Superman Comic STRIP hero?

[alschroeder3]

If you enjoyed the early Siegel and Shuster Superman comics, let me tell you something--you only know half the story. The early Superman comic STRIP running in the newspapers from 1939 till at least 1942 or 1943 are all part of the same continuity. In other words, what happened in the comic strip affected the comic book adventures of Superman, and vice versa.

Proof? Well, of course Superman #2 were all newspaper strips reprinted in comic book form, but there are other links. For instance, in Superman #17, "Man--or Superman?", the story in which Lois first seriously suspected Clark was Superamn, we have two pages of retrospective in Lois' scrapbook.

Of course, the first picture is the cover of Action #1, but that second one--where she said not long after, Superman caught her falling from a plane? There are a lot of stories where Lois did something similar, but the earliest was in the first newspaper comic strip story, with another early meeting of Lois and Superman. (It would take a little fudging to fit Action #1 and the opening newspaper story together, but it could be done.)

Okay, that can't be taken as iron-clad, but the NEXT page has a very interesting reference.

"The time he aided Eustace Watson was a classic". That is a reference to the story that ran in the Superman newspaper comic strip from December 1940 through March 1941.

Another more famous reference was this panel from Superman #25.

That refers to the first newspaper strip written after Pearl Harbor, where Clark Kent rushes to enlist..

Eventually, the Superman newspaper strip and the Superman comic book did diverge--probably after Siegel was drafted--but during his early years, you had to read the comic book AND the newspaper strip to get the full flavor of Superman's adventures.

Comments

[strejdaking]

Thank you for this.