How Superman Was Interesting: Even Without Kryptonite

It's an oft-repeated warning to writers that basically says, "Don't make a character like the golden age Superman. He was perfect and could defeat anyone. There was no tension and so they had to introduce kryptonite and then they used it all the time to keep stories interesting, so that Superman could in theory be defeated."

It's not a bad piece of writing advice: a character who can't be defeated can get really boring.

However, the illustration is a big misnomer and misnomers bother me. Similarly, I'm bothered by people saying that Joe Friday from Dragnet always said, "Just the facts, ma'am." when Joe Friday never said that. It came from a Stan Freberg parody.

Similarly, Superman was far from a boring character who needed Kryptonite as a crutch to excite the public imagination. The Golden Age Superman was a beloved and best-selling character that had become a star of film, comics, and radio.

Without anything that could easily imperil his life, Superman was pretty darn interesting in the 1940s, and I'll take a look at some of the ways readers were entertained and perhaps there are some other ideas that can serve writers well.

Catharsis: Golden age Superman was all about catharsis. Quite a few of his battles were against common criminals, unethical and greedy businessmen, and corrupt politicians. Foul, cry many fans: they're no physical match for Superman.

True, but strange as it seems, these characters really were antagonists of real people: racketeers that extorted money and ruined people's lives while corrupt police took payoffs. There were businesses that operated under extremely unsafe conditions. And there were arms dealers who helped to foment the first World War and then turned a huge profit when ten million people died such as Basil Zaharoff.

So in Action Comics #1 when Superman took on gangsters, a wife beater, and an arms dealer who was trying to start a war, Superman was taking on real threats. Superman was advertised as "savior of the oppressed" and if you're oppressed, you really don't care how close or how fair the battle is, you want oppression taken care of.

The escapism of Superman was that you could go into a world where people who spent their lives oppressing others were turned to quivering masses before Superman and that's satisfying in the same way that the Dirty Harry or the Death Wish series in the 1970s, though Superman was far more benign an expression of this instinct.

The same catharsis would be key in comic books in general when our heroes started taking on the Nazis and Japanese who were fighting American soldiers overseas.

Secret Identity: Another key aspect of Superman stories was needing to do his Superman stuff while maintaining his secret identity. This would be a challenge as he'd have to find ways not to blow his cover while fighting bad guys. Sometimes, it would be easy, but other times it would be a more challenging problem when people began seriously hunting for his identity.

Mystery: Superman stories were often set up as mysteries. If Superman knew who the villain was, it'd be simple for him to take care of the bad guy but Superman often didn't know who was behind it. Sometimes, he'd have to fight his way through multiple minor bosses to at last get the connect he needs to the big boss. You throw in a good old fashioned time bomb and you're set for a great Superman adventure that's just as good or better than what characters like Batman, the Shadow, or Doc Savage would have.

Testing Limits: While we know that most any effort is going to fail to stop Superman, audiences really didn't know what could stop Superman. So villains tried their worse. One villain called the Ultra-Humanite was actually able to knock Superman out in early Superman story. And of course Mister Mxyzptlk made plenty of mischief long before Kryptonite was a factor.

Similarly, Superman got knocked for a loop when fighting a comet in the Fleischer Cartoon, The Magnetic Telescope..

One of my favorite stories from the Superman Daily Comic strip took place over eight months and had a group of mad scientists called, "The Scientists of Sudden Death." trying to kill Superman with each taking their turn with another strange device. (note this story is collected in Superman: The Dailies, 1941-1942)

Even today, while Kryptonite is the most famous way to get at the Man of Steel, it 's far from the only way. Magic is the most common example, but several aliens gave Superman a run for his money during the golden age.

Missions of Mercy: Many early Superman stories were capable of warming the heart. Superman was not just a character who fought bad guys, but he cared about people. In any early Superman Comic, he helps a down on his luck former boxer get back into the ring by taking his place. In a comic strip series, Lois is editing the lovelorn column and throws away a letter from someone viewing him as utterly pathetic and unimportant. Clark Kent takes another view, "This fellow and his problem may seem petty, but to him it's the greatest crisis in the World! Big problem interest me and it looks as if Eustance and Superman are going to get together."

He finds a guy whose being pushed around by everyone and helps him become more assertive, get the girl, and defeat a bully of a rival. Of course, there's some great fun and super powers along the way.

There are other great stories like, "The Girl Who Didn't Believe in Superman." or "Christmas Around the World" which has Superman travelling with refugees to war-torn portions of the Earth. No Krytonite, no supervillains, just a lot of love and a lot of heart for humanity.

Humor: Superman and his writers could just have fun. One great example was a comic strip series that had Clark Kent drafted to play Superman in a movie due to his similarity to Superman and Lois unable to believe that anyone could think that boring Clark Kent looked like Superman.

Morals: Superman also could use his powers to teach morals. In one 1940s story, a conman conned several businesspeople hoping to avoid some of the post-war problems a chance to go to sleep in a machine that would allow them to wake up in a brighter future. Superman rather than merely exposing the con, flew the house to the middle of nowhere and used his powers to build the type of world where people sat around and waited for things to get better rather than working hard. The lessons to the characters and the readers was clear and pretty well executed, even though most modern experts will dismiss such a story as preachy.

At the end of the day, the early Superman stories weren't great literature, but they were a lot of fun to the original readers and I enjoy them quite a bit.

I think that people who are interested in superheroes owe it to themselves to sample these early Superman stories and decide for themselves whether they enjoy them rather than listening to well-intentioned examples that don't paint the whole picture.