The forties began for Superman, with a story that was never published. We've just seen pages of it in STERANKO'S HISTORY OF COMICS. For the first time, Superman experienced weakness. This was caused by the close approach of a fragment from space, that seemed to weaken him. A piece of the space fragment fell to Earth, and was discovered by a scientist. When the human scientist touched it, he seemed filled with strength. Though old and frail, he could life a desk with one hand.

When Clark touched it, he was thrown violently back, hurt.

It was his first encounter with the substance known as kryptonite, the remains of Krypton, his home planet. It may have travelled through the remains of the space-warp that Kal-El's rocket reached Earth with, or it may have travelled through normal space, in which case it would mean that Krypton was within at the most fifty light years from here.

It seems to have been the isotope of Kryptonite known as X-Kryptonite, which gives immense strength to non-Kryptonians yet still weakens humans. His cousin Kara would develop it artificially in later years.

Later in that same story, Clark, Lois, and some criminals after gold were stuck in a cave-in at a mine. Knowing that they would die unless he freed them, that he himself would eventually die without fresh air, knowing there was no way to get away unnoticed, he proceeded to take off his Kent clothes and show himself as Superman.

"Look well! For you are seeing what I thought no mortal would see."

Lois said,

"Superman--Clark! I must be hallucinating!"

"No, Lois. It's real---all too real."

Then he threw himself at the rocky mass that seperated them from the surface. When he broke through, he carried Lois to fresh air, commenting about the others, "For once they've forgotten their precious gold."

When Lois came to, she still had problems believing it.

Clark wasn't too disappointed. She seemed to take it well, and he knew with the growing popularity of the Superman character in fiction, it was just a matter of time before she had figured it out.

This story, suppressed by the editor, was written by Siegel and meant to be real. The subsequent stories have to be read in light of the editorial judgement (the editor was Whitney Ellsworth, who had no idea he was dealing with a real person) and know that Lois only pretended, from then on, not to know who Superman was. As for Clark, it helped him immensely to have someone who knew his identity and could be a helpmate.

(Instead, they substituted, in the comic strip, at least, a fantasy of Superman stopping the war in Europe. It was a fantasy--what Superman would have liked to do, but would have given his true existence away, if he had...and judging from his experiences in World War I, one superhuman couldn't have ended the war anyway. He didn't know, in a short amount of time, he would encounter others like himself...)

Another, similar, meteor might have fallen earlier. According to Alan Moore's run on SUPREME, a young boy named Ethan Crane was exposed to a meteor in the mid-twenties that gave him Superman-like powers. Although much of Moore's run on Supreme was a loving and fictionalized homage to the Silver Age Superman's adventures, there might have been a kernel of truth in this. Later, according to Rob Liefield, Supreme's original chronicler, one of the projects the United States did to make superhumans resulted in death for all but one volunteer, who barely survived the process, getting tougher and tougher with each repetition, until he is exposed to it thirteen times. That volunteer might have been Ethan Crane, and he might have survived because of his earlier exposure to X-Kryptonite, or "supremium" as he dubbed it, strengthening him. (Ethan Crane seems to have been a first cousin to Dr. Robert Crane, who became the first Robotman, and Robert's older criminal brother, Batman's foe the Scarecrow, Dr. Jonathan Crane.)

Supreme suffered from delusions and schizophrenia. When he first reappeared in the nineties, he killed anyone who opposed him in a disgusting manner. Later he had a code against killing that he had always "had", indicating a severe delusional problem. A skilled builder of realistic robots, I'm not sure how much reality Lady Supreme and Radar had, or whether they were robots built to boost his fantasies. (The name Radar is especially suspicious, when you consider the dog was supposedly named far before radar was introduced as a means of detecting aircraft.)

Supreme undertook several secret missions for the government during the War, and as will be seen, the government would be glad to get a Superman-like being who was not affected by mysticism...

It also might be noted that Clark made several visits to the NYC World's Fair in late 1939 and 1940, which became the basis for several story's in WORLD'S BEST and WORLD'S FINEST.

It also might be noted in the late spring of 1940, George Taylor retired, to be replaced by Perry White. At first Lois and Clark were resentful, but they soon came to appreciate White's newspaper sense.

