Superman Through the Ages! Forum

To all concerned:
This article has just gone up and I wold like to ask anyone interested to link it up.  It was a great deal of fun for me to write about something other than Boxing for a change.  :)  Here are the first couple paragraphs along with the link to the rest:
http://ringtalk.com/index.php?action=fullnews&showcomments=1&id=645
 
SUPERMAN RETURNS…IS BOXING FAR BEHIND?

26 June, 2006 by Cliff Rold


THE STORY BEGINS 68 YEARS AGO THIS MONTH…

June 1938.  The world stands at the verge of World War while the United States struggles through the morass of the Great Depression.  Adolf Hitler’s unwitting champion, Max Schmeling, was preparing for a June 22 rematch and a challenge of World Heavyweight champion Joe Louis.  Schmeling had been the only man to defeat Louis in his rise to prominence and, prior to the insertion of politics into the sport, Louis battled the worst of racial slights.  The press had characterized him in typical anthropomorphic terms, comparing him to various jungle beasts.  This fight was different.  For at least a night, Louis was to be the symbol of what made America better.  It was a chance to pretend that Jim Crow didn’t exist and to embrace a new kind of hero.  U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who famously refused to adequately address lynching laws, would grab Louis’ biceps before the fight and tell him America needed his muscle.

Louis, for that night, would be America’s hero.  When he felled Schmeling with efficient brutality in one round, he would be its superhero, the second to emerge that month.

I say the second because another American hero had emerged that month who would play a part in the coming global fight, cover dated June 1938.  Sprung from the minds of two young Jewish men in Cleveland, Ohio (hometown of Don King), and with an assist from the Phillip Wylie novel Gladiator, Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster gave birth to an icon and symbol every bit as potent as the image of Louis over a prone Schmeling.  A strange visitor from another planet, an “S” on his chest, a car held overhead, bad guys fleeing in shock from the ultimate American immigrant…without realizing it, Siegel and Schuster had just changed the world.  Now, 68 years later, a film with the title Superman Returns is set to burst onto screens worldwide.  Is Boxing about to return with it?  Is there even a connection between the sport and the Last Son of Krypton?