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!