Action Comics #13: Superman vs. the Cab Protective League

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

Another cover with Superman, a mirrored drawing from the cover to #10

   Superman vs. the Cab Protective League begins as a pretty standard, issue-driven Superman story, as Clark runs into some racketeers who are “trying to victimize the independent companies” in Metropolis’ cab world. By page 8, it seems wrapped up- Superman is getting more and more efficient and dealing with mobsters at this point- but then the crooks break out, and Superman has to follow the trail to their boss. Here, we meet Ultra-Humanite, a bald mad scientist who plans to take over the world. He would go on to appear 4 more times within the next ten issues of Action Comics, before being supplanted by Lex Luthor and not appearing again in the golden age. 

    Ultra explains that “a scientific experiment resulted in [his] possessing the most able and learned brain on Earth”. He is paralysed from the waist down, and serves as an intellectual foe who can trap and outwit Superman rather than a physical threat- there wouldn’t be any villains who could go toe-to-toe with the Man of Steel for quite some time. He does manage to knock Superman out with his trap, though; an electrified floor that “was enough to kill five hundred men”. It’s the first time we’ve seen the Man of Tomorrow in any real danger, so it does a decent job establishing Ultra as a threat. A couple of the henchman get killed off pretty violently, not directly by Superman but he is quite non-plussed about it, saying that they got what they deserved. The death penalty was still quite common at this time, and views on justice were quite different. The whole “superheroes don’t kill” trope is something that evolved over time, but in the early days heroes killing villains was not seen as something scandalous or rule-breaking. 

 

    This is Superman’s first recurring villain. Most comics of this era were essentially large collections of short stories, so one-off foes and supporting characters were very common. Flash Gordon had Ming, but aside from that I don’t know of any other arch-nemeses in comics of the 1930s. The Joker wouldn’t debut for another year, and there were still not many other heroes around in general. Giving Superman a recurring foe was a decent idea, even Ultra-Humanite was relatively underdeveloped and eventually left aside. It allows the book to shift from the more grounded crime stories of the early issues into more fantastical, pulpy territory (although madmen with dreams of world domination may have felt a bit less far-fetched in 1939). 

    The unusual structure of it is also something Siegel & Shuster have done a few times, linking small vignettes together rather than a more traditional, 3-act setup for every story. The variations help keep things fresh, and though I often find these fantastical stories less compelling than Siegel & Shuster’s brash takedowns of political injustices, the series does need to be able to tell these kinds of stories as well in order to branch out and keep going. It’s just that if you want larger-than life Superman stories with mad scientists and crazy gadgets, it’s been done better by later writers and artists.