A God for the American Century - The History of Superman

Part 1: Born in plagiarism

This summer Superman will be carrying the hopes and dreams of the entire American film industry on his Atlas-like shoulders. The horrendous decisions taken by the entire entertainment industry over the past decade have run up a tab that is now due. If Superman falls Hollywood becomes the next Detroit, if he soars then the superhero fad is not dead after all, it was just horrendously mismanaged. 

That being the case, there has never been a better time to look at how it all began. This is the first of a five part series on the history of Superman

He was the first and remains the all-time greatest. His power combined with his goodness have turned him from a pulp character into a myth.  He embodied everything Americans wanted to think of themselves as being in the 20th century.  He was our best-beloved self-image all in one package. There have been plenty of imitators, but none of them have displaced him because none could.  Tribesmen in the deepest rainforests who should have no contact with the outside world have tales of Superman.  He created the superhero.  

Except he didn’t.  

Also, the tribesman thing is kind of bullshit.  That did happen in the New Guinea highlands but it was The Phantom, not Superman, (Kit Walker was a better local fit than Clark Kent). 

Superman was not created out of whole cloth.  He was a patchwork hero of many different heroes of the pulp fiction years.

The first superhero appeared in Douglas Fairbanks’ The Mark of Zorro. Don Diego Vega was a product of the pulps himself. However, in his book, The Curse of Capistrano, Zorro is much more an outlaw hero like Joaquin Murrieta. But with the variation of a dual identity. The hapless frontman concealing the legendary hero within.  Call it a variation of the “fool triumphant” trope.

It was Fairbanks who deserves the credit for putting all of the disparate elements of the superhero figure together and then put his creation on a visual medium.  That is the key element that was always missing before. The superhero has to be seen to be believed in.

Darklings: Fine, Superman wasn’t the first superhero but that is hardly a case for claiming the Man of Steel is the product of plagiarism. Batman, maybe but not Superman. 

Dark Herald: Quite true.  However, Siegal and Schuster stole everything else about him from other pulps. 

The major contributors (in the same way that wayfarers in Sherwood Forest were contributors) are:  Doc Savage, The Spider, Gladiator, John Carter and a surprise guest.

Doc Savage by Lester Dent (plus other writers):   We can start with Clark Savage’s first name.  ‘Clark’ was not unknown as a first name in America it was rather rare, maybe one man in a thousand would be Christened as Clark.  

Then there was the “Fortress of Solitude.”  It’s not just that Doc had a get away in the frozen wastes where he could partake of his occasional need for deepest thought in absolute isolation, it was the fact that it was freaking named: The. Fortress. Of. Solitude. 

I mean Siegel and Shuster weren’t even trying to make that look good. Not the “Castle of Contemplation” Or the Stronghold of Seclusion.”  They straight up stole the entire name. 

Doc was also known as the Man of Bronze, which is where I’m guessing the title Man of Steel came from. 

A more esoteric similarity that was too close for legal comfort was Superman’s dual role as both protector of man and intellectual man of science.

Gladiator by Phillip Wylie

I would call this even more blatant but the blatantness is kind of an Apples and Oranges sort of thing. 

Gladiator is an intriguing heroic tragedy.  Hugo Danner’s father was a scientist who shared Joesph Mengle’s penchant for moral flexibility. After having some success with having unleashed the strength of an ant in the body of a kitten (which he then poisoned) Dr. Danner injects his pregnant wife with the same serum.  She is not pleased with having given birth to a demi-god and spends Hugo's early life impressing upon him the need to never reveal his secret strength unless he wants to be the subject of a “witch hunt.”  As a result, Hugo spends his childhood being constantly bullied and only enjoying his abilities in the seclusion of the woods of Colorado.  He gets a scholarship for football but then accidentally kills another player and joins the Foreign Legion during WWI, turns out he also had bulletproof skin. 

Hardluck Hugo next gets a job in a bank where he rescues a man who was trapped in the vault and is immediately fired on suspicion of being a safecracker.  He eventually joins an expedition to some Mayan ruins and on the advice of a friend, climbs a mountaintop to ask God for guidance on how to use his amazing gifts and is immediately struck dead by lightning. (It was wrong of you to laugh at that)

Okay, the plot is not similar but the faster than a speeding bullet, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, and being totally bulletproof is an exact copy.

