December 1, 2025 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, long before superheroes saturated movie screens and Halloween aisles, they lived quietly on pulp pages shaped by the anxieties and ambitions of 20th-century America. Industrial cities were growing, families were struggling, and people craved symbols of justice that felt larger than life but still recognizably human. World War II historian and author of Super-History, Jeffrey K. Johnson, helps us understand why the superhero is, at heart, a distinctly American invention.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
And we also love to hear your stories. We feature
them routinely. Send them to our American Stories dot com.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
There's some of our favorites.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Jeffrey Johnson is a World War II historian at Pearl
Harbor in Honolulu, Hawaii. He's also the author of Superhistory,
comic book Superheroes, and American Society.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
He's here to share this story. Let's take a listen.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
My name is Jeffrey Johnson. I have a PhD in
American Studies from Michigan State University. I was always joined
to comic books since I was I guess about ten
or eleven, and then I stopped reading them, and then
I picked them back up during the late eighties and
the early nineties, and then when I started my PhD
in I guess two thousand and four, I started reading
(01:06):
them again and it really just struck me just how
cohesive the narrative is and how very much speak to
the American experience in the way that King Arthur does
for England and Beowulf does for the Ancients and.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
The Greek gods do for the Greeks and the Roman
gods for them.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
I mean, they're this mythological force and they're a narrative
driver of that speaks to these heroes that a certain
society needs at a certain time, That speaks to their
hopes and their dreams and their fears, and they're a
real mirror to what is always going on in the
greater US mindset and the background of how we live,
(01:45):
which is an amazing thing to have to attract. Basically,
how then American society changed from nineteen thirty eight until
now through these superheroes. The first comic book superhero was
super and he debuted in June nineteen thirty nine, was
the cover date of Action Comics number one when he
(02:05):
came out. There were comic strips and comic books before that.
The first comic strip, which was a newspaper strip, came
out in eighteen ninety six.
Speaker 4 (02:13):
And it was called The Yellow Kid.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
But it was a different art form than what comic
books are, because comic strips were different for comic books.
Speaker 4 (02:20):
Because comic strips.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
Came out daily in the newspaper and they were three,
four or five panels and a strip every day, and
they often touched on politics or things of the day
at the early start, and then they would follow the
daily adventures of somebody, and they were from the beginning
really highly respected, and the people who created them became
pretty famous and pretty wealthy pretty quickly because they were
(02:45):
read by so many people in the newspaper every day.
And most of the people who went into that sort
of artwork, the kind of cartooning artwork, really wanted to
get into comic strips. But in the early nineteen thirties
there were these pulp magazines and then the early precursors
to the comic books, with these little pamphlets that were
put out at newsstands that were very much cheap paper,
(03:09):
very quickly made stories, and often they were reprints of
the comic strips that had been put in the paper.
But the real first major difference of what a comic
strip and a comic book could be was in nineteen
thirty eight, Action Comics number one came out and the
(03:29):
Superhero was introduced.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
That was the first.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
Appearance of Superman, and the creators of Superman were two
teenage boys from Cleveland, Ohio. Their names were Jerry Siegel
and Joe Schuster. Jerry mostly wrote the stories and Joe
mostly did the art, and they worked together on Superman,
and they came up with the idea just while that
they were trying to think up a comic strip for
(03:53):
the newspapers, because they really wanted to be comic strip guys,
because they that was where all the money and all
the fame were. And these were two teenage boys who
felt like they were outcast. They didn't really do particularly
well at school. They wanted to have girlfriends, but they didn't.
They were a little bit nerdy. They were two people
who really felt like they needed a champion for them,
(04:16):
someone who could stand up for people like them. And
one of the really interesting things is that Jerry Siegel's
father had been murdered during a robbery, and he had
always carried that with him, and so in some ways
he said later that he created Superman because he didn't
want people to feel like he felt in this fictional
world that he created, and he couldn't do anything about
(04:37):
his father's murder, and he couldn't do anything at actual time,
but he could create this world in which the superpowered
hero could actually fight for the common man and could
be this larger than life's force who actually worked for
real people and who tried to avenge the wrongs and
tried to stop crime and make up for things that
went wrong. It's fascinating that two teenage boys created Superman,
(05:01):
this first superhero who had created this entire industry.
Speaker 4 (05:04):
That we're still talking about today.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
I mean, it came out of nowhere, and yet it's
this amalgamation of all of.
Speaker 4 (05:11):
These different background things.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
I mean, you have Superman, who's, you know, dressed in
this costume that's very much taken from like these circus
acrobat performers and strong men, very bright and colorful and
stin costume. And then you have all of these different
pole heroes like Doc Savage and the Phantom, Zoro, Tarzan,
the Shadow, who all have these secret identities and they
(05:35):
fight crime and they're in the shadows, but they weren't
really Superman because they didn't put it all together. I mean,
you had strong men like Popeye, and you had avengers
like Zoro, or you had people who went on adventures
like John Carter from Mars, and you had all of
(05:55):
the elements were there, but no one ever put him
into one person because it was too fantastical. When Siegel
and Shuster first came up with the idea. They first
tried to make it into a comic strip and put
it into the.
Speaker 4 (06:05):
Newspapers, and nobody wanted it.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
Then they went around and they tried to get every
comic book publisher to take it, and nobody wanted it
because nobody believed that anybody would want to read something
that was this unbelievable, that was this super And so
they finally found a comic publisher that was run by
two guys named Harry Donnafield and Jack Leebowitz, who started
what was at that kind talled National Comics, but it
(06:30):
later became known as DC Comics, and they were looking
for filler for this new comic book they were creating
called Action Comics Number one.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
And you've been listening to Jeffrey Johnson tell the story
of comic books and where it all really began, and
not superheroes, because they've been around Greek mythology to the present.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
But in nineteen thirty eight.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
A couple of young guys, teenagers, Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster,
and they they had more than an idea. They wanted,
as Jeffrey said, to create a champion for sort of
nerdy outcasts like themselves.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
And by the way, the book is.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Superhistory, Comic Book, Superheroes, and American Society. Go wherever you
get your books, Amazon or the usual suspects.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
And when we come back.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
More of the life of comic book superheroes and how
they mirror American life. Here on our American Stories. Here
are in our American Stories. We bring you inspiring stories
of history, sports, business, faith and love. Stories from a
great and beautiful country that need to be told. But
(07:40):
we can't do it without you. Our stories are free
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keep the great American stories coming. That's our American Stories
dot Com. And we're back with our American Stories. And
(08:12):
Jeffrey Johnson, who is a World War II historian at
Pearl Harbor and Hawaii and he's also the author of Superhistory,
Comic Book, Superheroes, and American Society. We'd left off with
him talking about two teenagers in Cleveland, Ohio, and this
idea for a character and a cartoon and a comic
book called Superman.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Let's pick up where Jeffrey last left off.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
Although everybody remembers Action Comics number one is the first
appearance of Superman. There were multiple stories in there about
detectives and crime, and there was a magic story, and
there was all of these different formats that were basically
pushed in this one episode. And Superman was basically added
to this first issue because they needed something to put
(08:59):
in there. The was the story, and this was Siegul
and Schuster's last chance.
Speaker 4 (09:04):
And so when Action Comedies.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
Came out with the cover date of June nineteen thirty eight,
they did put Superman on the cover. And there's this
incredible cover of Superman picking this car up and he's
smashing it, and you see these guys in the background
with fear on their face and running around, and I mean,
it's not what people think of Superman now as this
you know, person who fights crime and he's you know,
(09:25):
nice to children and he saves cats from the trees
and that sort of thing. I mean, this is somebody
who was terrifying the people on this cover of this
first issue, and the history inside is.
