Episode 10: Superman’s 1940 Surge and the First Luthor

Simon Carver

[warmly] Welcome to the show -- this is the tenth episode of Distinguished Comics Radio, airing August 17, 1940. I’m Simon Carver, your regular man at the microphone, and with me is Robert Reed.

Robert Reed

[cheerful] Howdy, folks. Robert Reed speaking, straight from the windy side of common sense. Tenth broadcast already, Simon! Feels like we just rolled this crate of funnybooks onto the station floor, and now here we are, ringing the bell for number TEN.

Simon Carver

And what a fine one to ring in with, because tonight we begin our 1940 coverage -- early. Very early, in fact. We could not wait for the year to finish itself, so we’re starting with only the first third or so of the Superman material that has reached the stands. It feels a little like reviewing a serial after only the first reels have arrived, but that, honestly, is part of the thrill.

Robert Reed

[matter-of-fact] Yeah, we’re not waiting for the whole parade to pass before we salute. Superman took four of the five awards for 1939 on this program -- four outta five! That’s not a squeaker, that’s a blowout. So now the question is plain as day: was that a one-year hot streak, or is this fella gonna keep flattening the field in 1940 too?

Simon Carver

Four of five is the thing to remember. If you’re joining us fresh, that was the size of the shadow Superman cast over 1939 on DCR. And now, in these opening 1940 stories, you can feel the strip testing how much weight that shadow can bear -- longer plots, stranger dangers, tighter continuity, and a greater confidence that readers will follow from one issue to the next.

Robert Reed

[reflective] Outside the spinner rack, the world feels jumpy too. August has everybody listening hard to the radio. The Battle of Britain is in the air -- literally in the air -- and every headline feels like engines overhead. You hear about British ports hit on the 8th, airfields struck on the 12th, and then that rough fighting on the 15th... folks are walking around like the whole world’s holding its breath.

Simon Carver

That “15th” sticks with me too. Black Thursday. Seventy-six German aircraft lost, against thirty-four British, according to the reports. Those are not abstract figures; they give even these comics a different charge. When Superman tears after bombers, dives through searchlights, or outruns disaster, he’s touching a nerve that is very much alive in August of 1940.

Robert Reed

And that’s why tonight’s pile hits so hard. We’ve got Superman #3, especially that first big story, and then Action Comics numbers 20 through 23. Good comics -- all of ’em. Not perfect, maybe, but lively as a marching band and twice as loud.

Simon Carver

[curious] We’ll start with the giant one in Superman #3, spend some time with the orphanage material in there, then move into Action 20 and 21 for one of my favorite little accidental pleasures in early comics -- continuity by resemblance. And before we’re done, we’ll meet a certain Luthor for the first time, though none of us yet quite know how long that echo will travel.

Robert Reed

[chuckles] That’s right. A long one, a funny one, a couple wild machine-age smashups, and one lady in Action #20 who looks so much like Lois Lane I nearly dropped my sandwich. For a second I thought Lois had turned desperado on us.

Simon Carver

[excited] Superman #3, story A, is the big meal tonight. It may be the longest Superman story we’ve had yet, and it feels long in the right way -- not padded, but sprawling. It begins with a boy, Frankie Dennis, slipping away from a state orphanage at daybreak, trying to reach the Daily Star because, as he says, he can’t bear the place any longer.

Robert Reed

Frankie Dennis. That name’s the hook. Not “a boy,” but Frankie. Blond kid, hungry, says he hasn’t eaten in two days. That’s the token that gets me. Once Clark Kent hears “two days,” the whole thing turns black-and-white in the best Robert Reed way: somebody’s starving kids, so Superman has a job to do.

Simon Carver

Yes -- and Clark first meets him after saving him from a train. That opening rescue is marvelous pulp engineering. Frankie faints on the tracks, Clark spots him, transforms, races a Pacific train, hurls it aside, and then carries the unconscious child to safety. Before the investigation even begins, the story tells you its moral geometry: children are small, institutions are large, and Superman crosses the distance in one leap.

