The Silver Age Dailies

Superman created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster

SUPERMAN

SUPERMAN
The Silver Age Dailies
VOLUME ONE 1959-1961
IDW PUBLISHING

San Diego

OTHER BOOKS IN THE LIBRARY OF AMERICAN COMICS

SUPERMAN: THE SILVER AGE DAILIES VOLUME ONE : 1959 1961

SCRIPTS BY JERRY

THE LIBRARY OF AMERICAN COMICS

Dean Mullaney ART DIRECTOR Lorraine Turner

Bruce Canwell INTRODUCTION Sidney Friedfertig Tom De Haven COVERS Pete Poplaski MARKETING DIRECTOR Beau Smith
Joseph Ketels, Lorraine Turner, Dale Crain, Digikore Studios, and Dean Mullaney

STRIP RESTORATION BY

IDW Publishing, a Division of Idea and Design Works, LLC 5080 Santa Fe Street, San Diego, CA 92109 www.idwpublishing.com LibraryofAmericanComics.com
Ted Adams, Chief Executive Officer/Publisher Greg Goldstein, Chief Operating Officer/President Robbie Robbins, EVP/Sr. Graphic Artist Chris Ryall, Chief Creative Officer/Editor-in-Chief Matthew Ruzicka, CPA, Chief Financial Officer Alan Payne, VP of Sales Dirk Wood, VP of Marketing Lorelei Bunjes, VP of Digital Services

ISBN: 978-1-61377-666-7 First Printing, July 2013

Distributed by Diamond Book Distributors

1-410-560-7100

Special thanks to Sid Friedfertig, who eagerly loaned his collection of clipped strips that is the primary source for this volume. He would like to dedicate this book To my late wife Randy, who abided a grown man with a boys obsession and who gave me our children, David and Hannah, in whose eyes I am able to savor this moment. We are also indebted to the following for their help, advice, and research: Paul Levitz, Roy Thomas, Greg Goldstein, John Wells, Mike Tiefenbacher, Mark Waid, Jared Bond, Martin OHearn, Eddy Zeno, Harry Matetsky, Gordon Bailey, Ricardo Nandin, Todd Klein, Al Plastino, Frank Giella, Scott Dunbier, Justin Eisinger, and Alonzo Simon.

LibraryofAmericanComics.com
Superman and 2013 DC Comics, Inc. All rights reserved. The Library of American Comics is a trademark of The Library of American Comics LLC. All rights reserved. Preface 2013 Tom De Haven. With the exception of artwork used for review purposes, none of the comic strips in this publication may be reprinted without the permission of DC Comics, Inc. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information and retrieval system, without permission in writing from DC Comics, Inc. Printed in Korea.

Foreword
by TOM DE HAVEN
After reading everything I could find about Superman; after plowing through hundreds and hundreds of Superman comic books; after watching all of the theatrical and Saturday morning cartoons, the Columbia movie serials, the television series, the feature filmsafter nearly ten consecutive years of doing research so that I could write, credibly write, two books about him, the first a novel, the second a long essay, youd think by now, surely by now, Id be sick to death of the Man of Steel, but no. Not at all. Not even close. I still have the warmest affection for Big Blue, both as a character and as a meaningful icon, as well as an abiding interest in the writers and artists whove kept him vital and true to the vision, if not the version, that Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster dreamed up in Cleveland during the Great Depression. Having spent so much time with Superman, naturally I have favorite iterations. I cherish the original, of course, the feisty proletarian Superman, and I love the antic, multi-tasking Superman from those glorious Max and Dave Fleischer Technicolor cartoons. I also admire John Byrnes and Jerry Ordways Solid Citizen Superman (and yuppie Clark Kent) from the late 1980s, and Im mighty partial to the sweet-natured big galoot Superman in Jeph Loebs and Tim Sales 1998 graphic novel A Superman For All Seasons . But of all the many, many different incarnations of Superman begot over the past seventy-five years, the one I feel the most affection for is the Silver Age Superman of 1950s and 60s comic books, the demigod-workhorse who could reignite dead suns with his heat vision, crash the time barrier without breaking a sweat, speed-read the entire holdings of the Library of Congress in a split second, and deftly plug a spewing volcano with an inverted mountain top, but who was never, not ever, above performing a super-juggling act free of charge at the Metropolis Orphanage; the Superman who liked to just hang out by himself in his souvenir-cluttered arctic Fortress of Solitude, who gave a really cool signal watch to his good pal Jimmy Olsen, and who cleverly (and yes, I admit it, a bit smugly) thwarted his girlfriend Lois Lane every single time she was dead certain shed discovered his secret identitythe very same Superman who appears in this long overdue compilation of newspaper comic strips from 1959, 60 and 61. In fact, nearly all of the stories reprinted here were adapted from adventures that had first appeared in DC comic books.