Speaker 4 (09:35):
Much the same way.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
I mean, you know, Superman goes around and he he
fights these kind of petty street criminal type crime and
he you know, he fights corrupt politicians. There's a portion
of Action comics Number one with the villain is a
lobbyist who's corrupt, and Superman basically holds him upside down.
Speaker 4 (09:52):
On a wire and tries to scare him to death.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
That's very different from the Superman that most people think of,
who pushes planets around, to a guy who's worried about
a lobbyist who's kind of make a bad background deal.
But I mean that's what Superman was in the beginning.
He was someone who stopped petty thieves, and he stopped
corrupt slumlords, and he took on gambling dens that put
slot machines for our children to use. I mean, he
(10:18):
worried about street level crime, because that's what Siegul and
Shuston were worried about. They were worried about the things
that they saw every day. I mean, this was nineteen
thirty eight. This was in the midst of the Great Depression, right,
things were going terribly in the US economy get crashed
back in nineteen twenty nine, so you have almost a
decade of breadlines and soup lines and massive amounts of.
Speaker 4 (10:41):
People out of work.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
So when it came out Harry Donnafield and Jack Leiba,
was printed two hundred thousand copies, and they printed it
as an overprint. They thought they'd have a lot extra
sent back, and then it immediately sells out and the
retailers are asking them for more, So they printed more
for issue too, and they sold out of that, and
they printed more for issue three, but nobody knew that
it was Superman selling the issues because there was so
(11:05):
many different stories in there. And then by issue six,
they finally got numbers and they were able to figure
out that it was Superman, and they went around and
they talked to a news stand dealers and they said,
the kids don't know Action Comics. They asked me for
the one that's got Superman in it.
Speaker 4 (11:22):
And by Action.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
Comics number six they were selling about five hundred thousand
copies each, which was up from that two hundred thousand
print run for the first one that they thought was
wildly optimistic. I mean, Superman took off in a way
that I don't know if American culture has ever seen before.
It became a mania of just how popular, how quickly
(11:44):
he became. He got in Macy's Day Parade balloon, like
within a couple of years. Pretty soon he gets his
own show on the radio, and he's got Radio Adventures,
and I mean, and then really quickly, in the summer
of nineteen thirty nine, he gets his own own comic book.
Superman number one comes out basically a year from the
(12:04):
first issue of Action Comics number one.
Speaker 4 (12:07):
I mean, this was grassroots. This wasn't marketing.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
Nobody went out and asked people what they wanted, or
you know, tried to do these surveys or tried to
you know, come up with something that people wanted. This
was a vision of these two kids who changed the
entire world in some way by by creating these superheroes.
There were soon dozens and dozens of knockoffs Superman, and
(12:30):
one of the first Superman knockoffs was actually done by
DC itself. I mean, when that they saw how popular
Superman was, they quickly talked to writers and tried to
figure out if they could get another superhero to make
more comics about. And so they talked to a guy
named Bob Kane as the story and he came back
(12:50):
after a Weekend with this idea for Batman, and Batman
couldn't be any different from Superman. They wanted a Superman knockoff.
But I mean, Batman is not superpowered. He's a millionaire
playboy who is everything that Bob kand a writer who
created him wanted.
Speaker 4 (13:08):
He wanted to be rich and popular and be able
to do all these things.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
He's wished fulfillment for Bob Kane in the way same
way that Superman was for Siegul and Schuster, but in
the exact opposite way. So you have this really interesting
dynamic now that you have these two DC superheroes that
couldn't be any different. You have Superman, who's eventually shown
as being this Kansas farm boy who's from a place
(13:34):
that's so quaint and so Middle America that it's called Smallville.
He's adopted by these wonderful couple who teach him the
values and who teach him that he's supposed to fight
for right and for truth.
Speaker 4 (13:45):
And justice and all this stuff.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
And I say the other stuff because they didn't start
say in the American way until the Adventures of Superman
TV show with George Reeves came about in nineteen fifty three.
And then you have Batman who sees his parents murdered
and he's got all of this money and all of
the things that he could want, but he's in this
city that basically the crime of the city killed his parents,
(14:08):
and now he has to start this war on the
city and the crime that's in it. So, I mean,
you have these two heroes, but they do reflect these
two sides of this American mythology that's been around since
the very start of Who We Are. What's fascinating about
Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster is they were immigrants, as
(14:31):
were almost all of the early creators of comic books.
They both had parents who fled different countries because of
the anti Semitism of where they were from.
Speaker 4 (14:41):
As did a lot of the early creators.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
I mean, Bob Kane was of a Jewish background and
his parents fled where they were from because of problems
I talked about the publishers some national comics. They both
came from different countries to the States when that they
were young, and they fled because their parents thought that
they could have a much better life in this country.
And one of the creators were going to talk about later,
(15:02):
Jack Kirby. He was from New York and his parents
were also immigrants, and they came to America because of
a better life. And stan Lee was born Stanley Lieber
and he was of a Jewish background too, So I
mean a really large portion of the early creators were
from Jewish backgrounds and where people really understood how things
(15:22):
could go wrong in places other than the US, and
they came to the US really wanting a better life.
By the end of the nineteen thirties and the early
nineteen forties, there were literally dozens of not hundreds of
knockoff comic book superheroes. I mean people like the Black Hood,
Cat and Man, sub Zero Man, Hydro Man, Voltron, the
(15:44):
Human Generator, the Phantom Lady, Major Victory, the Human Bond,
and Vapo Man. Are you know some of the great
names that come out of that era. But I mean
there were also some that were really successful. One of
the most successful one is on Shazam or Captain Marvel's
he's known sometimes who came out of Wiz comics number
two and nineteen forty, and he was a Superman ripoff,
(16:06):
but he was done in this very safe, very cleansed
and a very easy read so Shazam, who was created
to look just like Superman, but he's given these much
more child friendly adventures where there was nothing violent or
nothing that parents could feel bad about their their children reading.
And he was highly popular. He outsold all superheroes, including
(16:30):
Superman for a while, but then he was such a
Superman knockoff that DC sued Faucet and then they won eventually,
but by the time the courts had dragged out, this
was in the nineteen fifties, when that his sales had
dropped so much that the effect of DC went in
the court case really didn't matter. So by like nineteen
forty and early nineteen forty one, you have this mass
(16:54):
of superheroes, right, dozens of publishers who are publishing hundreds
of different superhero who all share some of the same
elements and being superpowered and wearing bright costumes of fighting crime.
They're selling millions of copies across the boards of these issues.
And then you have World War two come about, and.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
You've been listening to Jeffrey Johnson tell the story of
how well how our comic books came to be in America,
And again it started with two teenagers in Cleveland and
the next thing, you know, from Superman, we get a
very different character from the same company, Batman. When we
come back more of this remarkable historical look at America
(17:35):
through the lens of comic books. Here on our American stories,
(18:08):
and we continue with our American stories and with Jeffrey Johnson,
who's a World War two historian at Pearl Harbor, and
he's also the author of Superhistory, Comic Book Superheroes and
American Society. Let's pick up where Jeffrey last left off.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
And then you have World War Two come about, and
everything within American society as a general, and for comic
book superheroes in particular, changes, And I mean, you know,
you have this war effort where that everything becomes about
the war, right, I mean, Americans start the ration, servicemen
are sent to war, and so because of this, these
superheroes necessarily have to change. I mean, you can't have
(18:48):
Superman taking on the police or the government at some
time as he did there in the thirties.
Speaker 4 (18:55):
Now that you're at war. So I mean, these heroes
become super.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
Patriot and they become part of the war effort, and
they sell war bonds on the covers of their issues,
and then on the coverage you see them fighting Hitler.
One of the early issues has Superman trying to enlist
in the military and his ex ray vision malfunctions, so
he reads the eye chart in the room next to
their room through the wall, and he's not actually allowed
(19:19):
to join because he's four f and so he decides
that the American service person can actually fight the war
far better than he can, and they don't need him,
and so he'll stay at home and he'll fight the
wars and a crime that is.
