Superman's newspaper strip of the 1940s- Online

[Great Rao]

From what I have so far, Superman chases a gigantic living asteroid away from Earth with such superspeed he breaks the time barrier.

You know, that's absolutely brilliant.  I doubt even Alan Moore could come up with something like that!

[binarysunrise]

So I've given my site a nice new update, and added a section on The World's Greatest Superheroes.

But what I wanted to share today is an episode that I have not indexed yet, but thought this image was pretty cool:



Anyways, that's a panel from September 9, 1950.  Thought I'd share

[MatterEaterLad]

Was "The World's Greatest Super Heroes" widely syndicated?  I never ran across any of it at the time...

[binarysunrise]

That's a very good question. Sadly I don't know the answer to it.  I know I didn't read it, but I am not sure if I was looking at the funny pages during that time period.

I have heard of other people who did follow it, and some whose papers dropped it after the first few storylines.  I also am not sure how many carried the Superman Sunday Special line from the mid 80's - I haven't run across many of them.

Anyways, this seems more likely the case that many carried it but then dropped the series.  One paper I looked at started running another strip (spiderman or star wars...) instead.  For the original Superman 1939-1966 run, I haven't found a major US paper that carried it into the 50's.  Most dropped it in the mid-forties.  I did find a small newspaper from Canada that seemingly carried the whole run, which is what I am using for my research.

Strange that there's a good chance that no one has read the entire series before...

[MatterEaterLad]

Kind of makes you wonder how the financial model for these syndicated series worked...I lived in a couple of cities in the 70s and 80s, "Dick Tracy" and "Mary Worth" were dropped, I read some "Winnie Winkle" (a serious strip that sprang from the humorous "Winnie Winkle, the Breadwinner" with her weird brother Perry Winkle of my mom's day), and I was able to read "Prince Valiant" on Sundays...

[binarysunrise]

Well, I've started looking into the McClure syndicated newspaper history.  Found out that on September 22, 1938, Detective Comics, Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, and McClure entered into an agreement, which procided exclusive syndication by McClure, and that they would have copyright over Superman in these strips (which would revert back to DC when they were done).  DC would retain the original drawings, the right to use the strips 6 months later, would pay the artists themselves, and would get a stipulated share of the profits.

Originally they were in 3 newspapers - the Boston Transcript, the San Antonio Express, and the Milwaukee Journal.

Now this all backfired on DC, when a judge ruled that this was a joint venture, and because McClure had failed to adequately put the copyright notice on the strips, the entire Superman copyright was forfeit.

Luckily though, this was overruled.  I bet there was some tension around DC offices that year.....

[binarysunrise]

Argh. I just finished indexing the wedding years (the period from 1949 to 1952 where Lois and Clark get married, but Clark decides to not reveal his identity to Lois).  Anyways the big reveal at the end was sort of interesting (in how things get back to normal and how they aren't married anymore) - I was expecting "it was just a dream", but was a bit surprised with how they did it. (not wanting to spoil the story).

Anyways, what bugs me is that the closest they came to having a superbaby was in one short "what if" sequence:


Ah well, I thought if they were going to do it, they should..well...do it

[MatterEaterLad]

Those are very interesting to read as well...

I continue to be interested in how few papers these stories ran in, and the byline reads "by Wayne Boring"...was he writing and illustrating?  You always read how he "took over the strip" until he moved back to the books in the 50s, but I never read how he wrote these stories, which seems very unusual for a DC artist...