Here is an image featured on the website of a New Zealand art gallery, Centre of Contemporary Art (COCA). The image is credited to an artist called Paul Chapman who is lavishly praised on the website for his work.

“Superbadboy is typical of his practice and although on one level it is informed by humour, it is equally assumes political dimensions, regarding the rights of parents and central government.”

“Chapman rocks, his wit cutting and sense of image, brilliant, yet his aesthetics never try too hard.”

The main problem with this pretentious nonsense is that the idea isn’t his, the humour isn’t his, and the image isn’t his.

It’s taken directly from the witty cover of Superboy #75 (1959), drawn by artists Curt Swan and Stan Kaye, and illustrates an amusing and thought-provoking story in the comic book about the issues surrounding physical punishment and the discipline of children. And, of course, poor Pa’s difficulty in controlling an invulnerable son.

It’s time we revisited the 70s. This was my recap of Kneel to Your Conqueror, Superman. Here I’ve included scans from the comic.

Brilliant art by Swan and Anderson, and a crisp, compact story by Leo Dorfman.

The story opens…

Clark is sent by Edge to tape a video special about an institute of top scientists. Crossing a mountain range in his mobile TV van on his way to the institute, Clark is caught in a powerful earthquake. His super-vision reveals that the epicentre of the quake is directly under the scientific institute, threating to topple the complex off the side of its mountain home.

Clark switches to Superman and does some nifty (and beautifully-drawn) repairs to some unstable underground caverns, then flies up to the institute to calm what he thinks will be scientific staff in a panic.

But the staff of the institute are perfectly calm. The earthquake was halted by Superman at precisely the moment predicted by Rufus Caesar, the greatest mathematical genius in the country, top advisor and strategist for the Pentagon and space administration, among others.

Superman joins Caesar at Caesar’s own estate where the scientific mastermind reveals he is fanatically obsessed with Superman. Superman is his idol, and Caesar has a Superman souvenir collection containing various extraordinary items, including the damaged head of a salvaged Superman robot.

Superman asks, “And what’s this empty platform for?”

Caesar: “I’ve reserved it for the most valuable trophy in my collection. I hope to get it someday soon.”

Superman is flattered by all this hero-worship from such a brilliant scientist. He is handed damaged optical lenses from the salavaged head of the Superman robot.

Caesar: “If you glance through them with your x-ray vision, you might recharge their vision powers!”

Superman: “I’d be happy to try.”

Superman fits the optical lenses headpiece over his head and activates his x-ray vision.

He is suddenly in agony and literally frozen to the spot, the optics headpiece having been rigged by Caesar to amplify Superman’s own vision power into a paralysing force.

Caesar then attaches scientific devices to the Man of Steel, designed to siphon off Superman’s powers (much like what was happening to Superman in the “Sandman Saga,” but this time, rather than it all being due to an act of fate and nature, the power-drain would be deliberate and calculated).

Seated at another device, Caesar (to the protests of his manservant) begins to deliberately siphon the powers of Superman into himself.

Firstly, with Superman fighting the drain mentally, Caesar absorbs the Man of Steel’s super-strength. The mad genius goes from being a scrawny, skinny little man to one “pulsing with super-strength!” He squeezes lumps of coal into diamonds to test his super-grip.

As he had told Superman: “This transvector…will siphon off your powers and feed them into my own body. I want to be a hero like you… someone all Earth admires… a super being…”

Against Superman’s helpless rage, he then drains the hero’s vision powers.

Superman: “Everything’s going… black…”

With telescopic vision, Caesar sees a damaged cable car in imminent danger of falling, taking the passengers to their deaths. Superman is beside himself with worry, but as Caesar says, “Worried, eh, Superman? No need to! As an old fan of yours, I know exactly what to do!”

He absorbs flying power next and goes sailing around the room, euphoric. Then, intending to smash through the wall to fly to the rescue of the cable car, Caesar nearly kills himself in a devastating collision with the wall of the room.

