LETTERS Supermanned flight
Sir: As with other matters, so with comic book heroes: a little learning is a danger- ous thing. Christopher Webb (Letters, 21 May) seeks to contradict the statement that it is Superman, not Batman, who can fly, asserting, 'Superman doesn't fly either. He takes huge leaps'. But of course Superman does fly, as anyone would know who had watched any of the films, seen any of the television series, listened to the radio programmes, or glanced at more than a couple of the very early comics.
It is true that when he first appeared in 1939 Superman seemed to have little more than abnormal strength to help him. In 1940 when the Mutual Network launched him on radio the introduction declared: 'Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap tall buildings at a single bound! Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Superman!' Perhaps it is the ambiguity here that has confused Mr Webb (if you can fly, why bother to 'leap' tall buildings?) but the fact remains that shortly after his first appearance Superman was quite clear- ly flying, has done so ever since, and is stated by the words in the comic strips to be doing so.
If Mr Webb wants chapter and verse he could, for instance, consult panel 2 on p.90 in 'The Domesday Decision' in the DC/ Marvel special Superman vs The Amazing Spider-man which states: 'Faster and faster flies the man of tomorrow until, with a thundering crash, he shatters the sound barrier. . . .' Some leap.
In his introduction to the book, Super- man from the Thirties to the Seventies, E. Nelson Bridwell, editor of National Periodical Comics, says: 'He was con- ceived as a man who could hurdle sky- scrapers and leap an eighth of a mile. Not long afterwards, though, he was literally flying. His strength increased and so did his speed. Once only able to out-race a train, he finally, in the late Forties, began travell- ing through time by exceeding the speed of light.'
If Mr Webb would take the trouble to go and see Richard Donner's 1978 Superman, the first film in which Christopher Reeve played the title role, he will see the most convincing 'human flight' sequences ever shot for the cinema. Hence the one-line slogan used to promote the film: 'You'll believe a man can fly!'
Christopher Dunkley Financial Times, Bracken House, 10 Cannon Street, London EC4
Previous page
