[Hank Kennedy traces the ideological history of Superman, arguing
that the populism of the character’s early iterations would
eventually be shed as a result of commercial interests. ]
[[link removed]]

FROM CHAMPION OF THE OPPRESSED TO TRUTH, JUSTICE, AND THE AMERICAN
WAY: WHO TOOK THE SOCIALISM OUT OF SUPERMAN?  
[[link removed]]


 

Hank Kennedy
January 13, 2023
Cosmonaut Magazine
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
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[[link removed]]

_ Hank Kennedy traces the ideological history of Superman, arguing
that the populism of the character’s early iterations would
eventually be shed as a result of commercial interests. _

‘Help Keep Your School All-American,’ 1949,

 

Introduction

There’s a joke that Superman’s famous dedication to fighting a
“never-ending battle for truth, justice, and the American way” is
paradoxical since if truth and justice are on one side, the American
way must be on the other. Lois Lane even jokes in the
1978 _Superman_ film that if Superman is fighting for “truth,
justice, and the American way” he’s “gonna end up fighting every
elected official in this country!” Additionally, there is received
cultural wisdom that Superman began as a left-wing populist before
transitioning into an establishment figure, lured in by commercial
success.1
[[link removed]] Superman
writer Grant Morrison wrote “it came to pass that our socialist,
utopian, humanist hero was slowly transformed into a marketing tool, a
patriotic stooge, and, worse; the betrayer of his own creators.”2
[[link removed]] But
how much of this is true? This article will attempt to answer the
following questions: what were the politics of the Superman character,
how much did they change (if at all), when did this change become
apparent, and what is the reason for that change?

The Ideological Origins of Superman

Some influences on Superman’s origin were personal. There is an
element of wish fulfillment that the retiring, bespectacled Clark Kent
(similar in this way to his creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster) is
able to transform into a being of unimaginable power. There is also a
possible streak of vengeance or personal catharsis for Siegel, as his
father, Michael Siegel, had died during the robbery of his used
clothing store in 1932.3
[[link removed]] The
perpetrators were never caught. This may have influenced Siegel’s
creation of a superpowered being who would protect the innocent and
punish the guilty. Superman is also a product of the times in which he
was created. Bradford Wright locates Superman within the milieu of
Depression-era culture that celebrated the common people, like the
novels of John Steinbeck, the songs of Woody Guthrie, and the films of
John Ford and Frank Capra.4
[[link removed]]

Milwaukee Socialist Party lecturer Joseph Piricin gave lectures
arguing that a socialist economy would create a superabundance of
goods that would make the future socialist citizen “a veritable
superman.” Piricin claimed that he gave a lecture on this subject in
Cleveland in the early 1930s that was attended by Jerry Siegel and Joe
Schuster.5
[[link removed]] The
term “Superman” was rich with political potential, used widely
across the political spectrum, from Nazi Germany to revolutionary
Marxist Leon Trotsky. But if Siegel and Schuster took the term
“superman” from Piricin’s lecture, they certainly took little
else in their first run at the character. Siegel and Schuster’s
first Superman was a villainous character from the self-published
science fiction short story “Reign of the Superman,” which
featured a vagrant given telepathic powers through a formula developed
by an evil chemist. Superman kills the chemist and attempts to take
over the world before the formula wears off and he returns to vagrancy
and Depression-era breadlines. The message of this story seemed to be
that no person could be trusted with incredible power and that the
common people, in particular, were not to be trusted, both messages
that would be at odds with later Superman stories. 

