Superman needs you in Supertown

If you don’t need me, will you still love me? Superman experiences the loss of every parent as the kids leave home and move past pater and mater, in Jimmy Olsen # 147 (March, 1972), on the stands 50 years ago today, 13 January, 1972. The story. ‘A Superman in Super-Town’ is justly regarded as a classic in the Kirby annals and the King delivers a tale that explores the deep waters of identity, belonging, purpose, hope, ego, loneliness, acceptance.

Kirby laid the seeds for this exploration in earlier issues of the Fourth World¹ as he showed the most powerful being in the Universe as a conflicted, doubting, even anxious personality. Superman, like all of us, wonders, ‘where do I fit it? Who are my people? How can I find a place where I can be myself and be accepted?’

Superman is a creature of loss. He has lost his parents, his friends, an entire world of people like him, the only exception at this point in his history being his cousin Supergirl and his dog Krypto. The Man of Steel is an orphan, a planetary outcast, a hero for millions, alone in that crowd. He receives the constant adulation of the human populace but it brings him no closer to what he most desires. A Man Who Has Everything actually has nothing because he is not with his own, with his tribe, with people who can feed his heart, his mind, his spirit in ways that no others can.

So Kirby takes him to Supertown, New Genesis, home of the New Gods, who all have powers and abilities beyond those of mortal men. Attacked by Magnar and other New Genesis teenagers, the Big Red S is amazed at the power and audacity of Youth as they mistakenly see him as an Apokoliptian villain just as he sees them similarly.

Both sides reconcile and are able to tell each other who they are and Supes lift his eyes heavenward to see the satellite city of New Genesis floating in the sky: “Of course! It can’t be anything else-! It’s Supertown!!! I saw it once – for one fleeting moment.’ In a moment the being who can leap tall buildings in a single bound is transfixed, grounded in longing, his eyes a window into the past and a gaze into the future. Like a comics fan catching a glimpse of a community that they had never seen but always hoped to see, one that would belong to them. Now, Superman sees his home and the look on his face is that of an orphan child not a regal superhero king.

The two New Genesis kids recognise a spirit like their own and they say ‘Well it’s open to friends. This is a world of friends. If you’re a friend to all – you belong among us.’ It’s hard not to become emotional reading those lines because in two sentences Kirby has summarised his life philosophy not just for his characters but for us, the outcast readers and for himself. The sentiment, the desire to believe in a place of Good where you can trust others and be treated well, matters, despite how often humans fall away from it.

Superman’s hopes soar with his flight path to Supertown. He experiences a new kind of peace and he passes by beings as super as him, unnoticed. As he descends to ground level, like a parent dropping in to his children’s apartment, he slips unconsciously into his role as super-helper, only to find in a series of incidents, that his help is not needed. In a place where he should feel the closest to the people, he is unwelcome. Like the Sixties culture around him, the bright, shiny Youth, with strange new powers and practices that he does not understand, don’t want him, don’t need him. It’s as if Bill Haley walked into the Whisky and no one clapped.²

Superman sits with Highfather and begins to lose his identity. He has no role as saviour. There is no one to save.  The man who can run faster than a locomotive does not fit in on a world where everyone can do it. Superman realises he is not special and it hurts his ego, for so long his social role as been help and reward. That parent-child transaction³ is now broken so what does he do? Who is he? In this vulnerable state, he is open to advice.

‘To be frank, I’m a new arrival to New Genesis. And by every rule I should belong here – yet I-I’m finding it difficult to adjust…everyone’s doing fine here without my help.’ Highfather expertly and wisely lets him come to his own solution by asking the right questions, like a good parent would and Superman goes to where he is needed, to save Jimmy and the Newsboys. His identity restored but the conflicts from all sides still pinning him with pressure.

Superman is heroic not because he is perfect, all-powerful. He is heroic because he is none of these things. Infused with all of Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster’s longing for a better life, Superman lifts above all that drags him down, all the things that don’t work out, all the hopes that are not fulfilled. He carries with him every human heart.

¹See my commentary on Forever People # 1, ‘ Finding Forever in Aging Children’

²The Whisky A Go Go was the counter-culture night club in Los Angeles in the Sixties, it ‘…would transform the Strip into ground zero for American rock ‘n’ roll.’

³Eric Berne was the father of transactional analysis, the theory of parent, adult, child roles and how they play out between people. He explores this model in his book, The Games People Play. Its central concept is the reward we get from different roles, sometimes positive, sometimes negative, sometimes neutral. We do things as part of an exchange, we give to get something in return, in our parent, adult or child states.

Research this article:

Comics:

-According to Jack Kirby (Michael Hill, Lulu, 2021)

-Comics Journal # 134, February 1990 (Jack Kirby interview by Gary Groth)

-Mike’s Amazing World of Comics website

-The indispensable Kirby & Lee: Stuf’ Said! (Jack Kirby Collector # 75: TwoMorrows)

-The equally indispensable Old Gods, New Gods (Jack Kirby Collector # 80: TwoMorrows)

Popular culture:

-Helter Skelter, the True Story of the Manson Murders (Vincent Bugliosi with Curt Gentry, W.W. Norton, 1994)

-LAcurbed.com, ‘Rebellion and Rock ‘n’ Roll: The Sunset Strip in the 60s’, by Hadley Meares, 7 March, 2019

-The Games People Play (Eric Berne, Penguin, 1964)

-There’s A Riot Going On (Peter Doggett, Canongate, 2007)

-The Vietnam War: The Definitive Illustrated History (Penguin Random House, 2017)

-Time Magazine, January 10, 1972

-Uncovering the Sixties (Abe Peck, Pantheon, 1985) 

-Vietnam: An Epic History of a Tragic War (Max Hastings, William Collins, 2019)

Michael Mead is a 55-year-old New Zealand comic book collector, who likes to think he can do "contextual" commentary reviews of old comics, asking: "where does this story come from?", looking at the social, political, cultural times it came from, the state of the comics industry, the personal and creative journey of the writer or artist, the personal journey of the reader as a child and as an adult. 

As part of this, he is vain enough to think he can bring new insights into Kirby's Fourth World comics and so, on the 50th anniversary of publication of each issue of Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen, Forever People, New Gods and Mister Miracle, he will publish a contextual commentary. This is his 34^th of a projected 48 Fourth World commentaries. Check out his earlier entries on this blog and tell him to stop talking so pretentiously in the third person for God's sake!