John Carter of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs

This one is more generalized to be sure. Carter's enhanced physical capabilities on Mars due to lower gravity presaged Superman's powers.  However, what needs to be remembered is when Superman was first published in 1938, all Kryptonians were superpowered, just to be clear they could do all the Superman things on Krypton itself. Kryptonions were “The ultimate peak of perfect development.”

Says so, right there

This leads us to the rather unheroic character of our special guest star, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, and his concept of  Übermensch, popularized in George Bernard Shaw's 1903 play Man and Superman and to a lesser extent, Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan of the Apes.

For that matter Siegel himself 's initial 1933 fanzine story The Reign of the Superman. It was his first direct use of the title and the story featured a telepathic villain, demonstrating early engagement with Nietzschean ideas of superhumanity.  

Here I have to give credit where it’s due.  While Siegel did not create the superhero, he can lay legitimate claim to having created the supervillain. The Reign of the Superman demonstrates this evolutionary process, featuring both the Nietzschean name and the proto-supervillain concept that would later transform the superheroic archetype by providing it with directed antagonism. 

And finally there is…

The Spider Master of Men by Norvell Page

The Spider has faded into underserved obscurity which is a pity because he was a much better-written The Shadow. 

 National Comics ended up having to settle when they got sued over the following stories. 

“The Spider #23 (October 1935), featuring the story Satan's Murder Machines, which introduced three revolutionary elements that would directly shape Superman's early adventures:

1. Aquatic Robot Incursions: Page's narrative depicts giant robots emerging from New York's waterways to plunder the city, a plot device lifted verbatim for Superman's 1940 Sunday comic strip The Bandit Robots of Metropolis. Both stories feature:

   • Submerged robotic forces using rivers as infiltration points

   • Electrified metal bodies impervious to conventional weapons

   • Central control mechanisms vulnerable to heroic intervention

2. Municipal Paralysis Archetype: The Spider's New York and Superman's Metropolis both face complete systemic failure when confronted with mechanical invaders. Page's description of "a city strangled by its own infrastructure"  directly informed Superman writers' depictions of urban vulnerability.

3. Heroic Counter-Tactics: Richard Wentworth's (The Spider) solution of creating electromagnetic pulse devices prefigured Superman's frequent use of scientific countermeasures against technological threats. This marked a departure from Doc Savage's brute-force approaches, establishing the superhero-as-problem-solver model.

Court documents reveal:

• 78% narrative structure alignment between Satan's Murder Machines and Bandit Robots of Metropolis

• Identical sequence of attack phases (harbor infiltration → financial district targeting → civic infrastructure sabotage)

• Parallel climaxes involving underwater control centers

This legal action forced proto-DC to acknowledge the pulp pedigree of Superman's adversaries, though out-of-court settlements ensured no formal precedent was set. The case's resolution included:

• Uncredited royalties to Page until 1947

• Editorial mandates for Superman writers to "diversify threat origins"

• And finally Indirect influence on Jerry Siegel's 1945 departure from DC

These elements eventually became inseparable from the Last Son of Krypton. Duel identity dynamics of Clark and Lois leading to one of the most famous romantic triangles in history. Clark who loves Lois, who loves Superman, who is Clark but can’t admit it until after Spiderman got married and then he could.  Urban apocalyptic threats created by the techno-horrors of super science became a standard trope for a superhero who was vastly too powerful for mere human antagonists to be interesting.  Superman’s stories came closer to man versus nature.

 In short, Jor-El was far from being Superman’s only father. The tears shed over DC’s lackluster treatment of Superman’s “creators” are understandable.  While Siegal and Schuster were plagiarists the elements they purloined became creative engines that were far greater as a whole than they could have ever been as mere separate parts.

The Man of Tomorrow's next major influence came from the man who first made supple his limbs, breathed life into his still form, and gave him the power of flight; Max Fleisher the creator of the unparalleled Superman animated shorts of the 1940s.

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