Happy birthday 80th to superman
Hey everyone, I’m Jeff and this is Plain English, the podcast that goes at the right speed for English learners. On today’s episode, Action Comics is honoring the eightieth anniversary of its first-ever issue, which featured a new character called Superman on its cover. Superman has shown his staying power over the years; and “staying power” is the phrase that we’ll talk about in more detail in the second part of today’s program.
Today is episode 44, so you can find the transcript of the program on the web site at PlainEnglish.com/44. The transcripts have instant translations of difficult words and phrases from English to Portuguese, Spanish, French and Chinese, so if you speak any of those languages, then I know you’ll benefit from the translations on the web site. PlainEnglish.com/44
Action Comics honors Superman’s 80th birthday
A brand-new comic book called Action Comics hit newsstands with a new character on the cover—a man in a blue uniform and a red cape, lifting up a green car so people could escape from being trapped underneath it. Little did teenage creators Jerry Siegal and Joe Shuster realize at the time, but their character and the emblematic red S on a yellow background would become one of the longest-running comic characters and the defining character of a new genre: the superhero.
On April 18th, 1938, eighty years ago exactly, Superman became the first superhero to appear in the comics. His mission was to use his powers of X-ray vision, speed, strength and the ability to fly to save humanity from anything that threatens it. He stood up for people with little strength or power, including mistreated wives and miners who worked in dangerous conditions. He appeared during a period in the United States called the Great Depression, the worst economic time in our history, and he served the reading public’s need for optimism in a bleak world.
The creators were two high-school kids from Cleveland, Ohio: Jerry Siegal and Joe Shuster. They created the character to reflect their secret desire to have super powers to attract girls. (Some things never change, right?) They added a unique twist to their character: his secret identity. In real-life, he was the mild-mannered Clark Kent, a newspaper reporter at the Daily Planet in the city of Metropolis. He had normal struggles of an average person. He was secretly in love with another reporter at the paper, Lois Lane. But Lois’s true love was the Man of Steel—Superman himself, though Clark Kent could never tell her about his secret identity.
Superman would be followed later by other superheroes such as Batman, Wonder Woman, Spiderman, and others, but would remain the original and the most enduring of the superhero genre. Other characters followed a similar template—the main hero had special powers and was pitted against villains who had powers of their own. Superman has been notable for his staying power: he has remained popular over the years. He has been in the movies, in radio series (before movies were popular), then television shows, and in cartoons. You can find his image on cereal boxes, toys, advertising, and now video games. Even today, the character still appears in the movies and is instantly recognizable. In one of the interviews I read, someone asked an interesting question: How many things from 1938 are still popular today? Music and movies from that time are hard to find, but kids still wear t-shirts with the famous Superman “S” on their chests.
Henry Cavill, who played Superman in the most recent movies, posted an illustration on Instagram showing what he thinks an 80-year-old Superman looks like. In his post, he wrote: “Superman paved the way for all of our favorite heroes. Within us,” he said, “Superman will live no matter how old he gets.”
Action Comics is marking the anniversary with its one-thousandth issue, a hard-cover book that has essays, tributes, and reprints of classic Superman comics. It’s not an exaggeration to say that Superman launched the comic book industry. Prior to that first issue, comics were small strips in newspapers and most comic books were reprints of newspaper comics. But sales of the first Superman issue were so strong that others started publishing comic books, too. The first issue sold its original 200,000 copies quickly. Soon, it would be selling a million copies a month. Here’s a funny anecdote. Like most comic books at the time, Action Comics #1 was an anthology, meaning that it had Superman in its first thirteen pages, but also had ten other features in its 64 pages. The editors didn’t know that the Superman feature would be popular; they only put it on the cover since it came with such a colorful illustration.
By the way, an original copy of that first issue sold in 2014 for over $3 million—the most ever paid for a single copy of a comic book. Its newsstand price was ten cents—or the equivalent of $2 today.
Today’s episode is dedicated to Jaynie. She’s from Colombia, but lives in London, Ontario, not too far from here—maybe a five or six hours drive. She wrote to say she likes listening to Plain English but doesn’t like to hear bad news! Now, I’ll be the first to admit that a few of the episodes lately have been about depressing things—death, corruption, things like that—so I’m happy to dedicate this purely good-news episode to Jaynie. Thanks for listening and congratulations on surviving your first winter up here in the north!
I also wanted to say thank you to Lorena from Argentina, who gave Plain English a five-star review on Facebook. If you’d like to leave a review on Facebook or send me a note, you can find me on there under the user name PlainEnglishPod.
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