Brian Cronin

by Was Superman a Spy?

  Even though, to achieve the same high-quality look as the Disney films, Fleischer’s 1941 series of Superman shorts marked the company’s highest budget up to that point (about fifty thousand dollars), it was still important to cut corners wherever possible. One such corner was Superman’s method of transportation. The Adventures of Superman radio show had a notable tagline, describing Superman as “faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.” Note the last part: “leap,” not fly. In his early appearances, Superman could not fly. He simply jumped large distances (or occasionally ran on power lines). To animate Superman jumping, however, required extra frames to be drawn of Superman crouching down and then leaping upward. A way to avoid drawing these extra frames was to simply take the frame with Superman standing and move it up slowly over the background, which would make it appear as though he was flying off the ground. The Superman animated serials were hugely popular (they were even nominated for an Academy Award in 1942), and soon Superman was flying in the comic as well, which he has been doing ever since.

  WHILE THE FLEISCHER Studios animated films were a hit, it took a lot longer to see a full-length Superman feature, animated or live action. There were a couple of live-action film serials in the late 1940s and early 1950s, starring Kirk Alyn as Superman, and they got as far as to produce a script for a possible film in the 1950s based on the television series Adventures of Superman (which starred George Reeves as Superman). Still, up until the 1970s there had not yet been a full-length Superman feature. That changed when Warner Bros. sold the rights to make the film to father-and-son producer team Alexander and Ilya Salkind in the early 1970s. They began work on the film in 1973, but it was not released until 1978. Part of the reason for the delay was the way they decided to shoot the movie, which also led to a bizarre change to the ending of the first Superman film.

  In the early 1970s, the Salkinds had produced two films about the Three Musketeers, directed by Richard Lester: The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers. As a cost-cutting technique, they tried something that had not been done before—they filmed both features at the same time. This cost less than starting up an entirely new production for the second film, and is the same technique used by New Line and Peter Jackson for the popular film trilogy Lord of the Rings. The Musketeers films were a box-office success, so the Salkinds decided to do the same with Superman: have director Richard Donner do two movies at once, Superman: The Movie and Superman II.

  However, the Salkinds were not prepared for how long and costly the film production would be, so with 80 percent of the second film completed, they decided to cease production, fearing that the first film would not be successful and the second film would not even happen. Donner obviously took issue with this approach, and he certainly took issue with the next decision the Salkinds made, which was suggested by Lester, who they had brought in as a sort of informal producer. The end of Superman II had Superman, played by Christopher Reeve, facing off against three Kryptonian villains. Superman saves the day by traveling back in time, to before the villains escaped, and preventing their escape. The Salkinds decided to take that ending and make it the ending of the first film instead!

  Superman: The Movie was a gigantic success, and the Salkinds made Lester the director of the second film, which he produced by adding new scenes to whatever he wanted to use from Donner’s production. This included using, at times, a body double for Gene Hackman, who played Lex Luthor in the films but had finished all his scenes before Lester took over. A second major change was the elimination of any scenes with Marlon Brando, who had played Superman’s father in the first film. The Salkinds claim the decision to eliminate Brando was strictly a creative one, but it is worth noting that Brando’s contract stipulated that he receive 11.75 percent of the film’s gross, making it financially prudent to eliminate him. In 2006, more than two decades after the 1980 release of Superman II, Warner Bros. released a newly edited version of Superman II that presented the film as Richard Donner had originally envisioned it.

  AS STRANGE AS the behind-the-scenes battles involving the first two Superman films were, nothing compares to the bizarre, almost twenty-year journey to produce a new Superman film after the disappointing box office performance, in 1987, of Superman IV: The Quest for Peace. In 1993 Warner Bros. finally regained the rights to Superman from the Salkinds (the Salkinds had allowed another production team to option the rights for Superman IV). Warner Bros. then hired producer Jon Peters, a successful film producer who got his big break through his connections with Barbra Streisand.