In a 1975 press release, Jerry Siegel gave his own reasonings for the
creation of the Superman character that would eventually become world
famous. Unsurprisingly, they reflected the political and social
problems of the 1930s a great deal. “What led me into conceiving
Superman in the early thirties? Listening to President Roosevelt’s
‘fireside chats’… being unemployed and worried during the
depression and knowing hopelessness and fear. Hearing and reading of
the oppression and slaughter of helpless, oppressed Jews in Nazi
Germany… seeing movies depicting the horrors of privation suffered
by the downtrodden… reading of gallant, crusading heroes in the
pulps, and seeing equally crusading heroes on the screen in feature
films and movie serials (often pitted against malevolent, grasping,
ruthless madmen). I had the great urge to help… help the despairing
masses, somehow. Now could I help them, when I could barely help
myself? Superman was the answer. And Superman, aiding the downtrodden
and oppressed, has caught the imagination of a world.”6
[[link removed]]

Champion of the Oppressed

Superman’s first appearance in _Action Comics 1_
[[link removed]] (June, 1938)
reflected many of these concerns. The story opens with Superman saving
an innocent from the electric chair, before pulverizing a wife-beater,
and ends with him confronting a lobbyist for arms manufacturers who
want to get the United States involved in a foreign war. There is an
obvious influence here from the famous United States Senate Committee
chaired by Senator Nye that investigated the munitions industry for
urging U.S. intervention in World War I. The Governor of the unnamed
state the story takes place in explains that Superman is “on the
side of law and order,” which is fairly unconvincing given that
Superman commits acts of kidnapping, assault, breaking and entering,
as well as the destruction of private property. More accurately,
Superman fought for truth and justice and if “law and order” got
in the way, he’d leap over it as he would a tall building. 

Other Superman stories attacked further social ills. In _Action
Comics 3_ [[link removed]] (August
1938) Superman causes a mine collapse while a greedy mine owner is
inside to teach him the importance of mine safety and respect for the
workers. Superman destroys slum housing in _Action Comics 8_
[[link removed]] (January 1939) to
force the government to build public housing for the poor. Superman
exposes the cruel mistreatment of prisoners in _Action Comics 10_
[[link removed]] (March 1939).
In _Action Comics 11_
[[link removed]] (April 1939) he
goes after some stock brokers guilty of defrauding investors and
in _Action Comics 12_
[[link removed]] (May 1939)
Superman addresses reckless driving and unsafe cars, anticipating
Ralph Nader’s _Unsafe at Any Speed_. Superman prevents profiteers
from selling poison gas to war-torn Boravia in _Superman 2_
[[link removed]] (September
1939). _Superman 3_
[[link removed]] (December 1939)
features the Man of Steel exposing an abusive orphanage that forces
its charges to work in sweatshop-like conditions. This plot was
repeated in _Action Comics 27_
[[link removed]] (August
1940). _Superman 4_
[[link removed]] (March 1940) contains a
story where Superman stops labor racketeers from taking over the truck
drivers union. When Superman’s arch nemesis Lex Luthor first appears
in _Action Comics 23_
[[link removed]] (April 1940) he
is acting as a war profiteer by encouraging two European nations to
wage war. Of course, his scheme is stopped by Superman._ _

The municipal government in these early comics is depicted as corrupt
and ineffectual. When Superman fights illegal gambling in _Action
Comics 16_
[[link removed]] (September 1939),
the gangsters running the gambling racket are being protected by the
police commissioner. In _Superman 5 _
[[link removed]](June 1940) a crooked
politician buys a newspaper to spread lies about his opponents,
including the _Daily Planet_, the muckraking paper that Superman
works for. _Superman 6_
[[link removed]] (October 1940) contains
a story where the mayor of Metropolis takes bribes to allow
dangerously inferior materials to be used for public works projects.
In _Action Comics 29_
[[link removed]] (October 1940) a
political ward boss is responsible for running an insurance scam
against the elderly. Metropolis’ District Attorney is in the pay of
gangsters in _Superman 7_
[[link removed]] (December 1940) and
the _Daily Planet_, with the help of Superman, supports a reform
candidate to replace him. In _Action Comics 37_
[[link removed]] (June 1941) the
police commissioner is also the mastermind behind a group of
gangsters. 

The anti-war messages of some Superman stories got the creators in
trouble with the Canadian censors. When the February 29, 1940, comic
strip depicted Superman convincing the warring (and fictional) nations
of Rutland and Blitzen to make peace, the _Toronto Star _was ordered
by wartime censors to remove the strip as it could be considered
deleterious to the morale of Canadian servicemen.7
[[link removed]] The
Communist Party’s _Daily Worker _even covered the incident in a
March 9 article “‘Superman’ Censored by His Majesty.”

