Superman comics I have owned. Part Two: Action Comics.

Hold onto your Kryptonite, pilgrims, because the sensational new feature that's left the internet dazed, battered and reeling returns as I take a look at yet more of the Superman comics I owned as a boy.

And this time it's Action Comics that's in the spotlight!

To be honest, differences between Action Comics and the main Superman title at the time were not exactly huge, with the same creative teams and characters. Still, Action Comics did distinguish itself by having a back-up story, often featuring the Atom or the Green Arrow and Black Canary.

It was my first exposure to a Neal Adams cover as a powerless Superman finds himself held hostage and in danger of going up in flames.

It was in this comic that I first learned that Superman loses his powers under the light of a red sun.

It was also my first introduction to Supergirl.

And you can read my review of this issue right here.

Clark Kent gives Lois Lane a radioactive necklace from space and, surprise surprise, she's suddenly transformed into a monster.

Has anyone in the world of comics ever been transformed into more things by more things than Lois Lane? You would've thought Clark would've learned his lesson by now.

Maybe it's just me but I must confess I found Lois more attractive as a monster.

When Bluto kidnaps Olive Oyl, Popeye goes to Superman for help

Admittedly they don't actually say the characters are meant to be Popeye, Bluto and Olive Oyl but you'd have to be blind not to spot it.

Some bad guys try to convince Superman his dead parents are disappointed in him, in an attempt to get him to leave the planet Earth.

Needless to say, our hero sees through their ruse and soon turns the tables on them.

My review of this issue can be found right here.

When the Weather Wizard starts causing trouble from his jail cell, the Flash and Superman team up to thwart him.

Despite the cover, no Flashes were harmed during the making of this comic.

Weather Wizards, on the other hand, were not so lucky.

My review of this issue can be found right here.

When a TV chat show host is kidnapped, Superman has to prove he's faster than a speeding bullet to rescue him.

I don't want to come over like an expert but what happens in this issue is clearly impossible even for Superman, as the resolution depends on the sound of a gunshot reaching Superman before the bullet hits its intended victim. As Superman's on the other side of town from the gun, and the intended victim's only a few feet away from it, this clearly couldn't happen.

The Superman Revenge Squad fix it so that if Superman performs ten super-feats, he'll die.

But the hapless aliens haven't counted on the ability of DC comics characters to find exact lookalikes at the drop of a hat.

It's a bit worrying that, at the end of the tale, Superman opts not to apprehend the villains - so they can be murdered by their own colleagues, which seems a little bloodthirsty by his standards.

Action Comics #441.

Life can be full of crushing disappointments.

Take me, for example. I pick up a copy of Action Comics, led by the cover to expect the sight of Superman punching the Flash's teeth in and, once inside, I get nothing of the sort.

Instead, I get a weather forecaster on Clark Kent's TV show who keeps predicting freak but destructive weather events.

Needless to say, Superman's soon on the case and, after dealing with the aforementioned events, he heads off to see the Flash, having reasoned the Weather Wizard must be behind it all.

So, together, they're off to see the Wizard who's currently in jail.

Upon being confronted, the Wizard confesses he's behind the scheme. Not only that but it was all a plot to lure Superman and the Flash into seeing him so he can zap Superman with some Kryptonian black lightning.

According to the Weather Wizard, upon being struck by such a phenomenon, a Kryptonian must kill the person nearest to him when it struck – and that person is the Flash!

Can nothing save our Hermes heeled hero?

Well, yes. It turns out it can because, before going to see the villain, Superman and the Flash disguised themselves as each other, and so it was really the Flash who the Weather Wizard zapped, meaning the black lightning had no effect on him. A quick chop across the back of the neck, from Superman, soon deals with the foolish felon.

Apart from the fact it hinges on him somehow bouncing hypnotic commands off the ionosphere, there does seem to be a fairly obvious flaw in the Weather Wizard's plan, which is that if Superman hadn't bothered to bring the Flash with him, the person standing closest to Superman at the moment the lightning was fired would've been the Weather Wizard who Superman would then have killed. With smarts like that, I think we can see how come he's in prison in the first place.

