Super-Swipes #7: The Olympics

As I have mentioned in the past, Mort Weisinger operated on the assumption that his readership turned over completely every seven years, and so he had little compunction about swiping stories from that long ago. Here's an example that fits the time pattern precisely:


Action #220 is the September 1956 issue, while Action #304 is the September 1963 issue. Note in particular that in the earlier story, DC was capitalizing on a current event, as 1956 was an Olympic year, while in 1963 the games were a full year away.

The stories are very similar as you can see from these opening panels:


On the next page, things do diverge a bit; in Action #304, Lana Lang happens along in her helicopter and is pulled into space along with Superman, whereas in Action #220 Superman travels alone. There turns out to be an important reason for this difference.

In both stories, a scientist from an alien world has sent out the attraction ray to bring Superman to his planet for the Interplanetary Olympics. In both stories, the prize is the same:


That's rather interesting in that one of the promises of nuclear power back in the 1950s was that it was supposed to be ridiculously inexpensive; in fact the claim was that it would be too cheap to bother metering. That certainly didn't prove to be the case.

In both stories, Superman performs very poorly:


But Weisinger (and writer Leo Dorfman) do have a substantial change in Action #304 to the Action #220 ending (tentatively credited at the GCD to Edmond Hamilton). In the original, Superman discovers that the top contestant, Bronno, is a robot, and that the reason for his own weakness in the stadium is that a block of Kryptonite was used in its construction.

In the revised version, Superman was intentionally losing, because he caught onto the fact that the games were rigged. It turns out that the contestants and the scientist who had brought him to the alien world were actually crooks, hoping to tap Superman's powers and use them to evade the law. Naturally, Superman didn't intend to help them, and in fact the story ends with the interplanetary police arresting the trio.

This also reveals why Lana was brought along with him. In the original, Superman was puzzled by his own weakness, but with the revised ending Lana had to be the one expressing surprise. Note in particular that in the panel where Superman's climbing out of the water, that he carefully avoids lying. "I'm doing what I can," not "I'm doing the best that I can."

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The Other Supermen Era At Action Comics

I happened to be flipping through some old Action issues today and noticed this trend. In Action #254-255 we have the first appearance of the adult Bizarro Superman. In Action #256, we see the Superman of the future. In Action #257, Clark Kent becomes a "second" Superman:

In #258, Superman encounters Cosmic Man:

Who turns out to be a robot. In Action #259, the other Superman is Superboy:

After a few issues off (#260-262), the Bizarros return for another two-parter in #263-264. It's Hyper-Man's turn in Action #265:

Then in #267-268, there's a two parter featuring a Superman of the past:

After that, the stories mostly get back to normal, but it's striking that there were so many tales with a similar theme over the course of about a year and a half.

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Action #314

This is one of the few Action issues from around this era that I didn't have in my collection until recently, and all I can say is, good Lord, I didn't know what I was missing. It starts with Aquaman and a few other JLA members signaling Superman to visit them on a remote island, where we learn:

Of course, Jor-El sent dozens of such messages to Superman during the Silver Age; indeed it would be a chore to catalog them all. At any rate, Jor-El wants to tell his son how Earth was chosen for his new home. It turned out that there were six possible worlds he could be sent to. Fortunately, one of Jor-El's friend has a future predictor:

It turns out that on the first world of Xann, he would be tiny compared to the other inhabitants, although he would retain his super-powers. Jor-El decides not to send him to Xann, because there he'd have nobody to marry. The second world, Valair, has no land, only water, and Kal-El's unhappy living his life under the seas. The third world has a red sun, so Kal would not have any super-powers there, but he does learn to compensate:

But he finds that some of the natives want to use his arrow-inventions for evil and leaves society to live on his own. Obviously that world is out. On the next one, it's always night and Kal-El takes on a lawman role:

On the penultimate world, Superman's adoptive father invents a ray that would give him super-speed, but the scene shown on the cover occurs when he gets a little too enthusiastic about trying out his powers. So Earth it is:

Comments: A silly story, obviously set up to deliver that surprise at the end where we realize that Superman would have been a one-man JLA. It does leave me feeling a little sad that he didn't end up getting sent to the planet of Amazonia, where he could have become Wonder Woman with the aid of a gender-transforming ray invented by his adoptive mom. ;)

