Action Comics #3: The Blakely Mine Disaster

 Nearly a year ago now, leading up to the release of Superman: The Golden Age Omnibus volume 7, I started reviewing Siegel and Shuster’s early issues of Action Comics. I haven’t gotten around to buying that omnibus and the project only got two issues deep, but I will try to start it up again, posting weekly. 

Although not the stories were not officially titled yet at this point, I will be using the retroactive names from the Golden Age reprint series. This one is titled The Blakely Mine Disaster, and like the first two issues uses Superman as a power fantasy to solve class issues. Here, Siegel and Shuster focus on exploitation of labour, as rich industrialist of the week Thornton Blakely disregards safety protocols in his coal mine, as the miners work long hours for low pay. 

In many ways this feels like the most pure version of the type of story Siegel and Shuster wanted to tell. There’s capitalist exploitation, class struggle, Superman scaring the rich into treating the working class equitably, and a strong visual contrast between the world of tophats and cocktails parties to hardhats and pickaxes. The absences aren’t immediately obvious: Lois doesn’t show up, the Superman costume only gets one panel, with the rest of the issue having Clark either undercover as a miner or working as a reporter, and very little mention of the whole secret identity thing beyond Supie not using his powers while others are looking. As with #2, Superman doesn’t get the cover here, either, though it would later become obvious that he was the main driving force of the book.

Miner Stanislaw Kober is injured in a cave-in. With Superman’s help, he is able to get out alive (despite a broken elevator which impeded the other rescue attempt), but crippled for life. Kober reveals that the owner is aware of the unsafe conditions, but refused to make the necessary repairs, and the workers feel trapped, needing to feed their family and pay their bills. Clark interviews Blakely, who denies any safety issues with his mine and refuses to give Kober a pension. To stir Blakely to action, Clark disguises himself as a miner and crashes the mine owners’ lavish party at his estate. Blakely decides to move the party into the mine as way to liven things up for the bored socialites, and Clark engineers another cave-in so that Blakely can experience firsthand just how faulty his safeguards are. After all this, Blakely vows to make his mine “the safest in the country” and to ensure his workers are “the best treated”. 

Like with the previous issue, it all wraps up very neatly and quickly, as required by the 13 page format. Still, it’s very effective in showing the divide between the labour of the working class and the detached opulence of the wealthy, wanting to cosplay as the poor for a cheap thrill until they realize that living in poverty is actually quite dangerous and unpleasant. Solidarity to the workers of the world, and long live unions.