I’m going through my big stack of omnibuses that I’ve collected over the past couple of years. I finally got around to Superman: The Golden Age Omnibus Volume One. This Omnibus collects the first 31 issues of Action Comics, 7 issues of the Superman title, and a couple of issues of World’s Fair Comics. And let me tell you, this thing is pretty spectacular.
What I find the most interesting, especially as a huge Superman fan, is how much the big guy has changed over the years. When Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel created him, they positioned him as the champion of the oppressed. The righter of wrong. The bringer of justice in an unjust world. To this end his common enemies were gangsters, corrupt politicians, policemen, and all forms of racketeering (is there good racketeering? I don’t think so). When the downtrodden felt completely helpless, Superman was there. Siegel wasn’t shy on his political views at the time either. Superman went against the grain. And he went against it hard.
Superman never killed, but he also didn’t go out of his way to save the bad guys either. He was tough and he was definitely of the times. In the 1930’s with the Great Depression hitting America like a ton of bricks, it’s really no surprise that something as fantastical as Superman would gain a foothold on popular culture. When you were down on your luck and felt like the system was against you, you fantasized about a strong person pulling you out and smashing that injustice for you. There is something brilliant about that.
The scary thing is that we need this depiction of Superman now more than ever. It’s sad to say that what Siegel and Shuster depicted and created still applies to this day. Haven’t we learned anything? Or do things simply come in cycles and we just need to dust out the circus costume put on that red cape, and smash all that greed and corruption wherever we find it?
Either way this one got me thinking quite a bit. And it’s amazing to see that a comic book that is now a good eighty-eight years old can do that.
Art-wise I was so inspired I decided to whip up a classic scene that you might have found within those pages. I went the whole way; started with pencils, did some inks, and colored it with some colored pencils. And I gotta say. I like this Superman.
Here’s looking at you kid.
Chris
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