Superman Enters The Age of The Atom...?

A significant milestone in the history of Superman?

Not just another Luthor story--read the caption!

Yeah, yeah, the "government wouldn't let us print this before" is cute and all. But it is actually true story, and just a clever trope:

In Superman #38, released in 1946, Lex Luthor terrorizes Metropolis with an “atomic bomb.” This comic had actually been written and produced two years earlier, but when the U.S. government got wind of it they sent agents to the offices of DC Comics to stop publication until they received official permission. At the time, the Manhattan Project was underway and the government did not want the Axis powers to know that they were working on an atomic bomb and were closely monitoring any public mention that could be considered a clue. The folks at DC were not given a reason for the censorship and could only assume they had hit on something sensitive, but they did not know what. Two years later, with the war over, the comic was cleared to be released.

But look: the caption gives us specific footnotes, including page numbers, to real adult publications!!!

Significantly, those are the first issues of Time and Newsweek to be published after the dropping of the atomic bombs. Now, I'm too cheap to pay to read the actual articles the caption cites, but here's a partial table of contents from that issue of time:

It's easy for us to forget now, having lived with nuclear weapons as a fact for our entire lives, but that table of contents reminds us that the advent of the "atomic age" had a seismic effect on the world, on culture, on our very perception of ourselves.

This Superman comic hit the street in late October 1945, meaning it would be one of the first published in the wake of those seismic revelations. And clearly someone involved had at least been reading about the world-altering events, because they even cited specific page numbers in the damned captions!

So how would the new atomic age alter Superman?

Geez, Luthor, it looks like you really need to cut down the caffeine!

Anyway, when Luthor's main plan--using an atomic-powered "molecular propulsion ray" to rob banks--is thwarted, it's time for one of comics' first uses of the atomic bomb!

And...Superman is immediately powerful enough to withstand an atomic bomb. Way to take all of the drama out of the atomic age, guys!

In fairness, I doubt DC did much if any rewriting or redrawing of the story from it's 1944 original, so our creators at the time would have had no concept of what the hell an "atomic bomb" really was, or the kind of havoc it could wreak. It was just another technobabble weapon from a super-scientist in a kiddie comic book. It was only the citations of "real world" media dealing with the impact of atomic science that made us expect anything more.

Still, the result of the first post-A-bomb Superman story is to effectively make Kal-El so overpowered that he was essentially unbeatable. Atom bombs? They don't even phase him!

No wonder they had to bring kryptonite into the comics a few years later...

From Superman #38 (1946)