QUARANTINE BLOG # 420

May 24, 2021

Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear.  Oh, wait.  That’s the wrong intro.  Look!  Up in the sky!  It’s a bird, it’s a plane!  It’s Superman.

I have watched the televised adventures of the strange visitor from another planet who came to Earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men, starring George Reeves.  

And the movies starring Christopher Reeve advertising, “You’ll believe a man can fly.”  And reading the comic books.  All of that means that I, and I’m sure you as well, know the origin story of Superman: born Kal-El on the planet Krypton and rocketed to Earth as a baby by his parents Jor-El and Lara when Krypton was exploding; landing in the field of a Kansas farm; raised by Martha and Jonathan Kent; and becoming our planet’s defender, fighting for truth, justice, and the American way.  

What I did not know was the real origin story – how Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster developed the character we know today.

Siegel and Shuster

Siegel, the writer, and Shuster, the illustrator, started the idea as a comic strip, not as a book.  They pitched several ideas for different characters and stories to newspaper editors, but were told their ideas weren’t sensational enough.  If they wanted to make a successful comic strip, it had to be something more sensational than anything else on the market. 

Their first Superman – in magazine form – was a vagrant named Bill Dunn who is tricked by an evil scientist into consuming an experimental drug.  The drug gives Dunn the powers of mind-reading, mind-control, and clairvoyance.  Unlike the character we know today, Dunn used his powers for evil.

The first Superman

Siegel next modified Superman’s powers to make him even more sensational.  Like Bill Dunn, the second prototype is given powers against his will by an unscrupulous scientist, but instead of psychic abilities, he acquires superhuman strength and bullet-proof skin.  Additionally, this new Superman was a crime-fighting hero instead of a villain, because Siegel noted that comic strips with heroic protagonists tended to be more successful.  There is no surviving artwork for this try.

In the next attempt Superman is a “scientist-adventurer” from the far future when humanity has naturally evolved “superpowers.”  Cosmic convulsions strike Earth and just before the planet explodes, he escapes in a time-machine to the modern era, whereupon he immediately begins using his superpowers to fight crime.

Siegel hired another illustrator, dropping his association with Shuster who destroyed all of the drawings except the cover.

In 1935 Siegel and Shuster reconciled and produced the character we know today, complete with the familiar costume, a job as a reporter, and a girlfriend who was suspicious of his true identity.

More tomorrow.

👉  For your dietary needs and historical curiosity, consider some apple facts.

An apple a day keeps the doctor away.  You’ve heard that old saying, probably said it yourself, but there is more to it than just trying to get kids to eat the fruit.  A large apple has 5 grams of fiber and that helps balance bacteria in your gut.  But make sure not to peel it: two thirds of the stuff that’s good for your tummy is in the skin.

The fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that Eve offered Adam was probably not an apple.  The Genesis account does not specifically say what the forbidden fruit was.  The Hebrew uses a generic word for fruit, and rabbinic scholars say it may have been a fig, a grape, a pomegranate, or even a banana.  That’s right, banana – the Middle East is a banana producing region, but not many apples grow there.

Apples have been associated with courting.  Paris had hoped his golden apple would win him Helen of Troy.  And in colonial New England, a young lady would try to peel an apple in a single unbroken strip, toss the peel over her shoulder, then look to see what letter the peel formed on the floor – this was the initial of her future husband.

Disney’s Johnny Appleseed was a real person.  John Chapman was a missionary who spread good seeds while walking barefoot through Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana, preaching the Gospel during the 19th century.  But by the 1920s most of his trees were gone – chopped down by the FBI during Prohibition so that people couldn’t use the apples to make hard cider.

More tomorrow.

👉  Just as the larder was running empty, comes a sign for the times:

👉  Enjoy some Monday cartoons:

👉  Today’s close is from Praying with the Psalms, by Eugene H. Peterson.

“It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil: for he gives sleep to his beloved” (Psalm 127:2).

Relentless, compulsive work habits, which our society tends to reward and admire, are seen by the psalmist as a sign of weak faith and assertive pride – as if God could not be trusted to accomplish his will, as if we could rearrange the universe by our own effort.

Prayer: Teach me, O Lord, how to work steadily, faithfully, and modestly.  I know, Lord, that it is not a question of working or not working; it is a question of who is in charge.  Is it going to be your work of mine?  Amen.

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