If youre as familiar with the originals as I am, it can be startling to read the newspaper versions. Its not only that the stories are longer and entirely redrawn, with fewer captions and more expository dialogue, but the narrative rhythms are completely different. A daily installment from this period of continuity strips consisted, by and large, of three identically-sized panels: the first one had to recap the story, the second had to advance it, at least a tiny bit, and the last had to contain a plot hook or a cliffhanger. It was tricky and demanding work, work that Jerry Siegeladapting eight- and twelve-page comic book scenarios by Otto Binder, Jerry Coleman, Robert Bernstein, as well as some that hed previously written himselfhad the chops and the craft to do masterfully. He was (its good to be reminded) a real pro, and so were Siegels two alternating collaborators, the quintessential Silver Age Superman artists Wayne Boring and Curt Swan (with Swans pencils elegantly inked by the great Stan Kaye). When these particular Superman strips were appearing Monday through Saturday on the comics page, in other parts of the daily paper you wouldve found news stories about Freedom Riders and race riots; stories about the first oral contraceptive and the first man in space; about the sad death of Billie Holiday and the shocking divorce of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz; you wouldve read, too, about payola and quiz-show scandals, and Hawaiis admission into the union as our 50th state. You wouldve read about a new show called The Twilight Zone premiering on television, about The Sound of Music premiering on Broadway, and about two Alfred Hitchcock filmsNorth by Northwest and Psycho premiering at the movies. In the New Books section (remember that?) youdve seen, and possibly read, reviews of Franny and Zooey , To Kill a Mockingbird , and the scandalous Lolita. During the long and poignant story in this volume about Supermans return to Krypton, the American spy-plane pilot Francis Gary Powers was put on trial in Moscow for espionage, boxer Cassius Clay won his first professional bout in Louisville, Kentucky, Martin Luther King was sentenced to prison for participating in an Atlanta lunch counter sit-in, and Nikita Khrushchev disrupted a meeting of the UN General Assembly by taking off his shoe and boorishly whacking it on his desk; and on the very same day (November 8, 1960) Kal-El blasts off from Krypton in a rocket ship, John F. Kennedy was elected President of the United States. (You wouldve read about that, however, on November 9, the day when the abandoned, heartbroken and doomed Lyra Lerrol senses the stark unbearable truth that shell never see her beloved fianc ever again.) But what was happening in the real world and being reported in the news sections of the daily paper never bled into the Superman comic strip (unless you count the story about his being pursued by a zealous IRS agent for nonpayment of income taxes). Unlike Steve Canyon and Buz Sawyer, Dick Tracy and Little Orphan Annie , On Stage , The Heart of Juliet Jones , Judge Parker, and Rex Morgan, contemporaneous story strips that very well might have been neighbors on the comics page, the Superman strip was, insistently was, pure fantasy, sheer escapism: wholesome and lighthearted. Andto use a final adjective that my slang dictionary tells me came into general use just around the time of the earliest stories collected here, an adjective meaning eccentric and outlandish, but applied in fond amusementthese Silver Age Superman strips were...kooky. Deliriously, preposterously kooky. And delightful. Have fun.
Tom De Haven is the author of the novel Its Superman!, the non-fiction book Our Hero: Superman on Earth, as well as the renowned Derby Dugan trilog y. He is professor in the department of English at Virginia Commonwealth University and has twice been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts.

