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Superman.
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Superman
The first and most important comic book superhero, Superman looms large not only in comic books but in all of twentieth-century American popular culture. Among the few American characters ins...
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Critical Essay by Slater Brown
It was only two years ago that Superman was first revealed to the youth of this country…. But the response which greeted his appearance was so enthusiastic and so...
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Critical Essay by Richard Kluger
Superman is the most fabulous of the comic book heroes—part of our folklore already, one might argue. And the most engaging feature of the Superman stories was ...
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Critical Essay by Les Daniels
Superman, the ultimate expression of human aspirations to power and pure freedom, was an instant triumph, a concept so intense and so instantly identifiable that he becam...
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Critical Essay by Arthur Asa Berger
In recent years Superman has been changing…. When we discarded our old legacy of rugged individualism and self-sufficiency, we also abandoned the view that a...
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Critical Essay by Mordecai Richler
[The] real Superman controversy has always centred on his assumed identity of Clark Kent, a decidedly faint-hearted reporter. Kent adores Lois Lane, who has no time ...
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Critical Essay by Philip Demuth
The saga of Superman takes on an entirely different cast if we regard it psychologically…. In this light, the character of Superman becomes simply the elaborate ...
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Critical Essay by John Kobler
[The] Man of Steel, with his super-hearing, super-sight and super-vitality, has become all things to all boys. He has shaken the pedestal of many a classic boyhood idol: ...
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Critical Essay by Martin Sheridan
[Superman's] popular appeal is due to the fact that America is a land of hero worshippers. Superman is the ultimate in heroes. He outdoes everybody in everythi...
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Critical Essay by Coulton Waugh
[Superman] is a national figure, perhaps the most worshiped and adored of our time. (p. 256)
The simple and marvelously effective idea back of "Superman" ...
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Critical Essay by Geoffrey Wagner
I do not personally believe that the hollow, self-gratulatory note of the Superman comic means that the USA has a bad conscience; rather I think it may suggest that t...
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Critical Essay by Fredric Wertham
Superman (with the big S on his uniform—we should, I suppose, be thankful that it is not an S.S.) needs an endless stream of ever new submen, criminals and &#x...
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Critical Essay by Stephen Becker
[By 1942, the critics were in action, pro and con, regarding Superman.] Superman was the ideal outlet for youth's unruly instincts; Superman was in the traditio...
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Critical Essay by Heinz Politzer
[Superman] has hardly more than his name in common with [Friedrich] Nietzsche's blasphemous and iconoclastic phantasm; in fact one suspects that he originally o...
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Critical Essay by Jules Feiffer
The particular brilliance of Superman lay not only in the fact that he was the first of the super-heroes, but in the concept of his alter ego. What made Superman differ...
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Superman
Critical Essay by Slater Brown
