The Reign of the Superman

High school friends Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster tried selling stories to magazines in order to escape Depression-era poverty. With their work rejected by publishers, 18-year-old Shuster produced the duo's own typed, mimeographed science fiction fanzine titled Science Fiction: The Advance Guard of Future Civilization, producing five issues.[1][2]

Siegel wrote "The Reign of the Superman" in 1932.[3] Inspired by the spread of the term "Superman" in popular culture of their time[4] and thus indirectly inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche's idea of a super-human (the Übermensch),[5][6] it featured a meek man transformed into a powerful villain bent on dominating the world. It appeared in issue #3 of the fanzine, with accompanying artwork by Shuster.[7] Siegel published it under the pen name Herbert S. Fine, combining the first name of a cousin with his mother's maiden name.[8]

The term "Superman" derives from a common English translation of the term Übermensch, which originated with Friedrich Nietzsche's statement, "Ich lehre euch den Übermenschen" ("I will teach you all the Superman"), in his 1883 work Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The term "Superman" was popularized by George Bernard Shaw with his 1903 play Man and Superman.[9] The character Jane Porter refers to Tarzan as a "superman" in the 1912 pulp novel Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Siegel would later name Tarzan as an influence on the creation of his and Shuster's Superman.[10]

A mad scientist, a chemist named Professor Ernest Smalley, randomly chooses raggedly dressed vagrant Bill Dunn from a bread line and recruits him to participate in an experiment in exchange for "a real meal and a new suit". When Smalley's experimental potion grants Dunn telepathic powers, the man becomes intoxicated by his power and seeks to rule the world. This superpowered man uses these abilities for evil, only to discover that the potion's effects are temporary. Having killed the evil Smalley, who had intended to kill Dunn and give himself the same powers, Dunn cannot recreate the secret formula. As the story ends, Dunn's powers wear off and he realizes he will be returning to the bread line to be a forgotten man once more.

In 1933, Siegel read a 48-page black-and-white comic book titled Dan Dunn. He decided that a Superman who was a hero could make a great comic character, and conceived a character as a hero bearing little resemblance to his villainous namesake. He wrote a crime story which Shuster drew in comic format. Titling it "The Superman", they offered it to Consolidated Book Publishing, the company that had published Detective Dan. Although the duo received an encouraging letter, Consolidated never again published comic books. Discouraged, Shuster burned all pages of the story, but the cover survived because Siegel rescued it from the fire. Siegel and Shuster compared the character to Slam Bradley, a private detective the pair later created for Detective Comics #1 (March 1937).[11] "We had a great character," Siegel later said, "and were determined it would be published."[12] Siegel and Shuster would next use the name in the story they sold to DC Comics, which published it in June 1938's Action Comics #1.

• After DC Comics' storyline "The Death of Superman", and before Superman's return from the dead, four Superman-themed characters replace him, in a storyline called "Reign of the Supermen", which ran through Action Comics and other Superman titles (June - October 1993).
• In DC's year-long weekly series 52, the events of issue #35 (January 2007) include numerous superhero characters abruptly losing their powers and falling from the sky, in a story with the pun title "Rain of the Supermen".
• DC's Tangent Universe features an alternate conception of "Superman" as a bald, highly evolved human.

Few intact copies of Science Fiction #3 survive. Collectors value it both because of its rarity and because of its importance in the history behind the development of the superhero Superman. In September 2006, Heritage Auction Galleries in Dallas, Texas, auctioned a copy for $47,800.[13]

• The Official Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide #18 reprints the first two pages with opening text and Shuster's splash art.
• Nemo, the Classic Comics Library #2 (August 1983) p. 20-28 reprints the entire story.
• A digital copy of the magazine issue that includes this story is available from the University of Florida's digital collections.[14]
• This work is available in various formats at the Internet Archive.[15]

• Fine, Herbert S. (August 1983). "The Reign of the Superman". Nemo, the Classic Comics Library (2): 20–28. ISSN 0746-9438.
• Overstreet, Robert M. (1988). The Official Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide (18th ed.). House of Collectibles.

• The Reign of the Superman title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database