Swiped and Then Swiped Again

Mort Weisinger's enthusiasm for swiping story ideas from earlier issues of Superboy does not seem as high as it was for Adventure Comics, but here's a pretty impressive example of a double swipe.  For starters, here is the cover to Superboy #52 (October 1956):

And Superboy #85 (December 1960):

As you can see, in both cases, Superboy is startled to discover another super-powered boy on an alien planet. He changes into civilian clothes and confronts the lad:

The other boy comes from a startling place:

Clark realizes how the other boy got his powers:

So it looks like Superboy is finally going to have a super-powered buddy.  But as they start off together, something happens:

Superboy eventually realizes that it's his presence that is causing the other superlad to lose his powers, and thus he must leave, resulting in a sad ending:

Weisinger recycled that ending in Superboy #87 (March 1961), in a Krypto story.  Krypto rescues a beautiful female dog:

You've gotta love that he calls her Toots. She doesn't have super-powers, but it turns out that Krypto knows where she can get some:

And so she drinks from the pool and becomes super. Unfortunately:

Krypto soon realizes that he is no longer super when near Kolli, and so we get the same ending as in the two Superboy tales:

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A Wink from Clark

Reading through the Silver Age Superboy, I noticed how many stories ended with this:

The winks tend to happen at the end of secret identity stories; I'm sure there are plenty of examples in Superman as well.

This is somewhat akin to the "Ending with Iris" bit in the Flash, and the "Bah!" responses from the Joker; a way of letting us know the story is over.

Update: Kirk House points out in the comments that the practice of ending the story with a wink from Clark may have originated with the Superman cartoons of the early 1940s from the Fleischer studios.  Here's the first one in that series, which does indeed end that way:

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Some Lesser Swipes

As I mentioned the other day, I have been working my way through the mid-1950s Superboy issues looking for more swipes by Weisinger and company.  I came across two more, although these were not quite as blatant.  First:

Despite the rather obvious swipe of the cover concept, the stories themselves have only a superficial similarity.  In the Superboy story, Clark was unaware that his teacher had instructed the class to wear Superboy costumes for Superboy day in Smallville, because he had been absent from the classroom when the order was made.  In the Supergirl story, a TV producer had given everybody at Stanhope copies of her uniform (including Linda), but hers was damaged when she used it on a mission in her other identity.  The latter story turns out to be an effort by the TV guy to expose Supergirl's secret identity.  In the former, Clark sweats it out that the reason he was chosen to be dressed in plainclothes was that someone had guessed his secret, but it turns out instead that hidden inside his jacket was a letter signed by everybody in town thanking Superboy.

It's comparable to these two stories with identical titles:

Same concept, different execution. In the first story (from Superboy #50) a gang of crooks have come to Smallville to hide out with their loot, although one of the underlings is worried about the rumors that a young lad has super powers has recently been making things tough for the local criminals.  The boss, as shown, finds the concept of a Superboy to be ridiculous, although he soon learns otherwise.  In the later story, Superboy goes to a nearby old West town where the local hoods haven't heard of him.

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You Can't Judge a Book By Looking At the Cover?

I decided to test that old saw by looking at the covers of several books I haven't read in many years and don't remember the story. Of course, I do have an advantage in that I know Weisinger's tricks.

Looking at the cover: My guess here is that Superman XXX didn't really commit those crimes; they were misinterpretations of actual events that were harmless.

Inside the book: Close. Superman did not commit those crimes. The other man on the cover is a descendant of Luthor, who oddly enough runs a Superman museum in the future. While he's not evil like his ancestor, he's upset at the Lad of Steel for helping out a competitor and thus is showing him an illusion created with that helmet he's wearing.

Looking at the cover: I'd guess it's some sort of trick to fool the aliens.

Inside the book: Nope, it's an effect of Red Kryptonite.

Looking at the cover: Must be Red K again.

Inside the book: Dingdingding, although Weisinger did throw a curve at me. It's an imaginary tale about what might have happened if Superboy had been exposed to Red Kryptonite on the day he announced his presence to the world.

Looking at the cover: It's clearly some sort of fakeout. We know that nobody could invent anything that would harm Superboy other than Green K. I'm going to guess in this instance that it's a plan to fool some crook.

