Wednesday, July 4, 2007

Reason to Love Comics #90,227 (Fourth of July edition)



This is from Action Comics #309, which has a cover date of February 1964. To let news vendors know when to remove items from their shelves, comics are traditionally dated two months ahead of their actual publication date, making this, more accurately, the December 1963 issue. President Kennedy was shot November 22, which means this story hit America's red, bleary eyes a month after the assassination at the latest. Could have been as early as 12 days.*

The story has Superman tricked by his friends into being a guest on a "This is Your Life"-type show called "Our American Heroes". Since everyone else from Superman's life has been notified and scheduled to appear, Clark Kent's absence would be conspicuous, so Supes has to produce a Clark double, and quick. But, all his usual doubles-- Chameleon Boy from the 30th Century, Batman, one of his Superman robots-- all fall through. Luckily, JFK shows up in a rubber mask, saving the day.

Imagine the impact this comic had on the youth of a traumatized nation. The ghost of JFK masquerades as Clark Kent. How does a child's mind process that symbolism (whether intended or not)? And "If you can't trust the president, who can you trust?"? Prophecy, much? All these old-school Superman books are fertile American mythology, but the implications of all the elements in this issue seem aggressively resonant. I wonder if history should take more notice of this book coming out when it did. Maybe it had... I don't know, some notable impact. It's strong enough to have.




*A full comic takes months to produce. The creators of a comic are about two-to-six months ahead of the readers, which is why this came out at all. Years later, another Superman book, depicting the smoldering wreckage of Lex Luthor's twin Lexcorp towers, came out a day after 9/11. That entire crossover stunk, so I skipped it. My haul for September 12 did include this gem, however, and imagine my surprise when I turned a page and saw this.

No comments: