Probably by the time you read this, you'll have already missed your opportunity to play Superman Jeopardy today at the 2026 Metropolis Superman Celebration in Metropolis, Illinois. It's scheduled for 9:30 AM CDT, which is way too early for trivia brain work good, if you ask me. The good news is that they'll run it again tomorrow and again on Sunday. The bad news is that those are scheduled for 9 AM and 10 AM, respectively, and I just don't think anyone should have to answer questions about what Superman's favorite food is* at that time of the morning.

Maybe they're holding the trivia contest that early to make space for autograph signings. An actual Superman will be in attendance this year: Tim Daly, who gave voice to Superman on Wings Superman: The Animated Series from 1996 to 2000 and several direct-to-video animated movies. Mr. Daly is charging $50 for a selfie or an autograph on an 8x10 (or $80 for the combo of an autographed selfie, however that works these days), which seems incredibly reasonable given his resume. I have to wonder how many kids might end up discouraged that he's not signing "Superman" on animation stills of Superman, but given that his cartoon has been off the air for two decades, it seems just as likely that all the autograph seekers will all be middle-aged Gen Xers. So long as everyone goes home happy, I guess.

What should I even care about the activities of a superhero convention happening several states away? I won't go to conventions less than an hour up the road from my house when William Shatner comes to town! But it warms my hardened Kryptonite heart to know that so many people enjoy Superman enough that for 48 years (give or take a global pandemic) they get together every year to celebrate a fictional character by giving their cash to aging actors. Huzzah!

*Superman would say his favorite food is beef bourguignon with ketchup, which I'm sure he likes, but it's his "favorite" because that's his code phrase with Lois Lane to tell her he's alright (as established in numerous comic books over the years). The origin of this is often credited to the first time Lois fed Clark Kent beef bourguignon in Superman #297 (1976) the first night they, um, spent together, if you know what I mean, wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Clark's propensity for drowning steak in ketchup was first indicated on an earlier date with Lois in Superman #276 (1974). Both stories were written by Elliot S! Maggin, so we should probably ask him.

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Superman: The Man of Steel #54, March 1996

Technically speaking, nothing can hold back the darkness forever. For a Spirit of Vengeance, the Spectre can be a real downer.

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Welcome to the 20th annual Wriphe.com Superman Month! What a nice, round, mature number.

This time last year, DC Comics was celebrating the impending release of their latest Superman movie with the "Summer of Superman" publishing initiative. One year later, Superman is literally nowhere to be seen in the DC Universe. Earlier this year, the Man of Steel won a tournament to the death and then disappeared from existence. His comic books are still being published with various children in his stead in a storyline that DC is calling "Reign of the Superboys." DC tells us it is selling very well, but the Superman fans I know don't seem very enthusiastic. I don't blame them. Who wants to pay $5 for a comic that doesn't feature their titular hero?

"Who wants to pay $5 for a comic?" I hear you asking. You make a good point. But this month is about Superman, not the economics of nostalgia.

I also hear some of you you asking, "Who cares about Superman?" I do, for one, and not just for nostalgic reasons. Superman might be a morally inflexible overgrown boy scout in bright pajamas, but at my advancing age, I increasingly enjoy the company of strong characters who still believe that Truth, Justice, and the American Way aren't all mutually incompatible.

Superman: The Man of Steel #80, June 1998

Yeah, he can be a bit preachy. Nobody's perfect.

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Justice League America #81, October 1993

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While walking the dogs, I came up with a great idea for a blog post. I really thought it all out, too, paragraph by paragraph. But I made a mistake. Instead of typing it all up when I came back to the house, I instead sat down and played video games. As you can guess, now that I'm at my keyboard, I have no idea what it all was.

To be fair to me, I didn't go straight to video games. Before I played video games, I made a cup of coffee and a sandwich and moved seven boxes of comic books upstairs and watched Jeopardy!. Somehow, I can remember a lot of trivia, but I cannot remember what I was going to post right here.

If I'm being really fair, I should also admit that after I played video games, I then ate some sardines for dinner, drank another cup of coffee, watched Balls Up on Amazon Prime, and then sorted some comic books before I sat down here at my keyboard. One just shouldn't do that. Watch Balls Up, I mean.

In the continued interest of fairness, I'll say that I don't think this film's failure is entirely the fault of the underwritten script or the casting choices (although I find Mark Wahlberg only funny as a straight man making reaction shots, so I'd say it was a mistake to give him any jokes at all). Comedy, even puerile comedy, is built on subversion of expectations and timing, and this exceedingly puerile movie has neither. I expected better from Oscar-winning director Peter Farrelly, director of There's Something About Mary. My first laugh came at 41 minutes when the editor finally had the good sense to just leave Sasha Baron Cohen in frame while he was being silly. Sometimes the best editing is the least. For the record, my second and final laugh came late, at the well-telegraphed scene involving a vampire fish trapped in the urinary meatus of a penis. I don't know if it was a practical effect or CGI, but the absurdity of the situation definitely gave off welcome There's Something About Mary vibes. Finally.

So now you can see how I forgot what I was going to post. Could you remember five paragraphs after all that? No, of course not. No one could. At least the stream-of-consciousness dribble I wrote above is probably way better than whatever I had composed in my head. And, to paraphrase a much funnier movie, Brett Favre is the guy you should be with. I just want you to be happy, Mary.

