Book Review - THE SUPERMAN WARS - by William Bernhardt

 

            This grand 2026 book is subtitled “A Battle for Truth, Justice, and an American Icon.”  The author, William Bernhardt, is a writer of several series of legal thrillers.  They’re always a fun read.  And extra credit because he’s an Oklahoman.

            This book is focused on Jerry Siegel, the writer half of the Siegel-Shuster team who created Superman and generated millions (maybe billions?) of dollars for almost everyone but themselves.

            Bernhardt does a good job of depicting the impoverished existence of sub-working-class children of immigrants to our country.  This was a world of neighborhood stores and craftspeople of the servant class, working to improve the prospects of their children.

            The author uses his tale-telling abilities to narrate the experiences of the young men who created the ultimate American hero.  It\s really depressing to read about the ongoing exploitation of their talent by all the various incarnations of DC and the men who ran them.  (The fact that such exploitation by those in power happens every day does not excuse it.)

            Joe Shuster is not shirked in the telling, but Jerry is in the spotlight throughout.

            In an afterword, Bernhardt ventures the opinions of a couple of psych/behavioral experts anent Jerry Siegel.  They point out that a lot of Jerry’s life exemplifies someone with hypomania or manic mood swings.  What achievements Siegel reached!—only to sign Superman away (more than once).

            The several legal imbroglios involving Jerry-and-Joe versus DC (and Jerry solo) show the dismal state of creators’ rights and corporate behavior.  Kudos to Neal Adams and others who motivated fans to shame DC into providing Joe and Jerry with medical coverage and pensions in the 1970s.

            I learned lots of things that THIS Super Fan did not know, including an early origin story for Superman which sent him to twentieth-century America from the future, not from another planet.

            The Superman Wars of the title are covered up until the 2025 film, with many backs-and-forths in courtroom and in the public eye.

            It’s gratifying to read the acknowledgments and see all the people Bernhardt contacted.  It’s like a Who’s Who of super folks, like Swan, Adams, the Siegel family, Carlin, Uslan, Maggin, and many more.

            This is a fine book with a splash of photos and art spread throughout.  If you love Superman, you’ll like it.  My only wish is that it were about half again as long and covered Joe Shuster’s side of the story in more depth.

            Read this book and enjoy some gosh-wows, and some deep compassion for how a couple of guys from Cleveland were swallowed alive by corporate greed.

            PS I was thrilled to meet Bill Bernhardt as a co-panelist at Soonercon 34, June 19-21, 2026.  He was kind enough to sign my copy of The Superman Wars.

            We participated in a panel called “The Golden Age of Sci-Fi: What Makes Classic Stories Endure?”

     

            In this photo, left-to-right:  Bill Bernhardt, Steven Southard, Frank Hood, and me.

See you Monday!

  

Yup?

Here's a little essay from the June 1, 1986 Amazing Heroes.

OUCH!  Was this satire, or prognostication?

In case you youngsters don't know, "Yuppie" was a derisive acronym coined in the 1980s, based on "Young Urban Professional."

What say you?  Is Clark Kent so conformist that he qualifies as such?  Of course, you gotta know WHICH Kent you're talking about.

  

See you Thursday, Yuppers and Yuppettes!

  

You Too Can Be Bizarro!

This article is from the September 15, 2000 Oklahoman.

You can tell the writer had fun with the concept.

Of course I have this tome.  One thing about the whole Bizarro thing that I thought too much about was the whole do-the-opposite thing.  I mean, if you EXPECT a Bizarro to say "Good is Bad,"  wouldn't he say the OPPOSITE of that, that "Good is Good"?

If you expect a Bizarro to do everything wrong, wouldn't they get it right just to be opposite?  But then, if you EXPECT them to do that, then they'd have to do it wrong because you expect them to do it right, to spite your expectation that they would do it wrong ...

Do you have a headache yet?

  

Reviewing Some Super Comics

This article, from the February 29, 1988 Amazing Heroes, is an opinion piece about Action #600 and the reprint volume The Greatest Superman Stories Ever Told.

I agree with Andy Mangels that a lot of what Byrne "repurposed" for the post-Crisis Superman was done better the first time, in the Golden or Silver Ages.

See you on Monday.

  

How Many Super Books Do YOU Have?

This survey of books about the Man of Steel is a little outdated.  It's from Amazing Heroes #136, cover-dated February 29, 1988.  Surely some of you cool cats know that date represents Superman's 50th birthday!

