Review: THE SUPERMAN CHRONICLES, Volume 4
Hoping to impart some of his passion for DC's Golden Age adventures, a Superman fanatic describes some of the great stuff to be found in The Superman Chronicles.
In Volume 4 of The Superman Chronicles, DC's chronologically ordered collection of the Man of Steel's earliest adventures, Superman continues his one-man war against oppression and injustice. It's difficult in our era--when Superman is so ingrained in American myth--to imagine a time when he was young and exciting and a lot more like us than he is today.
The fourth book in this series begins with Action Comics #26, July 1940, when Superman had been on newsstands all of 2 years, and his adventures still were driven by his youthful creators, Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster. Within these 14 tight, 
energetic stories, the Man of Steel exposes a scheme to exploit infantile paralysis victims, helps a small town newspaper stand up to big city racketeers, single-handedly gets a ship full of disaster relief to a South American country, runs an idealistic young opposition candidate against the entrenched political machine of Metropolis, and, in between, catches a car-robbing circus performer (literally) red-handed, survives a Flash Gordon-styled adventure in the Middle East, and even saves Lois Lane from a murder rap.
That's only about HALF of it, but you get the idea. The plots of these early issues of Action Comics and Superman are not global affairs, don't involve large groups of colorfully clad individuals, and aren't sparked by alien invasions. Superman's battles are personal ones. He fights for the common folk, the ordinary man, the people who can't fight for themselves. He targets businessmen, bureaucrats, burglars and bullies equally. He works day and night to even the odds, to balance the scales, and all because of what Siegel called a "tremendous feeling of compassion...for the downtrodden."
But, unlike the Silver or Modern Age Superman, the Depression-era version isn't gentle or polite about how he accomplishes his mission. And he respects neither personal privacy nor the boundaries of the law (it's JUSTICE he defends, not law). He doesn't even hesitate, in "Terror Stalks San Caluma," to break into the jail house and violently interrogate a suspect.
So, obviously, he's not averse to the threat of injury or death to elicit compliance or confession from the villains or their accomplices.
Now, he will try to save the bad guy if he (or she) was to, say, fall from a tall building (sometimes to escape HIM). But, since he can't really fly yet (Volume 4 is still a little fuzzy on this), he's not always successful. And he certainly doesn't cry about it. In "Racketeer Terror in Gateston," a car of thugs forces a press equipment truck over a cliff before accidentally following it. The Metropolis Marvel leaps after them, but with "only time to save one!" Once he's rescued the press truck, Superman glances at the wrecked thug vehicle and spits: "A well deserved fate!"
Not only is his attitude toward violence cavalier, but his wise-cracks could raise welts on Spider-Man. When the abusive Mister Tweed tries to flee his "Brentwood Home for Wayward Youth," Superman shouts after him, "Wait! I haven't given you that thrashing I promised you!"
The spicy dialogue throughout is flavored with the rhythm and meter of the time. Slang terms like "gat, bean and dame" stand in for "gun, brain and woman." Lois warns Clark not to be "a pantywaist!" And, yes, Superman actually addresses his opponents as "you dirty rats!"
It is in this area that I believe The Superman Chronicles hold their greatest value. The contemporary aesthetic is priceless--the oversized roadsters, the dependence on radio and newspapers, the clothes, the language and so much more. Siegel & Shuster made no attempt to create "timeless" stories; Superman's adventures are firmly rooted in the political and social mores of the period. But, it's been said (somewhere) that the more specific and personal the story, the more universally relatable its themes become.
The Superman Chronicles aren't flashy or slick. The book isn't hardcovered or slipcased, and there are no additional materials. But this volume does contain, cover to cover, some terrific tales of the greatest superhero you THINK you know, in a very affordably priced format. As a Superman devotee and fan of the Golden Age, I give The Superman Chronicles, Volume 4, my highest recommendation, and I hope a few people will dip into its pages and get excited about the Last Son of Krypton...as if for the first time.
[Jerry Siegel quote from Superman: The Complete History by LES DANIELS.]