In the summer of 1940, Superman found other helpmates. In the newspaper strip, he was facing slum conditions in New York City, and was trying to get reforms instituted. Here he took a less vigilantish tactic than he did in Cleveland, and tried to get funds from various sources legally, as Clark Kent, including travelling to Washington and getting the federal government to help.

Ecstatic at his success, he went to the press building in Washington, looked up...and wondered if he had lost his mind.

With his telescopic sight, he saw an odd-looking plane nearing the White House. On examination, it looked like a German bomber, surrounded by---what looked like--Valkyries. Warrior women on winged horses. Fighting them were oddly-costumed individuals. One had a glowing green ring that seemed to create things out of thin air. Another had totally white skin, like a corpse---or a ghost. One had a golden mask. Another had his feet moving so fast it created an updraft that supported him...

With his x-ray vision, he saw a huge bomb about to be released. Changing swiftly,he leaped from the press building and ripped the bomber in two. Aided by the golden-masked one who sent him hurtling down faster than the falling bomb, he caught it without letting it go off. There was enough high explosive to level several blocks of downtown Washington, and they were near the Capitol building...

Then the golden-masked stranger, who called himself Dr. Fate, told him a story of FDR contacting some of the heroes to stop the Invasion of England by the Germans, and how, with the help especially of the white-skinned Spectre, they had done so. Yet that the Valkyries were sent by Hitler, using a mystial Spear of Destiny, to take revenge on America for interfering...

Seeing one Valkyrie head towards the White House, he took off after her. She burst in, ready to kill FDR---when the Atom, the smallest and least powered of those gathered, took the blow instead. Superman then grabbed the Valkyrie, who faded away, like a dream, in his arms...

FDR proposed that the ten of them stay together as a "super-battallion". Superman, still edging towards pacifism and isolationism (although slowly waking up that the Nazis were a menace even to America) said that they would "never be part of an army" and that they would only "fight for Justice"---and so they called themselves the Justice Society of America.

Clark, not feeling comfortable in the mainly mystical-oriented heroes of the JSA, and not wanting to be under FDR's direct control, became an honorary member, pleading--with justification---that he didn't have enough time to be a regular member, but agreeing to aid them when he was really needed.

Besides, the mystical members really expanded his notion of what was possible, and made him very, very uncomfortable. Further, the soon-to-emerge leader of the JSA, Hawkman, was the nephew of a murderer he had caught. (I have since found out since writing the "Hall" article that Carter Hall had an early marriage before he met Shiera Sanders, and his wife, a Canadian hieress, died. The child, Franklin Hall, was raised by his Canadian relatives. He underwent an accident while experimenting on an anti-gravity substance---evidently his father's ninth metal--- and became the Avengers' foe Gravitron. Thanks to Mark K. Brown for making the suggestion.)

The JSA had heard of Superman, as a fictional character, and were shocked to learn he was real. Many, seeing how cleverly the fact he was thought of as fictional helped cut down on his being reported as a real phenomena---people assumed they were hallucinating instead---also contacted some comic book authors or artists to record their deeds, feeling if Superman could do it, so could they...

He also rather felt like a trendsetter who had been overtaken by a crowd. He was used to fighting criminals in plainclothes, even those like Ultra and Luthor. He wouldn't encounter his first costumed criminal until he met a blackmailer-murderer called the Archer in April of 1941. (In that same story he would first assist a young copy boy named Jimmy Olsen.)

On June 27th, 1941, he assisted Johnny Thunder and the Justice Society in raising a few hundred thousand dollars for war orphans. The day afterwards, he foils an attempt by his old foe, the Lightning Master, to assasinate a future U.S. President, and later he and Lois join the then-current roster of the Justice Society (and a few friends, such as Robin and Joan Williams) in defeating the being who drew the Lightning Master and many of their foes together, Dr. Fate's foe Ian Karkull. When the Spectre and Dr. Fate defeat Karkull, he explodes releasing a burst of "temporal energy".

Lois, ever the inquisitive reporter, had gotten as close to the fight as possible. More than the others, she received the full brunt of the "temporal energy". Although it gave enhanced longevity and vitality to all those present, so they could function as heroes even into their sixties, Lois was so close that she, unknown to the others, would find that her aging had virtually stopped.

