ReplyDeleteAnd I love the old comic ads! Thank you!
Bob Doncaster:
ReplyDeleteI recently watched Carpenters The Thing which apparently uses more elements of the original story with the shape shifting but I’ll always have a soft spot for the original film.
Rich Gignac:
ReplyDeleteWow, One of my first issues of Superman when I was a kid. That cover drew me in!!
Joseph Lenius:
ReplyDeleteI love that Curt Swan cover on Superman #196. And it was one of the few times (only time?) in a DC comic that a reprinted story led off the issue and/or was cover-featured when there was also a new tale therein.
Paul Zuckerman:
ReplyDeleteThis is one of my favorite Superman stories, which I first read in Superman Annual 2. It is one of the few stories of the era where Superman goes toe-to-toe with his adversary. Bill Finger's career as a Superman writer is overshadowed by his Batman work and because he never got credit when the stories came out, and that is a shame, because he shows that he could write Metropolis stories as well as he could Gotham City! Finger often relied on other media as springboards for his stories but he always made the idea his own by the end.
And Boring's art-abetted ably by Stan Kaye on inks--is dynamic and exciting, some of his best work.
Comparing and contrasting the two covers is interesting. An action cover like Superman 87 was unusual for Superman in the 50s. The cover relies much on the reactions and actions of Lois, the photographer and the cop. Superman and the Thing are distant in the background, but Boring's characters are dynamic, in motion, flying. Swan's cover (with Klein inking) is upfront and in your face. The other people are gone. We see the barest of backgrounds in lieu of the people. The low angle and closeness of the figures emphasize the action, making it more immediate and in your face. The figure on the left is still using a sledge hammer, but the other figure's log has been replaced by a steel girder, presumably because it was harder. I suspect that Infantino had a hand in laying out this cover--this was about the time that he took over as art director and Swan's work shows a marked increase in dynamism during this period.
Funny, isn't it, that though the Thing returned many times in reprints, he never did otherwise. He stayed dead. Funny, too, that early on Siegel planned to have Superman himself be a refugee from the dying Earth of the far future.
ReplyDeleteJoe Musich:
ReplyDeleteThis cover helped kick off the endless run to every spinner rack in town as a seven-year-old.
Eric Akins:
ReplyDeleteWonderful monograph.
Burns Duncan:
ReplyDeleteVery perceptive.