QUARANTINE BLOG # 422

May 26, 2021

We’ll wrap up our look at the career of the Man of Steel with his first adventures in the movies.

Superman first appeared in the movies as a 1948 15-part Columbia Pictures serial.  It stars an Kirk Alyn and Noel Neill as Lois Lane.  It was originally screened at movie matinées, and every episode ends in a cliffhanger.  The serial was a popular success that made Kirk Alyn famous and launched Noel Neill’s career.

Columbia’s advertising claimed that it could not get an actor to fill the role, so it had “hired Superman himself,” and Kirk Alyn was merely playing Clark Kent.  The Superman costume was grey and brown, instead of blue and red, because those colors photographed better on black and white film.  

The serial begins with the origin story, then after the Kents die, the Man of Steel heads to Metropolis under the guise of Clark Kent and joins the staff of the Daily Planet.  Soon after he is sent out to get the scoop on a new rock that a man has found that he calls Kryptonite, and Clark passes out; there Superman discovers that his weakness is Kryptonite.  The serial revolves around the nefarious plot of a villain who calls herself the Spider Lady.

“Superman and the Mole Men” is the first feature film based on any DC Comics character.  It stars George Reeves as Superman and Phyllis Coates as Lois Lane.  The film’s storyline covers Clark and Lois arriving in the small town of Silsby to witness the drilling of the world’s deepest oil well.  The drill, however, has penetrated the underground home of a race of small, bald humanoids who, out of curiosity, climb to the surface at night.  They glow in the dark, which scares the local townsfolk, who form a mob intent on killing the strange visitors.  Only Superman can intervene to prevent a tragedy.  

The movie was filmed in a little more than 12 days and runs just 58 minutes.  It was actually a pilot release for the syndicated “Adventures of Superman TV” series, for which it became the only two-part episode, “The Unknown People.”  The laser-like weapon of the Mole Men, which they retrieve from their subterranean home in order to defend themselves and rescue an injured comrade, was a prop made by adding metal shoulder braces to one end of an Electrolux vacuum cleaner body; for the ray’s “gun barrel” a standard metal funnel was attached to the other.  

👉  As promised, and a little bit late, here are more apple stories.

If you display your apples in a bowl on the table, it might look like a still-life painting, but if you want them to last, store them in the refrigerator.  The lower temperatures slows the ripening process.  When apples are picked for shipment, they are placed into cold storage for the same reason.

One of the most famous brand images today is the Apple computer.  In 1976 Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs were finalizing the paperwork for their new computer company, and were trying to come up with a logo.  Earlier Jobs had been pruning apple trees in Oregon, and when the men started throwing around potential names (Matrix, Executek, and Personal Computers Inc., among other ideas) he suggested Apple Computer.  “It sounded fun, spirited, and not intimidating,” Jobs said.  “Plus, it would get us ahead of Atari in the phone book.”

The first supergroup to use Apple as its corporate name was Apple Corps, formed in 1968 by the Beatles.  After Apple Computer rose to prominence, the two companies worked out an arrangement that Apple Computer would keep its logo and name out of the music business.  That changed in 2003, when Apple began selling music through iTunes.  It wasn’t until 2010 that the Beatles finally let it be, and let iTunes carry their music.

👉   Speaking of the Beatles, and since we haven’t dropped a coin in the jukebox for a while, here is the title song from their last studio album, “Let It Be.”  The band retired from live performances in August 1966 and there was speculation that “Let It Be,” released on May 8, 1970, would be the prelude to the Beatles going live again.  It was not to be.  They were never again to travel “The Long and Winding Road.” (One of the songs on the album, and when released as a single became their 20th and last number one hit).  In 2011, Rolling Stone ranked “The Long and Winding Road” at number 90 on their list of 100 greatest Beatles songs.

👉  Before we close QB 422, here are there panels from one of my all-time favorites – “Pluggers.”

Fitting for this panel, I think this is a repeat – like the weather forecasts.

👉  Today’s close is from New Morning Mercies, by Paul David Tripp.

The Bible calls you, as a believer, to live with three realities in view. The first greets you every day. It is the reality that you live in a world that has been dramatically broken by sin and does not function the way God intended. The temptations play to the sin and weakness that still lives inside you and that is being progressively eradicated by God’s transforming grace. You and I must live temptation-aware; to fail to do so is to fail to recognize the fallenness of the world that happens to be the address where we live.

The second reality is that even though we are God’s children, we lack the power on our own to fight the spiritual battles in which the world of sin and temptation engages us. What God says is dangerous doesn’t always seem dangerous. Evil doesn’t always appear so evil in our eyes. So we need protection, not just from external temptation but from our own blind eyes and wandering hearts.

Finally, you and I are welcomed as God’s children to rest in the reality that in this fallen world that throws temptation at us every day, we are never, ever alone. God is with us. He provides the safety we could never provide for ourselves. He fights on our behalf even when we don’t have the sense to resist. He gives us wisdom and strength at those moments when that’s exactly what we need. You and I can face the harsh realities of life in this broken world with courage and hope because we do not face them all by ourselves. Immanuel (“God with us”) is indeed with us in power, glory, and grace. The words of Zephaniah 3:17 ring with as much hope today as they did generations ago when they were penned: “The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save.”

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