Inside the book: Bzzt! It's the adult Luthor, who has brought back Superman's Fortress of Solitude in time to Superboy's era, complete with weapons from Kandor that can harm Kal-El.

BTW, note the bit about the Agony and the Ecstasy.  It's clearly intended as a reference to a 1965 movie of the same title.

Looking at the cover: Mort gives this one away. Since Superboy and Clark are one and the same person, they must have been split somehow, and Red Kryptonite seems the logical culprit.

Inside the book: Dingdingding, but with still another curve. In the story, Superboy is turned into a monkey by Red K, and later grows enormously in size. Beppo, the super-monkey is affected by the same Red K, and turns into a human. While human-sized (he later grows giant, just as Superboy had) the scene on the cover happens.

Overall I was 3 for 5.

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Smallville's Crooked Contractors

Did you ever notice that Smallville had the shoddiest construction projects imaginable?

From diving boards:

To dams:

To walls:

To the bleachers at Smallville High:

It often seemed like Smallville contractors intentionally built their projects as cheaply as possible, perhaps in the knowledge that Superboy would bail them out of any structural failures. Indeed, one wonders if his move to Metropolis resulted in dozens of deaths due to building collapses.

And don't even get me started about the enclosures at the Smallville Zoo:


Incidentally, that second panel comes from one of those stories where the Kents adopt a second boy with super powers.

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The Superboy Legal Case

Covered adeptly by Bill Jourdain. The post contains lots of information that I was not aware of previously, including the fact that DC Comics had formally passed on the Superboy concept, and then published the first stories (starting in More Fun #101) while Siegel was in the army and without his consent.

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Silly Panel Saturday

Realistically, I could pick almost any panel from the first seven pages of this story from Adventure #304, which is jaw-droppingly zany. Consider this:

Yes, I could fix your car but that would make the mechanic suspicious. Instead I'll let you drive it off a bridge:

Or this scene where he peeks into his parents' dreams:

Wacky stuff.

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Trivia Quiz #42: Superboy

1. Who caused the crack in the Liberty Bell?

2. I was a teenage hoodlum on Krypton before reforming and becoming a member of the Counter Intelligence Corps in the 30th Century. Who am I?

3. What civic function did Pa Kent perform?

4. Who saved Superboy from certain death at the hands of the Kryptonite Kid?

5. To stop girls from mooning over him, who did Superboy claim was his ideal girlfriend?

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Silly Panel Saturday

See, Superboy is looking through his time telescope at Superman, who's looking through his time telescope at Superboy, who's looking through his time telescope at Superman, who's looking....

The whole thing results in Superman being sucked into the past and Superboy being sucked into the future.

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Diamond Jim

One of the highlights of the Superboy pilot which I posted last week is the scene where Superboy creates diamonds out of coal. It is my recollection that one of the 1950s Superman episodes on TV was the first place this happened. According to this list, the episode in question is #40, Jungle Devil:

The reporters are on a jungle expedition that involves a valuable diamond used as an idol's eye. Superman creates a diamond by compressing coal.

The episode appears to have originally aired sometime in 1953.

Reading through the Superboy stories in Adventure, I noticed that beginning around late 1956, the Lad of Steel made a whole bunch of diamonds. For example, in Adventure #231, he makes them as consolation gifts for other boys who were turned down for a job in favor of him:

In Adventure #244, Ma and Pa Kent experience disaster as both their house and store burn down while they are away on vacation. To make matters worse, Pa had forgotten to mail off the insurance check before leaving, so they are paupers. Superboy tries to help them out here:

But the diamond turns out to be a problem, as the jeweler in Smallville doesn't believe it could be real and the one in Metropolis assumes they stole it.

In Adventure #257, Superboy goes into the past to help Hercules and Samson, who have been stealing jewels from the local tyrant and distributing them to the impoverished citizens, but there's something he can't do:


And in Superboy #88, in the story that follows the pilot for the TV show closely, Superboy creates replacement diamonds for those stolen so that a movie premiere can go off as planned:

Cecil Adams, who writes the Straight Dope column that appears in many arts and entertainment newspapers around the country, tackled Superman's diamond-creating abilities a couple years back in a discussion with his assistant, Una:

I gave it a shot anyway. I pointed out that HPHT required an elaborate press of intricate geometry to concentrate the compressive forces. It wasn't as if Superman could just grab a lump of graphite and squeeze it like a tomato.

