It probably startled many wartime comic readers when, for the first time, a comic with a team of super-heroes was released, for DC/All-American Comics' best and brightest--- that Superman, although mentioned, barely ever made an apparance. Oh, he was made an "honorary member" from the start, but he barely joined in.

We can't say he wasn't a joiner. As a teenager, he served with the Legion of Super-Heroes (albeit in plainclothes, looking more like the Young All-Stars' Arn Munro than the Superboy we associate with them) and later, with the Justice League, he seemed to join in more whole heartedly. Why did he choose to abstain from the Justice Society?

To examine that wraps us up in Superman's odd attitude in the early days of World War II, and other matters of timing.

First off, let's set the stage. In "The Untold Origin of the Justice Society" Superman and nine other super-heroes, the nascent JSA, stop the invasion of England and the bombing of Washington in Winter 1940. Many people have applauded this story, fans and writers alike, and I have to join in it. Yet no less an expert than Roy Thomas wrote that Hitler would have never attempted crossing to England during the Winter, when the weather was bad, and the waters of the Channel were choppy--- but would have instead attacked during the summer.

That's exactly right. The events told by Joe Staton and Paul Levitz actually happened in Summer 1940, before FDR was re-elected. Which may explain why it took so long to come to light. Despite running on a campaign pledging not to get us involved with the growing World War II, FDR was working with Sir William Stephenson to covertly defend Britain after the fall of France, in ways many of the noninterventionist members of the public might not have approved of.

For months, the FBI had been bringing him reports of extraordinary beings. Initially disbelieved or dismissed (was this the original "X-Files"?) FDR had eventually been persauded of the reality of same...

...And it scared him to death. He had no less than the authority of an old political crony, George White, ex-governor of Ohio, that Superman existed, even if that was not officially acknowledged by White. (See Superman's first published adventure.) What could these extraordinary beings do? Would they attempt a coup d'etat if frustrated? FDR ordered the FBI to cover the tracks of these beings as much as humanly feasible, lest the news get out and panic the population. (Please note the "Top Secret" and "Eyes Only" in that drawing by Joe Station.)

FDR recalled the panic caused by Orson Welles' 1938 "War of the Worlds" broadcast, and tried to imagine what news of superhuman beings existing would do to the average population...and realized that here might be the germs of a massive panic.

When an agent from Sir William Stephenson came with a dire need, is it any wonder that FDR proposed using these beings to defend Britain? If they succeeded, fine. If they didn't survive---well, that was one less problem to deal with.

I don't want to accuse FDR of being cynical, but sometimes hard choices need to be made, and he had no way to tell what the superhumans' intentions were in the long run. Superman had been operating since 1932 and taken the law into his own hands many times, often killing killers, demolishing property, and threatening admittedly corrupt politicians. He wasn't one of the ones who was eventually contacted at first---but the others were nearly as bad in their disregard for conventional law in their pursuit of justice. They were literally, loose cannons with enormous power.

Readers of "Untold Origin" know the story---of how Batman, the first Flash, and the first Green Lantern ventured into a nazi spy stronghold in Glasgow only to be defeated by an experimental machine of the Nazis. How they were taken to Berlin, where Hitler himself, displaying the Spear of Destiny, reacted to the appearance of Hourman and Dr. Fate. I don't want to comment on the Valkyries he summoned---what's unlikely in a story that has the likes of Dr. Fate and the Spectre?---except to wonder if these were real Valkyries or projections of Hitler's idea of Valkyries, given mystical life by the Spear?

Dr. Fate in turn summoned, to stop the invasion of Britain, Hawkman, the Atom, the Sandman, and most tellingly, the Spectre. The Spectre almost single-handedly destroyed the fleet sent to Britain---in the Channel, before they landed in Dover, despite what the story said.

Then they pursued a special experimental long-range bomber that was going to bomb Washington (!) in a move much more reckless than any Hitler had done to date. Unfortunately, that bomber was protected by the Valkyries, and even Dr. Fate and the Spectre could not penetrate their guard...

Meanwhile, below, in a Washington press building, Clark Kent looked upwards with his marvellous sight---and briefly wondered if he was losing his mind. He wondered if he was having a particularly vivid hallucination (remember, many of these superhumans he had never heard of before, and they were fighting Valkyries)---but then wasted no time in changing to Superman and leaping upwards and destroying the bomber, and, with Dr. Fate's help, catching the immense bomb that would have levelled the White House.

If Superman was startled by their appearance, think how the others felt. This was the summer of 1940. Superman had been appearing in the comics for two years, even though he had been operating behind the scenes for six more years. A radio show had started about him. He was becoming famous....as a fictional character. Imagine how startled the other JSAers were, to be saved at the last instant---by a "fictional" character.

