614 SUPERMAN
Th e initial stories featuring Su-
perman refl ected this decreased
power-level, pitting Superman
against mostly mobsters and thugs
as he fought against unsafe min-
ing conditions, racketeering, and
spousal abuse. During this period
Superman displayed a tougher,
grittier persona as Siegel and
Shuster had modeled him after the
hard-hitting pulp heroes popular
to comics at the time.
Th e more charming, light-
hearted version of Superman
would not develop until Mort
Weisinger’s run as editor in the
1950s and 1960s. Hiring Otto
Binder, the writer responsible
for the wild popularity of the
more comical and child-friendly
series featuring Captain Marvel,
Whiz Comics, Weisinger set about
capturing the audience of the
aforementioned publication by
running highly imaginative—if
not sometimes weirdly strange—
stories with a heavier focus on science fi ction. DC had recently won a lawsuit against
Fawcett Publications, publisher of Whiz Comics, causing them to cease publication
of Captain Marvel in 1953 due to his similarity to Superman, and with the institu-
tion of the Comics Code Authority in 1954 severely limiting the content printable in
comics, light-hearted seemed the way to go. It is in this era that Superman’s mythos
was expanded to include the bottle city of Kandor, the Fortress of Solitude, Supergirl,
and Krypto the Superdog.
During his tenure as editor of the Superman comics from 1971 to 1985, Julius
Schwartz had already signifi cantly modernized the character. Th e 1986 retcon of
Superman by John Byrne in his miniseries, Th e Man of Steel, then started another
new era for Superman comics by bringing a new focus to the interpersonal relation-
ships in Superman’s life In Th e Man of Steel, Byrne integrated Superman’s Clark Kent
persona into his fundamental identity since, in Byrne’s origin story, his powers did
not manifest until puberty, meaning that Clark Kent was no longer merely a guise for
Superman to interact with the world. Because of this change, Byrne also kept Martha
and Jonathan Kent alive into Superman’s adulthood to help give him moral direction,Superman, issue #1, published Summer, 1939. DC Comics/
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