Superman Used to Be a Super Jerk - Comic Tropes (Episode 88)
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- Опубликовано: 3 окт 2024
- This episode delves into Superman's origins. In his first year of stories by his creators, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, Superman battled the ills of 1939 American society. But he sure seemed to do so in a reckless and haphazard manner! It was likely intended as satire and it was certainly entertaining but 80 years later some of it has become funny because of how it's aged. Superman is essentially a giant jerk to everyone.
In this episode I mention my Patreon which you can find here. I post regular blogs about behind-the-scenes stuff and also the occasional extra video or poll.
/ comictropes
I also recommend a Kickstarter for a fantastic comic book by my late friend Jeremy. I'll be contributing a pinup. It's a great read and a great value:
www.kickstarte...
Superman bursting through the newly-rebuilt wall is actually pretty funny.
You suppose that was something they made fun of in Megamind?
Not if you built it
"What kind of nightmare world is this where suicide is considered completely routine"
I believe the academic term for that world is "the 1930s"
Or 2000's Japan
@@ahok1937 that was partly the Japanese police trying to preserve the 99% conviction rate by labeling any suspicious deaths that aren't immediately solvable as suicides so they don't mess with the stats.
The 2020s.
@@CzechAvailabilitie Why would the stats matter to them?
@@MegaSpideyman gives the image of Japan as a paragon of the law
I get the hunch that Siegel and Shuster were living vicariously through Superman. They could vent about any perceived social ill of their day, then send Supes in to liberally "smash" the offending individual, movement, or vice for twelve or fifteen pages; it may not have changed anything in real life, but it was doubtless more satisfying than a tersely worded "letter to the editor." Little wonder so many gravitated toward Superman in those early issues: kids got the cheap thrill of a strong dude making a mess of everything in sight, and adult readers got the satisfaction of knowing someone somewhere shared their daily frustrations.
Benjamin Kellog I’m sure you’re right.
Considering they came from a historically oppressed, vilified culture, you hit the nail on the head.
Liberally or literally?
You have to remember the original Superman was a dark character. Superman wasn’t around to help the people of earth he was there to Rule over it. Simon and Shuster portrayed The Supermen as Evil way before Action 1 came came out. The earlier years were the toned down version of the evil Supermen. Imagine what would have happened if the character was released as intended. May have been a whole different history.
@@jonbishop9062 Simon and Shuster's Reign of the Superman was indeed a whole different story and it had nothing to do with Superman the comic book character. Superman was not a "dark character", he was supposed to be a good guy from day one.
*Officer uses excessive force on petty criminal*
Superman: This is terrible!
*Joins in beating criminal*
LOL He should have approved what happened in Countdown to Infinite Crisis.
Look up in the sky. It's a bird. It's a plane. It's Superman! Run for your lives. He has dynamite. My god he destroyed my home and car. I'm bankrupt.
Lex, save us!
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
“Spider-Man creams four X-Men” Man this whole video gave me laughs I haven’t had in a while
I think Spiderman "needs some solid dick" (a serious talk), another funny expression from these days.
Have you heard of Tracy Scops?
Dude, most rational, thinking people in 2020 today who knows what context is, doesn't immediately go to a cringy sex joke as their first thought when reading that, either.
@@the-NightStar dude, most people have humor and laugh about things from time to time.
It's not necessarily a well thought through story with ups, downs, villains, damsels in distress, a heroic motive, homages to other artists, inside knowledge of greek mythology and/or a message to tell the audience.
@@the-NightStar everything is a sex joke now.
is no one going to mention that Supes apparently has an office for his Homer Ramsey identity
Well that is disturbing, isn't it?
I unironically love the golden age Superman stories. Yeah, he's kind of a jerk, but there's a raw, fun energy to these stories.
Cars VS Superman: Dawn of Justice
Mcqueen: do you spill oil? you will
Kars-
@@deutshsean8313 Ew, cringe
I wish Superman had won his war against cars though. They are a disgusting, noisy, dangerous, expensive, space hogging, polluting blight on our modern society and i want some powerful person to punch them all in the radiator. Frick cars.
I want to see a movie adaptation of Superman's war on cars. Including him breaking into the radio station multiple times just to rant about it.
Was he the inspiration for the Kool Aid man?
"You know, Superman, some people just use the door if they want to come inside...." 😂
Living-room tar barrels were one of the most chic interior design fads in the 1940s.
Tar was used to repair roofs.