Canadian censorship of Superman is interesting because by this point
in time the Superman comic books began espousing more interventionist
messages regarding foreign policy, particularly directed against
fascism. In _Action Comics 31_
[[link removed]] (December 1940)
the villains are foreign spies with the German-sounding names Baron
Munsdorf and Kolb. _Superman 4_
[[link removed]] (March 1940) features a
foreign country attempting to sabotage the American economy (This plot
was essentially recycled in the following _Superman 5_
[[link removed]] (June 1940) with Luthor
as the villain).In _Superman 6 _the superhero prevents a would-be
dictator from taking over the Latin American country of San
Caluma. _Superman 8_
[[link removed]] (February 1941)
contains villainous fifth columnists with more German-esque names like
Sagdorf and Reibel. In _Superman 9_
[[link removed]] (April 1941) the
activist group the Committee Against Militarism is nothing more than a
front for a spy ring for Superman to smash. _Action Comics 36_
[[link removed]] (May 1941)
contains a similar plot in which the Volunteers For Peace is a front
for “Nation X” to weaken America’s defenses before a preemptive
strike is launched against the United States. In _Superman 10_
[[link removed]] (June 1941) the
Germanic nation of Dukalia uses a traveling sports exhibition to both
prove its racial superiority and as a method of concealing its
espionage activities before being stopped by Superman. _Superman 11_
[[link removed]] (August 1941) features
the Man of Tomorrow stopping the domestic fascist terrorist group the
Gold Badge Organization, an obvious take on the real-life Silver
Shirts. 

While Siegel and Schuster were scrupulous about not mentioning Germany
or Nazis in the pages of _Action Comics_ or _Superman _before the
United States’ declaration of war, this was not the case in the
two-page comic they contributed to the February 27, 1940 issue
of _Look_ magazine. The story is titled “How Superman Would End
the War”
[[link removed]] and
the brief plot features Superman smashing through German defenses to
grab Adolf Hitler before flying to the U.S.S.R to pick up Josef
Stalin. Superman deposits the two leaders at the League of Nations
headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland where they are found “guilty of
modern history’s greatest crime-unprovoked aggression against
defenseless countries.” During the story, Superman says of Hitler
“I’d like to land a strictly non-Aryan sock on your jaw.”

This story actually provoked a negative response from the Nazis
themselves. Somehow, Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels read a copy of
the Superman story in _Look_ magazine and wrote a response, “Jerry
Siegel Attacks,” in the newspaper of the Waffen-SS _Das Schwarze
Korps_. Goebbels takes issue with Siegel’s Jewish ancestry
unsurprisingly, calling him an “Israelite” and “an
intellectually and physically circumcised chap.” The article mocks
the story’s depiction of Superman’s triumph over the Nazi military
and ends by mourning Superman readers, “who must live in such a
poisoned atmosphere and don’t even notice the poison they swallow
daily.”8
[[link removed]] Other
fascist attacks on Superman came from the German American Bund, who
sent hate mail to Jerry Siegel and picketed outside the Detective
Comics office. Benito Mussolini banned every American comic book,
including Superman, from Fascist Italy.9
[[link removed]] 
 _ _

The War Years

By the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the Superman
comics were officially attacking Nazi Germany. The cover of _Action
Comics 43_
[[link removed]] (December 1941)
showed Superman attacking a Nazi paratrooper, complete with Swastika
armband. _Superman 13_
[[link removed]] (December 1941) had
Superman attack a Nazi naval vessel on its cover. The following month,
Superman wrecked a Nazi artillery gun on the cover of _Action Comics
44_ [[link removed]] (January
1942). However, the stories within had nothing to do with these
covers. In fact, it was decided by the Superman creative team that
Superman should stay on the home front for the duration of the war, as
having him single-handedly wipe out the Axis armies would cheapen the
struggle of flesh and blood men and women against fascism.10
[[link removed]] In
the story’s canon, this was justified by having Clark Kent be
rejected from the military because he accidentally used his x-ray
vision to read the wrong eye chart, causing the recruiters to think he
was “blind as a bat” in the _Superman_ comic strip.