  Peters met Streisand because he was her hairdresser, and after the two began dating, they coproduced her 1976 hit film, A Star Is Born. Once he established himself, Peters went on to have an impressive career as a film producer, working on such hits as Caddy-shack , Flashdance, Rain Man, and most notably (and most likely why he was chosen by Warner Bros.) Tim Burton’s two Batman films. Peters’s approach to the title character seemed to be more about what he could take from other films than what he could settle on, and the various scripts he developed over the next decade clearly demonstrated this approach. The film was originally going to be based on the popular 1992 “Death of Superman” story line from the comics, so for the first try at a script, screenwriter Jonathan Lemkin told a tale of Superman fighting the villain who had killed him in the comics—the monstrous alien called Doomsday—and dying, but not before his spirit impregnates Lois Lane, who gives birth to a baby who quickly grows up to defeat Doomsday.

  In his take on the script, the second writer, Gregory Poirer, used the longtime Superman villain, the brilliant alien Brainiac as the main bad guy. Brainiac creates Doomsday, sends him after Superman, and Doomsday kills him. Another alien (holding a grudge against Brainiac) swoops in, takes Superman’s corpse, and revives him, although Superman is forced to use a robotic suit of armor until his powers return.

  Director Kevin Smith, who is a noted comic book fan (and has even written comic books for both DC and Marvel), was brought on to tell basically the same story Poirer had written, only with some new, more comedic elements involved. It seemed evident that Peters had a few constants he felt needed to be included: Doomsday, Brainiac, Superman dying, Superman wearing a suit of armor. When speaking of the film, Smith has pointed out some of the elements Peters wanted in the film that Smith felt were bizarre. One such element Peters insisted on was that Superman at one point fight a giant robot spider. It never made it into the film, but it is notable that Peters produced a film a few years later called Wild Wild West, which is set in the nineteenth century, yet the main villain uses a giant robot spider.

  Wesley Strick, Dan Gilroy, and William Wisher all took turns at writing scripts that resembled the basic scenario Peters required, with Brainiac and Doomsday, and Superman dying and coming back with a suit of armor. Strick created a darker version of the events to suit the director attached at the time, Tim Burton (Nicolas Cage was to star, though eventually both he and Burton took the money they were paid and left the project).

  After screenwriter Paul Attanasio took his crack at the formula, and a brief flirtation with the idea of a Batman and Superman film, J. J. Abrams stepped up to the plate with the first script that really broke free of Peters’s ideas. It offered a completely revisionist take on Superman, including a Krypton that did not even explode but was instead torn apart by a civil war. As part of the war, Superman’s father sent him away to Earth, but once he begins appearing as Superman, enemies of his father from Krypton attack Earth.

  Finally, Bryan Singer, hot off his successful turn with the X-Men film franchise, signed on to the film, along with enough clout to direct it with his own vision. Although Peters was still an executive producer on the film, the script Singer chose, by Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris (which Singer would later rewrite himself), did not have any of the four elements that Peters originally insisted upon, but instead followed the original Salkind Superman films—specifically the fi
rst Superman film directed by Richard Donner—to the letter. Nineteen years after Superman IV was released, Superman returned to the silver screen in 2006 in the aptly titled Superman Returns.

  THE RESPECT BRYAN Singer afforded Richard Donner was, sadly, not indicative of the way DC Comics treated two comic book legends when it redrew the work of both Jack Kirby and Alex Toth during the 1970s.

  Jack Kirby came to DC in 1970 after establishing himself as one of the most popular artists in the entire comic business during the 1960s while working at Marvel (read much more about Kirby in the Marvel section). Offered any book he wanted, Kirby chose to work on Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen, because it was the only book that did not have a creative team at the time, and Kirby did not want anyone to lose a job because of him. While on the book, Kirby quickly began introducing a series of new characters who would form the foundation of a separate line of comics he would do for DC. These starred the New Gods, characters caught up in an ancient feud between the good people of the planet New Genesis and the evil denizens of Apokolips, headed by the evil Darkseid (pronounced dark side).

  Kirby had Superman guest star in his Jimmy Olsen stories, to establish these New Gods in the DC Universe, but when he did, strangely enough, DC had a different artist redraw Superman’s face! Al Plastino, who was a popular Superman artist during the 1950s (and drew the first appearances of Brainiac and Supergirl), was brought in by DC to redraw Kirby’s Superman faces to make them appear consistent with the way the hero looked in his own comic book (which was drawn mostly by artist Curt Swan).