Actually the main disappointment of the tale is the Weather Wizard's declaration that it's been proven the Flash can't outrun Superman. I do tend to feel that, if Superman gets to have a zillion powers and a character like the Flash only has one, then the Flash should be better at his one super-power than Superman is, otherwise who needs the Flash?

And who needs a dog?

The Green Arrow and Black Canary do. Because in the issue's back-up tale, they've taken in a stray one - and they don't know where it came from.

But the mystery of where that was can wait as, first, the duo have to burst into a bad guy's lair.

Disastrously for them, the crook has an ageing ray.

Not so disastrously for them, the stray dog turns out to be Krypto who promptly bursts in and saves them before once more disappearing.

Maybe there's something wrong with me but it gives me a warm feeling to see Krypto back in the Superverse after his mystery disappearance, even if he vanishes immediately afterwards.

The main selling point of the tale is a slick and stylish art job by Mike Grell that mostly avoids the oddly amateurish lapses in draftsmanship he was sometimes prone to.

But I'm not sure I'll be able to sleep tonight for worrying what'll become of Krypto now his whereabouts are once more unknown.

Then again, where's Streaky the supercat? Streaky, where are you?

Sheffield's Most Wanted. Part 11: DC Famous 1st Edition #C-26, Action Comics #1.

While the world holds its breath awaiting the outcome of our poll to find the Avengers' greatest enemy, it's time for Steve Does Comics to bring back the Internet's most demanded feature, as I once more ramble on about a comic I've never read but always wanted as a kid.

I have to admit that, even now, I've never read Superman's debut tale. But that's all right, as I've managed to divine his origin from other places. Thus I know that Clark Kent was a nerdy reporter until bitten by a radioactive spider, whereupon he took to dressing up as a bat to fight crime.

Of course I'd have known all this sooner if I'd had the catchily titled DC Famous First Edition #C-26 which reprinted Action Comics #1 in all its glory. I was never, as a child, in any doubt that, being very old, the contents would be crude compared to what were then modern standards but, still, the chance to see how it all started was a severe temptation for me.

One thing that does strike me is that, looking at this title's entry on the Grand Comics Database, Action Comics #1 would appear to have had seventy two pages. Was it normal in the 1930s for comics to have that high a page count? I always knew old comics had more content than their modern equivalents but I was assuming it was something like fifty pages. If seventy two was the norm, they certainly believed in giving you value for your 10 cents back then.

Action Comics #402. It's all at stake for Superman.

If I had a taste for very old jokes, I might claim that comics are called a medium because they're neither rare nor well done.

But I don't.

So I won't.

Superman however is certainly in danger of being well done, as he's captured by the Navarro tribe who're angry that a dirty capitalist's building a rocket site on their land. As Superman's failed in his bid to change the developer's mind, the Navarro's leader Red Hawk decides the best thing to do is kidnap Superman and hold him hostage until they get what they want.

This is possible thanks to a red gem he possesses whose "magic" robs Superman of his powers, leaving him unable to break free of the stake they've tied him to.

Why a private developer's allowed to build his own personal rocket site's never explained but it turns out it's all a scam, as his rocket's nothing of the sort. It's actually a mechanical mole that he uses to drill into a local sacred plateau and get his hands on the vast Aztec wealth that Montezuma buried there.

Needless to say Superman escapes, and thwarts the developer's evil plan, before handing Montezuma's treasure over to the Navarro who use it to build hospitals and schools while turning Montezuma's plateau into a tourist attraction.

This is one of the first American comics I ever had, in that vague hazy summer of 1972 when the beaches of Blackpool were covered in greenflies and blackflies battling it out in the sort of insect plague we don't seem to get any more. It probably says something about childhood that forty years down the line I can look back at insect plagues with affection and I likewise have fond memories of all the comics I bought in that period.

It has to be said that, nicely drawn as it is by Curt Swan, the story's a lot less exciting than its cover suggests, as the Navarro have no intention of setting fire to Superman, or doing him any harm at all, merely tying him to a stake until their demands are met. Still, it is a chance for Superman to show what a nice guy he is by helping his kidnappers even as they hold him captive.

