Enter Sandman.
I should have been a Superman fan: greathearted utopian science fables starring the big blue boyscout who insists on seeing the best in us; who acts as if that’s all there could possibly be—what’s not to love?
The first Superman comic I ever read?
Number 234, from 1971. —I didn’t read it in 15¢ floppy form; it was stuck in an odd compilation of Batman and Superman stuff that had probably been assembled in England a couple of years later and printed and bound in cheap hardback and ended up in my hands in Iran. (The Batman piece I don’t remember as clearly, but then, I was already into Batman: I think it was one of the ones where he went to Tibet or something.)
And I know I knew something of the story of Superman, but I can’t remember exactly what; Superman’s a myth, after all, and the thing about myths is you always already know them. Even so, this issue is weirdly at odds with his Akashic record. There’s no Lois, no Perry, no Jimmy, no Lex; no Kandor or kryptonite. There is, instead, a volcano, a pissed-off planter, Morgan Edge, and this creepy-ass mofo made of, um, sand—
![[It] stares around at the blazing desolation...](/images/4.jpg)
There’s a reason it seems at odds with the myth: it was deliberately intended to be. Mort Weisinger, who’d edited the Superbooks for quite some time, retired in 1970, and Julie Schwartz took over Superman and gleefully joined the stampede to streamline, revise, refit, and update.
While Sekowsky led Supergirl down an avante garde avenue all her own, the rest of the Superman “family” editors came up with a scheme revolutionary for the industry at the time: Using Superman, as the cornerstone title, they all participated in streamlining the DC universe, openly doing away with such things as kryptonite and imaginary stories, and just plain forgetting about the humorous characters such as Mr. Mxyzptlk, the Bizarros and Krypto. No more Elastic Lad stories for Jimmy Olsen, no more Reptile Girl stories for Lois Lane, no more King Kong stories for Superman.
Boltinoff and Kirby got the “new” DC universe going in Jimmy Olsen #133, October 1970, which in a very real sense introduced a DC Earth as new and streamlined as the one that resulted from the Crisis series 15 years later. Two major DC characters debuted in Kirby’s “new” Jimmy Olsen: Morgan Edge, “president of the Galaxy Broadcasting System, new owners of The Daily Planet,” in JO #133, and in the following issue, the ultimate DC villain, Darkseid. (See Superman in the Fourth World.)
What emerged from the pages of Jimmy Olsen, Lois Lane, Action Comics, World’s Finest (which had become a precursor to the DC Comics Presents style of Superman team-ups), and most tellingly, Superman, was a new, faster-paced Earth (Earth 1A, maybe?), where the central characters simply had too much to do to worry about the secret identity contrivances and the varieties of kryptonite that had dominated their lives in the Weisinger era. Jimmy had the Newsboy Legion, the Hairies, the Outsiders, and D.N.Aliens to occupy his time with; Lois was caught in the middle of a gang war waged between the 100, Intergang and Darkseid’s minions; and Superman… well, in addition to all of the above, he had a new job as a TV reporter in his secret identity of Clark Kent and a sandcreature siphoning off all his powers to deal with. With all that and more going on, there simply wasn’t room to squeeze in Lori Lemaris and the bottle city of Kandor, too.
Heck, the issue just previous to this one stripped green kryptonite of all its plot-hook powers. Earth-shaking! —And you remember what Bill said (what Jules said) about Superman, right?
When Superman wakes up in the morning, he is Superman. His alter ego is Clark Kent. His outfit with the big red S is the blanket he was wrapped in as a baby, when the Kents found him. Those are his clothes. What Kent wears, the glasses, the business suit, that’s the costume. That’s the costume Superman wears to blend in with us. Clark Kent is how Superman views us. And what are the characteristics of Clark Kent? He’s weak, unsure of himself… he’s a coward. Clark Kent is Superman’s critique on the whole human race, sort of like Beatrix Kiddo and Mrs. Tommy Plumpton.
And yes, that’s an uncharitable read, but still, think of Christopher Reeve as Superman. Weak? Unsure of himself? A coward? —Yes, it was obviously an act, but still. Except not in 1971.
