History of Superheroes
Part 1: The Early Years
THE FIRST SUPERHEROES
Although superheroes did not begin to appear in comics, nor the term actually phrased until the early twentieth century, superheroes can be found in literature throughout history. Many of the heroes of antiquity such as Hercules, Samson, Achilles and Perseus were endowed with powers that exceeded those of mortal men.
A superhero is defined as being a “fictional hero having extraordinary or superhuman powers”. Doesn’t this definition describe the four figures above, as much as it does Superman, Batman, Captain America or Spiderman?
Indeed the conception for many of today’s superheroes can be found in these heroes of the past. The most obvious of course being Thor — the Nordic god of thunder. There is also the Amazonian Wonder Woman, and the Flash, who shares many similarities to Mercury, the fastest of the Roman gods.
Be that as it may, the first superheroes, as we think of them today appeared in the early twentieth century. The Scarlet Pimpernel was perhaps the first, appearing in a 1903 play, then crossing over into literature, and eventually film. He popularised the notion of a masked avenger defending the innocent and powerless. A nobleman by day, the Scarlet Pimpernel would disguise his identity and audaciously rescue unfortunates who were destined for the guillotine.
Then in 1919, Zorro made his first appearance in “The Curse of Capistrano”, a five part serial featured in All Story Weekly, and in 1933 The Lone Ranger made his debut in a radio show broadcast by Detroit station WXYZ.
Listen to radio episodes of the Lone Ranger
However, probably the first superhero to appear in a comic strip was Mandrake the Magician. Created in 1934 by Lee Falk, Mandrake used his extraordinary powers of hypnosis to fight crime by rendering criminals impotent with terrifying illusions. He proved to be so popular, that Falk was asked to create another comic strip for the newspaper.
He initially presented the publishers with a comic strip based on the legendary English King, Arthur, which they quickly rejected. It was this rejection that led him to create The Phantom, who made his debut in February of 1936. Falk originally imagined that the Phantom would be the alter ego of rich playboy Jimmy Wells. However, his love of myths and legends led him to set the character in the fictional African country of Bengalla, where the mantle of the Phantom has been passed down from father to son for twenty generations. Although the Phantom in Falk’s strips is actually the 21st reincarnation of the crime fighter, the outside world believes there has ever been only one, so he is also known as the ‘ghost who walks’, and ‘the man who cannot die’.
It was not until the 1940’s that the Phantom started to appear in his own comic book, and continued to do so until 1995, when DC decided to end his run. However the Phantom still appears in newspaper comic strips around the world, almost 80 years after he made his debut.
SUPERMAN AND BATMAN
In early 1938 National Allied Publications were looking to publish their fourth comic book. They had released the highly successful Detective Comics the previous year, and co-owner Jack Liebowitz wanted to capitalise on that success with another similarly themed comic book.
Due to time restraints editor Vin Sullivan was having difficulty finding a lead feature for the new comic, so he turned to former co-worker Sheldon Mayer for help. Meyer came across a series of strips that had previously been rejected, and Sullivan agreed to use them as long as the creators — Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster — could paste the strips into a 13 page feature.
They were able to do so, and in April of 1938 the first issue of Action Comics was released to the American public. The comic was an anthology of eleven stories, and on its cover featured the title character of Siegel and Shuster’s lead story lifting a car above his head. This character was of course Superman.
National Allied released 200,000 copies of the first issue which were quickly sold out, although they failed at first to recognise that Superman was largely responsible. It was not long before Action Comics was selling in excess of a million copies a month, and in 1939 Superman was given his own stand-alone comic book.
Due to the overwhelming success of Superman, editors at National Allied began searching for new superheroes. In response Bob Kane came up with the idea of the Batman. Although credited for many years as the sole creator of Batman, in reality the character was actually very much a collaboration between Kane and another comic writer — Milton “Bill” Finger. Finger designed the costume, wrote many of the stories, gave Bruce Wayne and Gotham City their names, and created the Batmobile and Batcave.
Batman made his debut in Detective Comics issue 27, and was an instant success. That success has continued to this day. In the first quarter of 2014 Batman was the highest selling comic book in the US, and sales are sure to increase dramatically given the caped crusader celebrated his 75th birthday earlier this year.
With the introduction of Superman and Batman came what historians consider to be the ‘golden age of comics’. Lasting a little over a decade this was when comic books were at their most popular, and when some of the most famous and enduring superheroes were created.
The History of Superheroes continues in part 2: The Golden and Silver ages of comics.
ACTION COMICS #1
Download PDF version Action Comics #1
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Originally published at jamiespages.org on October 6, 2014.
