Just wondering, what on earth could be a rational explanation for Superman standing by while millions of innocent people were exterminated?
I know, that one version of this from D.C. comics had it that he did not want to interfere with earth’s “destiny” or something like that.
And yet, he DOES interfere every day in our affairs.
What rationalization has D.C. comics ever offered for why he stood by and let all those people go to the gas ovens when he sould have stopped the whole thing in a day or two?
I do not believe that Superman has a “screw them” attitude about Jewish folk, but how can the comics explain this disjoint?
The latter-day rationalization was that Hitler had a powerful magical artifact - any superhuman entering Axis-controlled territory would fall under Hitler’s mental sway.
If I recall, in the DC comics version of WWII, Hitler had occult powers on his side; magic exists in the DC universe (that DC universe, anyway), and Superman is vulnerable to it. There was some kind of spell or curse that kept him out of German-dominated Europe.
As for the Holocaust – remember that for most of the war, people in the U.S. were largely unaware of what was going on, or at least the scale of the horror. The full facts only started to come out with the liberation of Poland (I think; I’m sure there’s an expert on the subject around here).
“Saturday Night Live” in its second or third year (I guess it was when the first Christopher Reeve Superman movie came out) had a funny sketch (probably written by Al Franken) in which little Kal-El’s spaceship lands in Germany instead of Kansas, and he grows up to be the Third Reich’s greatest weapon – Ubermann. They show a newspaper headline: “UBERMANN KILLS EVERY PERSON IN ENGLAND!” Also, he can spot Jews through their clothing.
1: Hitler had the Spear of Destiny against which Superman was powerless.
2: As a fictional character created by comic book writers & artists his knowledge of the existence of the camps would have been as limited as his creators. His name is Superman not Retroactively Omniscient Man.
Hmmm… that is potentially a very good point! I write from about 1959 or so on the Superman thing, snd I do realize that he has evolved over the years (like, originally [before my time] he just could leap great distances, like the Hulk)
It was only later that he could actually fly. So, a very, very good point there. I have to plead ignorance on this issue as to back then.
But, OTOH, I love the replies. Makes me think of alternatives to the situation. Maybe some of them are actually believable and in context…
I’ve a copy of Superman #17 from 1942 stored away.
On the cover, it has Supie standing on the globe, grasping Hitler by the collar in one hand and Tojo in the other, and he’s looking pretty pissed off as he shakes them.
So he definitely stood for kicking serious Axis butt.
However, the stories inside didn’t say much about WWII (IIRC). I think the authors dealt with the dilemma mainly by ignoring it. I think most people recognized it was a comic book, after all.
I remember a short story I read somewhere with a similar theme, done more seriously. Superman as a Brownshirt was rather creepy. Rather than fight on alone while Germany was leveled, he surrendered to the allies and was placed an a gigantic underground prison built just for him; a huge cube of armor and lead they built for him. They built it more out of form than anything; they knew he could just leave if he wanted. A detail I liked : the guards in the prison almost never talk, because they know he always listening : “He can hear us ?” “He hears everything…”.
A similar story was Red Son, where Kal-El landed in the Ukraine and became Stalin’s greatest weapon. Superman ends up succeeding Stalin and, since you just can’t say no to powers like his (and the aid he’ll bring with his advanced technology), he ends up turning most of teh world into Soviet satellite states. It’s a great story, since Superman is still moral in his way, just with cree[y totalitarian communist values.
There was a story in the 40s–no cite, sorry–where Clark Kent tries to enlist, but flunks the vision test. While reading the eye chart, his X-ray vision kicks in and he reads the chart in the next room. 4-F.
From a practical point of view, if he’d gone out and won the war single-handedly (as in the LOOK strip), it’d be tough to explain how the war ended in the comics but not in real life. I mean, would a modern strip featuring Reed Richards’ cure for AIDS be in good taste? I don’t think so.
And the more modern takes on WWII comics (INVADERS, ALL-STAR SQUADRON) depicted a slightly more level playing field. DC’s Axis powers had the Spear of Destiny, Parsifal, and some axis equivalents of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and Green Arrow. Marvel’s superheroes fought Master Man, Warrior Woman, U-Man and Baron Blood. Basically, the soldiers fought soldiers and the superheroes fought super-types.
A little more to the point: There was a PUNISHER story about two years ago where Punisher was kidnapped by the CIA and offered a job hunting Osama. He turned it down. Not because he’s a fan or anything, but because he saw Osama as very much a creation of US foreign policy, and he didn’t want to make a career out of cleaning up the Bush dynasty’s messes. And in a JLA story pre-9/11, their new member–Marc Antaeus–personally hunted down a Saddam Hussein type, caused a power vacuum in the country and left things in worse shape than he found them in. So yeah, there actually is something to the “superheroes stay out of politics” angle.
