Superman's Golden Age Publishing History

As mentioned in the third episode of the Superman & Captain Marvel Power Hour Podcast, for ease of aligning Superman's Golden Age publishing history with the 1953 halt of Captain Marvel's publication from Fawcett, I'm just going to settle on covering Superman's publishing history up through books cover dated 1953. Oh course a case could be for Superman's Golden Age era ending at a number of other ear marks, such as 1947's World’s Finest #32, which marks the final story written by Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel before he would return to DC and the Last Son of Krypton over 10 years later. One could also make the argument the end of Superman’s Golden Age with books cover dated January 1945, with the introduction of Superboy, a dramatic and significant change to Superman’s origin? After all, the Superman with a past of being Superboy is an Earth-One take on the character, and NOT part of the Earth-2 character’s history.

So with that in mind, let’s jump into Superman’s comic publishing history starting with Action Comics #1, that went on sale the first week of May 1938 up through the character's final 1953 cover date appearance in Action Comics #187. Action Comics debuted as a 64 page anthology book that also contained  the adventures of 6 other characters, including the magician Zatara. Superman grabbed the cover spot in Action Comics’ debut, something that wouldn’t happen again until Action Comics #7. He also had the cover spot on issues #10, #13, #15, and #17, before finally taking over as the sole control of the Cover with Action Comics #19, which went on sale the last week of October 1939. Superman was in every issue of Action Comics, and since I’m covering his exploits in the Golden Age up through 1953, the final issue cover dated 1953, would have been Action Comics #187, that went on sale October 30^th 1953, which featured the Superman story “Superman’s New Super Powers”

When 1939 rolled around, Superman’s popularity had already risen quite a bit, in addition to his monthly adventures in the pages of Action Comics, you could also follow his adventures daily in select Newspaper comic strips across the country. The Superman Daily Newspaper strip began on Monday January 16^th 1939. After the success of Action Comics #1 in June of 1938, and the skyrocketing in popularity of the character Superman, just 7 months later Siegel & Shuster were finally able to take their creation Superman into the publishing market they had hoped for all along, the syndicated Newspaper Comics arena!

It's crazy to think about nowadays, but in 1938, when Superman first debuted, comic books were still in their infancy, and considered second tier to the syndicated comic strips in newspapers. The newspaper comic strips had much higher circulation, and in turn shelled out a lot more money. Those comics that weren't deemed popular or good enough for Newspaper syndication, such as Siegel and Shuster's first Superman story, had to settle for repurposing their stories for comic books. Once Superman caught fire in the pages of Action Comics, Siegel and Shuster's dream of a syndicated Superman comic strip became a reality. The daily strip ran continuously from its January 1939 debut all the way until 1966, and it was joined by a full color Sunday strip that began on Sunday November 5^th 1939.

That wasn’t the only new publishing avenue for the Last Son of Krypton, in May 1939, just a year after his debut in Action Comics #1, Superman top an unprecedented milestone, his own comic magazine devoted solely to his adventures. Superman #1 went on Sale May 18^th 1939, and started as a quarterly book. Starting with the book cover dated 1941, the book moved to bi-monthly,  a publishing schedule it was still on in 1953, meaning the final issue of Superman with a 1953 cover date was Superman #85, which contained 3 different Superman stories.

But it wasn’t just Action Comics, the Newspaper Comic Strip, and Superman that chronicled Superman’s comic adventures. He would soon be added as an ongoing feature in World’s Best Comics in February 1941, that series was renamed World’s Finest Comics with the 2^nd issue of this quarterly series. In 1946 World’s Finest Comics switched to a bi-monthly schedule that it still had in 1953. The last issue of World’s Finest with a 1953 cover date was issue #67, that went on sale in late September. Now World’s Finest is best known as a Superman & Batman team-up book, but even though the Man of Steel and the Caped Crusader appeared together on every comic, they didn’t actually appear together in the same story until 1952’s Superman #76, and they wouldn’t actually team-up together in the World’s Finest title, until 1954’s World’s Finest Comics #71.

And of course, like Captain Marvel, Superman, being the very popular character that he was, starred in a number of other comic specials, including both the 1939 and 1940 New York World’s Fair Comics. On the cover of the 1939 World’s Fair issue Superman is miscolored, and the cover of the 1940 World’s Fair issue marks the first time that Superman & Batman ever appeared on a cover together. If you’d like to hear about the content of these comics, I recommend you go check out the podcast Comics in the Golden Age from Michael Lane and his cousin Chris, they covered those issues in Episode 16 & 17 of that fantastic podcast.

In addition to the 2 issues of New York World’s Fair Comics, Superman also starred in the DC Promo comics Superman’s Christmas Adventure #1, which was a promo comic given out at department stores like Macy’s or Baileys in December 1940, and was then reprinted and re-issued with a touched up cover in 1944. I actually covered that story just a couple months ago in Episode 4 of my Tales from the Golden Age podcast. There was also a 2^nd Superman Christmas Adventure, containing a new story, comic published in 1944. But those weren’t the only 2 special promo Superman comics, there was also the 1942 miniature Superman Py-Co-Py Toothpaste comic and the 1948 four page Superman and the Great Cleveland Fire comic.