“Lois, What’ve You Gotten Yourself Into??”

This is anoth­er one you can file under “ideas that popped into my head and would­n’t go away until I did them.”

I allud­ed in my pre­vi­ous post to hav­ing to look at a lot of Super­man mate­r­i­al while help­ing out with a recent Big Bang Comics project. In the course of doing that, this idea occurred to me: the Gold­en Age Super­man going up against Cthul­hu. And it would­n’t let go.

Final­ly, I had to do it. It’s not the first time I’ve tried to draw this ver­sion of Super­man. You can see it not only in the art I did as a kid (which I includ­ed with the pre­vi­ous post linked above), I also took a shot at him just pri­or to DC’s “New 52” era. So I’ve always had a soft spot for that ver­sion of the character.

To put the Gold­en Age Super­man up against Cthul­hu, I’m hav­ing to bend real­i­ty a bit in order to make it hap­pen. In the real world at this point in time, Super­man’s oppo­nents were still basi­cal­ly reg­u­lar non-pow­ered humans. They all were pret­ty much “one and done.” In the real Action Comics #13, they made their first attempt at intro­duc­ing a recur­ring vil­lain, the Ultra-Human­ite (though he was not yet in the lat­er albi­no goril­la form most fans are famil­iar with). At that point, he was just a very smart old bald guy in a wheel­chair. I think they were going for a char­ac­ter who might serve as Super­man’s Mori­ar­ty, his brains against Super­man’s brawn.

I’m not sure why Siegel and Shus­ter had­n’t yet put Super­man up against a super-vil­lain at this point. I guess they were still feel­ing their way, fig­ur­ing out the rules as they went along. After all, Super­man was the first of his super­pow­ered kind, blaz­ing the trail for a host of oth­er heroes. Messrs. S&S did take a crack at that kind of weird cos­mic hor­ror in one of their ear­li­er strips, Dr. Occult, and Siegel made use of it also in the Spec­tre. Clear­ly they were aware of that pulp genre, and were even fans of it to some extent. So maybe in anoth­er world, they might have thought to pit Super­man against Cthulhu.

Also in the real world, Action #13 was­n’t pub­lished with an Octo­ber 1939 cov­er date. It came out ear­li­er. I just liked the con­ceit of the 13th issue com­ing out in Octo­ber. Call it artis­tic license.

You might find the ver­sion of Cthul­hu here a lit­tle dif­fer­ent from what you’re used to. I elect­ed to ignore any lat­er (post-1930’s) depic­tions, and stuck with a cou­ple of sketch­es I found done by H.P. Love­craft him­self in 1934. I fig­ure some­thing like that is most like­ly what Shus­ter would’ve had access to. A lot of mod­ern inter­pre­ta­tions like to give Cthul­hu two eyes and brow ridges, but I liked how the six eyes Love­craft drew him with made him weird­er and less human-looking.

Hope you enjoyed it, and thanks for stop­ping by!

6 thoughts on ““Lois, What’ve You Gotten Yourself Into??””

  1. I have to won­der what effect the mur­der of Jer­ry Siegel’s father had in his ear­ly Super­man sto­ries in terms of the sorts of vil­lains that appeared? As to Cthul­hu, there is no greater malev­o­lence. Always lurk­ing, ready to enter your exis­tence. That end­ing seems to hard­ly be con­nect­ed to any par­tic­u­lar behav­ior of the vic­tim. This is an anoth­er exam­ple of what will hap­pen next in the chronol­o­gy of the sto­ry. Can Super­man take on that sort “ani­mal” of pos­si­bly a greater dimen­sion than we live?
    Very clever on your part to mash up the two per­spec­tives of human choice may I dare, tak­ing action even in hope­less sit­u­a­tions or as opposed to lay­ing down and rolling over.
    I appre­ci­ate your efforts at his­tor­i­cal accu­ra­cy of the art. And the it’s time­ly fit­ting to the present.
    Each of us view­ing your cov­er Mark can now walk away and cre­ate our sto­ries. The teacher, that would be you, has giv­en us tag line with which to work. Thanks.

    Reply

    1. Writer Brad Meltzer once raised the point about Siegel’s father being shot, and then him lat­er going on to cre­ate a char­ac­ter who was a bul­let­proof man. I’m sure that con­scious or not, things you’ve expe­ri­enced, learned or seen like that affect you. Just like there are oth­er fair­ly pro­found con­cepts bound up in Super­man that I’m not sure Siegel and Shus­ter were ful­ly aware of, which oth­er writ­ers have delved into point­ing out.
      Glad you like the cov­er. At the end of the day, I’m just try­ing to enter­tain, get peo­ple mus­ing about how a sto­ry like this might go in their own head.

      Reply

      1. Thanks, I must say, and enter­tain you do. I am going to search for the Meltzer com­ment. Fas­ci­nat­ing stuff regard­ing the cre­ation of a bul­let proof char­ac­ter. Inter­est­ing to note in this link that Meltzer was the first to go direct­ly to the fam­i­ly to find out what actu­al­ly hap­pened. I am going to drop the link in for any­one else who might not know of the Meltzer search. But once again, only Love­craft and now you can cap­ture the inte­ri­or hor­ror per­son­i­fied in this case by Lois. And you suc­cess­ful­ly inspired me to muse. Thanks. https://bradmeltzer.com/Books/The-Book-of-Lies

        Reply

        1. I should’ve remem­bered the com­ment was in con­nec­tion with that book. Fun­ny enough, I did illus­tra­tions for it! Brad Meltzer was look­ing for some­one who could do a series of illus­tra­tions in Joe Shus­ter’s style which would be part of the sto­ry, and a friend point­ed him my way. I’ve got one of the pan­els I did post­ed on the Gal­leries por­tion of my site here: https://marklewisdraws.com/galleries/Miscellaneous/Panel-2-final_Web

          Reply

          1. Sweet! I found a copy of the book and look for­ward to read­ing it and now for more than the story.

          2. Enjoy! Brad was a nice guy to work with, and after­wards he bought all the orig­i­nals from me.

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