Speaker 4 (19:31):
Here at home. So there was a Look magazine article.
Speaker 3 (19:36):
In the early part of the war with it, I
mean he basically it's like a two or three page
story in which Superman basically goes and he captures Hitler
and Stalin and he takes them to the League of
Nations that he turns them in and he you know,
ends the war, which is a great story, but it's
hard to keep telling that story when that you have,
you know, people are actually at war for a prolonged time.
Speaker 4 (19:57):
And then on the twentieth of December nineteen forty of
the other comic book come out. It's called Captain America
Number one.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
Land Me Stress. This is December the twentieth, nineteen forty.
This is a year before Pearl Harbor. Basically, this is
before the US is officially entered via war, and you
have this cover of Captain America punching Adolf Hitler in
the jaw and taking on the Nazis, Which doesn't seem
that incredible now because we know how the war ended
(20:24):
and we understand exactly what everything was. But a year
before the US entered the war, you have a comic
book character who's punching a world leader in the face
in a magazine meant for children. It's pretty incredible, and
it shows you how creative and also how fearless. A
lot of these comic book creators were the people who
(20:46):
created Captain America. One were Joe Simon and Jack Kirby.
He was Jewish and he grew up in the streets.
Speaker 4 (20:53):
Of New York.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
But he was this rough and tumble street kid who
used to get into fights. There was this little bitty guy,
but he was fearless and rough and tumble. There's this
great story that while they were working at what was
then called Timely but would later change his name to
Marvel Comics, they got a phone call that there was
somebody down in the lobby who said that he didn't
(21:15):
like what Captain American Comics was saying about Nazis, and
he was going to bomb the building. And Kirby immediately
picked up in the phone and he said, wait down there,
because I'm gonna come down there and to beat the
stuffing out of you. That's Jack Kirby, fearless, and it's
really telling that. I mean, what's like Superman and what's
like the other creators. Kirby was this immigrant whose parents
(21:37):
knew about oppression and knew about all of these terrible
things that had happened to them in the place they
came from. But the problem.
Speaker 4 (21:44):
Was after the war, there really was nowhere for a
lot of these comedy books to go because, I mean,
you have these.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
Incredibly powerful heroes who are fighting society's wrongs, and they
became very patriotic during the war, and then once the
war is over, people want to move on. I mean,
you have this generation basically from nineteen twenty nine to
nineteen forty five had only known depression, down times in war.
Suddenly the war's over and the US is the one
(22:15):
country who comes out of the war really prosperous. Suddenly,
for the first time in a lot of these people's lives,
they have stability, they have quiet, they have peace, they
have all of these things they had dreamed about in
their whole life, which is really great for the country
and really great for a lot of people, but it's
bad for the people who have to write stories for
these superheroes, and sales drop tremendously. A lot of these
(22:37):
public measures go out of business. Captain America, they try
to turn him to this anti communist hero. His comic
book has changed from Captain America to the title of
Captain America Commedy Smasher. But you know, it doesn't work.
So in the early fifties, Captain America is canceled, as
is a lot of these heroes. Superman and Batman still
(23:02):
continue to sell. Well, what Superman and Batman begin to
do is they start to mirror this nineteen fifties stereotypical
working man. You know, has a family in the suburbs,
and you know they certainly don't have a job in
the way that I'm talking, but I mean they take
on extended families. I mean Batman gets Robin and then
(23:24):
Superman gets this incredible extended family, whether they you know,
he's got Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen. He gets a cousin
from Krypton named Supergirl, and he gets this whole zoo
of pets, Crypto, the Super Dog, Streaky, the Super Cat, Comet,
the Super Horse, and my favorite dumb Bepo, the Super Monkey.
That's very different from the nineteen thirty eight nineteen thirty
(23:47):
nine version of these social Avengers who were trying to
affix society. Now they want to make sure that nothing
changes in society. So basically from the end of the
World War Two to the early nineteen sixties, you just
have an era of whether people really just want their
comic books to be child friendly and safe enough to
make everybody feel good about how life is going in
(24:07):
the US. So there's this great story that the person
who was head of DC at that time, Jack Liebowitz,
he was playing golf with Martin Goodman, who was the
head of Marvel Comics at that time, and Jack Liebowitz
says to Goodman that he had just started this new
superhero comic called the Justice League of America, where that
(24:29):
they put all of the superheroes together on one team
and they were super surprised at how well it's sold.
So once Martin Goodman gets finished with this golf game,
and then he goes back to Marvel and he talks
to his nephew who had been working for him since
the early forties, who had been this guy who had
been there the whole time and who had basically kept
the company running. And this nephew of his whose name
(24:52):
was Stanley Lieber by birth, but he changed his name
to stan Lee because he didn't want people to know
what his real name was, because he thought that he
could be the great American writer at some point, and
he very much wanted to save his real name for
the real novels he was going to write. He goes
back to stan Lee and he says, I want us
to do superheroes again. And you know, stan Lee, who's
(25:15):
at this time.
Speaker 4 (25:15):
Just tired of it all.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
He says, superheroes are no good, No one ever reads superheroes.
Speaker 4 (25:21):
I don't want to do superheroes.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
And Martin Goodman's like, no, there's money in superheroes. We're
all gonna do them for a couple of years and
then we'll move on to the next thing. And stan
Lee decides then that he's gonna quit because he's had
him there.
Speaker 4 (25:34):
And so he.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
Goes home to his wife and he says to her,
I'm gonna quit. I can't take this anymore. I'm gonna
go into advertising. I'm gonna write my novel. I can
do something else. And she says, just this one time,
write the superhero story that you would like to read.
And then Stanley says, yeah, that's what I'll do. I'll
blow it up on my way out and then I'll
(25:57):
be finished with it. So stan Lee goes back and
he writes Fantastic.
Speaker 4 (26:01):
Four number one.
Speaker 3 (26:03):
It's almost impossible to overemphasize what a sea change this
was in comic book storytelling. Stanley created these characters, along
with Jack Kirby, that had real problems, that fought among themselves,
that actually had things that really made their lives terrible
at some points.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
And my goodness, what storytelling. And to think that stan
Lee was out the door and it was his wife,
just like Steve McQueen who convinced Steve McQueen to do
the Thomas Crown affair and did it in really interesting ways,
it was stan Lee's wife, his bride, who said, hey,
out the door, just write that comic book you would
have always wanted to write before you write the.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Great American novel.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
And indeed that's how Fantastic for Number one comes to creation.
When we come back more of this remarkable look at
American history through the prism of comic books and how
our society changed and the writers, well, they changed right.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
Along with us.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
More with Jeffrey Johnson and the story of comic book superheroes.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
Here on our American stories, and.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
We continue with our American stories and author Jeffrey Johnson
and his book is Superhistory, Comic book Superheroes and American Society.
Let's pick up again where Jeffrey last left off.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
Superman and Batman and all of the DC heroes. They
fought crime, and they had these really fun lives and
you would love to be them. The Marvel heroes always
had such problems and such often horrific things happened to
them that you felt bad for them.
Speaker 4 (28:07):
These were heroes.
Speaker 3 (28:09):
Who had flaws and who were human in a way
that heroes had never been before. I mean, there's a
popular culture commentator, Pierre Comtos, who says, of the Fantastic Four,
here's the book that neatly divides the history of comic
books in the two era, everything that came before and
everything that came after. Fantastic Four became a hit. It
(28:31):
sold hundreds of thousands of copies, and then pretty quickly
Lee and Kirby create other superheroes.
Speaker 4 (28:38):
To fill out the Marvel universe.
