thechronologicalsuperman: Superman vol. 1 #9 - cover date March...

http://martinluthorr.tumblr.com/post/56859896125
thechronologicalsuperman:

Superman vol. 1 #9 - cover date March...

thechronologicalsuperman:

Superman vol. 1 #9 - cover date March 1941

By 1941, there’s a huge demand for Superman stories and the pace is bound to exhaust the creative teams. Besides the two regular titles which Superman headlines, there’s another on the horizon, alongside an animated series waiting to get into the nation’s movie theaters.  In fact - thanks to the radio serials and both iterations of the newspaper strips - Superman is thrilling the nation on a daily basis, seven days a week, without a break.

It’s inevitable – practically a matter of statistics – that Superman would occasionally enter a dry period, notably bereft of the frenetic and imaginative quality which typified these early years. The four stories which make up this issue have Superman dealing with fifth columnists, murder rings, alligators and steel-helmeted crooks - sounds good, but it’s actually pretty rote.

Luthor takes an achingly obvious break from menacing the Man of Steel, as do any of the robots, giants, deadly gases and other science fiction story elements which are becoming the occasional avenue for the book, leaving behind Superman getting his knuckles dirty against some otherwise unexemplary examples of the kind of bad guys he’s been slugging in better stories for the last few years …