As his constantly disapproving manservant says, “Master… you were too hasty! You forgot… you haven’t acquired invulnerability yet!”

Caesar, nursing an injured head, decides to absorb all of Superman’s remaining super-powers without delay. But first he dresses himself in a superhero costume of his own design, based partly on the garb of Superman and partly on the dress of an ancient Roman Caesar.

Caesar: “…I am about to become…emperor over all the Earth!”

He says to the helpless Superman, “With my brain and your powers, people will be idolizing me as they did you! The whole world will be shouting… HAIL CAESAR!”

Superman (thinking): “I did this! By allowing people to hero-worship me, I inspired him to become an egotistical, power-hungry maniac!”

Now Caesar attempts to drain all of Superman’s remaining powers - but it appears Superman, by using all his will power to try and stop the siphoning, is interfering with the power drain.

Caesar: “Ah… you’re fighting me, Superman! But not even your superb mentality can stop the siphon effect of my transvector completely! I can feel your powers ebbing… slowly into me!”

Superman: “Then I do have some control over the power flow!”

With the transvector mechanism shaking and humming, Superman takes the opposite tack - he relaxes, and lets his power flow freely and mightily through the machine into Caesar.

Caesar’s body begins to shake and swell, literally ballooning with the intake of super power. “My body… can’t take this ghastly pressure!” The power flow into Caesar reaches a critical point. “My molecular structure can’t adjust quickly enough!”

He barks at his manservant to throw the cut-off switch, but in the panic the manservant messes with the wrong switch which activates the “reversal relays.” The power begins to flow rapidly back into Superman.

Breaking free of the paralysis, Superman rips himself from the mechanism and speeds off to save the cable car.

When Superman returns to apprehend Caesar, it turns out that the power drain back into the Man of Steel took Caesar’s own brain and life energies with it, leaving Caesar a wasted, mindless vegetable.

Much later, Clark and Morgan Edge are discussing the video feature Clark made about the scientists, which included the sorry story of Caesar. As Clark is leaving the office, Edge ponders Superman’s triumph over Caesar: “Yes, [Clark’s] pal, Superman, may be smart enough to stop ordinary criminals… but when the time comes, he’ll be no match for me.”

Kneel to Your Conqueror, Superman
Story: Leo Dorfman
Pencils: Curt Swan
Inks: Murphy Anderson
From:
Action Comics #404 (September 1971)
All Favourites Comic No. 98 (1973)

The early 60s were such a wonderfully inventive and entertaining period for Superman comics, you sometimes wonder how the Silver Age earned a reputation as “silly.” Then comes a story like “The Super Rivals,” and all is made abundantly clear. The lead story in 1961’s Action Comics #279 stands as one of the looniest tales of all time, hysterically dated and timelessly goofy at the same time. Fittingly, the artwork for this bit of inspired madness is John Forte, whose quirky drawings prefigured the “acid trips” that would prove so popular later in the decade.

The story begins with Lois Lane and Lana Lang running into each other at Metropolis Museum, both bitter that they’re without dates and grumbling that Superman will probably never make up his mind and marry one of them. Standing by statues of Hercules and Samson, they wish aloud that the heroes were still around as marriage material.

Creepily, Superman is not only stringing both girls along, he’s also following them and monitoring their conversations. Hiding behind a pillar at the entrance to the museum, he decides to bring those heroes of “history” to the 20th Century and marry them off to the girls, getting them out of his hair once and for all.

Streaking back to the time of ancient Greece, Superman finds Hercules entertaining a crowd with a “tug of war” against a hundred gladiators at once. The question is, “entertaining a crowd” of…what? As drawn by Forte, the walls of the arena are about 7 feet high, so the little figures comprising the venue’s capacity crowd are presumably housecats.

Superman talks to Hercules using his ability to speak all languages “living or dead.” He needn’t have bothered…the mere fact that the guy goes by the Roman “Hercules” rather than his native “Herakles” is proof he’s multi-lingual, too. Next, Superman plucks Samson from the past and takes both heroes to his Fortress of Solitude, where he teaches them English with a Kryptonian learning machine.