Speaker 3 (28:39):
You have the Incredible Hulk that comes out in May
nineteen sixty two. You've got Spider Man, who that there's
some scrawny teenager who has all of these home life
issues and you know, problems. The fascinating about Spider Man
is that Martin Goodman, the had a Marvel absolutely did
not believe that Spider Man would work. Stan Lee had
to beg him many times to let it published Spider
(29:00):
Man because he was a teenage hero and teenagers born heroes.
He didn't think kids wanted to read about teenagers. They
wanted to read about adults. So, I mean, you know,
you have all those, and you have you know, ant Man,
thor Iron Man. The X Men eventually come out, and
then at some point he puts together a Justice Leave
of American type team called the Avengers, and then they
(29:21):
bring back Captain America.
Speaker 4 (29:23):
He becomes a member of the Avengers.
Speaker 3 (29:25):
The Marvel comic books of the nineteen sixties were often
really irreverent and really fun, and then towards the end
they start to take on some of the social issues
of the day, some of the nineteen sixties and the
Vietnam protests and things like that. But they begin to
get more and more serious. And then as the nineteen
seventies hit, there's this sea change not only in American
(29:46):
comic books, but also in the American society in general.
Speaker 4 (29:50):
It seems like there are these films.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
That come out in the day, like you know, Death
Wish or the Clint Eastwood Dirty Harry movies.
Speaker 4 (29:57):
Right where that show this like backlash.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
Against what seemed as crime being rampant and this lack
of a structure that can take care of him. Right,
I mean, you know, that's the late nineteen seventies. And
then you know, right about that same era, you also
have the Punisher, who's this Vietnam veteran who doesn't have superpowers.
He just you know, he shoots and kills a lot
of people, and you know, he goes after drug lords,
(30:21):
he goes after street crime, he does all of these things.
There's a great quote by one of the people who
wrote him. Mike Baron that I want to read. Baron
in nineteen eighty eight, when.
Speaker 4 (30:31):
He was talking about The Punisher wrote.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
The Punisher embodies the voice of conservative Americans who see
their quality of life threatened by criminal behavior and the
confused thinking of liberals. This average citizen is concerned with
getting through the day and protecting his family. The police
and the courts may constantly disappoint us, but the Punisher
never does. So Read and enjoy, and don't let liberals
(30:53):
make you feel guilty. The Punisher knows what's right. It's
quite simple when you think about it. Just don't forget
to shout afterwards. Now, heroes aren't just protecting society within
societal rules, they're actually setting their own rules. And the
point that this becomes the most apparent is when by
(31:13):
the mid nineteen eighties, Frank Miller writes this four issue
mini series called Batman and Dark Knight Returns, and it's
his take on this older Batman who had been retired
for a while, who then comes back to this Gotham
city that's overrun by crime. And so Batman's the only
one who can take care of this, and so this
(31:35):
keeps going during in the nineties, and there are a
lot of different stories trying to figure out what comics
books should be.
Speaker 4 (31:42):
For a while, Marvel ass to go.
Speaker 3 (31:43):
Into bankruptcy actually, and they're on the brink of closing down.
It was a really dark time, both in the storylines
of comic books and the way that comic books are
produced and the way that they were sold. They do
catch a little more of their footing by the two thousands,
as far as the nine to eleven attacks, and then
the post nine to eleven world, comic books become a
(32:05):
very fearful place where that it's hard to trust heroes
and then the people around them. There's a storyline called
it Uncivil War by Marvel where that Captain America and
Iron Man basically disagree about should heroes have to register
with the government. Captain America is against it, iron Man
(32:26):
is for it, and they basically fight it out, and
they basically bring heroes on to their sides, and then
at the very end, Captain America basically loses.
Speaker 4 (32:35):
He's in and arrested at the end.
Speaker 3 (32:37):
So you have this image of Captain America in handcuffs,
and there's this great quote by one of the writers,
where that he says, you know, basically, what this story
is about is where do we draw the line between
safety and freedom? I mean, you have stories like that.
You have the Death of Captain America, where that he
(32:57):
briefly dies and you know, he dies as this sort
of a story about who can be trusted in America
and have things shifted so much that things don't make
sense anymore. I mean, you know, these stories were really
a lot of creators trying to come to grips with
what the world meant after the nine eleven attacks and
then all of the aftermath of that. It's hard to
(33:21):
talk about comic books now as just comic books in
the last decade or so, because you have this merging
of outside media and comic books. Starting in nineteen seventy eight,
You've got this Superman movie that's probably the first time
where that people really took superhero seriously as a storytelling
(33:43):
device and as a way to tell stories.
Speaker 4 (33:45):
And then you also after.
Speaker 3 (33:47):
That have this nineteen eighties Tim Burton Batman movie, which
is this big budget with big stars movies, right. I mean,
so you would definitely have that, and you know, the
two thousand X Men movie and the two thousand and
two Spider Movie, and you know Punisher and Fantastics four.
Speaker 4 (34:03):
But the really big changes as far as how American
society views comic books as this larger mythology seemed to
be the Christopher.
Speaker 3 (34:13):
Nolan Batman films in two thousand and five, two thousand
and eight, and twenty twelve, which were you know, critically
acclaimed and did huge box office numbers. And then in
two thousand and eight you have this Iron Man film
that comes out from Marvel, and it's the first of
what's called the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Now, you know, there
were Marvel films before, but all of the Marvel films
(34:36):
before had been produced by studios that weren't Marvel. They
were Fox or Sony had bought the rights back when
Marvel was bankrupt, and then they were the ones that
put on the films. But Marvel, starting with Iron Man
in two thousand and eight, and then you know Iron
Man two in twenty ten, and then thor and Captain
America and the Avengers and so on, created this universe
(34:58):
of storytelling that really r is what comic books have done.
I mean, each story is a unique story, but they
also fit together to create this bigger universe. So I
mean you can add films in like Guardians of the
Galaxy and Black Panther and ant Man, and it.
Speaker 4 (35:15):
All becomes part of the same universe.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
There were really no films that had done that before,
and it's really following one of the tropes of comic
book storytelling. So you now have this reality where that
superheroes aren't comic books anymore. If forty thousand people read
an issue of you Name the Hero, but they watch
his film, he's a film star now instead of a
(35:39):
comic book star. That's a really interesting development that has
now created this world popular culture that now has seen
this art form that started in the nineteen thirties as
these street level characters that were mostly produced by these
immigrant kids who wanted to be part of society, who
were outcast, and who know how to get the things
(36:01):
that they thought they wanted, and so they created these
narratives where that these ciphers of theirs could do it
for them. Have now become this worldwide industry and this
mythology that I would dare say, I think I think
most people know a lot about the Marvel universe and
about the DC universe now in way that I think
(36:22):
maybe superheroes have outgrown comic books, and you know, maybe
comic grook books are going to exist as a neat
chart form for a long time. But it feels like
film and television is now their new outlet, and it
feels like a lot of people like that, and a
lot of people really respond to that, and it's created
this mythology that it now is just keeps growing and
(36:42):
growing and growing.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
And a terrific job on the production by Greg Hangler,
and a special thanks to Jeffrey Johnson, who's a World
War Two historian at Pearl Harbor and Honolulu, Hawaii. He's
the author of Superhistory, Comic Book, super Heroes, and American Society.
Get it at your local bookstores or wherever you buy
your books. And it all started with two Cleveland teenagers,
(37:10):
Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster the Fantastic Four. As Jeffrey noted,
that was the dividing line everything before and everything after,
as we got much more complex characters. And then came
the trilogy, the Batman Trilogy by Christopher Nolan, which changed everything,
(37:31):
and those films, my goodness, three of my family's favorites,
and soon there after Marvel steps in to make their
own movies. Warner Brothers did the Nolan films, but Marvel
stepped in and said, these characters are ours, and now
comic books are sort of like secondary to the movie
business itself and the superheroes brought onto the big screen.