On December 6, 1941, Superman was trapped by a time-travelled JSA foe, Professor Zodiak. (He was covering a USO show as Clark Kent, not showing up as Superman, despite Roy Thomas' view.) Held in a mystic field by Dr. Fate's old foe, Wotan, under the direction of the time-travelling Per Degaton, the JSA was kept out of action during the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th. On December 8th, the JSA (and some other heroes---FDR organized some of them into a larger All-Star Squadron that would use the JSA as its core, but incorporate nearly all "mystery men".) travelled to the remains of Pearl Harbor.

Shaken out of his pacifism and isolationism, motivated mainly to stop the War quickly and to save untold lives in the long run, Superman joins the others in trying to go after the Japanese fleet. In doing so, they cross a mystical sphere of influence that both Premier Tojo and Adolf Hitler have established, Hitler using the Spear of Destiny and Tojo using a stone cup which may have been the Holy Grail. The resultant sphere affected any hero with either mystical powers (like the Spectre, Dr. Fate, Wonder Woman, or the first Green Lantern) or who were particularly vulnerable to magic (Superman) and changed them into willing allies of the Axis. There was a fight between the less powerful heroes and their more powerful, brainwashed counterparts, but by luring them out of the Sphere of Influence, they regained their senses. They also realized that they couldn't interfere, directly, with Axis-occupied territory while that Sphere of Influence lasted.

It has been speculated if Hitler had been able to get the Arc of the Covenent, which Dr. Indiana Jones stopped, the Axis might have been able to spread that Sphere worldwide, even to Allied lands. Luckily, that didn't happen. (A copy of the Spear was placed in Nuremberg, while Hitler secretely stole/borrowed the real thing.)

When Clark got home, the Justice Society broke up so the individual members could enlist under their civilian identities. Clark did the same, hoping he could at least aid the war effort in some way, Sphere of Influence or no. However, unlike the time he enlisted for World War I, he now had x-ray vision. Nervous and anxious to help, and perhaps feeling guilty for his earlier isolationism, he accidentally used his x-ray vision while reading the eye chart, and instead read a eye chart in the next room. So the world's strongest and most powerful man failed the army physical, was called "blind as a bat", and was branded 4-F, something that Lois gleefully needled him about over the coming months. (The fact that she now knew he was Superman now just made it all the funnier.)

Although Superman could not serve the government in either capacity, he threw himself with patriotic fervor---again, perhaps out of guilt for his earlier pacifism and isolationism--- into helping the war effort, both as Clark and Superman.

FDR wanted to use the All-Star Squadron to fulfill the void left by the enlistment of the JSA, to help protect America, so he could use more resources to be sent oversea to help the allies. Still, some heroes never joined the All-Star Squadron.

A few weeks after Pearl Harbor, those few heroes (Captain America, already under the direct command of the Government---the Human Torch, an android employed by the NYC police department---and the Sub-Mariner, formerly considered a menace, who now was as angry as anyone at Hitler, when his undersea kingdom was also threatened by the Nazis...and their two teenage aides, Bucky and Toro.) on December 22, 1941, saved Winston Churchill from a maurading "Master Man" who looks suspiciously like Captain Nazi. I suspect them of being the same person, that Thomas used a nom-de-plume for Nazi. Churchill, knowing that none of these powerful beings would be affected by the mystical Sphere of Influence, and anxious to strike back at Hitler, commisioned them as the "Invaders" to directly invade and soften up the Nazis until the Allied forces were ready for D-Day. (There is at least one story that says that Hitler did not succeed in committing suicide, but was burned by the Human Torch rather than allowing explosives to destroy them all.)

After the war, the Invaders were redubbed the All-Winners Squad by President Truman, but did not last long---without the driving impetus of the war to fire them, the frictions between the members (especially the original Human Torch and Sub-Mariner) drove them apart.

The Justice Society reformed, after several months, as the Justice Batallion, under the direct guidance of the War Department. Superman, in the meantime, made his Secret Citadel, a mountaintop retreat where he could retire and exercise and think. (That would become a pattern in Superman's life, from the early fort he had built in the Colarado Rockies to the later Fortress of Solitude.) Not only did he have trophies from his various adventures, but a super-gynasium to keep his body at peak condition, even for a Kryptonian. He became more heavily muscled, and considering some of his opponents in the coming month, that's just as well...

