The thirties were when Superman's real career began. It began with the publication of GLADIATOR, and ended with an America which would soon be tossed into World War II.

Upon reading GLADIATOR, he decided to tour with circuses in Europe for a year or two, to refine his costume and to get away from any possible repurcussions from the publication of the novel. (Part of the time he did it with the Haly circus, and there met Mary Grayson and took the young Bruce Wayne with him.)

Finding that most of the real people in the novel never recognized themselves or read Wylie's novel, he decided it was safe to return. The Shadow had been operating in clandestine form for years, and the police searched for a criminal/vigilante called "The Spider". Dr. Clark Savage had turned the attention of himself and his associates to fighting evil...New York City seemed well taken care of, and he had no intention of getting in the way of his adopted cousin, Kent Allard/the Shadow. Chicago had been cleaned up by Elliot Ness in the last decade, but Cleveland was the nation's second most criminal-infested city according to statistics of the thirties, and filled with corruption. There he could operate with relative freedom....

Just prior to his being hired as Clark Kent by the Daily Star, Siegel's alias for a well-known Cleveland paper, Superman made his first appearance, as shown in the comic strip. Ten bank clerks were trapped in a bank vault. He burst through the wall, and opened the vault door, as he had done years before---but in his costumed identity he didn't bother to do it after sending others out, but gloried in it. The bank managers, understandably, didn't believe their own eyes.

Ten men were locked in, but only eight walked out. Two had died because Superman had not heard of the incident in time. He had been edging towards journalism as a career, but that act clenched it. He had to get news quickly to take advantage of it...

The actual act of hiring Kent followed the events of the comic book story in Action #1, not the comic strip story, and happened in the summer of '32. That comic strip story was actually about a later adventure, with the drama of Clark being hired thrown in to clue the comic strip readers in, who may have never read the comic book. One can tell from two clues: the story seems to have taken place in winter, not summer when Superman really started his career, and, more tellingly in that first comic strip adventure his super-hearing was working, an ability that would only manifest itself months after he started working for the Daily Star.

It was no small feat to get hired in the midst of the Depression, but Clark managed it.

There he met the adventurous and fiery reporter, that Siegel called Lois Lane. (Of course, Lois Lane, George Taylor, and Clark Kent are all aliases.) Lois was born around 1912, to Sam Lane and Ella Cochrane. (Ella was a cousin to Elizabeth Cochrane, also known as "Nellie Bly",one of the most famous reporters in the world, and one of the first famous female reporters. Around the turn of the century, she faked madness and wrote of being in a madhouse, and later imitated Phileas Fogg's eighty-day trek around the world.) She was one of four sisters in a large family, including Margo Lane (who would become Lamont Cranston's/the Shadow's companion and like Lois, was a snooping brunette who often complicated more than she helped the Shadow's adventures), Susie Thompkin's mother, and the baby, Lucy Lane.

Stuck by a "good ol' boys" system that relegated her to "sob sister" status, she burned to do some real reporting. Fearless to the point of foolhardiness, the burlesque of meekness that Kent had adopted--indeed, overacted--- was the last thing that would appeal to her.

His Superman persona, at first, also had problems for her. At first Lois was afraid of him, in his costumed persona, as anyone might be afraid of a seemingly normal man who could perform impossible feats, with inhuman strength and speed. She could not get George Taylor to believe her tales of this impossible character. At first he suspected she was drinking.

It didn't help that the newly-hired reporter, Clark Kent, seemed to do everything in his power to downplay or laugh off reports of this "Superman". Not only did she despise him for his cowardice and disgusting meekness, but she was trying desperately to escape the "sob sister" stigma, the advice to the Lovelorn strip that Taylor tried to stick her with. Here she was, being saved repeatedly by a fantastic being, literally the Scoop of the Century, but no one would believe her!

She and Clark were dispatched to South America almost immediately after he was hired, and this fantastic being followed and saved her from being executed as a spy by the firing squad. He seemed immune to her sexual overtures...her breathless "when will I see you again..." which actually was just a lure to find out more about this fantastic being.

