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Great! Can't wait for the restoration!

[Page 2]

We recently got ahold of re-assembled versions of the original artwork for K-Metal pages 2 and 4:

Page 2

Page 4

I've been waiting on adding them to the site because the story of their discovery and (re)creation is worthy of an article in itself; and I also wanted to wait until our full-color restoration was complete and ready to go. ie, put up both the old and the new and the article all at the same time.

But I did not want to hold up on making them public any longer - so here they are and both the article and restorations are in the pipeline.

[The official announcement.]

The official announcement.

[very]

And from our early days; one of the first versions of page 1 (possibly the very first?) - Angel's pencils with Bob Rivard's inks -



It's absolutely incredible that I had forgotten about this!!

The Secret of the K-Metal it is.

["Secret of the K-Metal!"]

I was recently reminded that our original name for this story, from 2003 up until I read the Gerard Jones book, was "Secret of the K-Metal!"

So, in the interest of historical accuracy; we'll be moving back towards that in some way.



Site changes in the queue.

[three hyphens]

Thank you!!

I've run across the occasional minor difference between our version and the 1940 version on other pages that are later discovered  - things like the number of trailing dots at the end of a sentence, or the number of hyphens (as with Lois' dialogue in the page 24 "partners" panel; in the original panel it's three hyphens; in our version it's two).

Now I chalk these up to differences in the two versions of the script.

Interesting analysis!

[Kryptonian Calendar of Events]

I'm always tickled by these!



(Added to our Kryptonian Calendar of Events page, by Jamie Dodds)

[a]

As mentioned elsewhere, we were recently given copies of the original Shuster Studio artwork of the formerly lost pages 2 and 4. (More on that later)

While working on page 2, I ran across a puzzling difference:



In our version of the page, the narration box reads,

"Hurtling thru inter-planetary space, a stellar fragment fated to change the destiny of SUPERMAN"

But in the original Shuster Studio artwork, it reads differently:



"Hurtling through inter-planetary space, a stellar fragment fated to change the destiny of a SUPERMAN"

I was puzzled by this difference, at first assuming that either I or the Shuster Studio had made a mistake in reading the script; or had done a minor on-the-fly edit.

It turned out the solution wasn't that simple, and the more I looked into it, the more puzzled I became.

Here's what I tracked down:

When Mark Waid discovered the original K-Metal script in 1988, he didn't actually discover the original typed document - he discovered a mimeograph of it.

In the interest of historical preservation, he painstakingly typed what he thought was an exact duplicate.

Turns out it wasn't exact.

The mimeograph of Jerry's script reads "a SUPERMAN", Mark Waid's reproduction of that mimeograph (presumably unintentionally) omits the a.  It was Waid's duplicate that was copied and distributed around the DC offices, and that is the copy we were working from.

Does the "A" make any difference?

That's a question that may turn up again in future installments...  

(It turns out the Shuster Studio usage of the more correct "through" for "thru" was, in fact, a minor edit made by whoever was doing the lettering - Siegel had written "thru" in both versions of the script)

[nature of his morally abhorrent crimes]

When Jerry Siegel wrote his K-Metal story in 1940, he did not give it a title.  Each page of surviving artwork is merely labeled "Superman" across the top, in pencil.

It wasn't until 1988 that the story was given a name by its discoverer, Mark Waid. He began to refer to it simply as "K-Metal". Alex Ross also wrote an article using that name for the story, and the impression I get is that "K-Metal" is DC's official title of the tale. Comic book journalists and others at the time also consistently referred to it as "K-Metal"

One year into our restoration efforts, I read Gerard Jones' book, Men of Tomorrow.  In it, he invents and assigns the name "K-Metal from Krypton" to the story. This may be an anachronistic and non-official title, but at the time I thought it was pretty cool, so I put it all over the website, and in all the articles on the website, and made lots of graphics displaying that title.  And from there the name began to spread, and now people throughout the world think that's the title of the story.

But as far as I know, it isn't. (If I am wrong about this, someone please correct me! I don't actually know all and see all!)

I am a little behind the times and out of the loop, so it wasn't until just recently that I learned about Gerard Jones' 2016 arrest and conviction and the nature of his morally abhorrent crimes.

And I feel unbelievable sorrow and deep regret for popularizing something he created; and I wonder whether or not I can undo it.

But on this website, I will now be referring to the original 1940 script, story, and artwork with DC's official title, "K-Metal"; and I am renaming our K-Metal restoration project, website, its articles, and our planned upcoming story arc (of which the original "K-Metal" is but one chapter) to "Saga of the K-Metal."

Technically, this is a work in progress; there is still a lot to track down and correct on the website.

I don't know whether or not popular use of the old title will continue, but I can't stomach it.