SUPERMAN celebrates 75th birthday
US: The world’s best-known superhero has been fighting for
truth, justice and the American Way since his first appearance in Action
Comics No. 1, which was cover-dated June 1938. Now Clark Kent’s alter
ego enters a new era with his upcoming flick, ‘Man of Steel.’
Lucky for Superman, his “freeze breath” is powerful enough to blow
out 75 birthday candles.
The most famous of all superheroes celebrates a major anniversary
this month after having fought for “truth, justice and the American Way”
for three-quarters of a century — ever since he was dreamed up by a pair
of Jewish teens from Cleveland.
When Action Comics #1 hit newsstands in June 1938, not even Jerry
Siegel and Joe Shuster in their wildest imagination could have dreamed
of Superman’s lasting success. Now, “Man of Steel,” opening Friday,
threatens to be one of the biggest box-office hits of the summer, and
the Daily News is giving the birthday boy a full week of super coverage
of his triumphant return to the big screen.
“I always appreciated Superman,” Henry Cavill, who plays the titular
hero in “Man of Steel,” told The News. “He always did the right thing
and I respect that ... now, I finally get the chance to show what I
always felt about Superman.”
Within a year of Superman’s first appearance, he’d sold a million
comics. By 1940, a popular radio serial, “The Adventures of Superman”
hit the airwaves; 12 years later, he made the leap to television in a
single bound.
And in 1978, moviegoers believed that a man could fly when actor
Christopher Reeve donned the suit for his first of four movies.
“If you look at his inception, he was this crusader for the little
guy, he was almost a Socialist hero in the late ’30s,” says Jim Lee,
artist on the upcoming comic series “Superman Unchained.”
“He became a patriot who fought Hitler and the Nazis in the ’40s, and
then (in the Atomic Age) he was battling crazy scientists — all the way
up into the ’80s, when Clark Kent became more of a yuppie, or in the
’90s, where he sported a mullet.
INDIA TODAY
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