Still, when she and Clark returned from South America, she found out more. There were rumours that Ohio governor George White had pardoned a killer because of a midnight incursion of a bulletproof being who was not human. Of criminals and corrupt politicians, who, one by one, were mysteriously killed or sent scurrying from Cleveland. The tales of a mysterious being who leaped over buildings and laughed at bullets weren't believed, but they did become a rumour laughed at by serious reporters---except Lois---similar to UFO reports and Sasquatch sightings in serious newsrooms these days.

In the spring of '33, Superman saved her and an entire town from destruction from a flood. He scooped her up from a flood-overtaken car, and toppled a mountain peak to divert a flood away from a town. It was that act---not the saving of her, not his superhuman abilities or strange costume, but his laboring to save thousands of strangers from a watery death---that won her over, that made her realize she loved him.

She gave him a kiss, admitting she loved him, and when he left, she said, very breathlessly, and very sincerely, this time, "Don't go! Stay with me...always..."

On Superman's side of the equation it was even odder. Remember, he wasn't a shy awkhard hayseed-virgin, as the comics or movies might have you believe. He was the same Hugo Danner whose dark attractiveness to women and many affairs had been explored in Wylie's novel. Yet after his offer of marriage had been rejected by Lori Lemaris, he had ...matured. He still had needs, of course, but he really didn't want to louse up his new career by sleeping with the woman whose main idea, he suspected, was to reveal his existence and win a Pulitzer. She had just pulled a dirty trick to divert Clark Kent---he wasn't sure her protestations of love were real, or if they were a ruse.

Besides, the novelty of being rejected---as Clark Kent---was vastly amusing to him. He had never been rejected before, unless it was because of the discovery of his strength, his uniqueness. To think that she knew all about his strength and wasn't turned off by it, but instead was turned off by his powerless pose as Clark, was an interesting reversal.

Lois was different from any other female he had ever met, from Anna Blake/Lana Lang to Lefty's cousin Iris, to the one-time prostitute he had rescued from that life to help him in the carnival, or the farmer's wife he had an affair with, who was scared to death when he saved them both with his strength.

Thus was born one of the great moments of sexual-romantic tension ever created...

Clark continued on his dual careers. It seems that the more ahhh, unusual and fiendish criminals mainly were hitting New York City. While the Shadow fought the likes of Schwan Khan and the Voodoo Doctor, and the Spider fought the Fly and Dco Savage fought John Sunlight, Superman was mainly facing corrupt politicians and ordinary criminals. (Which actually do more harm to the average citizen.) Paradoxically, this fantastic being dealt with social issues and more down-to-earth criminals and even wife-beaters and reckless gamblers.

With one interesting exception...

The Ultra-Humanite.

As proved in a recent article,"The Reign of the Supermen" by Kai Axel Jansson, the Ultra-Humanite was also the bald-headed "Superman", Bill Dunn, of Jerry Siegel's story, "The Reign of the Superman", whose mentality was increased by an experiment. His telepathic powers faded after that (and much later returned, according to Roy Thomas) and his body became crippled, but his amazing mind let him become the secret mastermind behind much of the higher criminal world around Cleveland. Siegel heard rumors about his original transformation, and made it into a story....

Speaking of which, months before he encountered the Ultra-Humanite, Clark encountered Siegel and Shuster. The rumors about Superman had culminated in a conman named Nick Williams,(brother to Sandford Williams and uncle to Simon and Eric Williams, who became an Avenger---under the name Wonder Man---and an Avengers' enemy--under the name the Grim Reaper---respectively.) ,sure that all the rumors are false, claiming to be Superman's "agent" and trying to get business deals for him. Most of the ones shown "accepted"---a billboard showing the Superman car, for instance---in the story were as fake as Williams was, to impress George Taylor and to get him publicity in Taylor's paper. He even arranged for Superman to appear "in the comic strips"...

