What stuck out to me about the early Superman comics is the lack of a supervillain, or even a consistent "normal" villain. It shouldn't be surprising, given that these are only the first seven comics, but it's strange to see a superhero without a nemesis. In order, Superman takes on a domestic abuser, a corrupt senator, a weapons manufacturer, a coal mine owner, a cheating football coach, a flood, someone trying to collect royalties off of the Superman name, and a corrupt lender. All but one of these enemies are mundane humans and all are defeated at no threat or cost to Superman.
The early comics bill Superman as "dedicated to assisting the helpless and oppressed" (No. 6 panel 1). All of his human enemies are trying to deceive or intimidate people (or in the case of the football issue, just cheat). In the case of the senator, the weapons manufacturer, and the coal mine owner (No. 1 and 2), Superman's enemies are representatives of institutions. The social commentary is topical, and not subtle either - see issue no.2:
Elsewhere in the issue, Superman flat out tells the two enemy commanders that "it's obvious [they've] been fighting only to promote the sale of munitions" (No.2 panel 98 / p. 30). The entire storyline where the mine owner cuts corners on safety and pensions while hosting expensive parties is another example. Even though the commentary was heavy-handed, I was surprised to see it at all in these simple stories.
Though the introduction of supervillains was a major change, I can still see some thematic continuity. Over the summer, a story
caused controversy for
showing Superman defending peaceful protesters from the police. Though it later turned turned out that the police brutality was part of a villain plot, the writers still chose to use the police rather than another group. The issue drew criticism that DC was making Superman too political, but it's not really a departure from the character's roots.
I like how you have identified Superman's early villain as the general label "corruption". Do you think this has anything to do with the effort to make Superman more relatable to the intended audience? Superman's adventures tend towards helping the average-we don't have him stopping supervillains threatening mass destruction on the city or threatening to poison the water supply, but rather a series of everyday incidents (especially the story about traffic patterns) that Superman fights against. Readers would not be able to relate to a legitimate fear of mass destruction (pre WWI), but they could relate to being fooled into buying faulty stocks or to a train derailing.
ReplyDeleteThe characterization of evil in the first few volumes of Superman is slightly perplexing because it is at once more believable and more unreasonable than the supervillains we become accustomed to in later iterations of Superman. In the early issues, the main force of evil is, as you pointed out, corruption. People without the means to fight are being taken advantage of by other people who have the power to do so. Superman's title as the defender of the oppressed seems to ring truer here, against realistic forces that can and do leave people 'downtrodden.' It's harder to image Superman as a defender of the common good when he's facing off against a decidedly uncommon evil, like Lex Luthor or Darkseid. Yet there is still an unreal aspect to the early Superman villains because the comics establish a dynamic wherein something like the abuse of munitions manufacturing could possibly be stopped by intimidating one man. The early issues make large-scale corruption seem less like an infestation and more like the moral failings of one or two powerful men. That's why when Superman has to face an issue like poverty and it's effect of youth, his recourse is to beat up a stolen goods fencer and cause a typhoon. He has no framework for seeing injustice as something systemic and systematic, so instead, he locates the power into the hands of a few corrupt people and makes their influence seem hugely imbalanced. In effect, these corrupt few become like proto-supervillains: greedy, unethical, lacking compassion or decency, megalomaniacal, yet dressed in the trappings of ordinary, everyday corruption and oppression.
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