(37:53):
The story of comic book superheroes. Here on our American stories.
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
And we also love to hear your stories. We feature
them routinely. Send them to our American Stories dot com.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
There's some of our favorites.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Jeffrey Johnson is a World War II historian at Pearl
Harbor in Honolulu, Hawaii. He's also the author of Superhistory,
comic book Superheroes, and American Society.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
He's here to share this story. Let's take a listen.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
My name is Jeffrey Johnson. I have a PhD in
American Studies from Michigan State University. I was always joined
to comic books since I was I guess about ten
or eleven, and then I stopped reading them, and then
I picked them back up during the late eighties and
the early nineties, and then when I started my PhD
in I guess two thousand and four, I started reading
(01:06):
them again and it really just struck me just how
cohesive the narrative is and how very much speak to
the American experience in the way that King Arthur does
for England and Beowulf does for the Ancients and.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
The Greek gods do for the Greeks and the Roman
gods for them.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
I mean, they're this mythological force and they're a narrative
driver of that speaks to these heroes that a certain
society needs at a certain time, That speaks to their
hopes and their dreams and their fears, and they're a
real mirror to what is always going on in the
greater US mindset and the background of how we live,
(01:45):
which is an amazing thing to have to attract. Basically,
how then American society changed from nineteen thirty eight until
now through these superheroes. The first comic book superhero was
super and he debuted in June nineteen thirty nine, was
the cover date of Action Comics number one when he
(02:05):
came out. There were comic strips and comic books before that.
The first comic strip, which was a newspaper strip, came
out in eighteen ninety six.
Speaker 4 (02:13):
And it was called The Yellow Kid.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
But it was a different art form than what comic
books are, because comic strips were different for comic books.
Speaker 4 (02:20):
Because comic strips.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
Came out daily in the newspaper and they were three,
four or five panels and a strip every day, and
they often touched on politics or things of the day
at the early start, and then they would follow the
daily adventures of somebody, and they were from the beginning
really highly respected, and the people who created them became
pretty famous and pretty wealthy pretty quickly because they were
(02:45):
read by so many people in the newspaper every day.
And most of the people who went into that sort
of artwork, the kind of cartooning artwork, really wanted to
get into comic strips. But in the early nineteen thirties
there were these pulp magazines and then the early precursors
to the comic books, with these little pamphlets that were
put out at newsstands that were very much cheap paper,
(03:09):
very quickly made stories, and often they were reprints of
the comic strips that had been put in the paper.
But the real first major difference of what a comic
strip and a comic book could be was in nineteen
thirty eight, Action Comics number one came out and the
(03:29):
Superhero was introduced.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
That was the first.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
Appearance of Superman, and the creators of Superman were two
teenage boys from Cleveland, Ohio. Their names were Jerry Siegel
and Joe Schuster. Jerry mostly wrote the stories and Joe
mostly did the art, and they worked together on Superman,
and they came up with the idea just while that
they were trying to think up a comic strip for
(03:53):
the newspapers, because they really wanted to be comic strip guys,
because they that was where all the money and all
the fame were. And these were two teenage boys who
felt like they were outcast. They didn't really do particularly
well at school. They wanted to have girlfriends, but they didn't.
They were a little bit nerdy. They were two people
who really felt like they needed a champion for them,
(04:16):
someone who could stand up for people like them. And
one of the really interesting things is that Jerry Siegel's
father had been murdered during a robbery, and he had
always carried that with him, and so in some ways
he said later that he created Superman because he didn't
want people to feel like he felt in this fictional
world that he created, and he couldn't do anything about
(04:37):
his father's murder, and he couldn't do anything at actual time,
but he could create this world in which the superpowered
hero could actually fight for the common man and could
be this larger than life's force who actually worked for
real people and who tried to avenge the wrongs and
tried to stop crime and make up for things that
went wrong. It's fascinating that two teenage boys created Superman,
(05:01):
this first superhero who had created this entire industry.
Speaker 4 (05:04):
That we're still talking about today.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
I mean, it came out of nowhere, and yet it's
this amalgamation of all of.
Speaker 4 (05:11):
These different background things.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
I mean, you have Superman, who's, you know, dressed in
this costume that's very much taken from like these circus
acrobat performers and strong men, very bright and colorful and
stin costume. And then you have all of these different
pole heroes like Doc Savage and the Phantom, Zoro, Tarzan,
the Shadow, who all have these secret identities and they
(05:35):
fight crime and they're in the shadows, but they weren't
really Superman because they didn't put it all together. I mean,
you had strong men like Popeye, and you had avengers
like Zoro, or you had people who went on adventures
like John Carter from Mars, and you had all of
(05:55):
the elements were there, but no one ever put him
into one person because it was too fantastical. When Siegel
and Shuster first came up with the idea. They first
tried to make it into a comic strip and put
it into the.
Speaker 4 (06:05):
Newspapers, and nobody wanted it.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
Then they went around and they tried to get every
comic book publisher to take it, and nobody wanted it
because nobody believed that anybody would want to read something
that was this unbelievable, that was this super And so
they finally found a comic publisher that was run by
two guys named Harry Donnafield and Jack Leebowitz, who started
what was at that kind talled National Comics, but it
(06:30):
later became known as DC Comics, and they were looking
for filler for this new comic book they were creating
called Action Comics Number one.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
And you've been listening to Jeffrey Johnson tell the story
of comic books and where it all really began, and
not superheroes, because they've been around Greek mythology to the present.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
But in nineteen thirty eight.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
A couple of young guys, teenagers, Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster,
and they they had more than an idea. They wanted,
as Jeffrey said, to create a champion for sort of
nerdy outcasts like themselves.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
And by the way, the book is.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Superhistory, Comic Book, Superheroes, and American Society. Go wherever you
get your books, Amazon or the usual suspects.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
And when we come back.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
More of the life of comic book superheroes and how
they mirror American life. Here on our American Stories. Here
are in our American Stories. We bring you inspiring stories
of history, sports, business, faith and love. Stories from a
great and beautiful country that need to be told. But
(07:40):
we can't do it without you. Our stories are free
to listen to, but they're not free to make. If
you love our stories and America like we do, please
go to Our American Stories dot com and click the
donate button. Give a little, give a lot, help us
keep the great American stories coming. That's our American Stories
dot Com. And we're back with our American Stories. And
(08:12):
Jeffrey Johnson, who is a World War II historian at
Pearl Harbor and Hawaii and he's also the author of Superhistory,
Comic Book, Superheroes, and American Society. We'd left off with
him talking about two teenagers in Cleveland, Ohio, and this
idea for a character and a cartoon and a comic
book called Superman.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Let's pick up where Jeffrey last left off.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
Although everybody remembers Action Comics number one is the first
appearance of Superman. There were multiple stories in there about
detectives and crime, and there was a magic story, and
there was all of these different formats that were basically
pushed in this one episode. And Superman was basically added
to this first issue because they needed something to put
(08:59):
in there. The was the story, and this was Siegul
and Schuster's last chance.
Speaker 4 (09:04):
And so when Action Comedies.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
Came out with the cover date of June nineteen thirty eight,
they did put Superman on the cover. And there's this
incredible cover of Superman picking this car up and he's
smashing it, and you see these guys in the background
with fear on their face and running around, and I mean,
it's not what people think of Superman now as this
you know, person who fights crime and he's you know,
(09:25):
nice to children and he saves cats from the trees
and that sort of thing. I mean, this is somebody
who was terrifying the people on this cover of this
first issue, and the history inside is.
Speaker 4 (09:35):
Much the same way.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
I mean, you know, Superman goes around and he he
fights these kind of petty street criminal type crime and
he you know, he fights corrupt politicians. There's a portion
of Action comics Number one with the villain is a
lobbyist who's corrupt, and Superman basically holds him upside down.
