This book is
an interesting read and has a laudable intent, to show how the producers of the
Superman radio show used it as a sort of carrier-wave to transmit very basic
American messages of tolerance, fear play, and the equality of all.
However,
the book falls short of my hopes in several ways.
First, it
uses “Breathless Documentary-Speak!”
Author Rick Bowers is either lazy or does not know that he writes in a
voice equivalent to a Discovery Channel documentary. Examples:
The production staff for the radio show doesn’t work in just ANY radio
studio, it has “state-of-the-art” studios (page 95). This is a worthless string of words. That’s like saying that my dad was as tall as
his height. If the studio existed, then
by its very existence it was at the state of its art for that time. DUMB use of words.
In another
example of maybe thoughtless word-association, Bowers is talking about kids’
fan letters to the radio program, using the Superman Code given out to
listeners. The show’s sponsor just
didn’t have some people deciphering the messages, on page 116 we learn of “a crack team of decoders.” Not just any ol’ team, a CRACK team (as in
crackerjack I guess). This is another
example of lazy word use.
There are
also several errors & irritations that got under my skin and made me a
little cranky.
In talking
about the young Jerry Siegel’s love for pulp magazines on page 12, Bowers talks
about “the smudged type on that thin
paper.” WRONG! Pulp paper is coarse and THICK.
On pages
13-14, he writes about the KKK’s distrust of the New deal, “President
Roosevelt’s program to restore the
economy by putting people to work.”
DISINGENUOUS! A truer
“explanation” would include the fact that Roosevelt was putting people to work
by creating semi-temporary government agencies to employ them doing various
projects -- from sociological surveys to construction projects, USING TAXPAYER
DOLLARS.
Did you
know that Philip Wylie’s 1930 novel Gladiator is “the first science
fiction novel to introduce a character with superhuman powers” (page 15)? WRONG!
What about Dracula? I’d say
crawling down a wall is pretty superhuman.
What about Gilgamesh, for that matter?
And spare me the “science fiction” qualification. What about Wells’ Invisible Man? That
was pretty superhuman and science-fictionish.
If they
were really hurting for content, why didn’t Bowers include some pages from the
scripts in question? No matter how
purple the dialogue, it would still be great fun to read the actual words.
You don’t
even get a mention of the Ku Klux Klan at all, until page 48!
Other
mistakes include Bowers stating on page 95 that radio scriptwriters “added the
roles of cranky editor Perry White and copyboy Jimmy Olsen.” WRONG!
What the radio show did was, give a specific name to Jimmy. A youngster working for the Daily
Planet first appeared in Action Comics #6 in 1938, and is
generally accepted as the character who “grew into” becoming Jimmy. While Clark
and Lois’s first editor was called George Taylor, Perry White first appeared in
the comics in Superman #7, in 1940, roughly contemporaneous with the
beginning of the radio show.
In his
closing words about the Superman character, Bowers makes a simple mistake on
page 148 in saying that “Superman teamed up with Batman, Robin, Wonder Woman,
and Captain America …” Umm, Superman DID
NOT team up with Captain America, who was a Marvel Comics character.
Even the
index is disappointing. For example, you
can’t find Philip Wylie or his book Gladiator in it. On page 118 of the book, the radio script
“The Scarlet Widow” is mentioned as a storyline which “featured one of the few
female criminals to clash with the Man of Steel.” But you can’t find her in the index.
It’s a real shame that
a book like this was not written by a Superman fan, who could have avoided
silly goofs and omissions like these, and made it a much more intriguing read.
