Superman: The Silver Age Dailies, Volume 3

Superman : Silver Age Dailies #3

by Jerry Siegel, Wayne Boring, Dean Mullaney (Editor)

The third volume of the "Superman Silver Age" daily newspaper strips presents the never-before reprinted stories from November 1963 through the series' conclusion in April 1966. Wayne Boring provides the classic artwork, and once again, Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel scripts adaptations of stories that first appeared in comic books. Siegel and Boring offer alternate versions of now classic stories originally written by Siegel himself, Leo Dorfman, Otto Binder, Robert Bernstein, Edmund Hamilton -- and drawn in comic books by Curt Swan, Al Plastino, Kurt Schaffenberger, and Pete Costanza. Stories include "Lex Luthor, Daily Planet Editor," "Superman's Sacrifice," "The "Man Who Stole Superman's Secret Life," "Lois Lane's Love Trap," "Clark Kent in the Big House," and "The Goofy Superman," among others. More than 750 daily strips -- over two years worth of stories -- from Earth-N (for Newspapers) that comic book fans have not previously seen. Edited and designed by Dean Mullaney, Introduction by Sid Friedfertig, and cover drawing by Pete Poplaski.

Genres: Comics

288 pages, Hardcover

First published December 23, 2014

About the author

Jerome "Jerry" Siegel, who also used pseudonyms including Joe Carter, Jerry Ess, and Herbert S. Fine, was the American co-creator of Superman (along with Joe Shuster), the first of the great comic book superheroes and one of the most recognizable icons of the 20th century.
He and Shuster were inducted into the comic book industry's Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 1992 and the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1993.

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's a certain charm even if the stories are frequently absurd and occasionally misogynistic. Given the lack of original art available, the Library of American Comics team did a solid job making the artwork legible and presentable.

[Ron Me]

Fun. More PC than the strips from the 30s and 40s! A few brand-new things are thrown in without any background, and while this is not the best volume to read if you're going to only read one, I enjoyed it.

[Michael P. · Rating 2 out of 5]

A few good stories, more bad stories, all badly drawn.

[Hannah Kayla]

this is one of my dad's books. i didn't know he was on goodreads, and i want to immortalize him here too.

[Adam Graham · Rating 4 out of 5]

This volume collects the last twenty-two Superman Daily newspaper strip stories. There are some pretty fun stories in here, "The Man Who Stole Superman's Secret Life" is actually a sequel to a previous Superman amnesia story. "Lex Luthor, Daily Planet Editor" has both Superman and Luthor travelling back in time to 1906 San Francisco, "Lois Lane's Anti-Superman Campaign" is a very amusing tale that has Superman running for the Senate and Lois eventually running against him in a fun story that has a bit of a cop out ending to maintain the Status Quo. And the final, "From Riches to Rags" has Superman assuming a variety of identities to fight iniustice. The reason for this is a bit silly but it's still fun.

While I found most of the book enjoyable, it's easy to see why it's popularity was waning. There were far too many repetitive storylines. (Amnesia, Red Kryptonite) I had to laugh when I saw the story titled, "When Superman Lost His Memory." As if that hadn't happened a thousand times before. The tone of the story was also a bit more juvenile than would appeal to the general newspaper reading public, and as was pointed out in the introduction, most of these stories that were adapted were second features in the comics which meant they were lesser stories to start with.

Still, this book offers a lot of fun for readers who are young at heart and expanded versions of several comic stories that many a Superman fan would find delightful.