  This was especially strange because not only did DC make a big marketing push about bringing Kirby over to draw books for them in his unique style (only to have another artist redraw his work to make it appear less unique), but the artist they chose to make Superman look like the regular books had not worked on those books for years!

  As strange as redrawing Kirby’s faces may seem, DC at least had the excuse that Kirby’s Superman did look different from the Superman that was familiar to most readers. However, they had no such excuse when they did the same with Alex Toth’s Superman. Alex Toth was a notable comic book artist during the 1940s, working for different companies in a number of different genres (superheroes, war stories, romances, Westerns, and horror). Eventually, Toth moved into the world of animation, becoming the designer on the Space Angel television series. This caught the eye of Hanna-Barbera, which hired him as the main designer for its action series of the 1960s and ’70s, including Space Ghost, Birdman and the Galaxy Trio, and The Herculoids. In 1973 he designed the Super Friends for Hanna-Barbera, which was its adaptation of the DC Comics super-hero line and became a massively successful cartoon series.

  Due to the popularity of the cartoon series, in 1975 DC put out a one-shot comic book tying into the cartoon series. Toth drew the one-shot. However, on Toth’s cover, DC replaced his depiction of Superman’s face with a drawing by Curt Swan!

  Toth’s drawing of Superman’s face was good enough for the Super Friends TV series, but it was not good enough for a Super Friends tie-in comic! Years later DC released a poster version of the one-shot cover, and it managed to fix its error decades later by taking a Superman head Toth had drawn for the back cover of the one-shot and putting it on Superman’s neck for the poster!

  This is the back cover that DC took Joth’s Superman head from to make the current poster “All-Toth.”

  SIMILAR FEARS ABOUT how Superman should be portrayed played a role in the destruction of a comic book starring Superman as a young baby.

  During the 1990s, DC began doing a series of comics called Elseworlds, which were stories featuring the famous DC characters in different environments or time periods that were not in continuity with the main books. For instance, the very first Elseworld, Gotham by Gaslight, is set in the 1880s and tells the story of Jack the Ripper coming to Gotham City to face off against Batman. In 1999 DC released a one-shot collection of short Elseworlds stories. One of the stories, written and drawn by Kyle Baker, was called “Letitia Lerner, Superman’s Babysitter” (her initials are an homage to the amount of notable Superman characters with the initials LL, such as Lois Lane, Lex Luthor, and Superman’s girlfriends in high school and college, Lana Lang and Lori Lemaris, respectively).

  In the comic, Letitia humorously finds herself having a hard time controlling a superstrong baby.

  However, DC president Paul Levitz found some of the scenes in the comic offensive, specifically scenes where the infant Superman crawls into a microwave oven and where he sucks milk directly from a cow’s udder. Although a few thousand copies had already been printed for distribution in the United Kingdom and some other foreign markets, Levitz ordered the remaining printings pulped at a cost in the thousands of dollars.

  Although there were only a few thousand copies of the book available, it still managed to win an industry award, the Eisner, in 2000, both for Best Short Story and for Best Writer/Artist: Humor. Eventually, in 2001, DC produced a hardcover book filled with similarly offbeat stories, titled Bizarro Comics. The story was included in the volume, which was released as a softcover two years later.

  2

  BATMAN

  Batman was introduced about a year after Superman, in the twenty-seventh issue of National Publications’ detective anthology, Detective Comics (soon National would take Detective Comics as the name of the company, becoming DC Comics). National was looking to add superheroes to every anthology it had, even the ones that had nothing to do with superheroes. So a detective superhero was the right fit for Detective Comics, and in the Batman strip (the first strip was drawn by Bob Kane and written by Bill Finger, although only Kane was credited), readers met millionaire Bruce Wayne who secretly solves crimes as the mysterious hero of the night, the Batman.