Robert Reed

[firm] Then Clark doesn’t just pat the kid on the head and move on. He feeds him at a lunch counter. He asks questions. Frankie says the superintendent starves the boys, makes them do hard labor, beats them sometimes, and locks them up. That lunch counter scene matters. Heroics are swell, but the sandwich comes first. That’s pure American stuff right there.

Simon Carver

And the Daily Star thread feeds it beautifully. Clark pitches the story, the paper sends him and Lois out, rival reporters tail them, and suddenly the orphanage investigation becomes both social exposé and newsroom race. The whole mechanism clicks -- reporting, suspicion, disguise, rescue, revelation. Power is not merely punching; it is also seeing, verifying, printing.

Robert Reed

[amused] And Lyman, the superintendent -- hoo boy. What a snake. Soon as reporters nose around, he starts scheming like a ward boss with his hand in the till. He suspects Clark, locks Frankie in the attic, hides his account books, and then, because apparently villainy ain’t complete till it’s flambé, he sets the orphanage on FIRE.

Simon Carver

That fire sequence is the part I’ll remember. Smoke pouring through the rooms, Lois trapped in the building, Frankie up in the attic, the superintendent trying to flee in his car -- and Superman handling all three crises at once. He yanks people from the wreckage, seizes the fleeing car “in a viselike grip,” and drags the truth into daylight.

Robert Reed

The “viselike grip” image is terrific. He grabs the rear of the car, the thing swerves, and Lyman gets the rough ride he’s earned. It’s a good old comic-book sentence: a rotten man thinks speed equals escape, and Superman says nope. End of argument. Like putting a boot on a crook’s getaway plan.

Simon Carver

And then the coda is newspaper justice. The Daily Star headline: GRAFT, CRUELTY REIGN IN STATE ORPHANAGE. That matters. The story doesn’t end when Superman throws a punch; it ends when the cruelty is named in print. Clark Kent and Superman are not doing different jobs here. They’re the same ethic in two tempos.

Robert Reed

[softly] And Frankie gets to come home with Clark for a meal before the whole mess is cleaned up. That little beat -- one boy safe in a kitchen after all that smoke and terror -- that’s the part that lands. Not the train. Not the fire. The kitchen.

Robert Reed

[curious] All right, Simon, let’s talk Action Comics #20, because I got fooled fair and square. Dolores Winters shows up, and for one hot second I thought, “Why is Lois Lane mixed up in this murder picture?” She looks SO much like Lois it’s almost a shell game.

Simon Carver

Exactly! Dolores Winters in Action #20 has that uncanny Lois silhouette -- enough that if you’re reading fast, you do a double take. Clark gets sent to a film studio, Dolores is the temperamental actress at the center of a disappearance mystery, and the whole story runs on performance, impersonation, and hidden spaces inside a giant studio building.

Robert Reed

[laughs] “Hidden spaces” is polite. This comic’s got false walls, secret rooms, a studio manager with bad intentions, and Superman creeping around like the world’s strongest stagehand. It’s got that picture-business racket feeling -- glamour out front, dirty doings behind the scenery flats.

Simon Carver

And then Action #21 comes right along and gives us a real Lois-in-danger plot point, which makes the resemblance in #20 feel almost like accidental continuity. In #21, Lois is involved in the story directly, and the serial nature of Superman really starts to hum. You read one issue, then the next, and your mind begins making connections the feature may or may not fully intend. That’s comics teaching readers how to remember.

Robert Reed

That’s the word: SERIAL. We’re not just getting isolated scraps anymore. In #21, Clark follows a boy named Terry whose father was killed by a terrific explosion. That leads to Dolores Winters, then to Professor Ultra, then to a wrecking spree with this little mechanical menace. And Lois is right there in the gears of it.

Simon Carver

Professor Ultra’s tiny robot is one of those delirious early-superhero notions I can’t help loving. It’s a little metal terror with terrific destructive force, smashing laboratory equipment, collapsing a giant clock, toppling steel, and driving the action upward into citywide peril. It feels modern in a very 1940 way -- as if the fear is not merely crime, but invention turned loose.

Robert Reed

And the giant clock at the two o’clock mark -- that panel sticks. Two o’clock exactly, smash, and the spectators below get showered with trouble. It’s the machine age gone haywire. Every dial, propeller, crane, and gadget in these books feels like it’s one bad idea away from becoming a deathtrap.

