There’sa pretty great modern comic I got from the library: Superman Smashes the Klan. Tells a story about a Chinese family moving into Metropolis and getting marginalized, has some good hero moments as well as identity moments for Superman - who, of course, is not from America.
I’d really love it if we had more modern media that sets aside the “complex, humanized villains” trend and just has Nazis as villains to get decimated.
What’s really great about that comic is it’s a loose adaptation of a 1946 episode of the Adventures of Superman radio show called “Clan of the Fiery Cross,” wherein Superman also takes on the Klan.
Klan membership went down after the broadcast aired, partially because fathers couldn’t really explain to their kids why Superman wanted to fight the Klan.
It’s credited pretty heavily with weakening Klan membership at the time of release, and it’s on YouTube.
This is kinda unrelated, but you were mentioning some of the identity moments in the comic. I really appreciated how they did some similar commentary in the new movie as well and, since I had never seen those themes focused on in Superman, I did some research into the history of immigration commentary in Superman.
Anyway, that’s how I found out there’s an adaptation from the 1980s where the life pod carrying Superman actually just contains DNA which it then assembles into Superman, all so Superman can be an American-born citizen. The 80s were one of the decades of all time.
It’s credited pretty heavily with weakening the Klan
That’s interesting, because the Klan was fairly weak by the 40’s. It peaked in the 1920s (something like 1 in 3 white Indianans were members in its heyday, to the point where Klan chapters would have baseball teams), but there were some huge political scandals and infighting over embezzlement that absolutely demolished the Second Klan.
The second Klan was formally disbanded for tax reasons in 1944, a couple of years before The Clan of the Fiery Cross. I think the argument might be more that the Superman episode kept the Klan from rising again. It was already profoundly unpopular in the war era due to some connections with the American Bund.
There’sa pretty great modern comic I got from the library: Superman Smashes the Klan. Tells a story about a Chinese family moving into Metropolis and getting marginalized, has some good hero moments as well as identity moments for Superman - who, of course, is not from America.
I’d really love it if we had more modern media that sets aside the “complex, humanized villains” trend and just has Nazis as villains to get decimated.
What’s really great about that comic is it’s a loose adaptation of a 1946 episode of the Adventures of Superman radio show called “Clan of the Fiery Cross,” wherein Superman also takes on the Klan.
Klan membership went down after the broadcast aired, partially because fathers couldn’t really explain to their kids why Superman wanted to fight the Klan.
It’s credited pretty heavily with weakening Klan membership at the time of release, and it’s on YouTube.
This is kinda unrelated, but you were mentioning some of the identity moments in the comic. I really appreciated how they did some similar commentary in the new movie as well and, since I had never seen those themes focused on in Superman, I did some research into the history of immigration commentary in Superman.
Anyway, that’s how I found out there’s an adaptation from the 1980s where the life pod carrying Superman actually just contains DNA which it then assembles into Superman, all so Superman can be an American-born citizen. The 80s were one of the decades of all time.
That’s interesting, because the Klan was fairly weak by the 40’s. It peaked in the 1920s (something like 1 in 3 white Indianans were members in its heyday, to the point where Klan chapters would have baseball teams), but there were some huge political scandals and infighting over embezzlement that absolutely demolished the Second Klan.
I suppose weakening Klan membership at the time of release would be more accurate, I’ll add it to the post
The second Klan was formally disbanded for tax reasons in 1944, a couple of years before The Clan of the Fiery Cross. I think the argument might be more that the Superman episode kept the Klan from rising again. It was already profoundly unpopular in the war era due to some connections with the American Bund.