Obviously Williams wouldn't hire an Alex Raymond or a Hal Foster for the strip...that would cost real money. He hired two kids in high school, with barely any credentials to their name, named Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.

When their employer was arrested, along with a fake Superman, for trying to kill Lois Lane, Siegel went to visit Williams in jail, and heard a tale of a real Superman, of Williams warning Siegel to stay away from the whole project. Intrigued, albeit a little frightened, Siegel began some more research, and found there were a lot of people who claimed to have seen this superhuman character. Could there be any truth...?

Soon Clark, no slouch at research himself, found out that a young teenager was trying to find out more about him. He leaped down to him in his Superman identity one summer night, hoping to scare Siegel into silence...and found himself instead talked into a seemingly odd proposition.

"These rumors are flying about you. The costume's a good idea---makes you look as unlikely as something out of Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers. Which gave me the idea. If we could turn you into a comic strip, like Alley Oop or Thimble Theater, people would never admit to seeing you...."

It seemed like an absurd idea...but Superman knew that his cousin, the Shadow, was doing something very similar, sending radio messages (in code) by being the voice of a spooky radio-show host, and also having a Walter Gibson, under the pseudonym of Maxwell Grant, record his actual adventures, changing the names of those concerned and exaggerating some episodes---as a consequence, everyone thought the Shadow was a fictional character, save for a few police inspectors and half of New York's underworld, who knew better.

So Superman agreed. Unfortunately, the idea of Superman was so--- unusual--- that it would take five years for Siegel and Shuster to sell the idea...

Superman took an--unusual--method of slum clearance in one story---by tearing the slums down himself--- and Governor White made up a cover story and had the area rebuilt. A few of the reporters were now privately convinced that there was something to the "Superman" story but couldn't lay their hands on any hard evidence, and didn't dare print it for fear of being laughed at. When Elliot Ness came at the police chief's insistence to help stop Superman, the reward posted was not for Superman per se, but the person who had been behind the destruction in the slums. Ness failed, and would return later to help Cleveland get its criminal population under control. Between Ness and Superman, Cleveland became a much safer town...

Superman continued on his crusade against corruption throughout the mid-thirties, forced the mayor to enforce safe driving laws (Cleveland had the highest automobile fatality for a city its size in the world) and declared war on gambling.

He fought the Ultra-Humanite several times, including stopping a plague that could have rivalled the Black Plague if it had gotten out. (A few months later, the Ultra-Humanite, supposedly killed in that adventure, came back---as a beautiful starlet into which his brain had been implanted. Brain transplants decades before heart transplants---now that's a sign of advanced mentality!)

Along that time, in 1938, Siegel and Shuster finally sold the Superman idea to DC Comics, and began running the feature in ACTION comics. Both the creators and the publishers---and the subject of the strip---were astounded at how popular it became, although it took several months before he was the regular cover feature, the editors being unsure of its appeal.

Then George Taylor sent Clark and Lois to cover the "Talon-Galonia" war in September 1938---actually, Germany's invasion of the Sudentenland. There they encountered Luthor for the first time, who convinced them that he was manipulating the war for his own ends. Superman, who remembered the horrors of World War I and had become a pacifist,almost an isolationist, was convinced by Luthors ruse and in his Clark Kent identity, may have been one of the influences that caused Chamberlain to believe in Hitler's lies. Luthor was in Hitler's pay--not that he had any love of fascism, but someone had to bankroll his schemes, so he was temproarily in Hitler's pay to divert blame for the invasion.

It was Superman's greatest failure. He could have stopped Hitler then, at the beginning of his invasions---if he hadn't been tricked into thinking Luthor was manipulating both sides. If he hadn't been trapped by his own wishful thinking that a holocaust that would dwarf World War I could be avoided.

When Lois and Clark returned, they were told to stop at New York, and have their things sent for from Cleveland. For there had been a couple of developements....

