And then, finally, triumphantly: Superman, revealed.
After Krypton and Kansas, after the Arctic and the Elders, after scherzos and Cheerios and Einstein and everything — here he is, looking exactly like we hoped he would. They gave us backstory and atmosphere, and possibly a little extra tedium, just to make sure that we really, really wanted him.
We are ready, and he has arrived. And he doesn’t look ridiculous at all, as we feared he would. He looks magnificent.
And he does what we’ve wanted him to do, most of all: he flies. Calm and purposeful, with his bright red cape trailing behind him, like a king.
Flying is Superman’s killer feature; it’s the thing that everybody loves best about him. When you think about Superman, the first thing that you think of isn’t his strength or his bulletproof body. You think about a man in a red cape, soaring across the sky.
Of course, it’s a clear violation of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster’s original intentions for the character. Flying is specifically a thing that he shouldn’t do. And yet, here we are.
I mean, they couldn’t have been more specific. The man can leap one-eighth of a mile, and hurdle a twenty-story building. That doesn’t leave a lot of wiggle room, as regards auto-aviation.
So this is what we get, in the early Siegel & Shuster comics, both in the comic books and the comic strip. He races, he bounds, he streaks, he speeds, he springs and he hurtles — but he doesn’t fly. How could he?
Siegel and Shuster’s Superman was basically a guy — a guy from another planet with a physical structure millions of years advanced from our own, but still a guy. He can punch really hard, jump really high, run really fast and lift really heavy things. Bullets bounce off his chest, and if you give him half a chance, he will definitely knock your house down. But he’s still affected by gravity, and he obeys a vague approximation of the laws of physics.
Here’s an example from 1940. Superman races at terrific speed, makes a tremendous upward leap to what looks like the roof of someone’s house, and then makes another leap up to catch a passing plane.
He messes around with the plane for a couple panels, and then heads back down. “Superman strikes earth!” the caption says. “Not pausing, he somersaults back up into the sky!” And then he bounces back up to play with another plane.
At the end of that sequence, he actually uses his cape to glide back down: “Seizing the sides of his cape, Superman navigates it like a sail so that he swoops out of sight in a giant curve before onlookers can quite understand what is happening!”
So it’s not really physics that we would recognize, but there appear to be limits to what he can do in the air.
Overall, the record is a bit murky, because it’s not always consistent. The above example is from spring 1941, where Superman spends a lot of the story leaping up into the air, and then having lengthy negotiations with people flying by in an invisible helicopter. In that case, the story requires a hero who can hover long enough to say “cease your crooked shenanigans”, which is at least flying-adjacent.
On the level of individual panels, it’s sometimes unclear exactly how he’s getting from one position to another — he’ll arc up in one panel, and then “zoom” straight ahead through the sky in the next — but in general, in the comic books and the comic strip, Superman is still leaping and cape-sailing until late 1943.
And then there’s the 1940 radio show, when he flies right away; it is literally the first thing that he does.
The first episode premiered on February 12, 1940, and the first words spoken are: “Up in the sky! Look! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Superman!” These are not things that you say about someone who jumps really far.
Episode 1 of the show is set on Krypton, and ends with the baby in the rocket; at the top of episode 2, the rocket lands on Earth, and Superman is all grown up. The narrator explains:
“The rocket landed in a desert. Superman stepped forth full-grown, to explore this strange new world in which he found himself. Today, as our story continues, we find him hovering, with his curious power, above a quiet highway in Indiana.
“A trolley car is just pulling up the hill, and as Superman wheels and turns in curious flight, unseen below, a man and a boy come out of the shed that serves as waiting room.”
There’s no ambiguity there. He takes one step out of the spaceship, and then goes straight up into the air.
In the radio show, the stunt had to be audible, so they used a rushing-wind sound effect, and Superman would announce everything that he’s doing. He’d say “Up! Up!” when he was rising, and “Faster! Faster!” when he was trying to catch up with somebody. When he had to dive, he would say something like, “There’s Lois’ car — just about to go off the cliff! I can’t let that happen… Down! Down!”
The difference is that Siegel and Shuster were writing the comics, but they didn’t write the radio show; they had nothing to do with it. I don’t know if the radio producers made the conscious decision to change his powers. I think it’s just as likely that they read some of the comics, which were ambiguous, and just assumed that he’d been flying the whole time.