Simon Carver

Then, in the middle of all that, we get the first appearance of Luthor -- the figure some are already calling Alexi Luthor in these earliest tellings. Bald head, severe face, hidden lair, scientific menace. We don’t know the full measure of him yet, of course, but you can feel an important strand beginning. A recurring Superman enemy is a different creature from a one-issue thug.

Robert Reed

[skeptical] I’ll tell you what jumped out: that head. No fancy mask, no carnival getup, just that smooth dome and a mean look. You don’t forget it. First appearance or not, that design lands like a brick through a window. I’m gonna remember “Luthor” even if I mix up whether we’re saying Lexi or Alexi or just plain Luthor.

Simon Carver

[chuckles] Fair enough. The important token is Luthor. Action #21 feels like the threshold where Superman’s rogues begin to acquire myth. Not fully formed, not polished, but present. A story can end; a rival can linger.

Simon Carver

[reflective] Let me take a small tangent here, because that orphanage in Superman #3 is not just a plot device. Early Superman keeps returning to places where ordinary people are trapped inside systems -- reform schools, crooked bosses, corrupt officials, bad institutions. The orphanage is especially potent because it carries instant emotional weather. Children have nowhere else to stand.

Robert Reed

[firm] And that’s where Superman is BEST. Not when the playing field is level -- when it ain’t. When you’ve got a big fella leaning on a little fella, I don’t need an essay, I need Superman knocking the table over. A state orphanage superintendent starving boys? That’s not gray. That’s a heel.

Simon Carver

There’s a newspaper spirit in these stories I find moving. Maybe that’s why I respond to them so much. They don’t merely want spectacle; they want exposure. Clark asks questions. Lois observes. Editors assign. Headlines land. Even when the scenes are fantastical, the moral structure feels borrowed from city reporting -- someone is suffering, someone powerful is lying, and somebody stubborn must go prove it.

Robert Reed

The “state orphanage” wording matters too. Not just a spooky house, not just a nasty guardian -- a STATE place. That gives it extra bite. If a place with the word “state” on the sign is rotten, that means the whole rig needs inspection. Superman isn’t just rescuing one kid. He’s shining a light in the rafters.

Simon Carver

That phrase -- “state” -- yes. It ties into the anxious mood of 1940. Families feeling squeezed. Jobs uncertain. War headlines rolling in from overseas. Talk of air raids, defense plans, mobilization. When the world feels unstable, stories about vulnerable people inside giant systems become sharper, not softer.

Robert Reed

[calm] Vulnerable are always first to get squeezed. Kids. Poor folks. The fellow without a lawyer. The widow. The immigrant. The patient. The tenant. That’s why a lot of these Superman yarns hit home even when he’s tossing trains around. Under the circus stuff, he’s asking: who gets stepped on first, and who’s gonna stop it?

Simon Carver

And because this is 1940, because the radio is full of Britain under attack and Europe convulsing, these domestic injustices don’t feel small. They feel like cousins of the same fear: that force may go unopposed unless somebody intervenes. Superman turns that dread into action. He is fantasy, yes, but a fantasy of interruption.

Robert Reed

[chuckles] “Fantasy of interruption” -- that’s you talking, professor. But I get it. He barges in. He stops the bully before the bully finishes the sentence. That’s the juice.

Simon Carver

Precisely. And when the stories are good, that interruption is not random smashing. It is aimed. Trains for the child on the tracks. Fire for the trapped. A headline for the hidden graft. That’s why this early material still feels alive to me.

Simon Carver

[excited] Action #22 and #23 really lean into Superman as a one-man answer to machine-age catastrophe. In #22 we get Europe war panic, tank rumors, sabotage fears, aircraft, bombs, and that wonderful escalation from newspaper office to sky battle. The Daily Star even blares EUROPE AT WAR, and the feature grabs that nervous energy with both hands.

Robert Reed

And it doesn’t waste time, either. Lita Laverne, foreign actress, suspicious manners, Captain Luthor poking around, and then bam -- Clark’s pinching papers, crawling through portholes, getting into planes. It’s like a dime novel tied to a propeller. Steel, wind, speed. This strip is cooking with gasoline now.

