Superman's influence on Spiderman.
dto:
Quote from: Ruby Spears Superman on August 06, 2007, 09:10:55 PM
I notice in some of the early Spider-Man stories, Peter would always compare his situation to "other superheroes". Given that that early on the only other superheroes were the Fantastic Four, a team which didn't have secret identities anyway, he might have been refering to comic book heroes like Superman. Where I live we have the Spider-Man newspaper strip and they have made several references to Superman. All of them direct. I also have a Wolverine story that makes a reference to George Reeves!
There's an incident in Amazing Spider-Man #306, where Peter and Mary-Jane are hurrying to a book-signing event. Peter accidentally bumps into a student on his way to sell his comic collection at a local convention. Gathering up the spilled comic books, Peter notes to Mary-Jane that he used to read comics as a kid and once had a "crush" on the heroine featured on one cover. Later at his book signing, Mary-Jane surprises Peter with the same comic book, commenting that she bought it for him to show that she wasn't envious of the "other girl" in his life.
That comic book was Action Comics #285, where Superman first introduces Supergirl to the world.
He much have been reading reprints or old collections, since Action Comics #285 was published in February 1962, but Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man was actually a fan of The World's Greatest Heroine.
And the cover of Amazing Spider-Man #306 is also a tribute to Action Comics #1. See:
http://comics.imakinarium.net/autores/m/mcfarlane/tmspid306.jpg
(No, this scene does NOT happen inside the issue! ;)
nightwing:
There's also the classic Avengers #93 (part of the Kree-Skull War sequence), where Hank Pym compares the inside of the Vision to "Metropolis...Fritz Lang's, not Clark Kent's."
As for the similarities between Supes and Spidey, even Doc Ock could get confused. In one of the most famous comics bloopers of all time, he actually calls Spidey "Super-Man" in issue #3.
Ruby Spears Superman:
Those examples are awesome! :o Now I gotta try and find those! I wonder how many Superman references there have actually been in Marvel comics.
alschroeder:
I always thought Spider-Man was in many ways a composite of Superman, Batman, and a touch of Superboy.
Teenage bespecled loser made fun of in high school, with white-haired parent figure..(Superboy.)
Gets powers sort of halfway between near-omnipotent Superman and non-powered Batman.
Batman elements include the swinging around, the Spider-Signal and utility belt, and of course the other "parent" being killing by a gunman.
Superman elements include the actual super-powers, albeit sort of halfway between Superman and Batman, the newspaper job with the hot-headed boss.
And I think a lot of those elements are DITKO's additions, more than Lee's, although Lee was very important. He took a lot of imput from a lot of artists, (for instance, Jack Kirby introduced the Silver Surfer into the Galactus storyline, which wasn't in the original synopsis.) and I think Ditko liked the idea of making it a halfway between Superman and Batman.
The reason I think it was DELIBERATE on Ditko's part, rather than an amalgam of ideas, is that he sort of did the same thing with HAWK AND DOVE, only this time combining Batman and Robin with the original Captain Marvel, who was of course the best-selling comic hero of all time. Youths who change into a more powerful form by saying a magic word given them by a mystical entity....Captain Marvel. Two adventurers who are modeled after two flying animals and fight crime mainly with extreme athletic prowess...Batman and Robin.
Kirby took a different tack. He would take three main superhero archtypes---Superman, Batman, and Captain Marvel---and do variations on a theme, as it were, often splitting the character into four or more components.. His Captain Marvel variations included the Fly, Thor, the Demon. and the Forever People, who were basically Billy Batson split into five separate beings. But all of them changed to powerful mystical beings by a magic word and/or totem, in Thor's case. (The striking of the cane.) The Infinity Man isn't per se mystical, but he was able to evade normal physical laws---which is another word for magic. The Fly is sort of a Captain Marvel combined with an insect motif. Thor is Captain Marvel with a Norse myth motif. The Demon is Captain Marvel with a horror motif. The Forever People is Captain Marvel with a hippie motif.
His Superman variations, methinks, are the Hulk, the Fantastic Four, the New Gods. The FF are basically Superman split into four parts---their origin starting with a rocket ride. The Hulk and the New Gods both start with a gigantic explosion---the gamma bomb in the Hulk's case, the explosion of the Old Gods' world in Orion. (Darkseid, interestingly, is a combination of Sivana---ruler of another world, Sivana of Venus, Darkseid of Apokolips--and Jor-El.) The Fantastic Four is Superman split into four parts---including one who's a Bizarro-like monster, one who's a young kid in the Jimmy Olsen age range (with the heat powers and flying), then Sue and Reed---who vary more, but Sue is not unlike Lois with Superman's ability to go faster than the human eye, and later invulnerability in the form of force fields and Reed's sort of the Jor-El of the group. (He did the same trick, as we'll see below with Batman.) The Hulk is Superman through a horror motif (combining Frankenstein and Jeckyll/Hyde), but strength in Superman's weight class, leaping over tall buildings, and a bespecled alter ego. Orion, the main star of New Gods, is a superstrong alien in the culture that raised him(New Genesis), adopting the values of the culture he was raised in rather than his homeworld...as Superman was.
Batman variations include Captain America, Challengers of the Unknown, and Mister Miracle. Captain America is Batman seen through a patrioic motif. Challengers of the Unknown is Batman broken up to his core skills---his strength/fighting ability, his acrobatic ability, his great mind, and his piloting and leadership skills. Mister Miracle is a nonpowered escape artist who avenges the death of a father figure (Thaddeus Brown, the original Mister Miracle) with gadgets and a keen agile mind.
I could cite more Kirby variations of a theme---I think the Silver Age Shield (Lancelot Strong) was a Superman variation)---but you get the idea.
---Al
PS. The first time he "split up" any archetype, I think, was with the Newsboy Legion. He took the basic Batman and Robin idea, but instead split up ROBIN into his combonent traits---one a two-fisted Scrapper, one a brain, one a fairly normal kid, and one a talkative kid who occasionally puns. The Batman-figure was more or less another Batman ripoff, but it was the kids who made it different.
Great Rao:
Quote from: Ruby Spears Superman on August 07, 2007, 04:11:18 PM
Those examples are awesome! :o Now I gotta try and find those! I wonder how many Superman references there have actually been in Marvel comics.
To add to the previous lists: Clark Kent had a brief appearance in one of Walt Simonson's issues of Thor, right after Thor adopted his "Sigurd Jarlson" secret ID.
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