There are certain plot holes in the story. Red Hawk's plan's clearly doomed, as it relies on his red gem concentrating the light of a distant red sun at Superman, which, presumably means that as the Earth turns and the red sun sets below the horizon, Superman'll get his powers back. Red Hawk's supposed to be one of the nation's leading astro-physicists, so you'd have thought he'd be aware of that but seems totally oblivious to the concept of the Earth's rotation. There's also a section where the sympathetic Navarro Moon Flower claims that Superman explained his escape method to her but you have to wonder just when he was supposed to have done it as there seems to have been no point when they were ever alone.

There were few times in my youth when the life of Superman imitated the old BBC1 rag and bone sitcom Steptoe and Son but this issue's back-up strip does just that as Superman and Supergirl fall out so badly that, just as the Harold and Albert did in that show, they divide their home in half, with one half belonging to Supergirl and the other to her cousin. Things reach such a head they decide to kill each other, and the whole feud only comes to an end when Superman decides that, even if he does hate her, he can't let Supergirl die in the radioactive pit that they, like any pair of cousins, share in their basement.

Unlike that episode of Steptoe and Son, it turns out it was all down to fumes from a mind-control device the pair destroyed a while back and, once the fumes are cleared from their fortress, they're the best of friends again. I do quite like this tale, as I like the sight of the normally Doris Day-esque Supergirl with a head full of murderous thoughts. She's also wearing her thigh-length boots again. I believe this tale would've been my first ever exposure to Supergirl and it gives me pleasure to know that my first encounter with the Maid of Might was in her lengthy boots phase.

The truth is that, like the insect plague that accompanied it, this comic probably isn't as great as I thought it was back then but, regardless, both its tales are enjoyable - the first for its siding with the rights of the American Indian, which seems to have been a fashionable trope at the time after decades of Hollywood hostility, and the second for the casting of its usually perfect leads in a negative light. So the old joke was wrong. It is comics. It is a medium. It's not rare and it is quite well done.

Action Comics #502. Your heroine speaks.

Hello, it’s me, Kara from Krypton. You might know me from such smash-hit movies as Supergirl and, erm, er, Supergirl.

Movies aside, you want to know what’s eating me?

Superman.

That’s what’s eating me.

This pod thing lands on Earth, and some aliens say it’s got a baby in it that’s going to be their saviour, and can Superman and me look after it for ’em. So, before I can say no, he says yes.

Well that’s odd, Mr Super Duper Man, because I seem to remember that when you were asked to look after me, you stuck me in an orphanage, kept threatening to exile me into space and told me I could risk my life saving the world for you just as long as I didn’t tell anyone I existed. But, this brat, oh that’s right, you don’t hesitate to take that on even though it has hair that looks like a steel toupee.

So we raise this brat, which only takes a few hours ’coz he’s an alien.

And then what happens?

O-o-o-o-o-h, Superman gets himself killed fighting the Galactic Golem.

At this point, bearing in mind the way he’s treated me over the years, you might think I’d be breaking out the party hats and getting ready to dance on his grave.

But no. I can’t do that. Despite my ample displays of bosom, I’m the world’s nicest girl and am therefore devastated.

Then it looks like The Parasite’s come to the Fortress of Superman-Has-No-Friends - I mean Solitude - to kill me with the unstoppable power he’s just absorbed from the late Superman and the now equally late Galactic Golem.

So, that’s it, with no way of beating that kind of power, I’m a goner.

Except Superman’s not dead and the Parasite’s not real. It was all a trick by my cousin to make me devastated with grief so the alien brat - that has a mouth like a vent act’s dummy, you know, those really creepy ones you wouldn’t want to be left alone with - that he left me alone with, will find out what emotion is and pass it onto the alien race that spawned it.

That’s right. My cousin the jerk deliberately set out to make me devastated with grief and then make me think I was about to cork it.

At this point, I take a Kryptonite chainsaw to the big blue sheesh and gleefully hack him to pieces as he begs me to spare him.

Well, no. I don’t. Because I’m the nicest girl in the universe, I just tell him how great and clever he is.