Speaker 4 (09:52):
On a wire and tries to scare him to death.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
That's very different from the Superman that most people think of,
who pushes planets around, to a guy who's worried about
a lobbyist who's kind of make a bad background deal.
But I mean that's what Superman was in the beginning.
He was someone who stopped petty thieves, and he stopped
corrupt slumlords, and he took on gambling dens that put
slot machines for our children to use. I mean, he
(10:18):
worried about street level crime, because that's what Siegul and
Shuston were worried about. They were worried about the things
that they saw every day. I mean, this was nineteen
thirty eight. This was in the midst of the Great Depression, right,
things were going terribly in the US economy get crashed
back in nineteen twenty nine, so you have almost a
decade of breadlines and soup lines and massive amounts of.
Speaker 4 (10:41):
People out of work.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
So when it came out Harry Donnafield and Jack Leiba,
was printed two hundred thousand copies, and they printed it
as an overprint. They thought they'd have a lot extra
sent back, and then it immediately sells out and the
retailers are asking them for more, So they printed more
for issue too, and they sold out of that, and
they printed more for issue three, but nobody knew that
it was Superman selling the issues because there was so
(11:05):
many different stories in there. And then by issue six,
they finally got numbers and they were able to figure
out that it was Superman, and they went around and
they talked to a news stand dealers and they said,
the kids don't know Action Comics. They asked me for
the one that's got Superman in it.
Speaker 4 (11:22):
And by Action.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
Comics number six they were selling about five hundred thousand
copies each, which was up from that two hundred thousand
print run for the first one that they thought was
wildly optimistic. I mean, Superman took off in a way
that I don't know if American culture has ever seen before.
It became a mania of just how popular, how quickly
(11:44):
he became. He got in Macy's Day Parade balloon, like
within a couple of years. Pretty soon he gets his
own show on the radio, and he's got Radio Adventures,
and I mean, and then really quickly, in the summer
of nineteen thirty nine, he gets his own own comic book.
Superman number one comes out basically a year from the
(12:04):
first issue of Action Comics number one.
Speaker 4 (12:07):
I mean, this was grassroots. This wasn't marketing.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
Nobody went out and asked people what they wanted, or
you know, tried to do these surveys or tried to
you know, come up with something that people wanted. This
was a vision of these two kids who changed the
entire world in some way by by creating these superheroes.
There were soon dozens and dozens of knockoffs Superman, and
(12:30):
one of the first Superman knockoffs was actually done by
DC itself. I mean, when that they saw how popular
Superman was, they quickly talked to writers and tried to
figure out if they could get another superhero to make
more comics about. And so they talked to a guy
named Bob Kane as the story and he came back
(12:50):
after a Weekend with this idea for Batman, and Batman
couldn't be any different from Superman. They wanted a Superman knockoff.
But I mean, Batman is not superpowered. He's a millionaire
playboy who is everything that Bob kand a writer who
created him wanted.
Speaker 4 (13:08):
He wanted to be rich and popular and be able
to do all these things.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
He's wished fulfillment for Bob Kane in the way same
way that Superman was for Siegul and Schuster, but in
the exact opposite way. So you have this really interesting
dynamic now that you have these two DC superheroes that
couldn't be any different. You have Superman, who's eventually shown
as being this Kansas farm boy who's from a place
(13:34):
that's so quaint and so Middle America that it's called Smallville.
He's adopted by these wonderful couple who teach him the
values and who teach him that he's supposed to fight
for right and for truth.
Speaker 4 (13:45):
And justice and all this stuff.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
And I say the other stuff because they didn't start
say in the American way until the Adventures of Superman
TV show with George Reeves came about in nineteen fifty three.
And then you have Batman who sees his parents murdered
and he's got all of this money and all of
the things that he could want, but he's in this
city that basically the crime of the city killed his parents,
(14:08):
and now he has to start this war on the
city and the crime that's in it. So, I mean,
you have these two heroes, but they do reflect these
two sides of this American mythology that's been around since
the very start of Who We Are. What's fascinating about
Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster is they were immigrants, as
(14:31):
were almost all of the early creators of comic books.
They both had parents who fled different countries because of
the anti Semitism of where they were from.
Speaker 4 (14:41):
As did a lot of the early creators.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
I mean, Bob Kane was of a Jewish background and
his parents fled where they were from because of problems
I talked about the publishers some national comics. They both
came from different countries to the States when that they
were young, and they fled because their parents thought that
they could have a much better life in this country.
And one of the creators were going to talk about later,
(15:02):
Jack Kirby. He was from New York and his parents
were also immigrants, and they came to America because of
a better life. And stan Lee was born Stanley Lieber
and he was of a Jewish background too, So I
mean a really large portion of the early creators were
from Jewish backgrounds and where people really understood how things
(15:22):
could go wrong in places other than the US, and
they came to the US really wanting a better life.
By the end of the nineteen thirties and the early
nineteen forties, there were literally dozens of not hundreds of
knockoff comic book superheroes. I mean people like the Black Hood,
Cat and Man, sub Zero Man, Hydro Man, Voltron, the
(15:44):
Human Generator, the Phantom Lady, Major Victory, the Human Bond,
and Vapo Man. Are you know some of the great
names that come out of that era. But I mean
there were also some that were really successful. One of
the most successful one is on Shazam or Captain Marvel's
he's known sometimes who came out of Wiz comics number
two and nineteen forty, and he was a Superman ripoff,
(16:06):
but he was done in this very safe, very cleansed
and a very easy read so Shazam, who was created
to look just like Superman, but he's given these much
more child friendly adventures where there was nothing violent or
nothing that parents could feel bad about their their children reading.
And he was highly popular. He outsold all superheroes, including
(16:30):
Superman for a while, but then he was such a
Superman knockoff that DC sued Faucet and then they won eventually,
but by the time the courts had dragged out, this
was in the nineteen fifties, when that his sales had
dropped so much that the effect of DC went in
the court case really didn't matter. So by like nineteen
forty and early nineteen forty one, you have this mass
(16:54):
of superheroes, right, dozens of publishers who are publishing hundreds
of different superhero who all share some of the same
elements and being superpowered and wearing bright costumes of fighting crime.
They're selling millions of copies across the boards of these issues.
And then you have World War two come about, and.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
You've been listening to Jeffrey Johnson tell the story of
how well how our comic books came to be in America,
And again it started with two teenagers in Cleveland and
the next thing, you know, from Superman, we get a
very different character from the same company, Batman. When we
come back more of this remarkable historical look at America
(17:35):
through the lens of comic books. Here on our American stories,
(18:08):
and we continue with our American stories and with Jeffrey Johnson,
who's a World War two historian at Pearl Harbor, and
he's also the author of Superhistory, Comic Book Superheroes and
American Society. Let's pick up where Jeffrey last left off.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
And then you have World War Two come about, and
everything within American society as a general, and for comic
book superheroes in particular, changes, And I mean, you know,
you have this war effort where that everything becomes about
the war, right, I mean, Americans start the ration, servicemen
are sent to war, and so because of this, these
superheroes necessarily have to change. I mean, you can't have
(18:48):
Superman taking on the police or the government at some
time as he did there in the thirties.
Speaker 4 (18:55):
Now that you're at war. So I mean, these heroes
become super.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
Patriot and they become part of the war effort, and
they sell war bonds on the covers of their issues,
and then on the coverage you see them fighting Hitler.
One of the early issues has Superman trying to enlist
in the military and his ex ray vision malfunctions, so
he reads the eye chart in the room next to
their room through the wall, and he's not actually allowed
(19:19):
to join because he's four f and so he decides
that the American service person can actually fight the war
far better than he can, and they don't need him,
and so he'll stay at home and he'll fight the
wars and a crime that is.