Hailing from the era before at-your-finger computeristic databases, the stories selected for reprint are an interesting mélange.

See you Thursday! 

  

From Mount Olympus (via Hollywood) to You!

The newest opus from Jacobs/Brown is out!  And I helped!

Swords, Starships and Superheroes – From Star Trek to Xena to Hercules: A TV Writer’s Life Scripting the Stories of Heroes by Paul Robert Coyle is a great read if you want to learn about the production and writing of genre TV like those shows, and others, from Superboy and Simon & Simon to DS9, TNG, and Voyager.

Paul tells his own origin story and shares his excitement and (you guessed it) toils working from Hollywood to New Zealand.  Fans of Xena and Hercules will really like Paul’s discussions of story conferences and plans, complete with alternate endings and script excerpts.

And I got to read it first! (and mess about with some words and spellings).  Yep, it’s another spiffy notch on my editorial belt.  But the best part is I got to read it first (and talk electronically with Paul, too).

You can buy it from Jacobs/Brown, with Paul’s autograph too!

To put it another way:

Screenwriter Paul Robert Coyle has crafted tales for Earth (Jake and the Fatman, The Streets of San Francisco), superheroes (Superboy), Starfleet (STAR TREK series Voyager, The Animated Series, and Deep Space Nine) and heroes of legend (Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess.

In his new memoir SWORDS, STARSHIPS AND SUPERHEROES:

From Star Trek to Xena to Hercules: A TV Writer’s Life ​Scripting the Stories of Heroes, Coyle shares tales from the 1970s to the present.  His reminiscences unveil the fascinating (and raucous) background of TV production, from Hollywood to New Zealand.

So go get it!

  

It's an Astounding Piece of Americana!

In the summer of 1974 I produced the following messterpiece, on a 15½-by-21½-inch posterboard:

I shall now proceed to explicate its components.

TOP RIGHT-HAND CIRCLE:

The circle and its hollow center are tracings of a 45rpm record.  The four panes are ...

·         12 o’clock:  Image from “Wardrobe of Monsters,” art by Gray Morrow.  Story by Otto Binder. I encountered in Eerie # 15, June 1968. (Note the bottom-left panel.)

·         3 o’clock:  Image from “Head Shop,” art by Jose Bea.  Story by Don Glut.  I encountered in Eerie #51, September 1973.

·         6 o’clock:  Another image from “Wardrobe of Monsters,” Eerie # 15, June 1968.  (Note the trop-center panel.)

·         9 o’clock:  Image from “The Graves of Oconoco,” art by Pat Boyette and Rocke Mastroserio.  Story by John Benson.  Also from Eerie # 15, June 1968. (The last panel.)



THE PSYCHEDELIC HAND:  is a tracing of my own hand, at that time.  The illustrated interior was inspired by Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes, which I first finished reading on April 25, 1974.  You’ll recall that when Mr Dark is searching for Jim and Will, the boys’ faces are tattooed on his palms.

THE SNAKE:  is a freehand drawing.  But its head is the skull from the Visible Man model kit.

 CENTER MOON/TOWER/HEARSE:

The swastika windmill sitting atop a hearse is inspired by the windmill seen at the end of the original 1931 Frankenstein.



THE SWOOSH IN THE TOP LEFT-CENTER:

The bottom circle contains an image cribbed from the 1973 cover of that monument of tripe, Jonathan Livingston Seagull.



The human silhouette is from some self-help book which I cannot now recall.

The Porky Pig is a common one, like this.

The Groucho Marx caricature is copied from the 1973 Manor Books printing of Groucho and Me.

The Batman face is from the over of an 80-pg Giant, Batman #198, cover-dated January 1968.  

And here’s an insert.

The hand is merely a sketch of the infamous rubber hand I bought at a novelty shop, and took with me on a choir trip to Galveston, TX, where it featured in many gag photos.



What’s on the other side, you ask?

Why, it’s a scotch-taped Beatles collage!



Well, this will have to hold all y’all for the month of September.  We’re takin’ a break until October, when we’ll dive into ...

BLOG-O-WEEN!

See you then!

  

2014 April Foolishness Art Sources

All are from Superman: The Silver Age Dailies 1959-1961  (IDW, 2013)

“Rock-a-bye Baby” -- page 33; from the story “Earth’s Super-Idiot,” by Jerry Siegel, Curt Swan, and George Klein

“Tapping Feet” -- page 68; from the story “The Super-Clown of Metropolis,” by Jerry Siegel, Curt Swan, and George Klein

“Super One-man-band” -- page 123; from the story “The Cry-Baby of Metropolis,” by Jerry Siegel, Curt Swan, and George Klein

You should BUY THIS BOOK.  It's amazingly fun!



