SUPERMAN AND THE SPIDER

~SUPERMAN AND THE SPIDER ~

February 28,2001.

When Superman moved to New York City, and joined the NYC paper that Siegel called the "Daily Planet", he found it a very different city than Cleveland. For one thing, it had its own protectors who had operated there for years.

He had already met some of them---The Shadow's real identity was an adopted "cousin" through the Kents, and in another article I covered an adventure that Superman shared with Doc Savage.

I think I've found another adventure that both Superman (in the Sunday comic strip) and a pulp character shared---the half-brother of the Shadow--- the Spider, Richard Wentworth. Though no actual relation to even his foster-parents, they doubtless knew each other, although neither may have known of the other's secret identity.

In 1940, in the Sunday comic strip, produced by Siegel and Shuster (although there appears to be other hands helping with much of the pencilling, Shuster still redrew every face for Superman and Lois) there was a sequence called "The Bandit Robots of Metropolis", where Superman fought a group of giant robots who were terrorizing Metropolis. These "robots" were actually giant manlike "tanks" with human operators, which were waterproof and had their hideout hidden underwater. These robots knocked police aside like kingpins, toppled tenements, and did enormous damage and panicked the inhabitants therein.

Interestingly in the December 1939 issue of the SPIDER magazine (reprinted in 1993 in Spider #6) there was a story called "Satan's Murder Machines" in which Wentworth/the Spider fought giant robots which were run by human operators, who toppled tenement buildings, and who were waterproof and had a hideout underwater.

The cynical and small-minded might say one story was inspired by the other--- even plagiarized. Yet when you grant the reality of both...

It seems extremely likely that this is the same case, seen from the viewpoint of two different battlers against evil, and only by looking at both accounts do we get the full story. At the latest, it would have had to have happened by June 1939, which alone would give enough time for the Spider story to be written and printed. Yet that fits into Superman's timetable well, since he was in New York City from the latter part of 1938 on. Nita worried about Wentworth exposing himself to the freezing water of the Hudson River, and Lois alternated between a short-sleeved and a long sleeved dress in this adventure, so it probably happened in the early spring of 1939, when it's sometimes warm during the day, but definitely not hot, and very cold at night or in the river.

For instance, look at the above panel. Now read this description from Chapter Five of "Satan's Murder Machines".

"The robots, if such they were, moved with the cold and silent efficiency of machines. They marched on and, now and again, two of their number would wheel from ranks to push down the front wall of a building. They were as systematic as a highly trained drill team. They towered enormous and the death they dealt was contemptuous. The overcast skies were releasing their pent clouds in torrential rain. The wet steel glistened as the massive arm swung, and still they marched on, and another tenement crashed; other scores fled screaming from their path---or screamed, trapped beneath the falling debris!"

Interestingly, for fans of comics, the villain in the Spider story was called the Iron Man....a predecessor to Tony Stark.

Here's a description of one of the robots in the Spider story.

"The thing stood there for an instant beneath the swaying street light, a monster of steel, an iron man! Its head towered almost to that light, and the red glare from the traffic signal spilled like lucent blood across a gigantic torso. Arms swung from ponderous sholders and the head--the head was a replica of the helmet tattooed upon the Drexler's watchmen's chest! Two blank eyes that were plates of glass stared emptily; the mouth had teeth like a steam-shovel---and the empty glare of those awful eyes was fixed upon Wentworth!"

It's obvious from reading the two accounts that both heroes only uncovered part of the plot. Despite both Richard Wentworth and Nita Van Sloan going underwater in diving suits, they never discovered the reflective submarine which the giant robots harbored themselves. There appears to have been two squads of robots, some of which were dispatched by Superman's strength, others by Wentworth's firebombs. (Though Superman was stronger than any one robot, the group of them were formidable, and of course he didn't have as much mass as any one robot---which meant they could fling him aside, even though it didn't hurt him much.)

Superman, for his part, was too complacent that the robot-leader had been destroyed in an underground avalanche, underestimating the strength of the watertight and oxygen-containing robot...as the leader returned to the Drexler estate---there to be revealed by Richard Wentworth.

Note the similarity in the M.O.'s of the two stories' villains---giant robots encasing thugs who control them, who kidnapped the protagonist's girl friend at one point and take them underwater. (At least Lois didn't suffer the indignity that Nita Van Sloan was made to do, as they forced her to strip so they could send her clothes to the surface as a taunt to the Spider....of course, they probably would have done that, but Superman didn't give them the time...)

I suppose it could be two seperate attacks by the gang, or two seperate gangs, one inspired by the other, months or even years apart--- but I think Superman's experiences can be easily placed within the same timeframe as the Spider's battle with these extraordinary criminals. Occam's razor does not needlessly multiply explanations, so it's best to assume it's the same, onetime, attack.

Of course, Wentworth also had problems with being framed for robbery and murder (he was guilty of a lot of murders, just not this particular one) by the Iron Man, and being interrogated by his police official friend, Stanley Kirkpatrick.

Meanwhile, Superman listened in on a council-of-war by the Mayor, Fiorello LaGuardia, and his council...and ended up being suspected by LaGuardia of aiding the metal monsters.

Oddly enough, neither hero seems to have met the other during the entire adventure, in which they both fought the same villain...

Unless...

In Chapter Seven of "Satan's Murder Machines" Wentworth phones a "friend on a morning newspaper". The friend found for him the abandoned ferry slip on the East River which was another conveyence of the Iron Men. That newspaper man had found that same slip a month ago for a common friend, Frank Drexler.

Was the "friend on a morning newspaper" Clark Kent? As a sort of a relation, at least a cousin of his half-brother's, Wentworth might be more prone to use him, even if he offered Kent a bribe at the end. For his part, Kent might have suspected more to the "metal monsters'" origins than Siegel knew, and was researching it himself. Yet it was Wentworth who discovered who the real robot-leader was first....who witnessed the end of the Iron Man. (It's worth noting that the leader was already very weakened by his near-fatal encounter with Superman and the avalanche of rocks under the river....)

To my knowledge, it is the closest that the Master of Men ever got to joining with the Man of Steel. It's unknown how each would regard the other. Superman wasn't averse to taking the law into his own hands, of course, and at least in his early career he killed criminals who he felt deserved it. Yet the Spider was wanted by the police and had committed literally hundreds of criminals. Would Superman have tried to catch the Spider?

Would he have succeeded?

Or would Superman have recognized, in his own warped way, the Spider was a hero, fighting maniac after maniac? That he too was a champion of justice?

Sort of?

Would the Spider tried to exterminate Superman, as a dangerous freak of nature who takes the law into his hands?

It's also worth noting that the Spider, years earlier, fought a maniac known as the---Bat Man...

A predecessor for Bruce Wayne.

But that should be someone else's article, I think.

PARTIAL LIST OF SOURCES:

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

SPIDER #6, 1993.

SUPERMAN: THE SUNDAY CLASSICS 1939-1943.

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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