When the Fleischer Studios started making cartoons in 1941, they also began with Superman flying right from the start. The first thing that we see is Superman streaking across the screen in flight, accompanied by the “Up in the sky! Look!” catchphrase from the radio show.
Once the cartoon gets going, and Clark hears that Lois is in danger, he dashes into a storeroom, changes into Superman, and flies out the window. This was just a thing that everyone assumed that Superman did, and it required no explanation.
Here’s the generally accepted first example of Superman flying in the comics, in October 1943. Kids in a children’s hospital say, “Let’s see ya fly!” and then in the next panel, Superman cries “Up-up-and away!” as he finally takes flight.
So everybody in America recognized that Superman could fly as of early 1940, when the radio show premiered, but it took more than five years for Siegel & Shuster to admit it, and put it in the comics. That says to me that Superman’s creators were deliberately resisting the idea, because that wasn’t their conception of the character.
After all, it doesn’t make sense that he can fly. He doesn’t have wings, or a propeller. What keeps him in the air? What makes him go faster? When he pushes against something in mid-flight, or catches a falling helicopter, what’s the force on the other end that he’s “standing” on?
Siegel and Shuster were writing science fiction — their Superman did things that you could imagine a really, really strong person could do. But flying? That’s magic. Siegel and Shuster’s Superman was a guy, not a god.
But the impossibility is why we love it, and why it means so much to us. Flying is the thing that Superman shouldn’t be able to do, but he does it anyway; he’s that cool.
That’s why they had to get the flying right, in the movie — not so that we would “believe” it, but because we love the unbelievable. America understood that before Siegel and Shuster did. They caught up with us, eventually.
Tomorrow:
The production hits
the first set of roadblocks…
1.30: After Brando
Footnotes:
Here are the comics referenced in today’s post:
- “Terror Stalks San Columa”: Superman #6 (Sept/Oct 1940)
- “The Invisible Luthor”: Superman #10 (May/June 1941)
- “The Million Dollar Marathon”: Action Comics #65 (Oct 1943)
Tomorrow:
The production hits
the first set of roadblocks…
1.30: After Brando
— Danny Horn
Superheroes Every Day 
I wonder about Siegel and Shuster’s attitudes towards Superman’s powers generally. The mightier he gets, the harder it is to come up with a story that has any suspense once he enters. With the other actors, the radio show and movie serial could always fall back on “Will Superman find out before it’s too late?” as a source of suspense, and the comic strip is only a few panels a day. But every issue of the comic books needs several pages of Superman in action while the outcome is in question. So I imagine they and the other writers of the comics must have been reluctant to expand his power-set.
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Same thing happened on the TV show Heroes–too many of the characters got so overpowered that it became like Dragonball Z: gods fighting for the fun of it, but no real stakes.
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Yes, it’s a constant back-and-forth- the easiest way to keep the readers buying new comic books or viewers watching new footage is to show the heroes using powers we haven’t seen before, so they tend to get a bit mightier every year. But the more powers they have, the harder it is to generate suspense in a story where they know what’s going on. That’s one of the things that keeps driving the comics companies to reboot their universes.
My favorite example is Batman, whose superpower is money. At first, Bruce Wayne maintained an image as a “playboy,” a title given only to rich guys, so he was probably a millionaire. But he lived in a medium-sized townhouse, and all his stuff (the secret sports car, the costume, the weapons, etc) could probably have been bought for at most $50,000 at 1941 prices. At its first appearance in a movie serial during World War Two, the Batcave wasn’t even something Wayne owned- it was a literal cave someplace out in the woods where he would drag Japanese spies and beat them to death. But as the years went by, Bruce Wayne got richer and richer, until now he’s a multi-billionaire.
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It’s called “power creep”. Batman’s superpowers now include “super-preparation” and “super-willpower” as well. It’s been suggested by one writer that Batman is endowed with the greatest willpower in the universe, such that he would even survive death by transmigrating his soul to another universe to be reborn. One less ambitious comic merely has Batman memorizing the locations and movement patterns of every security camera in Gotham City. Yes, comics are ridiculous and power creep is insidious.
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Siegel and Shuster were at the movie premiere and they were beyond pleased with it.