You know what I think it is?

Stockholm Syndrome.

Look it up.

Krypto, Beppo (or Zeppo, or Heppo, or whatever the hell it’s called), Streaky, Comet, we’ve all got it. That’s what he does to people.

But just you wait, Mr Super Duper Man. Just you wait. Coz one of these days, I’m going to turn bad. I mean real bad. I’m gonna get a tattoo and leather pants and play pool and everything. And then, Mr Super Duper Man, I’m gonna give you the pasting you’ve been asking for.

And when I do, everyone’ll want to know just what it was that tipped me over the edge.

Yeah?

I think we both know what that was.

Don’t we?

Action Comics #440. Of Superman and Superdog.

Many and varied are the powers of Superman but clearly his greatest is the ability to make you believe you think the opposite of what you actually do think.

My memory is that, as a kid, I never had much time for the Kryptonian clobberer. The big blue cheese was, after all, a bit square, a bit dull, a bit 2D and had far too many powers for the good of dramatic tension.

The odd thing is that, as I've started to rebuild the comic collection I had back then, what's struck me is how many Superman comics I had. I must've had more Superman issues than comics featuring any other hero.

Such a mystery needs reinvestigation. After all, If I was buying them in industrial quantities, there must've been something about them that grabbed me.

But what?

The obvious first answer is the covers. Just as I had a blind spot to my love of Supes, I seem to have had a blind spot to the existence of Nick Cardy. Until I started re-buying these old issues I'd somehow never heard of him.

I had, however, seen his covers.

And you know what?

They were fantastic.

I knew they were fantastic at the time but I never knew they were all by the same man. Now, it seems incredible to me that one artist could have done so many covers to so many comics to so high a standard. I definitely have to put together a post of my Nick Cardy favourites at some point.

But that's for the future.

For now, we'll have to settle for this one, the cover to Action Comics #440. Has there ever been a more potent cover to a comic book? You can practically feel the weight of the world on Superman's shoulders.

But it takes more than just a pretty picture on the front to make you love a comic. What about the contents?

Well, clearly this is the key to it all. It can't have been easy writing Superman in the 1970s. How do you come up with interesting stories about a hero who can basically do anything but whose tales have to be kept fairly light?

As the likes of Cary Bates and Elliot S! Maggin knew, mostly you do it by confronting Superman with a puzzle or mystery that has to be solved and have him think his way to a solution. It's an irony that the way to get the best out of the world's most physically adept super-hero is to get him dealing with problems primarily with his mind.

This issue is a perfect example as Elliot S! Maggin gives us a bunch of crooks who try to get rid of Superman by convincing him the ghosts of his parents are disappointed in him for having gone native and adopting too many Earth customs. All but disowning him, the "ghosts" order him to go and live on another planet. Needless to say, Superman quickly sees through this ruse and turns the villains' own plot against them.

This elegance, I think, is the clue to the strip's appeal. There's no peril here, no danger, just a slight conundrum. It's such a contrast to the ramped-up drama of the average comic book that it can't help but grab you. It's the super-hero equivalent of sitting on the front lawn, on a sunny day, drinking Earl Grey and nibbling cucumber sandwiches.

Meanwhile, in the back-up strip, the Green Lantern and Black Canary stumble across a super-intelligent stray dog with superpowers. Although we're never told it in this story, it doesn't take a genius to work out it's Krypto, Superboy's old dog. But where's he been and why's he lost his memory?

Come to think of it, why hasn't Superman noticed he's missing and gone looking for him? I always felt Kal-El was somewhat neglectful of his cousin Supergirl - putting her in an orphanage the moment she got to Earth - now he's abandoned his dog? maybe it's time the social services had a word with him.

I'm fairly sure this tale features as back-up strip in another issue of Action Comics from around the same time, although, off the top of my head, I'm not sure which one. Was it a mistake? Were they so proud of it they were determined to reprint it? Was there a deadline problem that meant they had to grab the first story at hand and hope no one noticed?

But who cares, these things happen and it's a cute tale beautifully drawn by the mighty Mike Grell who, for a relative novice, seemed to have been given a fair old workload at the time.