CONTENTS
EPISODE 107 EPISODE 112 EPISODE 118

Earths Super-Idiot
Jerry Siegel, Curt Swan/Stan Kaye

The Cry-Baby of Metropolis

The Duel for Earth

A largely original story with a humorous interlude borrowed from The Trio of Steel by Siegel, drawn by Al Plastino in Superman #135 (February 1960). EPISODE 108

Adapted from a story by Bernstein, drawn by Schaffenberger in Lois Lane #10 (July 1959). EPISODE 113

Adapted from a story by Siegel, drawn by George Papp in Adventure Comics #277 (October 1960). EPISODE 119

The Super-Servant of Crime

Supermans Billion-Dollar Debt

The Ugly Superman

Adapted from a story by Robert Bernstein, drawn by Kurt Schaffenberger in Lois Lane #8 (April 1959). EPISODE 109

Adapted from a story by Bernstein, drawn by Swan in Superman #130 (July 1959). EPISODE 114

Adapted from a story by Binder, drawn by Boring and Kaye in Superman #114 (July 1957). EPISODE 120

The Super-Sword
Jerry Siegel, Curt Swan/Stan Kaye

The Great Mento

The Super-Clown of Metropolis

Adapted from a story by Siegel, drawn by Plastino in Superman #136 (April 1960). EPISODE 110

Adapted from a story by Jerry Coleman, drawn by Plastino in Superman #124 (September 1958). EPISODE 115

Adapted from a story by Bernstein, drawn by Plastino in Superman #147 (August 1961). EPISODE 121

Supermans Return to Krypton

The Perfect Husband

Captive of the Amazons

Adapted from a story by Siegel, drawn by Wayne Boring and Stan Kaye in Action Comics #266 (July 1960) and combined with an adaptation of When Superman Lost His Powers by Bernstein, drawn by Boring and Kaye in Action Comics #262 (March 1960). EPISODE 111

Adapted from a story by Siegel, drawn by Boring and Kaye in Superman #141 (November 1960). EPISODE 116

Adapted from a story by Bernstein, drawn by Schaffenberger in Lois Lane #24 (April 1961). EPISODE 122

The Lady and the Lion

The Mad Woman of Metropolis

Adapted from a story by Binder, drawn by Boring and Kaye in Action Comics #243 (August 1958). EPISODE 117

The Superman of the Future

Adapted from a story by Bernstein, drawn by Schaffenberger in Lois Lane #26 (July 1961).

Adapted from a story by Otto Binder, drawn by Curt Swan and Stan Kaye in Action Comics #256 (September 1959).

The Great Superman Hoax

Adapted from a story by Bernstein, drawn by Boring and Kaye in Superman #143 (February 1961).
7

BOTH PAGES: Covers drawn by Curt Swan and Stan Kaye to the original comic book versions of some of the stories in this volume.

Introduction
by SIDNEY FRIEDFERTIG
In the early 1960s, long before comics specialty stores existed, comic books were delivered to newsstands and drug stores twice every week. Like most boys, my friends and I would race into our neighborhood candy store to plead with the too-busy-to-bother owner to come from around the counter to cut the wire-bound bundles holding the latest issue of Action Comics , Adventure Comics , or Superboy . We would push and shove each other to get the first look at the covers to the stories we were about to read and enjoy, swap and discuss, and ultimately fight about. What we didnt know was that many of those covers were in fact approved by other young boys before any of us ever laid eyes on them. During the Silver Age of comics the Superman titles were under the editorship of Mort Weisinger, who had taken over from Whitney Ellsworth when the senior editor moved to California to story edit The Adventures of Superman TV series. By all accounts Weisinger was a tough taskmaster, albeit a successful one. One secret to his success, he claimed, was that he would bring home proposed Superman covers and show them to kids on his block. These kids chose wisely. Often that cover was drawn by Curt Swan. Like Weisinger, Swan had been associated with the character since the 1940s, first drawing the hero in Superman #51 (1948). By the time baby boomers grew into readers Swans rendition of the Man of Steels open, friendly face and lithe muscular body had become the definitive depiction. When my friends and I saw Swans Superman soaring over Metropolis, we believed that a man could fly. Many times, though, despite the comic having a Curt Swan cover, the story inside was drawn by another DC artist. Swans primary assignment at the time (from June 18, 1956 to November 12, 1960) was penciling the daily Superman newspaper strip. It was a plum job. A nationally syndicated strip reached far more readers than any comic book, even Superman at its peak circulation; it also brought more prestige among the many newspaper strip cartoonists who, like Swan, called southwestern Connecticut their home. Its likely that the strip also paid better than comic books. The strip was a wise use of Swans talents. Most of the newspaper episodes had about twice as many panels as a comic book story, allowing the artist a broader canvas in which to insert more nuance and create additional drama.