Now it’s time to meet the girls. Luckily, each hero is smitten with a different female (Herc loves Lois, Samson loves Lana), so there’s no fighting. When Lois complains about the heat, Hercules uproots a shade tree and places it closer to her. When Lana says she’s thirsty, Samson punches a hole in a rock and reveals a natural spring of cool water. The formalities of courtship thus completed, the girls take a half-second of careful consideration before agreeing to marry the heroes.

But not so fast. The lady at the license bureau can’t issue them a marriage license immediately. (”I heard about your journey here from the past,” she says. Eh, happens all the time). Metropolis law requires the couples to wait a whole week for their licenses, which is a bummer for them, but not all that bad when you think about it, considering neither groom can possibly produce a birth certificate or proof of residency in any nation on Earth.

Lana uses her show biz connections to line up jobs for the boys in TV commercials. The ad man (who like all ad men sports over-oiled hair, a Ronald Coleman mustache, a plaid jacket and a spotted bow tie) agrees enthusiastically: “They’d have terrific appeal endorsing cigars, chewing gum, breakfast cereal!” Now that’s a commercial I’d pay to see.

Using the advance from these new jobs, the couples purchase new houses in the middle of nowhere (actually I guess it’s the Metropolis suburbs, but no other houses are in sight). As it’s still the early Sixties, the boys agree to sleep in hammocks outside.

Cue the laugh track as Lois, being a typical female, can’t decide where on the property her house should go, making Hercules carry it from one location to the next for her amusement. (”I changed my mind, try it over there”). Luckily for Herc, this house is drawn by John Forte, and therefore only slightly larger than the shipping box for a refrigerator.

Lana meanwhile has opted to spend even more money, buying a new car, which as a woman driver she manages to total on the way home from the showroom. Having by now thoroughly offended the National Organization for Women, the creators of the comic move on their next targets, PETA. Lana decides she wants an unusual pet, something no one else has, so Lois will be jealous. Samson, logically, tracks down a mountain lion (so common after all in the suburbs of major cities like Metropolis) and subdues it with a punch in the face. Dragging the big cat home by the tail, Samson finds Lana appreciative. “Chain it up,” she says, “and I’ll make you dinner.”

Alas, the cat wakes and goes after Samson’s raw steak. Lana takes cover behind a chair, but again John Forte comes to the rescue, making the crouching Lana 15 feet tall, so the lion is considerably less terrifying than he might have been.

True to Forte form, the very next frame depicts the lion as roughly the size of a Clydesdale. He breaks free from his restraint and runs off with the food, never to be mentioned again (Lana must be really popular with her neighbors).

Not to be outdone, Lois opts for a pet ostrich, which Hercules steals from the Metropolis Zoo. Well, apparently it’s not really stealing because he leaves a valuable ruby in its place. Later a radio broadcast reveals that the ostrich is subject to lethal colds and so must be kept warm at night. Interestingly this message is addressed to the bird’s “new owner,” suggesting the zookeepers are cool with the ruby swap. (Lesson for the kids: It’s okay to take something if you leave something else in its place).

Hercules gives up his hammock to the ostrich, which sleeps on its back. With a pillow. And a blanket. And he snores.

Samson takes up a job with a demolition crew, offering to tear down a building since he’s had some “experience” at that sort of thing. Never mind that any kid who ever went to Sunday School knows the only building Samson brought down was the temple of the Philistines, after he’d had his eyes poked out. And seeing as how he wasn’t invulnerable, he died in the process. But who’s got time for trivia like that? Anyway the job goes badly as Samson launches a pair of pillars into the air, nearly killing Perry White at the Daily Planet offices (he’s saved by Superman. Oh yeah, Superman’s in this story, too.)

