Puppet Posting: Action Comics #8: Superman in the Slums

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

I wonder if Fredric Wertham ever read Superman in the Slums. The influence of comic books on young people was a huge point of contention in the 1950s, particularly due to Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent (1954), which argued that comics drove youths to juvenile delinquency, loosely based on his own experience as a psychiatrist working with disenfranchised teens. Though the book was more concerned with crime and horror comics than with superheroes, it eventually led to the creation of the Comics Code Authority (CCA), a moralising doctrine that restricted objectionable content in the medium, much like the Hayes code did for film a few years earlier, as the industry caved to outside pressure and tried to avoid direct government intervention. The CCA states that “policemen, judges, government officials, and respected institutions shall never be presented in such a way as to create disrespect for established authority”, “crimes shall never be presented in such a way as to create sympathy for the criminal, to promote distrust of the forces of law and justice, or to inspire others with a desire to imitate criminals”, and several other policies prohibiting excessive violence, nudity, and sexuality. Through the 70s and 80s, the CCA would lose its grip, but for two decades these strict guidelines had to be followed.

Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent (1954)

Fredric Wertham looking at crime comics on the newsstand (note how only the top is visible, an important factor for cover design in this era)

Superman in the Slums is an early superhero comic that deals directly with juvenile delinquency. Though it’s too early to examine the medium's own place in influencing young people, it explores the social factors which lead kids to crime. The story opens in a juvenile court, with a mother’s plea for mercy falling on deaf ears as her son is sentenced to 2 years. Superman works against the police here, trying to stop the other kids from getting arrested so they he can help them get back on the straight and narrow. His ultimate solution, as ever, is overly simplistic and works perfectly, as he evacuates the slums, destroys all the houses, and after which the government builds new apartment buildings as social housing. As ludicrous as the timeline is, though, government investment in housing like this is a large part in what made housing affordable after the war, so Siegel and Shuster do have the right idea.

Superman is still quite a rebel in these early days. The national guard is sent after him, he kidnaps kids from police custody, and the demolition of the slums is done without any oversight or legal support. It’s a far cry from the status quo enforcement of many modern comics, a trend which admittedly began in the 1940s, and was solidified by the CCA era. It’s somewhat controversial among these early issues because it is perhaps the most radical of these Siegel and Shuster stories, as it does not rely on a change of heart from someone in power but instead has Superman take matters entirely into his own hands. Destroying a bunch of poor people’s neighborhoods and hoping for the best is obviously not a realistic solution, but it draws attention to how crime is a result of social ills rather than just a one dimensional state of evil, and the solution has to be systemic in order to make the world a better place. Superman is a force of change that cannot be contained by the system, and so can bring about such changes.

As a side note, this is also one of the few early issues, along with #1, where I was able to find a high quality scan. While I do own the official reprints (which are also available on DC Universe Infinite for digital readers), there is definitely something lost in translation to higher quality white paper and digital fill printing. The dot printing gives texture to panels that otherwise look a bit crude with flat colouring, and the colour tones look more natural because they were chosen specifically to work with that sort of newsprint paper. For what it’s worth the skin tones do come out a bit overly red here at times, though, and there’s some bleed and what space as the cheap printing doesn’t quite have the precision for small drawings like this, but it’s also the sort of unique-to-each-copy imperfections that people cherish in analog media, like dust and scratches on film reels. The reproductions are more uniform and easily accessible, but it’s not quite the way they were designed to be read.