--See you Thursday!

Welcome to the Fortress of Markitude! #4

NOTE:  all of these pictures were taken a few years ago when the place was less cluttered.  All text is in the present tense anyway.

             Here we will travel along one wall of the Fortress, beginning with the back of the entrance door. 

            This Superman figure was picked up at a thrift store before I started living in them.  He’s stitched together pretty cheaply with a screen-printed face.  He’s got no tags or identifying labels.  This was probably part of a lot of hundreds of “toys” that were illicitly manufactured in bulk somewhere and destined to be prizes at carnivals or some such.

             The name placard dangling around ole Supes’s neck has an interesting history.  It hails from April 1987, when NOSFA (the Norman Oklahoma Science Fiction Association) held its first convention, a one-day affair on April 18, called PseudoCon.  I quote from The STAR OKC Chronicles:  On April 18, NOSFA holds its first PseudoCon, aided by STARs Claire Stephens, Mike Hodge, Syd Henderson, Larry Nemecek, “Mike” [actually Mark] Alfred, and later STAR Karen Dorrell. One of the day’s highlights is a panel, “The Ersatz Vulcan vs. the Reel McCoy,” in which Mark A. as Spock and Larry N. as McCoy indulge in an hour’s worth of verbal wrangling and blustering.

 

            This placard hung around my neck, and Larry Nemecek’s said of course “Larry Nemecek ‘McCoy’,” or something in that vein.  I can still remember how long it took for the spirit gum (holding my latex ear tips on) to dry.  Good ol’ Larry stood behind me in the Student Union bathroom waving a hair dryer at my ears for a while.

            Above the door (on which you can see stuffed Superman hanging) are a series of plastic lunchboxes.  The blue one on the left is from Star Trek: TNG and the rest are Super-related.

 

            Blocking the bottom half of the Superman doll thing is one of those bouncing saucer things.  It’s a plastic ring, in the middle of which is an inflatable ball just like a smaller version of those red textured-rubber dodge balls we had in grade school.  The ring is sitting on top of a couple of metal file-card drawers, sitting on a metal file cabinet that contained mss. of various songs, poems, novels-in-progress (only one completed but with rejection letter), and other writings.

            On the wall above all this is a plate shelf with various Star Trek and Super plates.  That lime-green thing is an inflatable carnival-type prize, bearing clip art from Superman: The Animated Series.

            The books in the shelves in the middle ground are from when I had my books dis-integrated -- that is, grouped separately as “Mysteries,” “Media,” and general stuff.  You can tell the category by a couple of the spines (recognizably DC Archives) that you can spot with your eagle eyes.

            Now, at the center of the tallest shelf you can see the yellow front of a stuffed dog in a super costume.

 

            This is a photo of one of these little guys for sale.  Now, mine has no tag, but is otherwise the same.  It’s a promo for the Mighty Dog brand dog food, from the 1980s.  One of my drivers at the thrift store came across this in a donation.  Randy knew that I was a Superman fan, and he tossed it to me.  He said the “MD” on the chest stood for “Mark’s Dog,” which was a pretty good spur-of-the-moment confabulation!

 

            At the closest to the camera are the shelves holding audio cassettes.  All these are gone now, dubbed and donated.  The actual wood-grained shelves bearing the cassettes-in-plastic-drawers are originally from the convenience-store trade.  They were merchandisers for cartons of cigarettes, and originally had clear plastic barriers across them.  They wanted people to see (and want them) but not be able to snatch-n-steal them.

            Now sitting atop these shelves you can see the edge of a metal kids’ TV tray with a picture of Mr Spock at his science console from ST:TMP.

            The most important “thing” in the photo is the farthest away from the camera -- that’s Joyce far away on the right of the shot, “upstairs” in the kitchen.

 

 

            Now here is a close-up of the plate shelf glimpsed in the middle left of the previous panorama.    At the far left edge of this photo is that lime-green Superman inflatable I mentioned, below which are an alarm clock with a Superman background, and the edge of a plastic Mighty Mouse lunchbox.

 

            The leftmost plate features the same art of Superman as was used on the cover of the Filmation VHS releases in the 1980s.  The two smaller items on either side of the center Star Trek plate are part of a 1980s-era kids’ eating set.  The art for both look like Jon Bogdanove art, or at least in his rawboned, big-jawed style.

