The Trouble With Robots

One of the central themes running through DC comics in the Silver Age was a reverence for science combined with skepticism for applied science (i.e., technology).  Few plot points illustrate this better than the continual problems that Superman (and Superboy) had with his robots.

They were originally created to help Superman out of jams, particularly in situations where both Superman and Clark Kent had to be somewhere at the same time.  However, they were unreliable at best, often shorting out due to electrical disturbances, or sunspots.  And at times they were unavailable for other reasons:

And on more than one occasion, they nearly revealed his secret identity:

At least twice, his robots went rogue.  Ajax, a robot who was transformed into an android by members of the Superman Revenge Squad in Superman #163, apparently went off the reservation and tried to kill Superman, although it turned out that he was just pretending to do so to fool the SRS squad.  And when Superman tried to create an android of his own in Superman #174, it turned out to be mistake-prone and attempted to take Superman's place by convincing Clark Kent that he had never really been super.

But nothing reveals Superman's trouble with robots more than the story in Action #299, surely one of the wackiest in the entire Silver Age.  He receives a robot named LL-35 from the planet Jax that is supposed to be much smarter than even Superman himself.  LL-35 makes a suggestion:

Here are the robots he builds according to the instructions:

Kryptonite vision, you say?  I can't imagine how that could possibly backfire on Superman.  Unless, that is, some aliens tampered with the robots' loyalty tapes:

Well, that's pretty unlucky.  And for the next several pages, the robots torment our hero, using Red Kryptonite to turn him into an elastic man, and later giving him three faces:

Superman doesn't even get out of this using his wits; instead he gets lucky.  See, this was all taking place on an alien planet, where every day, a fallout dust disintegrates metal:

Any other examples of Superman's robots causing headaches for him?

More about →

When Did Superman's Heat Vision Start?

As many of you probably know, Superman's heat vision was not an early power. Both Superman and Superboy originally used "the heat" of their X-ray vision to melt things. This changed at some point fairly early in Weisinger's tenure. I am not quite sure why; was it because of the obvious problem that bullets were made of lead and thus not affected by X-rays? So I started going through the early Weisinger Action issues, looking for the changeover. What surprised me at first was how common the "heat of my X-ray vision" meme was in Superman. To give you an idea, it popped up in Action #254,, #255, #256, #258, #259, #262, #263 and #264, or in 8 of 11 issues. But after that it vanished for awhile, only appearing in Action #271. And even that appearance comes with an asterisk:

But in actuality that particular panel is being narrated by a fake Superman and Luthor henchman named Gypo. So it is far from certain that really represents a real instance of the heat of Superman's X-ray vision being used. On the other hand, it is fairly easy to pinpoint the first use of Superman's heat vision in Action; it appears in Action #275 (April 1961):

Okay, so in the second appearance of Brainiac, heat vision was established? But you know the problem; there are several other Superman mags to check, so I decided to start walking it back from April 1961, partially to see if there was an earlier appearance and partially to see if there was a more credible last mention of the "heat of my X-ray vision". There was no mention of Superman's heat from eyes power in Superman #144 (April 1961), but I did find this in Superman #143 (February 1961):

End of story, right? Not quite, however, for when I went forward to see when the first mention of Superman's "heat vision" came, I found mention of the heat of his X-ray vision in stories published after April 1961. The latest mention I can find now is from Superman #146 (July 1961):

The first mention of heat vision I can find in Superman issues comes from #148 (October 1961):

The transition from "heat of X-ray vision" to "heat vision" is pretty easy to track in Superboy. From Superboy #87 (March 1961):

While in the following issue (April 1961):

So it appears pretty obvious that the changeover came between the issues published in March 1961 and April 1961. Update: This is also one of those areas where you cannot trust the reprints. When I went to read the Superman story in Action #259, the closest issue at hand was the reprint in 80-Page Giant #1 (August 1964), where this sequence occurs:

But after noticing that there were several mentions of "heat of my X-ray vision" after this, I hunted down the original, and sure enough:

