| "The Reign of the Superman" | |
|---|---|
| Short story byJerry Siegel | |
 Opening pages in thefanzineScience Fiction: The Advance Guard of Future Civilization #3. | |
| Country | USA |
| Language | English |
| Publication | |
| Publication date | January 1933 (1933-01) |
"The Reign of the Superman" (January 1933) is ashort story written byJerry Siegel and illustrated byJoe Shuster. It was the writer/artist duo's first published use of the nameSuperman, which they later applied to theirarchetypal fictionalsuperhero. The title character of this story is a telepathic villain, rather than a physically powerful hero like the well-known character. Although the name is hyphenated between syllablesdue to it being broken between pages on the story's opening spread, it is spelledSuperman in the magazine's table of contents and in the story's text.
High school friends Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster tried selling stories to magazines in order to escapeDepression-era poverty. With their work rejected by publishers, 18-year-old Shuster produced the duo's owntyped,mimeographedscience fiction fanzine titledScience Fiction: The Advance Guard of Future Civilization, producing five issues.[1][2]
Siegel wrote "The Reign of the Superman" in 1932.[3] Inspired by the spread of the term "superman" in popular culture of their time[4] and thus indirectly inspired byFriedrich Nietzsche's idea of a super-human (theÜbermensch),[5][6] it featured a meek man transformed into a powerful villain bent on dominating the world. It appeared in issue #3 of the fanzine, with accompanying artwork by Shuster.[7] Siegel published it under thepen nameHerbert S. Fine, combining the first name of a cousin with his mother's maiden name.[8]
The term "superman" derives from a common English translation of the termÜbermensch, which originated with Friedrich Nietzsche's statement, "Ich lehre euch den Übermenschen" ("I will teach you all the supermen"), in his 1883 workThus Spoke Zarathustra. The term "superman" was popularized byGeorge Bernard Shaw with his 1903 playMan and Superman.[9] The characterJane Porter refers toTarzan as a "superman" in the 1912 pulp novelTarzan of the Apes byEdgar Rice Burroughs, and Siegel would later name Tarzan as an influence on the creation of his and Shuster's character.[10]
A chemist named Professor Ernest Smalley randomly chooses raggedly dressed vagrant Bill Dunn from abread line and recruits him to participate in an experiment in exchange for "a real meal and a new suit". When Smalley's experimental potion grants Dunntelepathic super powers, the man becomes intoxicated by his power and seeks to rule the world. Thissuperpowered man uses these abilities for embittered tyranny, only to discover that the potion's effects are temporary. The Super Man vanquishes the equally evil Smalley, who had intended to kill Dunn first as a dog-eat-dog attempt to give himself the same successfully-tested super powers, Dunn realizes that this was a horrible mistake by not keeping Smalley alive to torture and interrogate the secret formula from him, and instead found himself desperately using his low-level knowledge to recreate it. As the story ends, Dunn's powers wear off and he realizes he will be returning to the bread line to be a forgotten man once more.
The last two pages of the story feature a reporter namedForrest Ackerman, an early example of what would come to be known astuckerization. The real Ackerman was not only a friend of Siegel and Shuster, but actually has a brief review on the same page of the fanzine as the last page of the story in which the character named after him appears.
In 1933, Siegel read a 48-page black-and-white comic book titledDetective Dan, whose title character was a "secret operative". Siegel thought that a superman who was a hero could make a great comic character, and conceived one bearing little resemblance to his villainous namesake. He wrote a crime story which Shuster drew in comic format. Titling itThe Superman, they offered it to Consolidated Book Publishing, the company that had publishedDetective Dan. Although the duo received an encouraging letter, Consolidated never again published comic books. Discouraged, Shuster burned all pages of the story, but the cover survived because Siegel rescued it from the fire. Siegel and Shuster compared the character toSlam Bradley, aprivate detective the pair later created forDetective Comics #1 (March 1937).[11] Siegel later said that they had a great character and they were determined it would be published.[12] Siegel and Shuster would next use the name in the story they sold toDC Comics, which was published in June 1938'sAction Comics #1.
Few intact copies ofScience Fiction #3 survive. Collectors value it both because of its rarity and because of its importance in the history behind the development of the superhero Superman. In September 2006,Heritage Auction Galleries in Dallas, Texas, auctioned a copy for $47,800.[13]
