Saturday, June 13, 2009 11:24 PM CDT
COLUMN: Only one comic hero is this super
By DAVE FOPAY, Staff Writer
dfopay@jg-tc.com
It’s Flag Day, and also time to say happy birthday to someone who stands for truth, justice and the American Way.
I guess we don’t really know the birth date of the baby aboard the rocket ship that left the doomed planet Krypton, but he first came our way 71 years ago today. Action Comics made its debut with a cover showing a man lifting a car above his head, foiling a kidnapping as panicked, unbelieving thugs try to scramble away.
Since then, the Man of Steel has not only been around in the pages of comics but also on radio, TV and movies. For seven decades, we’ve been able to look up in the sky and see a bird, no, a plane, no, Superman!
If anyone can think of a more iconic American fictional character, let me know. If there were a Family Feud question to name a super hero, does anyone think that Superman wouldn’t be the No. 1 answer?
And while there are certainly festivals in honor of other fictional characters, how many of them honor super heroes? The Superman Festival takes place each year in Metropolis, Ill., a town with the same name as Clark Kent’s home, though a bit smaller, and this year’s version wraps up today.
Meanwhile, there have been five movies and at least four TV shows about Superman during my lifetime, and those are just the live-action ones. There are numerous animated versions, beginning with the classic 1940s movie reel edition where fans first heard “This looks like a job for Superman” and including the 1960s Saturday morning cartoon series — “Up, up and away!” — I watched as a kid.
Look at it this way. Mention the name “Lois Lane” and nearly anyone will immediately think of Superman’s longtime love interest (and frequent subject of his rescues — whose kidnapping do you think he foiled in that very first comic issue?).
Now, how many women can you name who’ve been romantically involved with Batman? How about the men Wonder Woman’s dated? And the term “mild-mannered reporter” instantly sparks the same connection. Anybody know the Flash’s secret identity and occupation?
There’s statistical proof, too. I asked some people I know, four men and four women, if they knew who Lois Lane is and they all did, even those who (inexplicably) are not fans of super hero stories. I also asked the same people if they knew who Hal Jordan is, and not one of them knew that he’s the secret identity of the hero known as Green Lantern (well, one of many Green Lanterns, but that’s another story).
That proves it. Superman is so entrenched in our culture that people know far more about the other characters in and aspects of his story than they do about other many other stories’ main characters, maybe any fictional character in American history.
Legendary stories of how a man can fly, see through walls and bend steel with his bare hands came from a legendary beginning. Two guys from Cleveland came up with the idea for Superman and put together the first stories. One of them, Jerry Siegel, gets the most credit for dreaming of a bullet-proof man after his father was shot to death during a robbery.
Seventy-one years later, Superman is still faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive and thwarting kidnappings and countless other evil deeds. But, you already know that.
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