SUPERMAN CHRONICLES VOLUME 4

By Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster, Wayne Boring, Jack Burnley and the Superman Studio (DC Comics)
ISBN13: 9781-84576-743-3

This fourth collection of the Man of Tomorrow’s earliest adventures, reprinted in the order they originally appeared, sees out the year 1940 in another tremendous little album that covers his appearances in Action Comics #26-31as well as the bi-monthly Superman #6-7.

Siegel and Shuster had created a true phenomenon and were struggling to cope with it. As well as the monthly and bimonthly comics a new quarterly publication, World’s Finest Comics (springing from the success of the publisher’s New York World’s Fair comic-book tie-ins) would soon debut and their indefatigable hero was to feature prominently in it. Also, the Superman daily newspaper strip, which began on 16th January 1939, with its separate Sunday strip following from November 5th of that year, was garnering millions of new fans.

The need for new material was constant and terrible.

From Action Comics #25 (July 1940) came ‘Professor Cobalt’s Clinic’ wherein Clark Kent and Lois Lane exposed a murderous sham Heath Facility with a little Kryptonian help, and the next month dealt a similar blow to the corrupt orphanage ‘Brentwood Home for Wayward Youth’. The September issue found the him at the circus, solving the mystery of ‘The Strongarm Assaults’, a fast-paced thriller beautifully illustrated by the astonishingly talented Jack Burnley.

Whilst thrilling to that, kids of the time could also have picked up the sixth issue of Superman (September/October 1940). Produced by Siegel and the Superman Studio, with Shuster increasingly only overseeing and drawing key figures and faces, this contained four more lengthy adventures.

‘Lois Lane, Murderer’, ‘Racketeer Terror in Gateston’, ‘Terror Stalks San Caluma’ and ‘The Construction Scam’ had the Man of Action saving the plucky newshen (you can’t imagine how long I’ve waited to type that term) from a dastardly frame up, rescuing a small town from a mob invasion, foiling a blackmailer who’s discovered his secret identity and spectacularly fixing a corrupt company’s shoddy, death-trap buildings.

Action Comics #29 (October 1940) again features Burnley art in a gripping tale of murder for profit. Human drama in ‘The Life insurance Con’ was replaced by deadly super-science as the mastermind Zolar created ‘A Midsummer Snowstorm’, allowing Burnley a rare opportunity to display his fantastic imagination as well as his representational excellence.

Superman # 7(November/December1940), and the Man of Steel was embroiled in local politics when he confronted ‘Metropolis’ Most Savage Racketeers’, quelled man-made disasters in ‘The Exploding Citizens’, stamped out City Hall corruption in ‘Superman’s Clean-Up Campaign’ (illustrated by Wayne Boring, who was Shuster’s inker on the other tales in this issue) and put the villainous high society bandits ‘The Black Gang’ where they belonged – behind iron bars.

This volume ends with Burnley drawing another high-tech caper as criminals put an entire city to sleep and only Clark Kent isn’t ‘In the Grip of Morpheus’.

Although the gaudy burlesque of monsters and super-villains still lay years ahead of our hero, these tales of corruption, disaster and social injustice are just as engrossing and speak powerfully of the tenor of the times. The raw intensity and sly wit still shine through in Siegel’s stories which literally defined what being a Super Hero means whilst Shuster and his team created the iconography for all others to follow. These Golden Age tales are priceless enjoyment at an absurdly affordable price. What dedicated comics fan could possibly resist them?

So don’t…
© 1940, 2008 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.