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Leaving aside the strange fact that Clark has been standing in his fortress for twelve years, this moment in the film when we first see the familiar, costumed Superman has always stuck with me. It’s such an interesting directorial decision to choose not to do a close up on Christopher Reeve’s face. Instead, we see the red and blue figure standing still on a distant ice pillar, then he slowly floats up, soars toward the camera and whooshes by, giving us only a glimpse of his face. For me, this succeeded in keeping me intrigued about how the adult Clark will appear and behave. On the other hand, maybe they just didn’t want the audience to notice how adult Clark hardly resembled his teenage self.
And because I have hours to kill until the Giants-Dodgers game, I googled San Columa, just to see, well, you know. Unfortunately, the town never recovered from the stalking terror, even with Superman’s help. It no longer exists.
Also, added to my list of Phrases to Try to Use in Normal, Everyday Conversations: “Cease your crooked shenanigans!”
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Or “I’ll make a beeline for your gizzard”; have to find a way to work THAT into conversation.
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Of course. Because the first time we properly see Christopher Reeve he’s not supposed to look anything like his teenage Superman self…. Because he’s wearing glasses – you won’t be able to recognise him!
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When you think about it, there’s really no reason for a superhero to have a cape except that it looks cool. In fact, it’s a detriment – it could get tangled, an opponent could grab it, it could get caught in something, it would weigh you down if you had to go into the water. If you’ve got to have one, it would be best to keep it short, like (the original) Captain Marvel.
But using your long, flowing cape as a sail is one of the few things that would justify having one.
And along those lines…the early Marvel heroes were almost all anti-cape. Thor had one, and so did Dr. Strange but he kind of falls into a different category.
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Cap, during his disillusionment with America, took on the guise of the Nomad, with cape. While chasing a villain he accidentally stepped on it, causing him to trip.
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“No capes!” Edna ‘E’ Mode
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For some reason the like button refuses to work for me, but I wanted you to know I enjoyed the “The Incredibles” reference.
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Wasn’t that an invention made by The Shadow? (Atleast we’re told so in Watchmen:) The point was that a long, distracting cape would reduce the risk that the bullets was gonna hit the body.
So for for Superman there is not much of a point. For Batman it is very usefull.
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Looking cool is the point. The whole point of superheroes is to show us things that we haven’t seen before, and making sense is a detriment.
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The 1950s tv series did point out Superman was “Faster than a speeding bullet. Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.” I don’t remember actually seeing him run faster than a speeding bullet or leap over a building. I think he may have crouched at the bottom of the building and then we saw him land somewhere. I do remember him flying, though! I never knew there was a time when he didn’t.
We seem to have to thank radio for the two most famous catchphrases associated with him. Do we know who wrote those?
It demonstrates how popular he must have been to get a radio show and a cartoon within a few years of his creation!
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The last couple of Fleischer cartoons were so excited about flying that they changed part of the narration from “Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound!” to ” Able to soar higher than any plane!”
Obviously, that didn’t stick beyond those few cartoons, but they really wanted you to know he could do more than leap.
Here’s one of the cartoons with that intro – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrNYK7EWUHM
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Well… jumping is swell
but flying IS cooler.
WAY cooler.
For me it was always about the costume. Was the Super-suit always made from the swaddling blankets, or did that story evolve?
And (of course) the comic book version of Superman had a spectacular physique and the tights (of course) showed it.
I rather liked that the ‘video’ versions of Superman were more ordinary in stature – – well, where were you going to find a guy with wall-to-wall muscles who could act? And where could you get fabric to make an outfit that didn’t just look like Grandpa’s long johns?
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In one of the Silver Age comics I read as a tween, we got the scientific explanation for his flying. (I’m sorry I can’t give chapter and verse; I sold my collection as a teen in a misguided attempt to seem grown-up.) The explanation was that he vibrated his super-muscles so fast that they created air currents. This would explain his flying, his ability to vary his speed while flying, and his ability to hover. It must have been awfully tiring, though.
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Of course it doesn’t explain how he was able to fly (really fast, too) in outer space, where there is no air. Oh dear. Lots of momentum?
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In the John Byrne reboot, it gets explained as a limited form of telekinesis.
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The original Ms. Marvel had a long scarf. Chris Claremont took over the title. He didn’t like the scarf, so Ms M kept getting the scarf caught on things. One villain actually swung her around by the scarf.
They gave her a new costume. It still had a scarf but around her waist. That one didn’t give her trouble.
Yes, a real cape can cause problems, but it looks cool. That’s all that matters. Plus it can tell you which way the wind is blowing.
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