Superman covers continued their run of wartime propaganda. Superman is
shown grabbing a meek-looking Hitler and Tojo on the cover
of _Superman 17_
[[link removed]] (August 1942), saving
sailors from an enemy shell on the cover of _Superman 20_
[[link removed]] (February 1943), and
swimming determinedly to attack a Nazi submarine on _Superman 23_
[[link removed]]’s cover (August
1943). Goebbels, who had earlier attacked Superman in the Nazi press,
is hoisted away from his microphone by the Man of Steel on the cover
of _Superman 26 _
[[link removed]](February 1944). These
are just samples of the many wartime propaganda covers of the Superman
line of titles. Sometimes the propaganda covers would be paired with
an explicit call to action. Superman asked readers to buy war bonds to
“do the job on the JapaNazis” on the cover of _Superman 18_
[[link removed]] (October 1942).
Batman, Robin, and Superman team up to sell war bonds under the sign
“Sink the JapaNazis With Bonds & Stamps” on the cover
of _World’s Finest Comics 8_
[[link removed]] (December
1942). Infamously, on the outside of _Action Comics 58_
[[link removed]] (March 1943), the
message “Superman Says You Can Slap a Jap With War Bonds and
Stamps” appeared. On _Superman 34_
[[link removed]]’s cover (May 1945),
Superman asks readers to donate to the Red Cross. 

The Superman stories that dealt with the war varied wildly in tone.
Some were more fantastical, such as when Superman stopped Nazi sea
monsters from sinking convoy ships in _Superman 20 _or fought
Axis-aligned gremlin-like Squiffles in _Superman 22_
[[link removed]] (June 1943), who were
sabotaging American fighter planes. In others, the superhero fought
more human menaces like industrial saboteurs in _Superman 21_
[[link removed]] (April 1943), an Axis
expeditionary force in the Arctic in _Superman 24_
[[link removed]] (October 1943),
domestic fascists in _Superman 25_
[[link removed]] (December 1943), and
wartime black marketeers in _World’s Finest Comics 15 _
[[link removed]](September
1943). Some stories functioned as recruiting ads for the armed
services. _Superman 23 _features Superman partnering with the US
Army on training maneuvers. _Superman 25 _contains a story published
with the assistance of the Army Air Force Technical Training Command
that stresses the thoroughness of that program. A 1944 storyline in
the _Superman_ Sunday comic strip focused on a woman deciding which
auxiliary branch of the military to join. _Superman 34 _highlighted
the important roles played by different occupations within the US
Navy. However, there still existed some elements of social criticism
in Superman stories. For example, _Action Comics 47_
[[link removed]] (April 1942),
which was written by Jerry Siegel, featured unflattering depictions of
Metropolis’ wealthy elite as fascist sympathizers, gangsters,
monopolists, swindlers, and just greedy individuals.

One of the strangest wartime Superman stories occurred in _Superman
18_ when Clark Kent becomes upset at the lack of domestic support for
the war effort. Kent cites the lack of response to requests for air
wardens, unemployment, and either a strike or lockout at a factory
(the art is unclear), as an example of Metropolis’ citizens not
taking the war seriously. Kent helps arrange a mock invasion of the
city to show the dangers of fascism, but it turns out that the fake
soldiers are real Nazis. Superman then has to stop the fascist
takeover. As previously mentioned, Superman stories could exhibit
uncomfortable anti-Japanese racism. One prominent example occurred in
a 1943 newspaper strip arc
[[link removed]] that
offered a defense of the internment of Japanese-American citizens and
a storyline that posited that most Japanese-Americans were loyal to
the Axis Powers. 