Speaker 4 (19:31):
Here at home. So there was a Look magazine article.
Speaker 3 (19:36):
In the early part of the war with it, I
mean he basically it's like a two or three page
story in which Superman basically goes and he captures Hitler
and Stalin and he takes them to the League of
Nations that he turns them in and he you know,
ends the war, which is a great story, but it's
hard to keep telling that story when that you have,
you know, people are actually at war for a prolonged time.
Speaker 4 (19:57):
And then on the twentieth of December nineteen forty of
the other comic book come out. It's called Captain America
Number one.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
Land Me Stress. This is December the twentieth, nineteen forty.
This is a year before Pearl Harbor. Basically, this is
before the US is officially entered via war, and you
have this cover of Captain America punching Adolf Hitler in
the jaw and taking on the Nazis, Which doesn't seem
that incredible now because we know how the war ended
(20:24):
and we understand exactly what everything was. But a year
before the US entered the war, you have a comic
book character who's punching a world leader in the face
in a magazine meant for children. It's pretty incredible, and
it shows you how creative and also how fearless. A
lot of these comic book creators were the people who
(20:46):
created Captain America. One were Joe Simon and Jack Kirby.
He was Jewish and he grew up in the streets.
Speaker 4 (20:53):
Of New York.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
But he was this rough and tumble street kid who
used to get into fights. There was this little bitty guy,
but he was fearless and rough and tumble. There's this
great story that while they were working at what was
then called Timely but would later change his name to
Marvel Comics, they got a phone call that there was
somebody down in the lobby who said that he didn't
(21:15):
like what Captain American Comics was saying about Nazis, and
he was going to bomb the building. And Kirby immediately
picked up in the phone and he said, wait down there,
because I'm gonna come down there and to beat the
stuffing out of you. That's Jack Kirby, fearless, and it's
really telling that. I mean, what's like Superman and what's
like the other creators. Kirby was this immigrant whose parents
(21:37):
knew about oppression and knew about all of these terrible
things that had happened to them in the place they
came from. But the problem.
Speaker 4 (21:44):
Was after the war, there really was nowhere for a
lot of these comedy books to go because, I mean,
you have these.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
Incredibly powerful heroes who are fighting society's wrongs, and they
became very patriotic during the war, and then once the
war is over, people want to move on. I mean,
you have this generation basically from nineteen twenty nine to
nineteen forty five had only known depression, down times in war.
Suddenly the war's over and the US is the one
(22:15):
country who comes out of the war really prosperous. Suddenly,
for the first time in a lot of these people's lives,
they have stability, they have quiet, they have peace, they
have all of these things they had dreamed about in
their whole life, which is really great for the country
and really great for a lot of people, but it's
bad for the people who have to write stories for
these superheroes, and sales drop tremendously. A lot of these
(22:37):
public measures go out of business. Captain America, they try
to turn him to this anti communist hero. His comic
book has changed from Captain America to the title of
Captain America Commedy Smasher. But you know, it doesn't work.
So in the early fifties, Captain America is canceled, as
is a lot of these heroes. Superman and Batman still
(23:02):
continue to sell. Well, what Superman and Batman begin to
do is they start to mirror this nineteen fifties stereotypical
working man. You know, has a family in the suburbs,
and you know they certainly don't have a job in
the way that I'm talking, but I mean they take
on extended families. I mean Batman gets Robin and then
(23:24):
Superman gets this incredible extended family, whether they you know,
he's got Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen. He gets a cousin
from Krypton named Supergirl, and he gets this whole zoo
of pets, Crypto, the Super Dog, Streaky, the Super Cat, Comet,
the Super Horse, and my favorite dumb Bepo, the Super Monkey.
That's very different from the nineteen thirty eight nineteen thirty
(23:47):
nine version of these social Avengers who were trying to
affix society. Now they want to make sure that nothing
changes in society. So basically from the end of the
World War Two to the early nineteen sixties, you just
have an era of whether people really just want their
comic books to be child friendly and safe enough to
make everybody feel good about how life is going in
(24:07):
the US. So there's this great story that the person
who was head of DC at that time, Jack Liebowitz,
he was playing golf with Martin Goodman, who was the
head of Marvel Comics at that time, and Jack Liebowitz
says to Goodman that he had just started this new
superhero comic called the Justice League of America, where that
(24:29):
they put all of the superheroes together on one team
and they were super surprised at how well it's sold.
So once Martin Goodman gets finished with this golf game,
and then he goes back to Marvel and he talks
to his nephew who had been working for him since
the early forties, who had been this guy who had
been there the whole time and who had basically kept
the company running. And this nephew of his whose name
(24:52):
was Stanley Lieber by birth, but he changed his name
to stan Lee because he didn't want people to know
what his real name was, because he thought that he
could be the great American writer at some point, and
he very much wanted to save his real name for
the real novels he was going to write. He goes
back to stan Lee and he says, I want us
to do superheroes again. And you know, stan Lee, who's
(25:15):
at this time.
Speaker 4 (25:15):
Just tired of it all.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
He says, superheroes are no good, No one ever reads superheroes.
Speaker 4 (25:21):
I don't want to do superheroes.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
And Martin Goodman's like, no, there's money in superheroes. We're
all gonna do them for a couple of years and
then we'll move on to the next thing. And stan
Lee decides then that he's gonna quit because he's had
him there.
Speaker 4 (25:34):
And so he.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
Goes home to his wife and he says to her,
I'm gonna quit. I can't take this anymore. I'm gonna
go into advertising. I'm gonna write my novel. I can
do something else. And she says, just this one time,
write the superhero story that you would like to read.
And then Stanley says, yeah, that's what I'll do. I'll
blow it up on my way out and then I'll
(25:57):
be finished with it. So stan Lee goes back and
he writes Fantastic.
Speaker 4 (26:01):
Four number one.
Speaker 3 (26:03):
It's almost impossible to overemphasize what a sea change this
was in comic book storytelling. Stanley created these characters, along
with Jack Kirby, that had real problems, that fought among themselves,
that actually had things that really made their lives terrible
at some points.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
And my goodness, what storytelling. And to think that stan
Lee was out the door and it was his wife,
just like Steve McQueen who convinced Steve McQueen to do
the Thomas Crown affair and did it in really interesting ways,
it was stan Lee's wife, his bride, who said, hey,
out the door, just write that comic book you would
have always wanted to write before you write the.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Great American novel.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
And indeed that's how Fantastic for Number one comes to creation.
When we come back more of this remarkable look at
American history through the prism of comic books and how
our society changed and the writers, well, they changed right.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
Along with us.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
More with Jeffrey Johnson and the story of comic book superheroes.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
Here on our American stories, and.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
We continue with our American stories and author Jeffrey Johnson
and his book is Superhistory, Comic book Superheroes and American Society.
Let's pick up again where Jeffrey last left off.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
Superman and Batman and all of the DC heroes. They
fought crime, and they had these really fun lives and
you would love to be them. The Marvel heroes always
had such problems and such often horrific things happened to
them that you felt bad for them.
Speaker 4 (28:07):
These were heroes.
Speaker 3 (28:09):
Who had flaws and who were human in a way
that heroes had never been before. I mean, there's a
popular culture commentator, Pierre Comtos, who says, of the Fantastic Four,
here's the book that neatly divides the history of comic
books in the two era, everything that came before and
everything that came after. Fantastic Four became a hit. It
(28:31):
sold hundreds of thousands of copies, and then pretty quickly
Lee and Kirby create other superheroes.
Speaker 4 (28:38):
To fill out the Marvel universe.
Speaker 3 (28:39):
You have the Incredible Hulk that comes out in May
nineteen sixty two. You've got Spider Man, who that there's
some scrawny teenager who has all of these home life
issues and you know, problems. The fascinating about Spider Man
is that Martin Goodman, the had a Marvel absolutely did
not believe that Spider Man would work. Stan Lee had
to beg him many times to let it published Spider
(29:00):
Man because he was a teenage hero and teenagers born heroes.