  Batman (along with his young crime-fighting partner, Robin, who was introduced a year later) quickly soared to high sales, becoming the second most popular superhero at the company next to Superman, a spot he would maintain for the next few decades. Superman and Batman were two of the few superhero characters not only to last into the 1950s but to do so with multiple titles! Still, in the 1960s sales were down, and there was even talk about possibly canceling the comic. Luckily for Batman fans, in 1966 the television network ABC began airing the Batman television series. Produced by William Dozier, the series was played for camp laughs, but it was still such a massive success that comic book sales soared once again.

  After the television series ended, the comics tried to get back to the darker roots of the Batman character. In the mid-1980s writer-artist Frank Miller created the limited series Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, bringing a much darker approach to the character that was notable both for forming a template that the other Batman titles of the day would soon follow and for inspiring Tim Burton to direct the massively successful Batman film in 1989.

  In the 1990s, on top of a number of popular films (although the film series stalled after its third sequel), Fox launched a popular animated series by acclaimed animation producers Bruce Timm and Paul Dini. Batman: The Animated Series was one of the most popular and critically acclaimed animated series of all time and has spun off a number of follow-up Batman (and other DC Comic heroes as well) cartoon series.

  Recently, inspired by a different Frank Miller comic book (Batman: Year One, which examined the beginning of Batman’s career), Warner Bros. launched a new Batman film starting from that origin, titled Batman Begins. It was a huge success, spawning a 2008 sequel, The Dark Knight.

  AS NOTED EARLIER, the only credit on the first Batman comic story was the byline of Bob Kane. Currently, Bob Kane is the sole acknowledged creator of Batman. All Batman comics carry with them the byline at the beginning of the issue, “Batman created by Bob Kane.” However, the actual creation of Batman is a good deal more complicated than simply “created by Bob Kane,” although it may depend on what one considers the actual creation of the character.

  In 1939 National Publications sent a simple plea ou
t to all of its comic creators—give us another Superman! It was with this in mind that Kane, who had created a few series for different publishers in a variety of styles, from funny animals (“Peter Pupp”) to an adventure series (“Rusty and His Pals”), began brainstorming to find a new hero to rival Superman. He came up with an idea, and after putting together some designs of the new character, he introduced the Bat-Man to his studio mate, Bill Finger (Finger was an aspiring writer who Kane had recently hired to write some strips).

  As both Finger and Kane recalled, the early vision of Bat-Man was a man wearing a red bodysuit, with black wings attached to his back, and a domino mask (similar to the one Robin wore). Finger suggested that they make the suit less colorful by turning the red to gray. He then suggested making the domino mask a bat-shaped cowl, that the hero should wear gloves, and that the wings should be replaced by a cape. Finger then wrote the story that would appear in Detective Comics #27, including naming Bruce Wayne and Commissioner Gordon, who both first appeared in that story. So, who created Batman?

  Kane quickly signed a twenty-year contract to produce Batman stories for National, a deal he would later renegotiate in the late 1940s when Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster first sued for the rights to Superman. Part of the deal was that all Batman strips would carry a Bob Kane byline and that Kane would be hired to produce a certain number of Batman stories. DC ultimately bought Kane out of the production deal in the late 1960s.

  WHEN IT IS said that Kane was hired to produce a certain amount of Batman stories, it does not mean that Kane himself drew them. Kane was not a particularly proficient artist, and modern comic historians have demonstrated that Kane’s original Batman stories were to a great extent produced by using poses and arrangements of other comic artists, including Hal Foster (artist of the popular Tarzan comic strip). This was not an unusual occurrence, of course, as most comic book artists of the time swiped from one another. However, once Kane had his deal in place to produce Batman stories, he began to hire other artists to help produce his artwork, and in 1943 he left the comic book entirely to devote his time to the Batman comic strip. In 1946 he returned to the comic book, but for the rest of his career as a comic book artist, he was not doing any of the actual art, choosing instead to have other artists ghost draw for him (Lew S. Schwartz from 1946 to 1953 and Sheldon Moldoff from 1953 to 1967). As you can imagine, with so many different people working on the comic, it is extremely difficult to determine who created what—this is never more evident than in the case of Batman’s greatest enemy, the Joker.