So I was thinking about that final time that a comic book used the silver age tag line “This is an imaginary story” this evening and it occurred to me that I didn’t know the first time it was used.
A google search turned up lots of references to the last time. It isn’t in any of the three Superman centered Showcase volumes I have which go up to about 1960 and I don’t think the first use can be much later than '62 or '63. Anyone happen to know where the first one was?
Oh, and just to save someone the trouble of posting it:
“Our Very First IMAGINARY Story!” was a blurb on the first page of “Superman, Matinee Idol”, a 13-page story that ran in Superman#19 (Nov/Dec 1942). Clark and Lois attend a showing of a Superman animated cartoon (Clark: “I hear that Paramount Pictures did an outstanding job.”) and Clark keeps distracting Lois whenever the cartoon reveals his secret identity, as both Clark and Lois are characters in the cartoon itself. It’s clearly just an ad for the cartoons, but there you go. The cartoon within the story doesn’t, as far as I know, match any of the actual cartoons.
Thanks for the info on the first story actually labelled imaginary! In an odd way, though, that was only half of what I was curious about. I was thinking of where they first used the phrase “This is an imaginary story” at the begining to label a story as out of continuity.
I have found a cite on the net for Superman #224 which opens almost identically to Moore’s version (“This is an imaginary story which may or may not ever happen.”), but the site also says that it was February 1970. I know that “imaginary stories” were relatively common before that (and obviously turning up very early in Superman’s history thanks to Bryan’s cite), but I don’t have access to a copy of such stories as “The Death of Superman” (the first one from the early sixies) or “Superman Red/Superman Blue” to see if they used that actual caption that Moore turned on its head years later…
You did make me think of another question, though. If it’s Superman’s first “IMAGINARY Story”, were there others that were labelled “imaginary” with the same meaning before Superman? There’s certainly an implication in that blurb that the phrase was used before Superman #13. Any other early golden age heroes doing this? Were there out of continuity pulp fiction or Flash Gordon strips that were labeled as “Imaginary Stories”?
Okay, after I posted I thought about searching for images of the splash pages for those stories and I at least found Superman Red/Superman Blue which was published in 1963 and labeled as “an imaginary novel” 1961’s Death of Superman was also called “an imaginary novel” on the cover and the splash page but included the paranthetical aside “(which may never happen, but then again may)” just like Moore’s version. I couldn’t find a picture of the splash page for “The Son of Jimmy Olsen” from Jimmy Olsen #56 which was also published in 1961.
I found “This is only an imaginary story” in Superboy #124 from October 1965 so maybe the 1970 is the earliest that they actually wrote the phrase “This is an imaginary story”…
Superman and the line extension comics - Lois Lane and Jimmy Olson - did a ton of imaginary stories in the 1950s. They kept marrying Lois and Superman or showing Superman’s kids or Lois as the First Lady to Clark’s President. Most were splashed across the cover as Imaginary. Whether they used the specific line, this is an imaginary story, I don’t remember. But you’d have to look carefully through them before deciding on a 1960s date.
The titles is Superman: Whatever happened to the Man of Tomorrow? Alan Moore, Curt Swann, George Perez & Kurt Schaffenberger.1986 copyright. Available on Amazon.
An affectionate & sorrowful farewell to the Silver Age Man of Tomorrow.
It was not referred to as an Imaginary Story in that first printing, however. The narrative box introducing the story:
‘Talk of the talkie industry – the favourite entertainment of millions…that’s the Superman movie cartoon! But tho the films in this stirring series thrill a nation, they can be a source of acute embarrassment for Clark Kent, particularly if Lois Lane happens to accompany him to one. Why? Read the adventure of “Superman, Matinee Idol”…’
That was the last time the phrase was used. Since Alan Moore wrote those lines I included in the original post as an epitath to the silver age Superman no one can really use the phrase again.
I was wondering about the first time “This is an imaginary story” was used. I was a common enough sight in the silver age that Moore turned the whole thing on its head (like he did with so many other things). So far 1970 is the earliest story I can find but my collection is really weak on silver age Superman since as I child I never thought of keeping this stuff as reference material.
Not having an original copy, I couldn’t say. The blurb I describe definitely appears in the hardcover compilation Superman, From the Thirties to the Eighties (1983), though the story had been reprinted at least twice before. If the blurb wasn’t in the original, there’s no clear indication of when it was added.