All of this, however, was happening outside the purview of young comic book readers, including my friends and me. Too young at the time to know about that daily dose of Swans art, it probably would not have mattered. Waiting a whole nother day to read a fragment of a black-and-white story was not something most seven year olds would consider. No, for us, all in color for a dime was required. The Superman newspaper strip had a long history. Following the immediate success of Action Comics #1, the strip premiered on January 16, 1939, predating Superman #1 by several months. It was published continuously until 1966. That year, in addition to the strip folding after a twenty-six-year run, a Superman musical opened and closed on Broadway after only one hundred twenty-nine performances, while Batmanthanks to a number-one-rated TV show and the resultant Batmania crazesucceeded in doing what was only possible before in imaginary tales, eclipsing Superman as the best known superhero in the country. The newspaper strip became an almost forgotten footnote in the Man of Steels history. Flash forward a couple of decades. Every so often at comic book conventions, I would find some yellowing newspaper clippings of Superman stories drawn by Curt Swan that I had never seen before. I thought I knew them all! When I was able to complete an episode and read the entire story, I discovered to my surprise that it had the same title as one in comic books from the 1960s but the story was not quite the same. Here, finally, were the stories that went with those Curt Swan comic book covers! I took on the task of tracking down every one of these strips. In the late 1990s the first few years of 1939-1942 dailies and Sundays by Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, and their studio were reprinted, but that left more than twenty years of stories featuring one of popular cultures most beloved characters unseen after their initial appearance. Most comic books and strips of any note have at one time or another

been reprinted and repackagedcover compilations, best of collections, first and second and third appearances have been rebound and retold and resold, to be seen, read, and enjoyed by a new generation of readers. This made the lack of Superman newspaper strip reprints all the more mysterious. Why this gaping hole in the pantheon of comics reprints? When approached about this, Paul Levitz, the long-time DC Comics publisher, confirmed what I already suspectedDC did not have the strips. In this era of deep archiving, much of what is seen, said, and done is a click away from being recorded and forever retrievable. When these strips were created, however, photostatting was expensive and making a photocopy was a messy, laborious process. Until the 1960s comic art was routinely disposed of after use, and the strips were no exception. Countless pages were discarded while others were given out freely to fans. Nothing illustrates this better than the so-called Superman half strips. Many years ago, a young artist working at DC (who would remain with DC for decades and go on to draw both Superman and Batman) spotted a stack of 1942 daily strips neatly torn in half in a trash bin. He rescued them and they remain some of the few surviving original art examples from the period. That an archival record of the Superman newspaper episodes was not established was less the result of a decision by management than a sign of the times. For most of the 1950s Supermans newspaper strip adventures were written by Alvin Schwartz. When Mort Weisinger assumed control, he and Schwartz could not see eye to eye. Schwartz quit and Weisinger turned to none other than Jerry Siegel, Supermans co-creator, to write the series. With the exception of the largely original story, Earths Super Idiotwhich introduces an interplanetary producer and screenwriter visiting Earth to film Superman for a Realie, a reality show on their worldSiegel adapted comic book scripts by Otto Binder, Robert Bernstein, Jerry Coleman, as well as several of his own, including the classic "Supermans Return to Krypton!" Some adaptations were published long after the original comic books, while others appeared in

