The Superman Chronicles, Vol. 6 by Jerry Siegel

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


The Superman Chronicles continues its journey through the Man of Steel's early years, collecting Issues 10 and 11 of Superman, Action Comics #37-#40, and Superman Stories from World's Finest #2 and #3.

The stories are all by Jerry Siegel, but the art chores are down by four different artists with Leo Nowak being the best of them.

My favorite stories in there include, "The Invisible Luthor" which involves Luthor making things disappear and holding the city for ransom. The art on this one is superb.

Action Comics #37 features an attempt by the city to reform police with new Commissioners, but each new Commissioner is killed until someone has the idea of appointing Clark Kent.

Action Comics #38 features people committing crimes under radio control.

In Superman #11, there's the Corinthville Caper which has Clark and Lois heading to investigate a story of giant animals and finding more than meets the eye.

Action Comics #39 has a seemingly invulnerable radioactive criminal whose crimes are blamed on Superman. It's interesting that in some ways the early golden age Superman has a few themes in common with the oft-misunderstood Marvel characters of the 1960s and 1970s

There are also some weak stories in here, "The Yellow Plague" from Superman #11 has the Man of Steel going to an India tribe to find a cure from the stereotypical natives and Action Comics #40 has Superman playing nursemaid to the daughter of a billionaire.

This book being from Summer to Early Autumn 1941, there are quite a few stories of sabotage and intrigue. Two separate spy rings appear in Superman #10 in back to back stories. The most interesting one was in Zimba's Gold Badged Terrorists where an entire suburb disappeared.

There did seem to be a bit of a tonal issue as Superman was a bit rougher in this book than he had been some of the previous volumes. In many ways, Superman in this book feels like a throwback to the Superman earliest Golden Age stories as Superman is a bit more menacing than he has been for the last couple of volumes.



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