Action Comics 1 - The Source of Your Superhero Love
- CBCCPodcast
- Apr 17
- 5 min read
We spoke with Mark Waid and Dan Slott about Action Comics #1, the original Superman idea, and its contemporary importance.
Welcome to Creator Corner, our recurring interview series in which we chat with the industry's coolest and most thought-provoking creators. In this entry, we're discussing Action Comics 1 with Mark Waid and Dan Slott.
While Action Comics #1 sported a cover date of June 1938, it officially hit the streets on April 18, 1938. That's why we celebrate Superman Day on that day (which is this upcoming Friday, for those who happen to be reading this article on the day it releases). The automobile hoisted above Superman's head on the cover had only become a common convenience eighteen years before publication. America was in the grips of the Great Depression, and the World was starting its second great war.
Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were teenagers when they first imagined a version of the man who could "leap 1/8th of a mile." They were both 24 when they sold the rights to Superman to Jack Liebowitz and National Allied Publications for $130 (about $2,849 in 2025). Six years earlier, Siegel's father died of a heart attack, which occurred after a shoplifter punched him in the chest during an altercation at his tailor shop.
Siegel and Shuster's Superman is a cocktail of influences, a collision of spandex-clad strongmen and pulp adventurers like Doc Savage, Robin Hood, and John Carter of Mars. Grant Morrison would eventually call him the ultimate enlightened man, the best version of us, sharpened into the most compelling, simplistic idea. Even a baby can understand his purpose.
And babies really do! Since April 18th, 1938, Superman has achieved global cultural omnipresence. Whether you read comics, watch movies, cartoons, or don't, you've encountered Superman at some point in your life and have formed some opinion of him. Countless creators have worn his cape and extended his story well beyond his first thirteen pages in Action Comics #1. What would Jerry Siegel think of Jason Aaron and Rafa Sandoval's Absolute Superman? How about Joshua Williamson's current run?
We cannot know, and those are not important questions anyway. The real question should be, what significance does Action Comics #1 maintain eighty-seven years after its publication? Should readers who adore the character after first meeting him in Richard Donner's Superman or Zack Snyder's Man of Steel familiarize themselves with the source? Should all Superman writers read Action Comics #1?
"Superman is an icon," says Dan Slott, who just made his first contribution to the great Superman story through this week's Summer of Superman Special. "He's timeless. You can look at Superman through the lens of any era."
After years of toiling away at Marvel Comics, Slott has returned to DC. His chapter in the Summer of Superman Special leads directly to his new series, Superman Unlimited, done in collaboration with artist Rafael Albuquerque. He's building this new series as a jumping-on point for new, curious readers.
"There's a scene in Superman Unlimited #2," continues Slott, "which opens in 1938 because it's the ley line. You go all the way down to the root. But, more than that, you can't live on this planet and not know who Superman is, and you can't grow up in any different era and not have guys that are your Superman."
Slott seems less concerned about when or if you need any connection to Action Comics #1. Superman flew from his pages almost immediately after publication, refusing to be chained to one medium. He's a story made from many stories, so his influence should be promiscuous.
"It is weird to me," says Slott. "Before I bought a comic, I'd seen the Fleischer Superman cartoons. I'd watched George Reeves on TV, the black and whites, and I had this book from the local library, Superman from the thirties to the seventies. It wasn't until I was eight or nine that I started buying comics, and the Superman comics that I bought were always with him and other heroes."
Few writers have spent as much time contemplating Superman as Mark Waid. Undoubtedly, anyone reading this article has also put their eyes on Kingdom Come, Superman: Birthright, or Batman/Superman: World's Finest. After decades of steering the character, Waid remains fascinated by the last son of Krypton. Following Summer of Superman, the writer will explore Clark Kent's early years, before Superman, alongside artist Skylar Patridge, starting with Action Comics #1087. Naturally, he thinks a lot about Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.
"My answer is different for Superboy and Superman," says Waid. "For Superboy, I go back to the Siegel and Shuster material. That Superman was an activist. He was take-no-prisoners. He pushed people around if he needed to push people around. They were doing awful things. He takes on social causes, and that's what our Superboy will do."
After nearly nine decades, the Superman idea has solidified in the cultural imagination. He's grown up like any person. He's not exactly the hero the world first met in Action Comics #1.
"By now," continues Waid, "Superman has molded in the DC universe. He has learned to temper his anger, temper his rage, temper his feelings of injustice, and channel them into more productive ways. Our Superboy does things that you wouldn't see Superman do, and there are prices to be paid for it."
The Superman of today might not be as angry as 1938's Superman, but Waid is adamant that there are still elements of Action Comics #1 that we should not forget, even though most folks pickled in superhero stories have done so.
"I do go back to the Siegel and Shuster era," says Waid. "Not so much in the activist angle, but in the fact that Superman, if you just look at that first issue of Action Comics, is holding a car over his head! We take that kind of strength and that kind of super-heroic imagery for granted now. But that was the first time anyone reading comics, or looking at newspaper strips, or listening to radio shows, had ever seen something that crazy."
It was so crazy that National Allied Publications publisher Jack Liebowitz called the concept "ridiculous." Superman was created to do the impossible, but on Action Comics #1's first page, the ninth and tenth panels are devoted to real-world examples of animals doing extraordinary things. See, Superman can leap 1/8th of a mile because a grasshopper can also jump preposterous lengths. Ants can lift weights hundreds of times their own weight.
"You're not writing a Superman story," says Waid, "unless he does something that no one else can do at some point or another. He does something impossible. There is no problem that Superman cannot solve if he has time to think about it. That's what we want out of Superman. We don't want him to fail. We want him to succeed, but also to be invested in his emotions and why he wants to succeed."
In the spirit of doing the impossible, growing beyond the original idea was inevitable. Whether you revisit the first Action Comics or not, you are always in conversation with it. You are actually always reading it.
Again, on page one, in the first panel to depict the Man of Steel in his costume, he's described as a "Champion of the Oppressed." We must never shake these core elements from the character. Superman began in ACTION comics. He can do what no other can.
DC will re-publish Action Comics #1 as a facsimile on Superman Day (April 18th).
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