He also fought the original Metalo around that time, one of his more formidable opponents, a man in armor whose strength had been amplified by a special formula.

In late January or early February 1942, Superman had the greatest battle of his life. In a previous adventure, Luthor had gained super-strength and electrical powers thanks to a scientific treatment he underwent. It didn't make him quite Superman's equal, but close. Luthor had been captured and sentenced to the electric chair---which instead of killing him, revived his strength and powers. He tricked Superman into getting an ancient artifact called the Powerstone, which can give almost unlimited might to the wielder. With it, Luthor drained the super-strength from Superman, so that he had a normal man's strength, and created a huge energy-duplicate of himself to toy with Superman.

Meanwhile, Luthor started kidnapping men in high places in government and industry, in preperation for taking over the country.

Superman tricked Luthor into attempting a feat that caused the Powerstone to fall off. His strength returning, he got the Powerstone out of Luthor's possession and Luthor tried to blow them all up. Superman got Lois and his hostages and even some of this henchmen, but not Luthor himself. (Luthor survived, as the last electrical-treatment gave him enough invulnerability to survive the explosion, before his powers ran out completely...and he had come to the end of the treatments that would give him such power, without endangering his life.)

Going to the remains of the World's Fair, the Perisphere, Superman meets with the rest of the All-Star Squadron. Later he is captured by the Ultra-Humanite and her henchmen, after the Ultra-Humanite gains control of the Powerstone. (One of her (unwilling) henchmen is the young scientist Terry Curtis, who he had aided against Ultra in her/his previous appearance.) The All-Star Squadron (with the help of a time-travelling team called Infinity Inc.) finally defeated Ultra and freed Superman.

In February 23, Superman joined the others meeting in the first full meeting of the All-Star Squadron. They are interrupted by a being calling itself Uncle Sam who tells them of a parallel Earth...where he and some other heroes from our Earth foiled the attack on Pearl Harbor, yet where the Axis powers are doing much better than here. A splinter group of the All-Stars visit this "Earth-X" and would later make it their home. This splinter group was called the "Freedom Fighters". (Harbringer's saying there never was an Earth-X in the new, streamlined reality was a red herring by the writer of Crisis. We'll get more into that when we get to the chapter about Superman in the Eighties.)

In very late February 1942, Captain Marvel is captured and split between his two identities by a scientist under Hitler, aided by far-future devices from the Monitor. The Captain Marvel self, totally under the sway of Hitler's Spear of Destiny as long as Billy Batson stayed in Germany, was sent to attack England with the blitz. Superman journeyed to England, followed by other members of the All-Star Squadron, to fight Captain Marvel.

Superman lost that fight, although he and Captain Marvel were pretty evenly matched. Later in that same adventure, he encountered for the first time, Captain Marvel Jr. and Mary Marvel...who are later similarly split between their two identities and their super-powered ids fight for Hitler. (Of course, Roy Thomas added some details, like the Marvels being from the fictional "Earth-S". In reality they were from our Earth also.)

In March 1942, he fought the Blaze, a Nazi spy wearing a fireproof suit that could also emit jets of flame, making the Blaze a sort of artifically-created Human Torch.

In April 1942, Superman fought with Mr. Mind's first Monster Society of Evil. (A later version would fight Captain Marvel the following year.)

On June 10, 1942, Superman and Wonder Woman help prevent the kidnapping of Albert Einstein, and prevent some Axis superhumans from stealing a prototype nuclear reactor. (Superman and Wonder Woman have a small battle, in which she feels that America should never use dangerous nuclear technology, and Superman, again compensating for his earlier isolationism, thinking that America can be trusted with it.)

I don't want to give the impression that all of Superman's fights during the forties were major battles. He had a few recurring criminals, such as the Prankster (who, despite his ludicrous appearance, had some quite interesting plots), the Toyman, and the Puzzler, who were really more minor annoyances than anything else. Barred by the Sphere of Influence in joining in the major battles of the decade, he also continued helping others with what seemed like minor deeds.