But it is in the Supergirl story that things really get wacky. Remember, when Supergirl originally arrived on Earth, her parents had supposedly died when meteors struck Argo City. However, in Action #309, it was revealed that they had survived by beaming themselves into the Survival Zone, a dimension much like the Phantom Zone. Zor-El and Allura decided that they wanted to live among their fellow Kryptonians in the bottle city of Kandor, while Supergirl remained on Earth with the Danvers. However, all was not well:

As you can probably guess, she's heart-sick for her daughter, who never visits, never calls. Then one day:

So you can see she's gone completely mentally unstable. The authorities take back the android, without apparently considering that maybe, just maybe, they could make a similar doll for Allura that would ease her pain. They decide to contact Supergirl, but as it happens, she's out and the Danvers receive the call. Realizing that Allura's health is more important than their love for their adopted daughter, they decide to, wait for it, practice mental cruelty on Supergirl so that she will rejoin her natural parents. No, I'm not kidding:



But eventually Kara overhears the Danvers tearfully discussing how hard it is to be so mean to their daughter and discovers the reason why they've been treating her badly. She visits Kandor and suggests that she should stay their permanently, but apparently Mom realizes Earth needs its Supergirl. The only solution is for the Danvers to move to Kandor while the exchange ray brings out Zor-El and Allura. At first this looks like a great solution, as Supergirl's parents can join her in protecting Earth. But what of the Danvers?

The Chief Healer comes up with a solution:

The story ends as a cliff-hanger; will Supergirl's parents be happy on Earth? Can the Danvers find love in their heart for Dar-Lin?

Comments: Wow, what a wild story. I confess that I always enjoy these psychological dramas more than the run-of-the-mill secret identity stories, but this tale was completely wacked-out.

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Captain Marvel Versus Superman

Superman Fan covers the oversized comic from the 1970s featuring the battle between the Big Red Cheese and the Man of Steel. But before that matchup ever took place (indeed before DC began publishing Shazam!), there was another tumultuous pairing between Supes and somebody who quite clearly was inspired by Captain Marvel:



In the splash page to Action #351, we learned what his name stood for:



And in Whiz Comics #2, we found out what Shazam stood for:


(Image lifted from the late, lamented Comic Coverage)

Except for Solomon and Atlas, the names are the same, although some of the locations and attributes are different.

In the story, the United Crime Syndicates needs a new boss, their old one having been jailed by Superman. A newcomer appears offering to lead them:



No surprise, the gangsters accept Zha-Vam's leadership eagerly. And apparently believing in the dictum to "Never steal anything small", they attack Fort Knox. Superman arrives and finds himself in quite a tussle:



In the middle section, Zha-Vam delights in forcing Superman to press one of the buttons on his belt, which turns him into still different gods of the past. For example, the "G" button transforms Zha-Vam into Gorgon, in which guise he turns Superman to stone. Supes recovers when he manages to attract lightning to himself. Later, Superman presses the "P" button, and turns out all the light in the word, as Pluto replaces Zha-Vam. Superman must grovel:



Superman's computer reveals a possible way to defeat Zha-Vam; his Achille's heel. But it turns out that the Greek God has planned ahead for this eventuality:



In the final issue, Superman returns from space to discover that Zha-Vam has placed the Shield of Orion around the Earth, and that he cannot get past it. He decides to go backwards in time to evade the shield and while he's at it, he takes a sidetrip to ancient Greece, and Mount Olympus. There he learns that the gods are angry that modern folks no longer worship them:



In response, they come up with Zha-Vam and send him to the future to humiliate Superman and remind people of their awesome powers. Meanwhile, Superman talks to the Oracle and learns there's another set of gods who are rivals with the Olympians. They even the score by giving Superman his own belt, leading to the climactic battle:



In the end Zha-Vam loses his cool and decides to simply use his Kryptonite sock to kill Superman. But Supes uses his belt to call Atlas (for once he's not changed into the hero himself) who opens a can of whoop-ass on Zha-Vam, getting rid of the sock in the process. And Supes uses his belt again, as a whip on Zha-Vam's exposed heel:



This takes the fight out of Zha-Vam, and Supes deposits him back in time to Mount Olympus. The gods, realizing their folly, turn Zha-Vam back into clay, and Superman indulges himself in a little side trip to Mount Olympus of modern times:



Yep, only one god on DC's green Earth in the Silver Age. Comments: Entertaining story and Boring's art works perfectly for Zha-Vam; he's really got it going here. The concept of the old gods being upset that Superman has replaced them is a clever but creepy motivation, although of course thinking it through would reveal that the Greek Gods had been dead for millennia before the Man of Steel came along.

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