Grant Morrison's Analysis of the First Superman Cover

8/10/2019 Grant Morrison's Analysis of the First Superman Cover

1/4

Look at the black-haired man dressed in a tight-fitting blue and red outfit with a cape trailing behind himas he moves left to right across the drawings equator line. The bright shield design on his chestcontained an S (gules on a field or, as they say down at the heraldry society). The man is captured inmotion, poised on the toes of his left foot, almost taking flight as he weightlessly hefts an olive green carabove his head. Using both hands, he hammers the vehicle to fragments against a conveniently placed

rocky outcrop in what appears to be a desert landscape. In the bottom left corner, a man with a bluebusiness suit runs off the frame, clutching his head like Edvard Munchs Screamer, his face a cartoon ofgibbering existential terror, like a man driven to the city limits of sanity by what he has just witnessed.Above his head, another man, wearing a conservative brown two-piece, can be seen racing north to thefirst mans west. A third, equally terrified, character crouches on his hands and knees, jacketless, gapingat the feet of the superhuman vandal. His abject posture displays his whimpering submission to theultimate alpha male. There is no fourth man: His place in the lower right corner is taken by a bouncingwhitewall tire torn loose from its axle. Like the bug-eyed bad guys, it too is trying its best to get awayfrom the destructive muscleman.

In any other hands but Supermans, the green roadster on that inaugural cover would boast proudly ofAmericas technological superiority and the wonde rs of mass manufacturing. Imagine the oozing adcopy: luxurious whitewall tire trim makes it seem like youre driving on whipped cream, and black -and-white newsreel cars in mind-boggling procession, rolling off the automated belts at Ford. But thiswas August 1938. Production lines were making laborers redundant across the entire developed worldwhile Charlie Chaplins poignant film masterpiece Modern Times articulated in pantomime the silent cry

of the little fellow, the authentic man, not to be forgotten above the relentless din of the factory floor.

Superman made his position plain: He was a hero of the people. The original Superman was a boldhumanist response to Depression-era fears of runaway scientific advance and soulless industrialism. Wewould see this early incarnation wrestling giant trains to a standstill, overturning tanks, or bench-pressing construction cranes. Superman rewrote folk hero John Henrys brave, futile battle with thesteam hammer to have a happy ending. He made explicit the fantasies of power and agency that keptthe little fellow trudging along toward another sunset fade- out. He was Charlies tramp character, withthe same burning hatred of injustice and bullies, but instead of guile and charm, Superman had thestrength of fifty men, and nothing could hurt him. If the dystopian nightmare visions of the age foresawa dehumanized, mechanized world, Superman offered another possibility: an image of a fiercely human

tomorrow that delivered the spectacle of triumphant individualism exercising its sovereignty over theimplacable forces of industrial oppression. Its no surprise that he was a big hit with the oppressed. He

was as resolutely lowbrow, as pro-poor, as any savior born in a pigsty.

Returning to the cover again, notice how the composition is based around a barely hidden X shape,which gives the drawing its solid framework and graphic appeal. This subliminal X suggests the intriguing


2/4

unknown, and thats exactly what Superman was when Action Comics no. 1 was published: the caped enigma at the eye of a Pop Art storm. He stands at the center of the compass, master of the fourelements and the cardinal directions. In Haitian voodoo, the crossroads is the gateway of the loa (orspirit) Legba, another manifestation of the god known variously as Mercury, Thoth, Ganesh, Odin, orOgma. Like these others, Legba is a gatekeeper and guards the boundary where the human and divine

worlds make contact. It makes perfect sense for Superman to inhabit the same nexus.

As a compositional crossbar, the X composition allowed Shuster to set a number of elements in a

spinning motion that highlighted his central figure. There are moving people with expressions on theirfaces, car parts, and very bright colors, but layered over the firm brace of the X, they form a second,spiral arrangement that drags our eye up and around on a perceptual Ferris wheel, eliciting frantic

questions as it compels our minds to motion:

Why is this running man so scared?

Whats this car doing up here?

Why is it being smashed against a rock?

What is the man on his knees looking at?

