Before Superman...

Well, now that I've got this book out of the way, I want to talk about some of the inspirations for it. You see, as everyone knows, Superman was the first 'superhero' in comics, starting in Action Comics 1, cover-dated June, 1938. Before him, there were men with mysterious powers (mostly occult), but it wasn't until Superman appeared that the whole 'costumed hero' thing really took off.

But before Superman, there were plenty of other 'superheroes', albeit much lower in power than the Kryptonian. For example, the Shadow was hugely popular (he's more of a Batman predecessor) in the 1930s. He had the power to 'cloud men's minds,' rending himself invisible. He was both on the radio and in the pulps; you can find both online in various places for free, like the Internet Archive.

There was also Doc Savage, the Man of Bronze, who was an inspiration for Superman. There was Hugo Danner, from Philip Wylie's 1930 novel, Gladiator. He's the most obvious inspiration for Superman, having great strength and invulnerability from birth.

But these are from the Golden Age of the Pulps in the 1930s. There were other men with tremendous abilities in fiction prior to them, as well. Naturally, we go back to Edgar Rice Burroughs, who created two iconic characters, John Carter and Tarzan, who are both direct inspirations for the Superman mythos. Carter is able to leap tall buildings in a single bound (on Mars). Tarzan is like Batman on steroids, with the senses of a wild animal and strength greater than any man (he never lifted a car, but he probably could at least tip one over). Honestly, if there is one guy that can beat Batman in a fight, it's Tarzan. Because even though Batman is awesome, he's not Tarzan.

Then there are the fantastic and weird characters such as H.G. Wells' classic Invisible Man, or Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, both of which offer characters with tremendous abilities, albeit not in the classic superhero mold (although there actually is a Marvel character named Mr. Hyde). They, along with other classics such as Frankenstein's monster, the Mummy, and Dracula, fall more under the 'horror' rather than 'super' genre.

But superheroes go way, way back; look at the Norse and Greek mythologies, both of which produced iconic modern superheroes in Thor and Wonder Woman, respectively. Or, if Wonder Woman doesn't count because of her modern-day origin, go with Hercules, who definitely did some hardcore superhero stuff. In the Middle Ages, there were legends of knights like Roland and Galahad who likewise did impossible, super-heroic things (Roland fought at Roncesvalles and slew hundreds of Saracens before succumbing to his wounds; Galahad was so pure and noble that he makes Superman look like Lex Luthor. He was also a great warrior, too).

So, superheroes aren't as new as people tend to think. They've been around as long as we've been writing stories down; Gilgamesh and Enkidu are perfect examples of that. They just weren't actually called 'superheroes' until the 1940s.

And now, I've made my own entry into that world with The Gilded Age: The Awakening, the new short-story anthology that introduces a new set of superheroes into the pre-World War I era. Check it out on Amazon today!