George Taylor had been promoted by the newspaper chain that ran both the Daily Star in Cleveland and a New York paper that Siegel called the Daily Planet, in New York City. He had been made the managing editor of the Daily Planet, and could take any two reporters with him that he thought contributed to his success. Naturally he picked Clark and Lois---Lois had long ago graduated from her "sob sister" status.

By this time, Cleveland had become relatively tame, thanks to Superman's brand of vigilantism/social reform and the cleaning out of corrupt politicians. He was eager for new challenges, so he decided by now he could move into New York without getting into his cousin's way.

At first LaGuardia, who started to receive reports of this extraordinary being, was sceptical. After hearing privately from George White, governor of Ohio, and the mayor of Cleveland that Superman was indeed real, he became suspicious of Superman's ideals. Superman, for his part, found that New York City was a much different city than the corrupt Cleveland. La Guardia had already swept many of the rascals out from city government who had thrived under Jimmy Walker. If Superman proved less a reformer under this phase, it was because it was less needed, that many of the political reforms had already been made. (Siegel called any city Superman lived in "Metropolis" so as not to worry about any identifications---or lawsuits---when Superman exposed corrupt politicians.)

As time progressed into 1939, Superman was becoming so popular that he had a newspaper strip as well as the comic book, and they were starting to air a radio show about him. Lois had no time for such "frivolities", but Clark knew that once she did listen to a radio show, or see one of the comic books or comic strips, she would immediately put two and two together, despite the fictionalizations of the names...and realize the "meek, cowardly" companion was in reality the superhuman being who had saved her, again and again....

He was trying to figure out how to tell her the truth. Still, Superman in 1939 wasn't quite the household word he is in 2001, and Lois had no idea she was being portrayed in a comic book, a comic strip, and a radio show...

Hitler invaded Poland, and World War II began in earnest....although without America, as of yet. The newspaper strip showed exactly what Lois and Clark were doing at the time. After a story with some gangsters that she and Superman got involved with, Lois was hoping to see her story on the front page, but instead saw...

That would have had to have been September 3, 1939, when Britain and France declared war on Germany for its invasion of Poland two days before. Her story had been relegated to an inside page, but for once she didn't mind---for this horrible news of war still meant that there would be plenty of news to cover.

Clark was more horrified, being older than Lois, and having lived through World War I's folly on the battlefield. Like many Americans, he was something of a pacifist, even an isolationist--and hoped to have America avoid the European war altogether.

The impending war in Europe wasn't the only thing that concerned Clark in 1939. Superman was hearing rumors about other beings, though, in 1939....in many ways disturbingly similar to himself. A sea-breathing super-strong man caused havoc in some parts of New York. Lois and Clark were there when Professor Horton introduced his artifical man to the press...that burst into flames, without harming the android, when oxygen was introduced. (If you scan faces of the press in Alex Ross' MARVELS, you'll see Lois and Clark clearly there.) Clark later heard of the android's escape and consequent reformation, working unofficially with the police department of New York City. (Horton had somewhat modeled the android after Clark's hyper-metabolism. It's significant that a transfusion of the android's artificial blood---he, like Superman, was a universal donor---resulted in super-speed being given to a British woman in wartime.) He heard rumors of a super-fast being called the Flash, and of a near-invulnerable being in a patriotic costume being used by the FBI. Towards the end of 1939, he was puzzled by reports of a being who sounded a lot like him, but in places and situations he hadn't been in, calling itself ---Captain Marvel.

In Cleveland, Siegel heard rumors about a ghost haunting the underworld called the Spectre, and made him the subject of a comic strip.

There were also nonpowered avengers, more inspired by the Shadow and the Spider than by him. There was Batman, and the Sandman, and others...

Superman had no idea how soon --and how many---others would rise up with other superhuman powers....but that's part of the theme for the next decade.

Nor did he realize the war he was passionately trying to keep America out of...would soon intrude on all of them.

PARTIAL LIST OF SOURCES:

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

"The Reign of the Supermen" by Kai Axel Jansson

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.