10

newspaper and comics simultaneously, and a fewbecause of comic books longer lead timefirst appeared in newspapers. Reading these stories is a revelation. The plots are similar to yet divergent from the corresponding comic book stories. What should be familiar is strange. I had seen Superman slain by The Black Knights Super-Sword many times as I read and re-read my worn copy of Superman #124, but the scene in the strip is different. Seeing these stories is like thumbing through a box of comics and discovering a Superman issue you never knew you had. It feels like youre in Bizarro world. In The Captive of The Amazons Siegel cleverly combines his own comic book plot of the same name with Robert Bernsteins When Superman Lost His Powers from Action Comics #262. In the comic book version, Jena the Amazon threatens to destroy Earth if Superman doesnt marry her; in the Bernstein tale, Superman loses his powers for forty-eight hours when he enters an Aztec kings tomb. In the newspaper strip variantwhich is stronger than the two independent storiesJena takes away Supermans powers (instead of threatening Earth) and, when Supermans adventure in the Mexican jungle is about to prove fatal, only restores them to save his life. In Cry-Baby of Metropolis the additional panels in the strip format allow Swan to give baby Lois more personality than in the shorter comics version. When, in Superman #136, Al Plastino does his version of The Super Clown of Metropolis, the rigid page count has him condense into a single panel what Swan could spread out over twelve panels in four consecutive dailies. Siegels Supermans Return To Krypton! contains roughly one hundred extra panels that enable the scenes between Superman and his doomed parents to achieve an even greater level of poignancy than the comic book version. Comparing the different artists approaches to the same material is equally fascinating. In The Perfect Husband, because the strip changes artists midstory, we can see three different versions of the same scene: Saturday, May 20, 1961 by Wayne Boring; Monday, May 22 by Swan; and in the comic book, the complete story by Kurt Schaffenberger. Al Plastino, recalling those days, says that there was a complete separation between comic books and the strips. With the exception of Weisinger and Siegel, its unlikely any one else knew

what the other camp was doing. The Great Mento was drawn in Superman #147 by Plastino, the strip version illustrated by Boring; The Duel for Earth is by Boring in the dailies, the comic book is by George Papp; The Ugly Superman, drawn in the strip by Swan, shares little more than the title with the comic book version illustrated by Schaffenberger. Other episodes are reinterpretations by the same artist, such as The Lady and the Lion, drawn in both instances by Boring. That 1960 story marked Wayne Borings return to the strip. He had a longer history with Superman than either Swan or Weisinger, having joined the Siegel and Shuster studio at the tail end of the 1930s. He drew the daily and Sunday for many years and while Swan was drawing the daily strip, Boring stayed on the Sundays and was reassigned to DCs mainstay comic books. Its not known why Weisinger switched assignments for Boring and Swan. Because DCs production schedule at the time was generally six months ahead of the on-sale date (and the cover date was an additional two months beyond that), the initial appearances of some of Supermans greatest supporting characters occurred in the newspaper strip. In this volume, Jena, Queen of Adoria; The Great Mento; and Smilin Sam Smith make their debuts. Future volumes will present the premieres of Mr. Mxyzptlk, the Ogies, Bizarro (with a B chest insignia), Metallo, and a city shrinker named Romado who is a prototype for Brainiac. In the slightly different newspaper continuity, Brainiac was also the name of the computer in The Perfect Husband. This book is a celebration of a forgotten heritage, a lost treasure found and revealed. Completists can stop searching. Fans and scholars alike now have a wealth of new comics to read and enjoy, swap and discuss, and ultimately fight about. And its just beginning. The entire Superman newspaper strip canon returns to its full glory as every strip, unseen for over half a century, is republished to entertain an entirely new audience. Stories long forgotten, artwork long unappreciated, and characters long shelved will be brought back to black-and-white life. Its a great time to be a Superman fan.

11

Episode #107

Earths Super-Idiot
Strips #6339-6422 13

April 6-8, 1959

April 9-11, 1959

14

April 13-15, 1959

15

April 16-18, 1959

16

April 20-22, 1959

17

April 23-25, 1959

18

April 27-29, 1959

19