He's Superman, said Una. According to Wikipedia, he can withstand the impact of a nuclear explosion. You're saying diamonds are going to stymie him because he hasn't got the right belt-press jig?

Me: I'm saying if "he's Superman" is the answer to all questions, why are we having this discussion? He can do anything he wants by magic. We're trying to establish what somebody with unlimited strength could do in real life.

Una: Nobody has unlimited strength in real life.

Me: I know that. That's the point. We have to set some reasonable bounds on the question. Let's say you've got enough strength to manage 130,000 atmospheres. Is that alone enough to create a diamond? I say no. Never mind the special press, you still need a temperature of 3,100 degrees.

Una: Heat vision.

The ability to create diamonds was featured in the otherwise forgettable Superman III back in 1983:

Skimming over the trees, Superman sees a coalmine, and lands there with Gus. Walking over to a pile of coal, he grabs one piece and uses his super strength to make a large diamond in his bare hand.

I can't remember coming across another example of the diamond-making bit in an Adventure issue prior to #231. My guess is that it happened in that Superman episode I recall, and the writers/Weisinger picked it up from there. I will look for examples of Superman creating diamonds in the comics as well and will update this post as needed. Any help from my readers and other bloggers is, of course appreciated.

Update: We have a new candidate for earliest appearance: Superboy #26 (June-July 1953):

Update II:The diamond trick apparently goes back into the 1940s; in Superman #60, Supes pretends to be secretly Perry White in order to flush out a gangster, and a man asks him for financial aid:

Update III: We can move it back a couple more years; Superman #60 is the Sept-Oct 1949 issue.  In Action #115 (Dec 1947) there's another example:

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The Superboy TV Show Swipe

While looking through the early 1960s letters columns in Adventure Comics to see if anyone had written in to complain about the Superboy swipes (see previous post), I came across this missive:

I had never heard about an early 1960s Superboy pilot, so I did some searching and found it on YouTube:

As you can see, after an origin sequence, the story starts out with a young man who's embarrassed because his dad's occupation is a lowly doorman at the local movie theater. I particularly love the speech his dad (the terrific and forgotten actor, Ross Elliott) gives starting around 5:10 about how if he gets his son through college and into his chosen profession, he'll consider himself as successful as anyone his son knows.

But that's not why I decided to do this post. I realized as soon as I saw the opening sequence in the school that the basic plot was swiped from a comic that I had read recently. Since I've been working my way through the Adventure issues featuring Superboy, I assumed it was there. But it turned out to be another swipe from Superboy #49. Here's a scene from that comic:

As you can see, the focus in the comic is on Captain Joe's phenomenal memory, while in the TV pilot, he's working on becoming an artist. But in both cases he identifies the crooks. The robberies are slightly different, with the criminals stealing diamonds from the movie theater in the TV version, while in the comic they stick up a bank nearby.

Both stories end with the young boy satisfied that while a doorman's occupation may be mundane, his father is not. And both include a job offer for the dad that he turns down:

The other thing that is interesting in the pilot is the relationship between Clark and Lana. In the comics it was occasionally hinted that they were more than just friends, but more commonly Lana was just an annoying secret identity pest. In the TV show, it certainly appears that they are dating; note the way they're holding hands after class when they catch up to Jimmy at around 2:48 into the first part.

Here are the other two parts of the episode:



Update: Commenter Tmdess remembered the story being published yet again, and it didn't take me long to find it (with an assist from Commander Benson), in Superboy #88 (March 1961). As you can see, this story is even closer to the Superboy pilot, with the diamonds being stolen from the movie theater while Superboy is dealing with a crook shooting madly from a hideout. It even has the bit where Superboy makes replacement diamonds out of coal.




One thing I can't tell is whether this story is swiped from the TV pilot or vice-versa. Either way, it's pretty obvious that what we have here is a double-swipe from the Superboy #49 story. Here's a list of the other proposed episodes (which were written but never filmed). As you can see, there were other swipes from the comics planned. For example, Superboy's New Parents, which I discussed recently, would be another double swipe, and The One-Man Team was also published in Superboy #88:

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