Even though Superman was fully behind the American war effort, the
superhero and his creative team faced unwanted scrutiny from the U.S.
government over plots featuring the atomic bomb. Some Superman stories
were even asked to be delayed by the War Department due to the
government’s desire for secrecy when developing nuclear weapons as
part of the Manhattan Project. The story “Battle of the Atoms” was
delayed a few years because in it Lex Luthor attacks Superman with
“an atomic bomb.” The story “Crime Paradise”, in which
Superman films an atomic bomb test for the army was similarly delayed.
Most significantly, when Alvin Schwartz used the term “cyclotron”
in the _Superman_ newspaper strip, the War Department opened an
investigation to see if Schwartz was receiving leaks from the
Manhattan Project as the cyclotron, or “atom smasher,” was a key
part of their secret research. In fact, Schwartz had merely recalled
the term from a decade-old issue of _Popular Mechanics_.11
[[link removed]]

After the War

After World War II, the Superman comic books shifted towards telling
stories more in the realm of science fiction and fantasy. Stories
about political corruption, foreign affairs, and racketeering
disappeared and were replaced by stories about Superman’s imperfect
duplicate Bizarro, Superman’s cousin Supergirl, and even
Superman’s pet dog Krypto. There were also plenty of appearances
from extraterrestrials. 

If the Superman creative team retreated from real-life problems in the
comic books, this was not the case in the _Superman_ radio show. The
radio show had three stories attacking racism and hate groups between
1946 and 1947. The first was titled “The Hate Mongers
Association”, during which an American neo-Nazi group called the
Guardians of America attempts to destroy a proposed youth center
because it will be open to children of all races, religions, and
nationalities. Superman and his pal Jimmy Olson stop the group and
Superman warns the radio audience that “Hitler may be dead but his
mad, twisted ideas didn’t die with him.” The second story was
the famous
[[link removed]] “The
Clan of the Fiery Cross” which was inspired by the efforts of
progressive journalist Stetson Kennedy
[[link removed]] to
infiltrate and expose the activities of the Ku Klux Klan. The third
was “Knights of the White Carnation,” about Superman’s efforts
to stop a violently anti-immigrant vigilante organization. 

Jack Schiff, who edited the Superman titles and produced the one-page
DC Public Service Announcements, was described as “a right-wing
Communist” or “Stalinist” by writer, and self-described
“Norman Thomas Socialist,” Alvin Schwartz.12
[[link removed]] Schiff
ran the PSAs on behalf of the National Social Welfare Assembly,
composed of groups like DC Comics, the Boy Scouts of America, the
Child Study Association, the National Association of Social Workers,
and others, and Superman was a regular feature within them. Schiff
actually served as DC’s representative on the National Social
Welfare Assembly’s board of directors. Schiff’s politics were not
wholly popular with the DC staff. Fellow editor Mort Wiesinger accused
Schiff of being a Communist and said that his PSAs would get the
company in trouble with the House Un-American Activities Committee or
other Red hunters.13
[[link removed]]

Despite Wiesinger’s fulminations, the DC PSAs generally stuck to
uncontroversial topics such as good citizenship, public service,
practicing good hygiene, and the like. Occasionally, however, more
political topics were addressed
[[link removed]].
In one 1951 story, entitled “Know Your Country”, Superboy (the
teenage version of Superman) calls out prejudice amongst some
youngsters. Granted, this is prejudice is against Scandinavians, not
exactly the group most likely to be the recipients of discrimination
in 1950s America. Another story from 1953 called “People are
People” has a Black youngster holding off an escaped lion until
Superman can capture the animal. The owner of the circus the lion has
escaped from wants to congratulate a white boy for his (nonexistent)
heroism until Superman points out that the heroic young man was Black,
and that the circus owner only wanted to congratulate the white boy
because he was prejudiced. Notably, Schiff’s PSAs never attacked or
mentioned Communism, even at the height of the McCarthy era.