If Peter Pan had suddenly popped up and saved them, they would have been no more surprised.

One Valkyrie sneaked in to destroy FDR, sensing he was the enemy of the man who summoned her. The Atom heroically got in the way of the blast that would have killed FDR, and Superman grabbed the Valkyrie in his mighty hands...and she faded away, knowing she could not win against such power. Leaving Superman more than a little...spooked.

FDR, ever the politician, was faced with most of the superhumans he had feared, and they had saved his life. They seemed eager to help the country, to respect him as President....contrary to his fears. Why not gather the superhumans to police themselves? To work in concert with the FBI and the government as a secret weapon of the USA? He suggested that they stay together as a group, under government direction---

Superman alone voiced a dissent.

"I don't think that's possible."

There were a couple of reasons for Superman's dissenting voice. Moreso than many of the others, he had often been involved with corrupt politicians, and he feared what the influence of politicians into their line of work might be. (Considering the disbanding of the JSA in the early fifties rather than face the scrutiny of Joe McCarthy's group, perhaps he had a point.)

Secondly he was---well, spooked--by much of the membership of the Justice Society. Flash seemed okay, a scientific phenomenom whose speed might even exceed his own. Hourman also seemed reasonable, although he wondered about the chemical changes into getting someone to change so drastically in an hour. Batman reminded him somewhat of his adopted cousin The Shadow, as did the Sandman in a different way, although he had doubts about the Atom, who simply seemed to be a costumed college athelete.

Yet---Green Lantern had a mystic ring,which Superman couldn't understand. Doctor Fate was an eons-old sorcerer who seemed to have stepped straight out of a H.P. Lovecraft story. The Spectre was the most frightening as well as the most powerful, with immense powers Superman couldn't understand, and claiming to be a ghost. Also bear in mind that Superman lived for a while in Cleveland, which was obviously also the home of Jim Corrigan/the Spectre, which Jerry Siegel---also the Spectre's chronicler---called "Cliffland". (Later Superman moved to New York City.) He may have known Jim Corrigan when he was alive---and recognized him, with a shock--- in the cold, dead visage of--- the Spectre.

Oddest of all, in some ways, was Hawkman, who had an anti-gravity metal (was Hawkman a grand-nephew of the Professor Cavor in THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON by H.G. Wells? Did he receive the "ninth metal" formulae from family sources, from notes on Cavorite?)--- yet dressed up as Horus the Avenging hawk-god and thought he was the reincarnation of an Egyptian prince. In many ways he set the tone of paradox, of the eccentric mixture of the mystical with a little science fiction, that was the JSA, and Superman wasn't surprised, later, when Hawkman became the JSA's third and permanent chairman during its first incarnation.

This was not the Legion of Super-Heroes, who came from a science-fictional background as he did. For the most part, the JSA's most powerful players were powerful mystics, and Superman came from a rationalist background, as anyone who read GLADIATOR could tell. Even accepting their existence, and their foes, the Valkyries', opened abysses in his understanding and worldview that was hard to take and would take a while to assimilate.

However, Superman was overruled by the others. Giving in, he agreed.

It is interesting to note that when Franklin Roosevelt proposed they form a sort of goverment battalion, Hawkman agreed---remember, Hawkman was really the wealthy Carter Hall, from the same social class as FDR...and it was Superman who dissented again, refusing to be part of any army, and defining their fight as a fight "in the cause of justice", giving them their name. It shows Superman's deep distrust of government that he objected to becoming an arm of the military...and Hawkman's relative acceptance of same.

Instead, the JSA became more modelled after the FBI, a collection of the elite among the superhuman and superlative-enabled, and though cooperating with other government branches, especially during the darkest days of World War II, where it got renamed the Justice Battalion--it did not become just a political arm of the White House. Carter Hall/Hawkman, to do him justice, managed to steer the JSA away from such political traps, until the McCarthy hearings.

Another factor in Superman's rarely helping the JSA had to do with his initial reaction to war and rearnament. Remember, Superman, as Hugo Danner, had fought in World War I. Like many World War I veterens, he had seen the WW1 propaganda and saw how it fell short of the reality, and had grown a bit cynical. Those who have read GLADIATOR know his disgust at the elder Shayne's investing his small funds in munitions and making him a millionaire---Danner/Kent considered it blood money---and his confrontation with a corrupt politician in Washington, who was taking money from munitions makers to get us embroiled in another war.

When we view his first adventure as Superman, we seem much the same thing. Clark observed a corrupt politician being bribed by a slick lobbyist to try to get us embroiled in war, and later terrorized both the lobbyist, and the munitions manufacturer who hired him. With reason, no doubt---but one wonders if Superman's efforts from 1932 on had resulted in America being weaker than it need be at this crucial time.