Those earliest stories add value to later Superman. You skipped my favorite where, disguised as a lumberjack, Superman deliberately causes a fender bender with the prison warden, engages him in a street fight, and is incarcerated in a work camp just to make the man's life a living hell. Rather, to do an investigative report on the department of corrections.
once upon a time there was a mystical website called "Superdickery" that collected all of Superjerk epic acts of dickery. Edit: oh and they had a section called "Seduction of the Innocent" for panels like the one with Spiderman
"Seduction Of The Innocent" was also the name of a book written in 1954 which claimed that comic books were corrupting the minds of American youth.
I love how they wrote all three of these stories the same way Superman wants to deal with problem he heard about and he does so in a violent and assholish way.
It’s also funny that he just hears about these problems or comes across inconveniences in his day-to-day life.
Tearing down oil wells? Destroying cars?
Clark Kent was an anarchist.
No, Kal El is an alien invading from outer space.
Even if he's a jerk, I somewhat like how much of an unstoppable, loose cannon this Superman is. He's working well outside the law. I also like the detective work aspect of Clark Kent.
The part where Superman just busts through the wall that was just repaired was fucking hilarious.
I think its funny how even Superman when it started wasnt the character we all know, like batman who used to carry a gun in his first adventures.
Julioo Torren Most superheroes ossified in the 60's. They morphed a lot in the first two decades.
Yeah, the NFA even ruined comics.
Julioo Torren IKR. Batman once choke a guy with his grappling hook and Superman was a huge Communist supporter.
The Golden Age sure were a weirder time.
Batman straight up murdered so many people that Arrowverse Oliver Queen in the early days of his vigilantism would be telling him to cut back on the judo flipping people off buildings
Batman didn't always carry a gun in his early days. He only used a gun a couple of times when it was necessary, like in Detective Comics # 32, when he discovered that a villain called the Monk and his female assistant were both vampires, so the only way Batman could defeat them was to shoot them both in their hearts with silver bullets. The next issue also showed Batman using a gun to shoot out a lightbulb to fool a bunch of crooks who were pursuing him (I don't think the gun was his; I believe he snatched it from one of the crooks).
This seems like a comic Lex Luthor would write while thinking to himself "This'll show the people that the alien is dangerous."
lol i think hed create a parody character in his own comic just to annoy supes
God damn. Man, golden age Superman is a psycho.
Yet he got angry about the 90s lol.
I miss the time when people got thrown into barrels of tar ^^
aldi404 Well don’t say THAT!
Please. Without feathers whats the point?
Or simply hurled across town so hard they just... go AWAY.
APIEngineering like that smoking villain Superman punched into space in that 1970’s PSA cartoon?
I knew that Superman vs. Cars would be one of your exemplars the moment you said "loose cannon."
I love how Superman basically looked at gun control as said "yep, this will totally work" and then just did it to cars.
I laughed more than I should at "Spiderman creamed the X-men".
Thirties Superman is my kinda social justice warrior.
One cataclysmic climax coming up!
"Uh, activate webshooters! Get real sticky!"
It's truly a sad moment when you realize that Luthor may have a point about Superman being an intergalactic menace...
If he wanted to stop THIS Superman than he wouldn’t even be much of a villain!
“It has just aged a bit strangely”
You mean like fine wine?
Always fun to look back on the earlier issues of the classic superheroes.
Said Superman to Wonder Woman somewhere high over the Earth: "I, uh, noticed you didn't wash your hands in the invisible sink."
These sound like they would make great super villain origins.
Clark was raised on a farm... he knows all about “tough love”
That sounds wrong
He was supposed to be tougher than his foster parent so they couldn't punish him, so he didn't learn tough love and responsibility.
6:39
“Detective, we found a pool of the killers blood!”
“Mop it up. Now, let me follow my HUNCH”
This should be titled "Superman was once cool and not at all the jerk he became under McCarthism".
Destroying people's houses while people are living in them is more than a jerk.
I kinda love this! Superman has always been an enforcer of social justice and I imagine being someone from that time period, struggling will all these social and economic issues and reading those comics that are basically Superman beating the shit out of the people responsible was very damn satisfying.
In the Watchmen universe, this Superman’s comics inspired real people to become costumed crime fighters. That didn’t end well, to say the least!
You can't say these stories weren't creative...
The funny thing is, when they tear down the slums and build nice, new homes, the people that lived there before cannot afford to move into those new digs.
So, they moved elsewhere.