Hercules has his own problems. He’s agreed to help a football team train, but the players keep hurting themselves against his invulnerable (?!) hide. The team mascot, a mule, gives him a kick in the rear, but he doesn’t feel it. The mule, however, is rendered unconcious. Exactly how the animal could be knocked out by an injury to its feet is unclear, but we know it’s badly hurt because it’s lying on its back, legs in the air, like a dead cockroach.

“Instantly” (the caption says), the assistant coach declares, “The mascot knocked himself out! Now our superstitious players won’t play because the mule was their good luck symbol!” Really? You took a poll of your players in one instant? That’s awesome. The coach takes back Hercules’ salary, saying they now intend to use it for “medical expenses for the mule.” Oh, the indignity.

Like anyone reading this, the heroes have now had enough, and beg Superman to return them to their own eras so they can escape life with Lois and Lana. He complies, and in short order the girls are back to pulling each other’s hair in a squabble over the Man of Steel.

As the scans suggest, I discovered this tale in a copy of Showcase Presents Superman, Volume 3. The credits list the author as “unknown,” and based on the evidence at hand, maintaining that anonymity is the single brightest idea the writer ever had.

In the new age, there is a lot of trash talking about “Superbaby” and sometimes I can understand some of it. I read these stories when they came out and I always wondered who the target audience was supposed to be - boys, girls? No one I knew at the height of the era ever looked forward to “Superbaby” stories. But they did lend some interesting flexibility for writers, something I am starting to appreciate more and more.

Superboy No. 120/3 April 1965: “Superbaby’s Golden Quest!”
Writer: Edmond Hamilton

Here is a story that uses the character as goal-driven but wide-eyed and naive. Initially, Superbaby is upset that his adopted father has lost his gold cufflinks and so flies off to various times in the past in order to find a source of gold. He visits the time of the Golden Fleece (and inspires the mother of Achilles to dip her son in the river Styx). He visits the time of a biblical King (Wyllyam) and serves as the child who is sentenced to be “cut in half” so that each mother might claim him (obviously a direct reference to Solomon). Superbaby’s intense heat vision melts Wyllam’s crown, and he is off again. Next, he visits Sutter’s Mill and discovers gold with his x-ray vision and starts the historical California Gold Rush. On returning to Smallville, Jonathan Kent tells his adopted infant that he has found suitable replacements for cufflinks and that Superbaby’s quest was not necessary.

This was a story that I sort of never thought of again but actually interested me enough when I read it to learn about the time periods in question. And there was the writer’s intent, not to change the mythos for ever more, but to tell a tale of history and it’s consequences - maybe best through the actions of a child much younger than Superboy (see the many 60s TV series that had naive character venture into uncharted territory for naive reasons, something in story-telling that goes back thousands of years).

Superboy No. 133/1, October 1966: “Superbaby’s First Foster Parents!”
Writer: Otto Binder

One of the three (maybe four) stories where Superbaby got a cover appearance, this is a much different tale. Here, Superbaby has no motivation though he’s drawn as about the same age as the previous story. Taken from the Smallville orphanage before the Kent’s can come back to adopt him, the baby Kal is abducted because he resembles a millionaire’s child and so has ransom possibilities. In this case, he’s eager to show off his super-destructiveness and so the criminals give up in frustration. Here it seems that the object is to emphasize an infant with no motivation rather than act with altruistic impulses (see the many 60s TV series that had episodes of a cute raccoon or chimp that wrecked havoc in an “adult” world).

Soooo….

All-in-all, Superbaby seems like an opportunity to tell stories of a super-being before he had a sense of higher purpose, a person either misguided or without any motivation. And who better than an infant? While Superbaby may put off some, I’m surprised at how much I remember these stories. It seems that Superbaby was a plot device, certainly no better or worse than the tales of Bizarro (Superbaby is in many ways a replacement for the Bizarro theme), Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, or the Justice League of America - all titles that took very particular points of view and tried to see if they struck a chord. To me, these stories are always best read as a sign of their times.