Sort of a cross between his major fights and the annoyances-villains was the ---first?---appearance, in 1944, of Mr. Mxyztplk. (Also called Myxyzptlk.)

Mxyztplk was a native of a fifth-dimensional world---a world in which time and something called hypertime could be negotiated as easily as length, width and bredth. In the relative "flatland" of our three-dimensional world, Mxyztplk could literally do ....anything, toying with the laws of physics. His powers were "magical" in the sense that they defied the laws of physics.

Mxyztplk was a court jester in his native world. (His native world seems to be a constitutional monarchy---a later story by Siegel depicts Mxyztplk running for office.) While poking in the secret volumes of a brillant scholar, he learned how to come to our world, and back again. Superman tricked him into returning to his world...the first of many times...(coincidentally, around the same time the Spectre and Dr. Fate retired from the Justice Society. That was too bad, for Mxyztplk was the sort of foe that he could really use their help with.)

This story was definitely written by Siegel, and evidently predated the appearance of Mxyztplk in the comic strip, written by Ellsworth and drawn by Boring---even though the comic strip appeared first. Yet was this Mxyztplk's true first appearance?

There was a Superboy story in which "The Ghost of Jor-El" appeared, which purported to be Mxyztplk's first appearance, bedeviling Clark as a boy. It was written by Siegel. I'm unsure if it's just a total fabrication (and we know some parts had to be at the very least exagerrated...Superboy as a costumed hero did not really exist when Clark was a boy.) Still, it's possible that the young Clark Kent encountered the young Mxyztplk, and that Mxyztplk robbed Clark of his memory of that incident. Certainly Superman, at least, believed it was their first encounter when they met as adults. It may even have been Mxyztplk who, as an additional curse of his other-dimenstional magic, made Superman so "sensitive" to magical emanations, to make him an easier opponent, easier prey for his mystical stunts. (It's not true that all of his effects disappear when Mxyztplk disappears---in the very first story in which he appears, a fake story under Clark's name is put in the Planet after Mxyztplk has been tricked into returning to his world.) That would explain what so puzzled Clark, despite Superman's non-magical origin, Superman was stopped by Hitler and Tojo's mystical "Sphere of Influence". As he said, "Ma and Pa Kent found me in a rocket ship, not a flying carpet!"

Of course, Mxyztplk sounds ridiculous on the face of it---but no less ridiculous that Dr. Fate, or the Spectre, or Dream of the Endless, or Cthulhu, or She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed. No less a researcher of the paranormal than Dr. Jacque Vallee in DIMENSIONS, 1988, said, extraordinary sightings "need not represent a visitation from space visitors, but something even more interesting: a window toward undiscovered dimensions of our environment... beyond space-time... from a multiverse which is all around us, and of which we have stubbornly refused to consider the disturbing reality in spite of evidence available to us for centuries."

Vallee also said of such phenomena, "it appears to be inter-dimensional, and to manipulate physical realities outside of our own space-time continuum"

And that it...

"manipulates space and time in ways our scientific concepts are inadequate to describe,"

If such a visitation chooses to make itself look like a little man in a derby hat.... we can be sure it's not its true form.

On April 15, 1945, FDR is buried. After the funeral party departs, the JSA--including Superman---shows up for a private showing, kept from public sight by Green Lantern's ring.

In September 1945, Superman fought the Atoman, one of his toughest opponents. This story was a rarity in that it was true but aired on the Superman radio show, not the comic or the newspaper strip. Perhaps Siegel occasionally linked stories to the writers of the radio show. The Atoman/Atom Man, a German soldier named Heinrich Milch who survived the Third Reich, and was injected with a serum made from Kryptonite, possessed superhuman strength but gave off kryptonite radiations that nearly killed Superman. Joining the Planet under the name of Henry Miller, he pretended to be a veteren who was just out of the service.

The fight with Atoman was particularly harrowing, and at the end Superman mentions he never came so close to losing his life.

1945 had its lighter moments, like the bumbling Hocus and Pocus, "magicians by accident"---or rather, with the aid of Superman.

On December 7th, 1945, the All-Star Squadron---which had been a secret grouping--- disbanded, on the fourth anniversary of Pearl Harbor.