You know, seeing these examples makes his insane actions in Infinite Crisis make much more sense.
Up until the early 70s, it wasn't a bad thing to beat the crap out of bad guys. That Superman wasn't a jerk, but a product of the time when men did what they believed needed to be done to bad guys. Also, I wonder if their intent was for Superman to be more of an anti-hero, causing menace unless people complied with the law.
I don't think superman was "tamed down" as much as it's just that this is the beginning of the very idea of a superhero. They didn't know what they were doing yet.
Yep. I’m not sure the term “super-hero” was even a concept yet. They were literally creating and meshing out the genre. Superman was just a strong dude with a cape at this point lol
Have you never heard of Hercules? ...among others? 🤦
Term Superman dates at least back to 1903 which is 35 years before Action Comics used it.
@@RamManNo1 Herakles and Hercules had super strength in stories more than 2000 years ago.
Golden Age Superman was a lot closer to Stardust the Super Wizard than we often give him credit for.
8:36 ...Did Clark - I mean, "Homer Ramsey" - even _have_ the cash available to buy all those shares in the first place?
I don't think being a journalist pays all that well, and he spent several thousand dollars just like that. WTF
He's Superman, he can, ahem, borrow it the Robin Hood way. All for a good cause such as smashing the greed of capitalists.
I approve.
That drawing of the government-built new housing in (what I guess was) Metropolis' Suicide Slum reminded me of the projects that my mother grew up in. They were AWFUL! Prison block architecture that reminded all the residents that the government considered poorer people subhuman! The boxing Spinks brothers lived in one of those projects, too. Ever wonder how they got good at fighting? I would say it was all the practice they got trying to stay alive!
Think of all the construction jobs Supes created when the new housing was built! But then again, if that story was written today, the people from those slums would have been forced to flee to who knows where, while the spanking new buildings would have been CONDOS for greedy Fat Cats
Anyway, as flawed as their early stories might have been, Siegel and Shuster's hearts were in the right place! I have a problem with today's Superman in that he's become so full of himself, it's tough to identify with him! I've really become interested in Marv Wolfman's and later Jerry Ordway's ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN comic from the late 80s early 90s! While Byrne had the headlines, Wolfman and Ordway quietly explored what if Supes DID get involved more directly in politics while at the same time, we got a look at how the citizens of Metropolis try to get on with their daily lives with out him being on the scene 24\7! This is a very under rated period in Superman's comic book history!
"Think of all the construction jobs Supes created when the new housing was built! "
That's the Broken Window Fallacy.
I was hoping for this video to start with "Oh, hi! You caught me being a jerk".
Absolutely Love very early Superman!
OOF! Supes, you sure lived in a pre-Katrina world. I really love that he's making the government put their money where it should be going (the people) but I can't help wondering how bad the equivalent of a 1930s FEMA camp would be. Regardless of the potential realities of these situations, I really love how Siegel & Shuster made a hero for the common man, before the genre was all about fighting giant alien laser gods in the sky. You can feel the passion of the era in these comics. Must've been therapeutic, eh?
Nicodemus Sphaliro Absolutely. It’s pure wish fulfillment.
FEMA was created in 1978, so there were no 1930's Era FEMA camps. That's what Slums were for.
He sure doesn't come across as a hero for the common man in this video. He seems to be more of a power fantasy of the creators than anything else. Like in the oil story in the video. You think he's going to help the people who got ripped off, but all he does is rip those people off, and also screws over the "common man" oil workers too. Apparently keeping a cool million dollars to himself too. Then he destroys the car production plant, putting lots of common men out of work, plus irrationally destroys a bunch of cars probably owned by common men. Seems he only existed at first to serve his own desires, as wish fulfillment for the creators.
@@mattboggs6304 You need to read more stories from the 1920's and 1930's. A lot of what our culture tells us is good, or at least what the Media Makersd Think we should see as good, has drastically changed depending on the Era. Christian Heroism in the 1600's as displayed by
@Ken D I'm not reallu sure why you said this. I'm discussing the mentality of authors, and why characters behave the way they d in certain Time Periods.
The creators of SUPERMAN sure had a lot of anger to get off of their chest. Very funny stuff and bizarre to see what entertained kids back in those days.
Excellent video.
I really love the rawness and undiluted nature of Golden Age superhero comics in their prime in which you never knew what you were going to get.
It's just something of a favorite of mine.
Great episode! Loved the “China and tar in the house” bit.
when people said superman was originally made as a villain, i didn't know that this was what people meant.