Superman writer Dennis O’Neil promotes a theory that the change in
Superman’s attitude was caused by editor Mort Weisinger. O’Neil
describes Superman as metamorphosing from a “wise-cracking tough guy
with a rugged zeal for reform” to “a Scoutmaster in cape and
boots.” Superman’s superpowers increased and his concerns for the
little guy correspondingly decreased. O’Neil speculates that the
change in tone was done to not remind readers of either the troubles
of the Great Depression or the horrors of World War II. In other
words, Superman was altered so as to be a comforting presence, telling
readers that everything would be okay.14
[[link removed]]

Conclusions

The shift exhibited by Superman during the war is somewhat similar to
another piece of 1930s and 40s culture, the folk group the Almanac
Singers. The Almanac Singers were composed of Pete Seeger, Woody
Guthrie, and others, and the group performed topical songs about the
issues of the day. These included attacks on capitalists and those who
wanted American intervention in their album _Songs for John Doe_.
However, after the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union, they pulled this
album from distribution, and after the Japanese attack on Pearl
Harbor, they released the album _Dear Mr. President _in support of
the American war effort. David Hadju draws a comparison between
Superman’s role in World War II and the shift in the career of actor
James Cagney from playing blue-collar toughs to playing patriotic
songwriter George M. Cohan in _Yankee Doodle Dandy_.15
[[link removed]] In
all three cases, there is a clear shift from the promotion of domestic
reform to focusing on winning the war. Les Daniels claims the well had
run dry for stories stressing Superman’s social conscience by 1941.
Daniels also speculates that the change could have been due to
editorial restrictions by new editorial director Whitney Ellsworth at
DC Comics.16
[[link removed]] The
greatest weapon against the two-fisted crusader version of Superman,
then, was not kryptonite, but commercial and artistic concerns.

NOTES

[[link removed]]

* For example, see this article
[[link removed]] by
comics writer Aubrey Sitterson.
* Grant Morrison, _Supergods: What Masked Vigilantes, Marvelous
Mutants, and a Sun God From Smallville Can Teach Us About Being
Human _(New York: Spiegel and Grau, 2011) 17.
* Brad Ricca, _Super Boys: The Amazing Adventures of Jerry Siegel
and Joe Shuster-the Creators of Superman _(New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 2013), 6-7.
* Bradford Wright, _Comic Book Nation: the Transformation of Youth
Culture in America _(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
2003), 10-11.
* Gerard Jones, _Men of Tomorrow: Geeks Gangsters and the Birth of
the Comic Book _(New York: Perseus Books Group, 2004), 81.
* Jerry Siegel, “A Curse on the Superman Movie,” press release,
1975.
* Larry Tye, _Superman: the High Flying History of America’s Most
Enduring Hero _(New York: Random House, 2012) 61.
* Joseph Goebbels, “Jerry Siegel Attacks!” _Das schwarze
korps_, April 25, 1940.
* Larry Tye, 78-79.
* Roy Thomas, _Superman: the War Years 1938-1945 _(New York:
Chartwell, 2015) 147-148.
* Brian Cronin, _Was Superman a Spy? And Other Comic Book Legends
Revealed _(New York: Plume) 12-13.
* Jim Amash, “Alvin Schwartz on His Long Career in Comics and
Elsewhere,” _Alter Ego 98 _(December 6, 2010) 35.
* Bradford Wright, 64-65.
* Dennis O’Neil, “The Man of Steel and Me,” in _Superman at
50!: the Persistence of a Legend _(New York: Collier Books), 52-53.
* David Hadju, _The Ten-Cent Plague: the Great Comic Book Scare and
How it Changed America _(New York: Picador, 2009), 53.
* Les Daniels, _Superman: the Complete History _(San Francisco:
Chronicle Books, 1998), 63.

_HANK KENNEDY is a Detroit area educator and socialist who writes
regularly on the connection between comics and politics._

_Cosmonaut [[link removed]] is a Marxist magazine for
revolutionary strategy, historical analyses and modern critiques. We
aim to be a platform of debate and polemic in order to contribute to
the formulation of a Marxism for the 21st century. Make socialism
scientific again!_

* Superman
[[link removed]]
* comics
[[link removed]]
* popular culture
[[link removed]]

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