It's notable that many patriotic Americans were isolationists at the time---Charles Lindburgh, another high-flying hero, comes to mind. Superman certainly wasn't an isolationist, but he was deeply suspicious of munitions makers and those who would cynically push people towards war. Despite his often violent nature, Superman, like many who lived through the horror of four years of trench warfare in World War I, became something of a pacifist, a non-interventionist.

A good idea...but at the wrong time...with Hitler stirring.

Superman was, quite frankly, suspicious of FDR, and whether he would get America embroiled in the growing World War II. He enjoyed many of FDR's social programs and reforms, but he distrusted his foreign policy a little, and as a reporter, being suspicious of what a politician says is almost second nature. Though he despised everything Hitler stood for, his telescopic and x-ray vision could not reach around the curvature of the Earth, nor peer through the immense bulk of the Earth, so everything he heard about Hitler was second-hand. He thought Hitler was a threat, but didn't realize the depths of his evil till later.

It was Superman's greatest failure, in many ways. If he had thought Hitler had been serious about the "final solution", he could have gone into Germany in the mid-thirties and destroyed the embyonic Third Reich. He, like many Americans, and at least one British prime minister---Neville Chamberlain--- didn't fully realize what a threat Hitler was, and hesitated to overthrow a major European power. Later, of course, Hitler's Spear of Destiny kept Superman from doing what came naturally in Axis lands.

I suspect the Talon-Galonia war, which appeared in two stories and introduced Luthor, was actually a fictionalization of Germany's invasion of the Sudentenland in September 1938, after which Chamberlain declared the infamous "peace in our times". That Luthor had been hired by Hitler to distract the Allies and this new irritant,Superman, to make him think that it was all Luthor's doing to agitate a new war.

At first Clark tried to convince the negotiating authorities, and was laughed at...

Yet later he gathered more evidence to convince the most sceptical....he just didn't realize that Luthor's entire plan was a red herring to distract the Allies and Superman himself, rather than assigning all the blame to Hitler, where it belonged. That once Luthor disappeared, people would suppose---wrongly---that Hitler would be content with the lands he had. That Hitler would keep his word.

Perhaps the secret evidence they uncovered, the remains of Luthor's vast dirigible, helped convince Chamberlain. If so, it was Luthor's first and greatest triumph, and Superman's most terrible failure...for it gave Hitler time to maneuver and later invade Poland, Holland, France....showing even a man with x-ray vision can sometimes be---terribly short-sighted.

FDR doubtless got word of that, and that may have been another reason he didn't initially try to recruit Superman---that a mistake of that magnitude, even though it was two years in the past, rendered him an unlikely candidate to work for Roosevelt's intention of rescuing Britain from the German fleet.

Even when World War II started (above is an artist's depiction of Superman, with some other heroes, JSA and non-JSA, at Pearl Harbor the day after the attack) he was primarily moved by the idea to stop the war quickly, to save lives. Unfortunately, he wasn't allowed to do that...

All of this is perfectly consistent, might I add, with the personality of Hugo Danner who emerged embittered after World War I, as portrayed by Philip Wylie, and adds validity to the identification of Hugo Danner with Clark Kent.

Soon afterwards, Clark Kent tried to enlist in his Clark Kent identity. Nervous at the draft board, in his desire to join and his hope they wouldn't uncover the oddities of his physiology, he came to the eye test...

Accidentally, he used his x-ray vision, and read the eye chart in the next room, rather than the one right in front of him. The doctor declared him near-blind and 4-F.

The shame of it...

Superman detested fascism, yet in both his identities, he was unable to fight the fascists...

A word about the Spear of Destiny. That was introduced in the "Untold Origin"--- at least as far as main comics continuity was concerned--- and was used by Roy Thomas as an explanation of why some of the more powerful superhumans---the Spectre, Dr. Fate, Wonder Woman, even Captain Marvel---didn't just wipe Hitler from the face of the Earth.

One doesn't doubt Hitler's continued interest in the occult, expressed many times. Certainly Professor "Indiana" Jones experiences with the search for the Ark of the Covenent points to Hitler's interest in same. If the U.S. government had the Ark of the Covenent somewhere in its vaults, can we rule the Spear of Destiny out?

Quite frankly, it is hard to believe after World War II started, anything less than such a prohibition would have kept certain superhumans (the Spectre comes to mind) from reducing Berlin to rubble.