Simon Carver

The image that sticks for me in #22 is Superman clinging to the pace of an airplane, then tearing at propellers, then dropping to earth, then leaping back toward the skies again. The action has a vertical imagination: rooflines, cockpits, bombers, city streets far below. You can feel the creators realizing that Superman is most convincing when the world around him is huge and mechanical.

Robert Reed

[animated] Yeah! Bombs, bullets, engine noise -- and he’s STILL the strongest shape in the panel. He gets flung off, crashes, gets back up, grabs landing gear, hitches rides on enemy planes. That’s good clean nonsense, and I mean that as praise. Like watching a trail bike somehow outrun a locomotive downhill.

Simon Carver

Then Action #23 arrives and gives us the big one: Luthor in earnest. Aerial destruction, Lois captured, a hidden base, war machinery, and Superman pushing further into the realm of science-fiction villainy than before. This is not just a crooked businessman or a sadistic superintendent. This is organized menace with technology, secrecy, and ambition.

Robert Reed

The token in #23 is that air war. Not a fistfight in an alley -- a whole swarm of danger. Superman tears through airplanes, interrupts bomb runs, and then dives into Luthor’s operation itself. That’s a bigger canvas. He ain’t just cleaning up after disaster; he’s trying to stop the machine that makes disaster.

Simon Carver

And because we’re living in August 1940, with airfields and bombers constantly in the news, these panels have extra voltage. The strip is not predicting anything beyond our date; it is responding to what already saturates the imagination. The menace above the city. The dread of unseen attack. The fantasy that one incorruptible force could meet it in the air.

Robert Reed

[thoughtful] What I like is that modern life itself almost becomes the villain. Towers fall. clocks crack. studios hide secrets. planes rain death. trains race toward disaster. Water fills caverns, fire eats walls, and steel keeps turning up meaner than a junkyard dog. Superman’s the answer because he can’t be rattled by the gadgets.

Simon Carver

Yes -- bombast, speed, steel, water, fire. That is the vocabulary of these issues. And the confidence is growing. Action #20 felt nimble. #21 felt inventive. #22 and #23 feel expansive. The series is beginning to believe that no scale is too large for Superman, and that belief may be its greatest superpower.

Robert Reed

[cheerful] All right, gang, time to put a bow on the parcel. Next show, for those ready to fiddle the dial a little, will be on a short-band radio exclusive platform. Mr. Moore -- that mysterious future gent who may or may not exist -- insists you go to Patreon to get your correct tuning bandwidth. I don’t know how a man goes to Patreon, Simon, but apparently he does.

Simon Carver

[laughs] He does, somehow. And on that short-band exclusive, we’ll be starting our first substantial visit with Quality Comics: Doll Man, and Feature Comics numbers 27 through 39. If you’re reading along with us, do yourself a favor and especially seek out issue 27 and issue 36. Those are the two I’d underline in red pencil.

Robert Reed

Issue 27 and 36 -- write ’em on your cuff if you gotta. Doll Man, Feature Comics 27 through 39. That’s the short-band crowd.

Simon Carver

And for those staying with us on the standard broadcast, our next regular program will be Batman 1940, part one. A different kind of hero, a different kind of city, and I suspect a different kind of conversation.

Robert Reed

[grinning] Less cape-in-the-sunshine, more cape-in-the-gargoyle department.

Simon Carver

If you’d like to send us a note, a correction, a challenge, or simply tell Robert he was wrong about something in a charming Midwestern hand, write to distinguishedcomicsradio@gmail.com.

Robert Reed

And if you write in, keep it legible, pals. We’re radio men, not codebreakers.

Simon Carver

[warmly] Until next time, keep your eyes on the newsstands, keep your ears on the airwaves, and keep a little room in your mind for the idea that stories can still surprise you.

Robert Reed

This is Robert Reed--

Simon Carver

--and Simon Carver--

Robert Reed

--signing off from Distinguished Comics Radio, KDCR, wishing you a good night, a steady signal, and clear skies wherever you are.