35. The Man of Tomorrow, Today!

Superman. Not the earliest flying superhero (Marvel Comics' Submariner predates him by five years, for his original power was “able to leap tall buildings in a single bound”), got rejected for enlistment when as Clark Kent he used his x-ray vision to read the eye chart in the next room, early on was really a roughneck in how he spoke.

Also, the Man of Steel more than willing to let people in his sight fight and kill each other, but some part of him sticks with us. (Oh, and in his earliest origin story Superman's home planet of Krypton had a uranium core and for a decade or two references to that and Kryptonite – in Lex Luthor's words, a “souvenir from the old home town” – were scrubbed, and for that matter any reference to radioactivity, because of a little thing called the Manhattan Project.)

In Superman In The Forties (ISBN 1401204570) that I finished yesterday, you find him and Lois Lane and Perry White of the Daily Planet (or George Taylor of the Daily Star; the stories alternate back and forth) and Luthor and Toyman and Superman almost … umm, too good and politically active (keep in mind these are the days of the Great Depression and World War II and you needed polar opposites).

The two-pager of Superman bringing Hitler and Stalin before the World Court itself, though, makes this practically required reading. Likewise Alan Moore and Curt Swan's Whatever Happened To The Man of Tomorrow? deluxe edition (ISBN 9781401223472) which reprints the last issue of Action Comics from 1986

(Superman debuted in issue 1, seems appropriate he “ends” in the last issue doesn't it?) as well as an issue where the Swamp Thing helps Superman purge himself of a virus and Batman, Robin, and Wonder Woman help Superman overcome … well, what you get “For The Man Who Has Everything”. And now I segue into last night at Oak Park, where I met Jeffrey for his final Cub Scout meeting of the year where he got to advance to Wolf Scout.

I think I'm wording that right … and I believe I forgot to bring up that Breanna our niece graduated from high school at Rodeheaver Boys and Girls Ranch this past Friday (hooray!). Like I said yesterday, it will be a short week for Martha and me at work, for Friday morning we'll be leaving early as Western North Dakota Synod delegates from our church and meet in Bismarck until Saturday afternoon. We've never done that before.

When we come back Saturday we'll have a post-graduation open house for Breanna at her grandparents' (that's Robert and Sharon, Martha's parents, by the way) and after church Sunday I will be starting a second job at one of our local Marketplace Foods supermarkets. Specifically, the one closest to our house – I'll be working in their deli and my training begins at one in the afternoon. I look forward to it.

Now behave, David