That doesn't mean that Hitler wasn't totally without defenses, and not just military ones. The Red Skull was one of his operatives, a skilled but human operative, on a par with Captain America or The Batman. There was the super-strong Captain Nazi, who came to America and tried to assasinate super-heroes one by one. Obviously these costumed operatives were created, to a certain extent, to rival the heroes of the JSA. Still, it doesn't appear that Hitler had any superhumans who might stop Dr. Fate or the Spectre---without the Spear.

Why Superman is so vulnerable to such non-scientific forces, even more so than normal humans, is a puzzle that no one, quite frankly, has an answer for. We just note it.

Although Superman did aid the JSA twice during the forties---both times at the request of Johnny Thunder, oddly enough (doubtless Superman felt sorry for the dim-witted Johnny)---he did not feel comfortable taking the orders of anyone, even the President. He supported the President in many points, and despised facism, as he showed over and over again, later---but he felt like a team of superhumans being turned into an arm of the government was a bit much.

Of course, the JSA operated in a much more secretive way than the comics hinted at (as did Superman himself). Many of the members, at FDR's suggestion, contacted the same comic book company Superman used, because the fact that Superman was thought to be fictional actually aided him---no one who saw him would admit it. They also became comic book stars, as did the entire JSA....and became, thus, more unlikely to be reported on in real life.

As for other leaks...let's just say the fastest man alive, moving thousands of times faster than other men, as well the mystic ring of Green Lantern, the spells of Dr. Fate and the Spectre...combined with a little wartime censorship...worked quickly and efficiently to delete all clues or news reports that might lead one to them. FDR still feared, not without reason, a general panic if news that superhumans worked among us became general knowledge.

Superman did not personally dislike FDR, and backed many of his liberal and progressive programs, as shown below. Yet much of the country in the late thirties and pre-Pearl Harbor were non-interventionists, and believed America should stay out of the growing European war. That fit in with Superman's own antiwar, pacifistic inflinations.

Similarly, FDR might not have felt at ease with Superman---who had shown many times that he would take the laws in his own hands, who was not as easy to manage as Hawkman, or his predecessors, Flash and Green Lantern, as chairmans of the Justice Society. FDR might have felt more comfortable with the non-honorary Justice Society members, who showed that they were ready to obey orders either from FDR or J.Edgar Hoover without question---then the more skeptical Superman.

Superman felt more at ease when, later in his career, the infant United Nations made Superman their "secret weapon", with an emphasis on the secret---feeling that the political influences would cancel each other out.

He would feel much more at home with the United Nations-sponsored Justice League of America, of the late fifties and early sixties, which initially had one other alien with comparable powers to his, J'Onn J'Onzz---and a second Green Lantern, whose ring was the product of alien science, not magic. The entire organization was much more science fictional and futuristic than the Justice Society was, and often fought advanced science or aliens. Though initially he didn't join in as much as some of the others, soon he was a regularly attending member of the Justice League. The only mystical member of the League was also someone who had been part of the Society--Wonder Woman---and he still had enough of the ladies' man Hugo Danner in him to feel perfectly at ease with her, no matter what the source of her powers.

Really, the JLA should have been originally called the Justice League of the World, or Justice League International, but after the Justice Society fell victim to the red-baiting Joe McCarthy in the early fifties, they thought it sensible to mention prominently their country of origin and allegiance---for most of them, anyway. Then, as now, there are some people in America who dislike the UN. Still, the JLA took its directions more from the Secretary-General, who used them as a secret UN peacekeeping force, than the American President. Most of the threats they fought were global, often protecting the Earth from forces from outside space or time.

In many ways, another superhero team, the Avengers, was more the successor to the JSA, since the Avengers got its authority from the National Security Council. Or, if I may use the analogy, the JSA was like the FBI, only for super-humans. The JLA was a UN-sponsored peacekeeping force, only for superhumans. The Avengers, on the other hand, were the superhuman equivelent of the CIA.

Although Superman wished the Justice Society well--and several times the JSA and the JLA met, and he got to meet with his old Society friends, who envied him his eternal youth---he would always be more at ease with the Justice League.

PARTIAL LIST OF SOURCES:

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

Pictures and references taken from:

Action #2, July 1938. "Men are cheap, munitions expensive"

Action #22, March 1940."So once again the world is being flung into a terrible conflagration.."

Action #23, April 1940."My plan? To send the nations of the Earth..." and, "I can't reveal my source of information..." and, "You've seen the strange dirigible..."

Superman #2, "Superman Champions Universal Peace" "I'm going to give you the fate you deserve, Lubane..."

DC Special #29, "The Untold Origin of the Justice Society" "Still, I must do something, and I believe I know what..." and "You would make a snappy army regiment" and "--Form a special super-battalion--"

All-Star Squadron #4, "Day of the Dragon King", December 1981. "If we could end this war, and it now--today---think of all the lives we'd save!"

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.