It seems reasonable to think of early Superman as a nietzschean Übermensch character: beyond good and evil, shaping the world to his liking, being pure in motive because nothing can change his resolve.
If he was pure in motive would have built houses not destroyed them.
Okay, but I would actually like to see Superman's disguise skills played up a bit more in comics tbh. I think it would also help sell the concept of him selling Clark Kent if the idea he's got that precise muscle control and fashion knowledge to fool people. Like how Batman has Matches Malone as the false identity he uses to pretend to be a mid-level goon for hire, complete with a backup plan to put Matches in charge of organized crime. In film, Christopher Reeves sold it perfectly by being that good an actor, so it's not even a bad idea. Imagine that skill combined with superwhatever.
Those very early Superman stories were basically revenge fantasies by Seigel and Shuster. This was a big part of the book's appeal. The Big Blue Boy Scout came later. Here Supes takes on the things that angered his creators, and humiliates or destroys them. Of course millions of other bullied kids thought this was great.
Golden Age was so weird, Supreman was a jerk, Batman was a mass murderer and all that was portrayed as heroic or at least just.
Fetish for Romance Say what you want about the Comic Code and all the parents back then complaining about violence in comics, without their restrictions we wouldn’t have gotten the modern characterization of these characters we are used to.
Also, all of the sudden, Batman and Superman’s portrayal in Batman v. Superman does not seem like a betrayal to their characters anymore.
He's just a guy who wants to solve every complex issue through simple means. There's a problem with reckless drivers? Just destroy as many cars as possible!
These stories feel like their from Adult Swim. I can't stop laughing.
The Spider-man line is just up there with the other Spiderman'66 memes, just brilliant.
OMG... one of my favorite episodes! Has me in tears! Love the channel!
This is my favorite Superman.
I love Golden Age Superman stories! They are so much fun to read. Just as fun as the later Silver Age stories, but in a more pulp magazine inspired way. I love his first and second appearances and I don't remember all of the Golden Age stories I have read, but what stands out for me the most is the mood and fun and the action packed stories! Great escapism form the world today.
While I can certainly understand wanting to up your production value, personally I rather like the current "low-fi" feel and aesthetic of the show. Feels more "down to Earth" and grounded to me. It also brings your knowledge, insight, and passion to the forefront, that are the reasons I personally subscribed in the first place.
Frankenstein077 I appreciate that, thank you.
Yeah Keep this intro. and keep the ,multicolored index cards.
I agree with this whole-heartedly!
The title "along came a spider" makes the cataclysmic climax line so much better
Superman's war on sugary beverages would have been interesting. He could have ripped out the pancreas of unsuspecting soda drinkers so their bodies could no longer effectively process sugar.
The funny thing is the whole car thing is pretty much the logic behind gun confiscation
You left out my favorite story about how Superman kidnaps and drugs a high schooler for weeks to take his place on a football team
“I don’t think a character that is this much of a jerk would have lasted this long” meanwhile batman is the more popular superhero nowadays 😂
_Faster then a speeding bullet, more destructive than a cyclone over poor people's slums, able to pick up boys up to a geat distance and let them fall until they're crushed to a pulp, this amazing stranger from the planet Krypton, the man of steel,_*Superman!* _Possessing remarkable physical strenght, Superman fights a never ending battle for Truth, the Lulz and the Wiseau Way!_
I love this channel, you’ve helped me through a lot.
Damn it, now I wanna see a modern Superman show where he's characterized like this. It'll be like the Harley Quinn show, but with an asshole hero instead. Same tone, but slightly less cruelty for the sake of keeping him on the hero bay. Guess that probably will be more difficult to pull off in comparison though.
Wow great video and thanks for the laughs! Just recently found you on here and seriously cant get enough. Nice job.
Golden Age Superman wasn't anywhere near as modern Superman. He can't just instantly build houses like the flash can.
Nobody seemed to get this with Zack Snyder’s movies though! I understood what he was doing with the character (how he didn’t even learn to fly until later in MOS, was really violent towards Zod and the other bad guys in BvS), but nobody wanted to see what his vision was building up to. I get that most people don’t want to “wait” to see a hero become a full-fledged hero, but considering the original source material, I appreciated Snyder’s nods to it.
There was no guarantee he would beat Zod in Man of steel, so had to try, otherwise Zod would have killed people in the story. Worse in Superman II where Zod and his followers had lost their powers and were no longer a threat appears they were killed when not necessary.
