Superman Research Paper

Words: 1087
Pages: 5

"Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Superman!"
This is the exclamation which heralded the start of the iconic superhero’s arrival and subsequent success on radio, and today he is the third most popular comic book superhero, with 1.7 billion views on 14,000 hours of video on Youtube (Batman being the first). Apart from being one of the most popular heroes, he’s also one of the oldest, having appeared in Action Comics way back in 1938. In fact, it is safe to say that Superman’s success helped pave the way for many other beloved Superheroes. Before Superman there were quite a few guardians and protectors of humanity such as The Phantom, the Clock and Flash Gordon, but none of them ever had any actual superpowers, and instead fought crime
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However, the characters utilized were a little more than thinly veiled parodies of the European dictators. Many people believe that since the publishers of several of the major publishing houses were Jewish, they produced comics which were exceedingly sympathetic to the European plight as they still had emotional ties, and even relatives living in these countries. After a point though, Superman comics ceased having stories which had World War Two as a backdrop and instead only had front covers which sent out messages in support of the American troops. I like to think that the stories inside intentionally avoided the subject of war as a means of escape for a weary nation. The comics thus provided civilians and troops with a brief, desperately needed break from reality, as well as a measure of hope that, like in the comics, good would eventually triumph over