The Foundations of Superman in Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel’s “The Reign of the Superman”

For a number of reasons, I have never been a huge Superman fan. When I was younger, and into speculation, I bought Superman #75, “The Death of Superman,” in hopes that it would increase in value. Today, I no longer have that issue, and I have no clue what I did with it. Even though I’ve never really been a Superman fan, I had to include him in my “Who Watches Superheroes?” course because Superman is the progenitor of what we define today as superheroes, characters that correspond to Peter Coogan’s definition of the superhero because they exist on a matrix that encompasses mission, powers, and identity (MPI). Superman embodies MPI to a tee, but it wasn’t always like that.

When most people think of Superman’s debut or origin they envision of the cover of Action Comics #1 (1938) where Superman holds a car above his head before smashing it on a rockface. Five years earlier, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, while still in high school, began publishing their Science Fiction, a pulp fanzine in the vein of other publications at the time. “The Reign of the Superman” appeared in the first issue with Siegel writing the text and Schuster providing the illustrations. This story, as Aldo Regaldo points out, “was the first incarnation of the character that eventually became America’s first modern superhero.”…