In February, 1947, Superman helps the Justice Society fight the "drowned men" who had been made ruthless by Koehaha, "The Stream of Ruthlessness". He also fought another extra-dimensional being, "the most powerful enemy I've ever faced", in his own admission, who was trying to "collect" Superman, in "The Case of the Living Trophies."

That was one of his last cases for that stage of his career. Both Clark and Lois had been reporters since 1932, and had been with the Planet since 1938. It was beginning to look odd that they were still there, unaging, while others were growing up and old all around them.

At the end of 1947, they quit the Planet, and went travelling, together, with funds they had saved between them. It was around that time that Siegel and Shuster had their breaking-off with DC Comics as to who had the rights to Superman as a fictional character. Superman, ever anxious to help the little guy, offered to persuade/terrorize some of the DC higher-ups. Siegel was anxious to win, but not at the cost of Superman possibly being exposed as real. So Siegel, in a moment of quiet heroism, refused Superman's offer to help....and lost the lawsuit---while Lois and Clark went travelling. (The artists and authors who remained continued to churn out stories, deviating more and more from Siegel's original vision of Superman and adding the stories about Superboy. These totally fictional adventures would eventually have Superman moving planets, kindling suns with his heat vision, travelling through time on his own power, and all sorts of impossible feats.)

The first place they went was England, where they stayed for about a year. They were there on March 15th, 1948. Clark looked overhead that night and saw, long before other devices could, an alien spacecraft entering our atmosphere....at too great a rate of speed, it seemed to be out of control---and heading for a major population center.

It was, literally, a job for Superman.

He flew up to meet it with the aid of the Legion flight-ring and collided with it, sending it away from the major population center to a more isolated spot. His x-ray vision indicated the occupants were in the midst of changing---evidently they could summon different "bodies" as needed out of a dimensional "closet"...and it's possible those within could have stopped their fall themselves. Yet he couldn't be sure of that, and hundreds of thousands of human lives were at stake, as opposed to the few inhabitants of the ship.

He watched, from a distance, while British Intelligence, led by Dr. Emil Gargunza, explored the spacecraft with its alien technology. He wondered what they would do with it....

That was Superman's only brush with the Marvelman/Miracleman project, which would take war orphan Mickey Moran and give him the ability to summon a super-powered adult self called "Marvelman"...yet they kept the superhumans dreaming, testing them for eventual use. Later the orphans were released for use, and tried to stop a plane carrying an a-bomb.

Michael Moran(a great-grandson of Colonel Sebastian Moran) grew up without remembering his life as Marvelman, until by accident he stumbled upon his trigger word, "Kimota". Alan Moore recorded his later deeds, but when reporters started edging towards the truth, he abruptly took the series into fantasy, writing about Kid Miracleman/Marvelman decimating London and a future where Miracleman/Marvelman was treated as a god, so as to throw them off the track. We have no idea what Michael Moran and Marvelman/Miracleman are doing now.

It's a shame Superman and Marvelman/Miracleman never met. They had a lot in common...

In 1949, he heard that Doc Savage and his companions had disappeared. He journeyed to Canada's far north, searching for Doc's mysterious Fortress of Solitude. He had heard about it, and without Doc to guard it, he shivered at the thought of someone unscrupulous getting hold of the fabulous machinery within it. It took a long, long time to find it, but a man with telescopic vision and x-ray vision who can move at super-speed can eventaully find anything. He finally located the huge blue dome structure that was the Fortress. Then, over the next few years, he built another structure in the side of a glacier itself, and moved the contents of Doc's Fortress into that one, which could be more easily hid and more easily defended, and destroyed what was left---the big blue dome.

So at the beginning of the fifties, he was far from civilization, in the frozen North.

PARTIAL LIST OF SOURCES:

Of course, TARZAN ALIVE and DOC SAVAGE: HIS APOCALYPTIC LIFE by Philip Jose Farmer.

Those interested with comments, suggestions, things I have forgotten, things I messed up, contact me at...
E-Mail:al.schroeder@nashville.com

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Speculations Copyright © Al Schroeder. Superman is owned by DC Comics, Warner Communications, and the Siegels. All other characters copyrighted by their respective owners.