Knowing what we do of Superman today, we can assume that the fleeing, frightened men are gangsters

of some kind. Readers in 1938 simply had no idea what was going on. Undoubtedly, action would beinvolved, but the first glimpse of Superman was deliberately ambiguous. The men weve taken forgranted as fleeing gangsters could as easily be ordinary passersby running from a grimacing power thugin some kind of Russian ballet dancer kit. Theres no stole n loot spilling from swag bags, no blue fiveoclock shadows, cheap suits, or even weapons to identify the fleeing men as anything other thaninnocent onlookers. Based on first appearances alone, this gaudy muscleman could be friend or foe, and

the only way to answer a multitude of questions is to read on.

But theres a further innovation to notice, another clever trick to lure us inside. The cover image is asnapshot from the climax of a story weve yet to see. By the time the world catches up to Superman ,hes concluding an adventure weve already missed! Only by reading the story inside can we put the

image in context.


3/4

That first, untitled Superman adventure opened explosively on a freeze-frame of frantic action. Siegeldumped conventional story setups and cut literally to the chase in a bravura first panel that rearrangedthe conventional action- story arc in a startling way. The caption box read, A TIRELESS FIGURE RACESTHRU THE NIGHT. SECONDS COUNT DELAY MEANS FORFEIT FOR AN INNOCENT LIFE, to accompany aJoe Shuster image of Superman leaping through the air with a tied and gagged blond woman under his

arm. The image is as confident, muscular, and redolent of threat as Superman himself.

By the second panel, weve reached the Governors estate, and Superman is already sprinting across

the lawn, calling back over his shoulder to the bondaged blonde in the foreground, whom hes dumpedby a tree. MAKE YOURSELF COMFORTABLE! I HAVENT TIME TO ATTEND TO IT. We dont know whothis girl is, although Super mans gruff demeanor implies that she must be a bad egg unless, as the

cover is willing to imply, the star of the strip is the villain.

Already we are compelled through the narrative at Supermans speed and required to focus on the mostsignificant, most intense elements of every scene as if with supersenses. The only solution is to be swept

up in the high-velocity slipstream of his streaming red cape, one breathless step behind him.

When the governors dressing -gowned butler refused to open the door to the well-built stranger in theskintight suit, Superman smashed it down, sprinted up the stairs with the butler held screaming abovehis head, then tore a locked steel door off its hinges to reach the terrified (and clearly security-conscious) official within. The butler, in the meantime, had recovered his wits enough to seize a pistol.PUT THAT TOY AWAY, Superman warned, advancing with a clenched fist. The butler fired, only todiscover the muscular heros immunity to bullets, which bounced harmlessly off his brawny,

monogrammed chest.

This virtuoso kinetic overture alone would be worth ten cents from the pocket of any fantasy-starvedreader of the Depression. But Siegel and Shuster were not yet done. They still had a masterstroke toplay. Just when we think we have this incredible Superman concept figured out, after witnessing the

Man of Steels prodigious strength and determination, we are treated to Clark Kent the man behind

the S a man with a job, a boss, and girl trouble. Clark the nerd, the nebbish, the bespectacled, mild-mannered shadow self of the confident Man of Steel. The boys had struck a primal mother lode.

Hercules was always Hercules. Agamemnon and Perseus were heroes from the moment they leapt outof bed in the morning until the end of a long battle-crazed day, but Superman was secretly someoneelse. Clark was the soul, the transcendent element in the Superman equation. Clark Kent is what made


4/4

him endure. In Clark, Siegel had created the ultimate reader identification figure: misunderstood, put-upon, denied respect in spite of his obvious talents as a newspaperman at Metropoliss Daily Planet. Asboth Siegel and Shuster had learned, to their cost, some girls preferred bounding heroic warriors toskinny men who wrote or drew pretty pictures. But Clark Kent was more than the ultimate nerd fantasy;everyone could identify with him. Weve all felt clumsy and mis understood, once or twice, or more

often, in our lives. Just as everyone suspects the existence of an inner Superman an angelic, perfectself who personifies only our best moods and deeds there is something of Clark in all of us.

Documents

Grant Morrison's Analysis of the First Superman Cover