Man, im with superman, on each story. It would be a different world without so many cars. And it would be better.
Yep true
Why don't you walk everywhere you want to go then.
Public transportation. Also bicycle and electric vehicles. Thats why. @@hydrolito
Basically Superman was chaotic good
And people bitched about Zack Snyder’s Superman snapping Zod’s neck.
My summation of 1938 Superman -- A Bully to the Bullies.
SO in other words...Superman was a Social justice Warrior. Respect to him
He was a criminal terrorizing people and destroying their property.
My guess is that as they had to tame down Superman, they came up with The Spectre as an outlet to keep telling this type of stories.
I imagine Spectre threatening the kids.
The bit where the cop punches the guy in the face had me in stitches. Comic Tropes is awesome. Who knew this stuff about Super man?? Hilarious.
Have you seen the website , Superdickery ? It gives a lot of examples of Superman comic book cover art and from stories where Supes was a real jerk, manipulating Lois and Jimmy, mainly from the 1950's. Apparently, it may have come from the editorial direction of Mort Weisenger. Enjoyed this episode as I have just finished reading a biography about Siegel and Schuster called Super boys written by a comics history scholar Brad Ricca. Worth a read.
magisterguidice Yes, funny site. I’ll have to add Super Boys to my book list, thanks.
I think he mentioned that at the start of the video. A lot of these reference, like Joker's "big boners," are often taken out of context. The other thing is that these stories are a product of their times. Much like how Maureen Robinson, the bioengineer mother from Lost in Space, did all the space laundry and space gardening in the original series, some question content from these early comics can be written off as just being the culture of the time.
Great Video Chris.
I think I prefer this psychotic Superman. It’s like he’s trying to be helpful but doesn’t even understand the problem. He’s an alien and has superpowers so he’s incapable of relating. His perspective is different; more like The Tick.
Destroy all cars! 💥🚗🔥
The video is a lot of fun, but the Jeremy Dale portion took my by surprise. I remember Skyward fondly. I never met Jeremy, but love his work.
I miss jerk Superman. Much more interesting then the boring boy scout.
Yeah, early Superman was far from a super boy scout, and not very smart or insightful, to boot. In another story, Superman 'discovers' that a South American war was only being held for the profit of weapons manufacturers. Yay, another easy solution for a difficult social problem.
I like the idea of Clark being this super altruistic guy who wants to solve every problem in the world, but the only way he knows how is beating people up.
@@matti.8465 Writers were not very bright.
I love that page with Superman racing the bullet. He’s more exciting when he’s a MAN, not a god, but comics and movies keep making him overpowered.
This is exactly how I would write Superman now
Look at the cover of the very fist comic! Supes is slamming a car into a boulder and everyone is running away from him in a panic!
Dang. Forget General Zod, the original Supes is a real wildcard! Reeve is still the best... informative videos, thank you!
Early Supermen hadn't been honed and refined but those origins are definitely interesting too!
6:16 The world of The Great Depression..
I NEED MORE VIDEOS LIKE this ONE pleASE
Superman was the first evil Superman, way before Homelander 😂😂
I remember a Super Boy comic from the fifities where super boy was helping with a community junk drive by eat garbage. It wasn't house hold garbage, but still weird.
13:30 Some of it intended to be satire? Come on man, he breaks back in to the radio station JUST as they repair it. The whole thing is slapstick comedy for kids.
That spiderman 67 quote is why he still has memes. XD
The biggest dick move that Superman ever did was not allowing Supergirl to use her powers. What was even the point of that? And she lived in an orphanage . Most depressing fucking character ever.
9:55 Batman judo-throws people off rooftops, locks a dude in an underground storage room to starve, straps a bomb to a thug's stomach, allows rabid ex-cultists to tear their former leader to shreds, breaks a Russian's neck, garrotes a thug from behind, uses a thug as a human shield against the Penguin, hangs a thug from his private plane, and otherwise slaughters so many people.
Really makes the Batman v Superman version seem accurate to his origins
There was an episode of Speed Racer called "The Man Who Hated Cars". He only rode a horse and ran around thwacking cars with his big whip. His daughter started dating Speed Racer so her father rode up on his horse and whipped her.
This was sooo funny... You should made more DC videos. I LOVE Superman.
You should do a Part 2 with Jimmy and Lois Lane's titles.
We need a parallel world Superman where he is still a super jerk in modern day. Good video my man.