             The central, biggest item is one of the Franklin Mint Star Trek sets. It has an interesting history in that about 1986, when my oldest Matthew was two or three, he was goofing around and banged into the wall where this plate was originally hanging.  It fell down to the floor with a crash, and several small pieces cracked off the edge.  Matthew started to cringe and cry.  He knew his Grandma (my mom) had given me the plate and that it was a special gift.  He was afraid that I was going to spank him until he couldn’t walk straight.

 

            But I explained to Matthew that I wasn’t going to spank him.  I told him he should have been more careful, but that I knew it was an accident.  He should be more careful.  I told him, “People are more important than things.”  I sure hope he remembers that forever!

 

            On the far right of this shelf is a Bakelite-style plate copyrighted 1967, with a Wayne Boring Superman swooping across it.

 

            In the foreground you can see that Superman bouncy-ball thing.

 

            Leaning against the plate rack, behind the bouncer, is an adaptation of Monopoly I made based on STAR OKC. Someday I’ll do a STAR OKC blog post about this…I made something specialized to STAR OKC’s history for every property and every Community Chest and Chance card.

 

 

            This is a four-sheet Star Trek color-your-own poster set.  According to this website, this came out in 1976 but it seems to me that it must have been sooner than that.  I had these posters on my walls before I graduated high school in 1974, it seems to me.

 

 

            Of course, some day in the future I will have to unpack this set, scan them, and post them.  In the frame are all four posters and the (flattened) box.  As you can see from my photo, I've colored all four of the posters.

 

            Well, that’s stop four in our tour of the Fortress of Markitude.  Hope you found something interesting.  Feel free to comment and share some of your own memories or reflections!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Superman: The Unauthorized Biography by Glen Weldon

This book is a real disappointment.

 

            BOTTOM LINE:        A book that mocks the subject matter and makes fun of the subject matter’s devotees is a stupid idea and depressing to contemplate.

 

            From the title, which is hipster-speak for “ooh, secret dangerous stuff about to be revealed!” -- it isn’t; to the last pages, wherein we learn that the book only has a bibliography, not endnotes; it’s sad to see so much obvious effort expended for just another uninspired and, in fact, mocking, tale of Superman’s history.

 

            A big downside is the smarmy. snarky tone taken by Weldon, which may or may not be a job requirement for his NPR gig.

 

            Surprisingly, there are only a handful of actual errors in this book:

 

·         Page 45 - composer Sammy Timberg’s name is given as Timber (lumberjacks rejoice!)

·         Page 99 - we have a case where an opening bracket “[“ is closed by a parenthesis “)” instead of a second bracket

·         Page 100-101 - in the retelling of how Superman and Batman learned each other’s identities in Superman #76, Weldon says “a bright light” is what lit up the darkened stateroom, when in the story the light comes from rising flames from a fire that they are changing to battle

·         Page 105 - Jimmy Olsen’s stretchable alter-ego, Elastic Lad, has NEVER had the word “The” on the front of his shirt

·         Page 121 - Superman’s lost Kryptonian love, Lyla Lerrol,  has her last name misspelled “Lerroll” on this page but it’s spelled correctly elsewhere

·         Page 125 - in his narration of the Superman Red/Superman Blue story in Superman #162, Weldon mistakenly says that the resulting twin Supermen have outfits that are all-blue and all-red, when in the story the yellow parts of their costumes stayed yellow

·         Page 142 - How can you say “Elliott S. Maggin” when everybody knows it is “Elliott S! Maggin” (with an exclamation point)?

·         Page 165 - Amalak the space pirate is called a “low-rent villain” when in fact he appeared seven times, almost killing Superman several times; Amalak believes his home planet was destroyed by Kryptonians

·         Page 178 - Is it Plexiglas or Plexiglass?

·         Page 264 - The TV programming block was called “Kids WB,” not “WB Kids”

·         Page 289 - What Superman eats is not “beef burgundy with ketchup” but SPECIFICALLY  “beef bourguignon with ketchup” - this is important because this specific phrasing has even been a life-or-death (!) secret code between Lois and Superman

·         Page 304 - In Superman Returns, Lois DOES NOT have “conversations with her husband” - especially since in the previous paragraph Weldon tells us that Lois is “engaged” not married

 

 

            One way in the book is accurate is in its explanation as to why Superman Returns was flawed from the start.  Aside from its disturbing depiction of Superman as a creepy Super-Stalker (let’s X-ray vision my ex-girlfriend’s life and use Super-hearing to eavesdrop on her!), the Superman we knew and loved would never put himself first and run away from the people that need him.

