Action Comics #10: Superman Goes to Prison

This is part of an ongoing series where I review Golden Age Superman, weekly, issue by issue, starting from the very beginning. 

    Superman Goes to Prison is a story about police brutality. It does not look into profiling or police violence in the outside world, rather, it is focused on the cruel treatment of convicts in the prisons themselves. Clark is tipped off to the brutal conditions by an escaped convict and goes undercover to gather evidence and get Superintendent Wyman arrested. It’s a pretty straightforward story that follows the formula of the first three issues, where Superman finds someone in a position of power who is abusing their authority and forces them to confront the suffering they cause firsthand, leading to their reform, in Christmas Carol fashion. There’s some comedic moments as Superman completes back-breaking labour with ease and glee, an attempted escape, and some subterfuge before the plan is finally complete.

    Wyman is running a chain gang. Chain gangs are a form of punishment where workers are chained together and forced to perform physical labour. In the United States, chain gangs became prominent after the Civil War, as the South needed a source of free labour to replace slaves and maintain their economy. Though this comic does not bring race into the picture, chain gangs where a key part of maintaining institutional racism during Reconstruction. Superman refers to stocks (a form of corporal punishment that binds limbs in a wooden block with small holes) as reminiscent of “puritan atrocities”, where stocks were often used to expose lower class prisoners to public humiliation. Wyman conducts various forms of torture, such as whipping, a “sweat-box”, and starvation. Focusing on Wyman specifically gives a physical form to an institutional injustice, but it never feels like a “one bad apple” type of story- Siegel and Shuster are earnestly engaging with social problems here, just using individual to explore these ideas as concrete parables. 

               Action Comics #10 marks the third time Superman would get the cover of the book, and while he begins to headline more frequently now, it wouldn’t be until Action Comics #19 and onward that he would become the de-facto star on every cover. It’s vaguely similar to a sequence in Action Comics #2, so they’re still not really doing original covers, but it’s good to see Superman get top billing nonetheless. The header image that starts this story off would also be the basis for the cover of Superman #1, when he finally spun off into his own book. 

    Art wise, it’s one of the weaker issues up to this point. There are several moments where the angle on characters switches panel-to-panel in a way that muddies the sense of space, and a couple of action beats that feel rather abrupt, and could’ve used another panel or two to flow better and build up some suspense. The dialogue is also framed in rectangular, right-angled boxes rather than the bubbles the book normally uses, another one of those weird, one-off touches that doesn’t really come back. There’s still some solid visual gags: all the Superman interacting with Wyman stuff is great, but a lot of the smaller moments don’t really land. Even Wyman looks off a lot of the time, as his beard seems to go in and out depending on the panel, and he doesn’t really have a distinct look, which is a step down from the immediately identifiable detectives and their funny hats from last issue. Still, when a competent yarn with an ever-relevant political theme is one of the weaker stories of a run, it’s ultimately a sign of the book’s overall quality.