Morgan Edge, Kent’s new boss, reassigns him to his TV station, WGBS, as a roving reporter. Here, too, Swan and Anderson shine. Gone are Kent’s solid blue suits and horn-rimmed glasses; throughout the saga Kent dresses mostly in brown, double-breasted suits with striped blue shirts and white ties, three-piece suits with striped yellow shirts and spotted yellow ties, and variations on these. Kent also switches to wider framed glasses that are more flattering and contemporary, and despite Earth’s yellow sun, his hair has gotten a little thicker.
Schwartz’s editorial vision was clear: no more gimmick-ridden plot contrivances for Superman, and no more wimpy Clark Kent portrayals. Personality-wise, Kent may be a bit bland, but no less a personage than Morgan Edge—the equivalent of, say, Ted Turner—recognizes the quality work Kent’s done for many years, and singles him out to become an on-air TV reporter. You don’t get to be one of the preeminent reporters in the country by being meek and timid, and, recognizing that incongruity, O’Neil dumps the wimpy persona.
But as a kid of—what, six?—these nuances escaped me. Instead, I was puzzled by word and picture splits like this:
Remember, this “red and blue juggernaut” had just been fighting “an eerie, almost shapeless figure” in the sky. We’re told the red and blue juggernaut smashes fiercely into the barrel of the gun, but it’s a muddy, colorless figure we see—not unlike the sandman. Which was it? —The next panel shows Superman getting up, red and blue again despite the rain. What happened? What was going on?
And it’s not like I’m blaming the art or the writing or the editorial direction for my visceral dislike of Superman. (There’s a lot not to like.) But the whole thing made an odd first read for a superhero naïf, and seeing the art again so many years later is weirdly disconcerting—an ur-thing that shaped the very eyes I’m reading it with. (Is it just me, or is the sight of Curt Swan’s grey-flannel face atop that goddamn costume just, y’know, weird?) —The existential threat of that sandman comes out of nowhere—well, the previous issue, sure, but I didn’t have that—and it peters out, unresolved, at the end. Unsatisfying, but in a deeply creepy way that squirmed somewhere under my skin. Batman was much cooler. (This was before I read that Clayface issue out of sequence, mind.)
Years later, of course, it’s creepy for another reason. We can see how prophetic it was:
The Sandman did appear, and (eerie, Shaper) did sap some of the superheroes’ power for itself. For a time.
—But what I didn’t realize (and let’s leave Thomas Hayden Church out of this for the moment, okay? I was never a Marvel zombie), what I didn’t realize, until I started poking around the web for my ur-Superman comic, what I didn’t realize was this: there was always another Sandman.
Sandmann was created in 1959 by East German TV as a result of a race with West German TV to prove socialism was more efficient than capitalism. East Germany won, and since then Sandmann has put several generations of East Germans to sleep with his bed time stories and dream powder. Sandmann is a fairytale character, but he inhabits the real world, an idealised version of East Germany. Sandmann is always at the right place at the right time; he drives a Trabant, he marches with the Jungpioneers, he even travels in Space! With daily broadcast Sandmann promoted the ideas of socialism to his audience; the East German children. He showed the future optimism, technical development and solidarity.
The plots of the films have changed as the East German society has changed, and Sandmann’s life goes parallel to the history of East Germany. This peculiar and slightly different historical documentary portrays the rise and fall of socialism in East Germany seen through life and films of Sandmann.
Greathearted utopian science fables? Starring a Jungpioneer who insists on seeing the best in us; who acts as if that’s all there could possibly be?
Superman
Superman
Rescue me
You’re so brave
and strong
and really care for me
In the end
sure I’ll be
your lover man
Superman
you will come
and rescue me
Good stuff.
Oddly, this summoned the vague memory of a final panel in a mid-90s Superman wherein a sand-like creature was in agony from having absorbed some of Superman’s powers. Not being a DC fan, I never got around to finding out what that was all about.
Pretty enjoyable track, too. Thanks.
This sort of thing reminds me how out of touch I am with the ‘mainstream’ comics reading population (yes, I realize that mainstream in this context is potentially misleading).
While I’ve heard about the whole ‘multiple Supermen’ phenomenon, and about the series I’ve read acerbically described as “Crisis on Infantile Earths”, most of my comix reading has taken place in the dark, musty corners of the comixverse. E.g., I’m far more familiar with Elfheim and Beanworld than Superman or Authority, and, while I have all of Sandman in graphic novel form, I’ve never read any Miracleman.
Not sure how much of a problem this is; at any rate, I still can’t gin up much enthusiasm for the superhero genre as a whole.