 

            Another disappointing aspect of this book is the paucity of its index.  For example, Sammy Timberg’s musical theme is mentioned several times, since it appeared in the Fleischer shorts and on the radio shows.  But the composer isn’t listed, even by the way his name is misspelled in the text.  A slightly bigger name, President John Kennedy, is also missing.

 

            So, in summary, this is an unnecessary telling of Superman’s story with nothing really new and a disturbing snarky hipster tone.  If you are going to put this amount of effort into a book, why condescend and make fun of the stuff?  One disturbing example is that after his summary of “The Superman Super-Spectacular,” after JFK stood in for Clark Kent, Weldon takes a dump on our childhood by saying, “1964, ladies and gentlemen.”

 

            I wish I had NOT  spent the money to buy this book.

 

            I can’t wait for the day that the “ironic” mindset becomes outmoded.

 

 

“Superman” at 75

            On April 18, 1938, Action Comics #1 went on sale, and we should all know a little about the cover character by now.

 

            I grew up in the 1960s, the time of George Reeves syndication and Filmation TV cartoons and Curt Swan’s heyday.

 

            Superman was my hero, and rode the top of all my friends’ estimation too.  There were other heroes -- Daredevil, Batman, Spider-Man, and all the other four-color guys (I always liked Herbie the Fat Fury too) -- but Superman was the guy.

 

 

 

            As a fictional character whose adventures were written for him and thus predetermined, he always made choices that ended well in the end.  He had strength when the solution was a super-punch; he had a super-brain when strategy was necessary.

            I really enjoyed stories where he outwitted Luthor or Brainiac and didn’t just beat them up.

            So, Superman’s appeal to an American kid?  He did what was right.  He knew what to do.  Girls liked him, but he was also able to keep them at arm’s distance.  He had cool friends.  And nobody ever picked on him.

            Now, Clark Kent was another story -- he was often picked on by Lois or other characters.  But that didn’t really get under our skin because we knew The Secret -- He wasn’t just that mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper.  He was also the impenetrable, unstoppable Superman!

 

 

 

            He did what was right, and he treated everybody fairly.  He helped kids and didn’t look down on them.  He had a smart dog who always obeyed.

 

 

            As a white-bread kid (Wonder not Rainbo at our house) who grew up believing in rules and that right deeds were rewarded, Superman was for me!

 

            Nowadays, I look around at see a society that most of the time makes up its own rules, and most of the time can’t agree that a given deed was a right one.  My childhood memories of Superman, on the one hand, make me yearn for a simpler idea of life where right and wrong were so easily determined, and when the bad guy lost out (often by the unforeseen results of his own misdoings).  One the other hand, I take resolve from the idea that most of the time I (or anybody) CAN do something positive, in most circumstances.

 

          As Elliott S! Maggin put it, “There is a right and a wrong in the universe, and most of the time that distinction is not hard to make.”  Unlike Superman’s fictional adventures, the reality we face can be messy and hard to figure out.

 

            But MOST OF THE TIME it is NOT THAT HARD to make a decision that will help somebody. 

• Let somebody onto the highway in front of me when they are running out of merge lane? not a problem
• Open the door for somebody (man or woman)?  I will do that
• Unload the dishwasher? I live here, don’t I?
• Tell somebody they dropped some of their change? It’s when I hope they would do for me

 

            And that’s the key, most of the time.  And here we get into the reality that Superman is a shadow of…

 

            Plenty of my friends don’t believe in my lord Jesus, and many do.  But most wouldn’t argue with that guidance for living, the (second) most important rule:  Treat other people right.  Help them.  Most of the time, that is not hard to figure out!

            As Glen Weldon says on a new book about Superman:  "Superman changes as our culture changes. The only thing about him, in fact, that has remained untouched, inviolate, since Action Comics #1 hit the stands in April 1938, is his motivation. That motivation is at once the simplest of them all and the hardest to unpack: He is a hero. Specifically:

  1. He puts the needs of others over those of himself.

  2. He never gives up."

 

            Happy “Birthday,” Superman, you’re my second favorite hero!  Even if current reworkings or “re-imaginings” change you from my childhood memories, those memories are still around.  And those comics still exist, too! (Even if I can’t afford some of them.)

            In case you wanted to know … the reason the title of this post is “Superman” at 75 and not “Superman at 75” is simple -- because the icon may age, but not our hero!