He didn't think kids wanted to read about teenagers. They
wanted to read about adults. So, I mean, you know,
you have all those, and you have you know, ant Man,
thor Iron Man. The X Men eventually come out, and
then at some point he puts together a Justice Leave
of American type team called the Avengers, and then they
(29:21):
bring back Captain America.
Speaker 4 (29:23):
He becomes a member of the Avengers.
Speaker 3 (29:25):
The Marvel comic books of the nineteen sixties were often
really irreverent and really fun, and then towards the end
they start to take on some of the social issues
of the day, some of the nineteen sixties and the
Vietnam protests and things like that. But they begin to
get more and more serious. And then as the nineteen
seventies hit, there's this sea change not only in American
(29:46):
comic books, but also in the American society in general.
Speaker 4 (29:50):
It seems like there are these films.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
That come out in the day, like you know, Death
Wish or the Clint Eastwood Dirty Harry movies.
Speaker 4 (29:57):
Right where that show this like backlash.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
Against what seemed as crime being rampant and this lack
of a structure that can take care of him. Right,
I mean, you know, that's the late nineteen seventies. And
then you know, right about that same era, you also
have the Punisher, who's this Vietnam veteran who doesn't have superpowers.
He just you know, he shoots and kills a lot
of people, and you know, he goes after drug lords,
(30:21):
he goes after street crime, he does all of these things.
There's a great quote by one of the people who
wrote him. Mike Baron that I want to read. Baron
in nineteen eighty eight, when.
Speaker 4 (30:31):
He was talking about The Punisher wrote.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
The Punisher embodies the voice of conservative Americans who see
their quality of life threatened by criminal behavior and the
confused thinking of liberals. This average citizen is concerned with
getting through the day and protecting his family. The police
and the courts may constantly disappoint us, but the Punisher
never does. So Read and enjoy, and don't let liberals
(30:53):
make you feel guilty. The Punisher knows what's right. It's
quite simple when you think about it. Just don't forget
to shout afterwards. Now, heroes aren't just protecting society within
societal rules, they're actually setting their own rules. And the
point that this becomes the most apparent is when by
(31:13):
the mid nineteen eighties, Frank Miller writes this four issue
mini series called Batman and Dark Knight Returns, and it's
his take on this older Batman who had been retired
for a while, who then comes back to this Gotham
city that's overrun by crime. And so Batman's the only
one who can take care of this, and so this
(31:35):
keeps going during in the nineties, and there are a
lot of different stories trying to figure out what comics
books should be.
Speaker 4 (31:42):
For a while, Marvel ass to go.
Speaker 3 (31:43):
Into bankruptcy actually, and they're on the brink of closing down.
It was a really dark time, both in the storylines
of comic books and the way that comic books are
produced and the way that they were sold. They do
catch a little more of their footing by the two thousands,
as far as the nine to eleven attacks, and then
the post nine to eleven world, comic books become a
(32:05):
very fearful place where that it's hard to trust heroes
and then the people around them. There's a storyline called
it Uncivil War by Marvel where that Captain America and
Iron Man basically disagree about should heroes have to register
with the government. Captain America is against it, iron Man
(32:26):
is for it, and they basically fight it out, and
they basically bring heroes on to their sides, and then
at the very end, Captain America basically loses.
Speaker 4 (32:35):
He's in and arrested at the end.
Speaker 3 (32:37):
So you have this image of Captain America in handcuffs,
and there's this great quote by one of the writers,
where that he says, you know, basically, what this story
is about is where do we draw the line between
safety and freedom? I mean, you have stories like that.
You have the Death of Captain America, where that he
(32:57):
briefly dies and you know, he dies as this sort
of a story about who can be trusted in America
and have things shifted so much that things don't make
sense anymore. I mean, you know, these stories were really
a lot of creators trying to come to grips with
what the world meant after the nine eleven attacks and
then all of the aftermath of that. It's hard to
(33:21):
talk about comic books now as just comic books in
the last decade or so, because you have this merging
of outside media and comic books. Starting in nineteen seventy eight,
You've got this Superman movie that's probably the first time
where that people really took superhero seriously as a storytelling
(33:43):
device and as a way to tell stories.
Speaker 4 (33:45):
And then you also after.
Speaker 3 (33:47):
That have this nineteen eighties Tim Burton Batman movie, which
is this big budget with big stars movies, right. I mean,
so you would definitely have that, and you know, the
two thousand X Men movie and the two thousand and
two Spider Movie, and you know Punisher and Fantastics four.
Speaker 4 (34:03):
But the really big changes as far as how American
society views comic books as this larger mythology seemed to
be the Christopher.
Speaker 3 (34:13):
Nolan Batman films in two thousand and five, two thousand
and eight, and twenty twelve, which were you know, critically
acclaimed and did huge box office numbers. And then in
two thousand and eight you have this Iron Man film
that comes out from Marvel, and it's the first of
what's called the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Now, you know, there
were Marvel films before, but all of the Marvel films
(34:36):
before had been produced by studios that weren't Marvel. They
were Fox or Sony had bought the rights back when
Marvel was bankrupt, and then they were the ones that
put on the films. But Marvel, starting with Iron Man
in two thousand and eight, and then you know Iron
Man two in twenty ten, and then thor and Captain
America and the Avengers and so on, created this universe
(34:58):
of storytelling that really r is what comic books have done.
I mean, each story is a unique story, but they
also fit together to create this bigger universe. So I
mean you can add films in like Guardians of the
Galaxy and Black Panther and ant Man, and it.
Speaker 4 (35:15):
All becomes part of the same universe.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
There were really no films that had done that before,
and it's really following one of the tropes of comic
book storytelling. So you now have this reality where that
superheroes aren't comic books anymore. If forty thousand people read
an issue of you Name the Hero, but they watch
his film, he's a film star now instead of a
(35:39):
comic book star. That's a really interesting development that has
now created this world popular culture that now has seen
this art form that started in the nineteen thirties as
these street level characters that were mostly produced by these
immigrant kids who wanted to be part of society, who
were outcast, and who know how to get the things
(36:01):
that they thought they wanted, and so they created these
narratives where that these ciphers of theirs could do it
for them. Have now become this worldwide industry and this
mythology that I would dare say, I think I think
most people know a lot about the Marvel universe and
about the DC universe now in way that I think
(36:22):
maybe superheroes have outgrown comic books, and you know, maybe
comic grook books are going to exist as a neat
chart form for a long time. But it feels like
film and television is now their new outlet, and it
feels like a lot of people like that, and a
lot of people really respond to that, and it's created
this mythology that it now is just keeps growing and
(36:42):
growing and growing.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
And a terrific job on the production by Greg Hangler,
and a special thanks to Jeffrey Johnson, who's a World
War Two historian at Pearl Harbor and Honolulu, Hawaii. He's
the author of Superhistory, Comic Book, super Heroes, and American Society.
Get it at your local bookstores or wherever you buy
your books. And it all started with two Cleveland teenagers,
(37:10):
Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster the Fantastic Four. As Jeffrey noted,
that was the dividing line everything before and everything after,
as we got much more complex characters. And then came
the trilogy, the Batman Trilogy by Christopher Nolan, which changed everything,
(37:31):
and those films, my goodness, three of my family's favorites,
and soon there after Marvel steps in to make their
own movies. Warner Brothers did the Nolan films, but Marvel
stepped in and said, these characters are ours, and now
comic books are sort of like secondary to the movie
business itself and the superheroes brought onto the big screen.
(37:53):
The story of comic book superheroes. Here on our American stories.
Host
Lee Habeeb
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