More about →

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:

More about →

Super Swipe #9: Space Circus

Up till now, all the swipes I have covered involve stories updated for either Superboy or Superman. But here's one where a Superboy tale was converted into a problem for his adult counterpart:


In both stories, a circus advertising itself as being from another world sets up on the outskirts of town (Smallville and Metropolis, respectively). Both circuses require coins instead of bills:


The updated version does have one of my favorite goofy Silver Age panels:

In each case, Kal El prevents a disaster from occurring, resulting in a surprising offer:


But the circus owner won't take no for an answer, and sics some of his monsters against the Lad/Man of Steel. At first he is able to defeat them, but:


Neither beast can beat Supes, but he cannot beat them either. It looks like a stalemate, but the circus owner threatens to loose the monster on the nearby town. So Superboy/Superman agree to join the circus reluctantly, but warn that they will leave if they can figure out away to defeat their nemesis. Which they shortly do:


Incidentally, these stories fit Weisinger's seven year pattern nearly precisely with Adventure #198 coming out in March of 1954, while Superman #145 carried a cover date of May 1961.

More about →

Oh, I'm a Lumberjack and I'm Okay...

For some reason, the writers, artists and editors of Superman found this image of the Man of Steel cutting down trees compelling:

There are quite a few more examples and I will add them as I find them. Here's an early one from Adventure #184:

The earliest one I've found so far is this one from Adventure #110, although it's somewhat different from the others in that Superman hurls a spinning circular saw at the trees:

Either way, it's apparent that Kal-El would not find himself welcome at a meeting of the Earth Liberation Front.

Update: Bryon in the comments points us to this dueling lumberjacks panel from Superman #199:


Update II: Another example from Superboy #106, pointed out in the comments by Dave:

More about →

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."

More about →

The Secret Origin of the Phantom Zone

Wikipedia presents the following information on the Phantom Zone:

The Phantom Zone is a fictional prison dimension featured in the Superman comic books and related media published by DC Comics. It first appeared in Adventure Comics #283 (April 1961), and was created by Robert Bernstein and George Papp

Ah, but as I have discussed in the past, Mort Weisinger and his writers often swiped ideas and entire plotlines from earlier stories and so it is with the Phantom Zone. The precursor to the Zone first appears in Action #131 (April 1949), a full 12 years before its official debut. Here's the cover:

As you can see, the original machine was quite cumbersome, but the effect is clearly the same. The person's color fades, then becomes white (for the benefit of the reader, as the stories always made it clear that the characters in the zone were actually invisible).
In the Action #131 story, Luthor has come up with a new invention:

A teleportation device, in other words. But, in typical comic book criminal fashion the commercial applications for his machine don't occur to Luthor. Never mind that he could instantly put out of business every trucking, railroad and airline company, Luthor's bright idea is to put it to use robbing banks.
In the Silver Age tale, Superboy discovers the Phantom Zone projector (initially called the Punishment Machine) in a box of forbidden weapons that Jor-El had shot into space. He is accidentally sent into the Zone when a lizard presses the button as he stands in front of the projector.

In the Golden Age, Superman is holding a receiver when Luthor's teleportation device signals it. The crook thinks quickly:

In the stories, Superboy and Superman are unable to touch anything in the physical world, or communicate directly with anyone. But there is an indirect method of communication in both stories, and it is the same each time:


Incidentally, that bit with phantoms communicating via an electric typewriter was used at least once more that I'm aware of. Lois let Perry, Jimmy and Clark know she was still alive in Superman #129's The Ghost of Lois Lane:


Update: Commander Benson drops by in the comments and notes a very similar theme in the Atom Man vs Superman serial from 1950. Note particularly Chapter 8, which has Superman sent by Luthor into the "Empty Doom" where he exists solely as a phantom, and where his only means of communication with the corporeal world is... you guessed it, via an electric typewriter. From what I've been able to observe of the serial, it's largely based on the story from Action #131.

More about →