52/2622. Balls Up (2026)

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The Superman Sunday Special newspaper strip, April 1, 1984 (written by Bob "The Answer Man" Rozakis)

According to the Editors of the Encyclopaedia Britannica:

"What is April Fools’ Day?"
Although the day has been observed for centuries, its true origins are unknown and effectively unknowable. It somewhat resembles Hilaria, a festival of ancient Rome, held on March 25.

"How did April Fools’ Day start?"
Some suggest it originated in France with the Edict of Roussillon in 1564, while others believe it relates to the equinox that occurs on March 20 or 21 (the Northern Hemisphere’s vernal equinox and the Southern Hemisphere’s autumnal equinox), a time when people are fooled by sudden changes in the weather.

"Unknowable"? Very funny, Britannica. Superman can travel through time, so I'll be taking his word over some mere mortal encyclopedia editors.

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Seeing that this blog doubles as my personal diary, I feel I need to make note of the passing of Friend Michael, killed too young by cancer.

Rummaging around my archives for a pic of Mike to commemorate the sad occasion, I found this, taken (probably by James) in the parking lot of Medieval Times in Lawrenceville in June 2013.

Talking comic books and acting like big dorks. Yeah, I think pretty accurately encapsulates our three decade friendship.

Thanks for the good times, Mike.

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Mom shares her New York Times digital subscription with me, so I assumed that was why the algorithm thought I could use an ad linking me to this:

While my appreciation for spandex is well documented, what struck me about this particular advertisement was the obvious modesty-preserving panty liner the model was using. That crotch bulge seems so familiar....

Oh, right. It's how Dan Jurgens draws male superhero crotches.

Superman #123 limited edition "Glow-in-the-Dark" variant, May 1997

Maybe that ad was targeting me after all.

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Following up on yesterday's post about the S-shield on Superman's cape: it has never appeared on any of the Superman balloons in the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade.

I previously posted about the very first Superman parade balloon from 1940 back in November 2008. That original balloon, used for only one year and record holder as the tallest balloon until 1982, had a loose red cape that came down just to the seat of its pants. The second Superman balloon (a particularly ugly one with a round chest) debuted in 1966, and its cape was a little longer but just as solid red. The third Superman balloon, the largest balloon since WWII and the one I painted in 2020, entered the parade in 1980, and despite several mishaps, flew each year until 1987. This last one also had a solid red cape, though it was a horizontal "flying" pose, so the back was never seen from street level.

The parade balloons are expensive to create and fill with helium (though the people who walk them through downtown Manhattan are all unpaid volunteers), so it shouldn't come as a surprise that the balloons that make the annual cut are the ones that Macy's can make money on. That was true even in 1940, when Macy's had a sponsorship deal with National Periodicals to produce exclusive Superman merchandise, as you can see from this advertisement from page 21 of the May 16, 1940, edition of the New York Daily News:

If you look at those illustrations of Superman, the S-shield is clearly visible on his cape. However, the "playsuit" that Macy's sold to kids, not so much. It was just a solid red sheet with a comics-inaccurate blue drawstring. (The pants featured pictures of Superman around the waist, so comics accuracy was clearly not a big concern.)

For the record, the very first Superman to ever appear in a parade was Ray Middleton, who dressed the part as the Metropolis Marvel for "Superman Day" on July 3 at the 1940 New York World's Fair. The event was created to promote the New York World's Fair Comic 1940 Issue featuring Superman (and Batman and Robin!). In the comic, Superman very clearly has a shield on his cape, but Middleton's costume didn't. If the "real" Superman had a solid red cape, the kids at Macy's couldn't be too disappointed.

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As I usually find when I already have an inkling of the correct answer, Google's AI response is wrong. (Is it ever right? What's the point of having access to the accrued knowledge of the human race if you never actually read it?)

I've read a lot of Superman comics, and I know that Superman has a yellow S-shield on a cape. However, I'll grant that not a lot of people actually read comic books anymore, Google apparently included. I'll also grant that Superman's cape in the influential 1940s animated Fleisher Studio cartoons was solid red (to make the animation easier and less costly), a trend that has been followed often in animated adaptations for similar reasons. But every live-action adaptation since Kirk Alyn's 15-part 1948 Superman serial has an S-shield on his cape. Maybe Google needs to watch more television.

Google's obviously wrong answer sent me looking through old comics for the real answer to my question of its first appearance, and the earliest I could find the cape shield in my copies of The Superman Chronicles reprints was in the historically significant¹ untitled Superman story² in Action Comics #13, cover dated June 1939, published on April 14, 1939.

Here's a sample panel, easily found in a Google Search™ (once I knew what I was looking for):

And, as if I needed any further confirmation, here are the issue's indexer notes from the fantastic (and Google-able) Grand Comics Database (GCD), online at comics.org since 1994:

The "S" symbol first appears on Superman's cape. ... Paul Cassidy is credited with adding the "S" symbol to the cape (but it only appears in some panels and not others), and the pencils and inks here look like his work. Note in particular the odd flying poses of Superman in panels one and five of the final page, which are characteristic of Cassidy. He claimed that [Superman creators Jerry] Siegel and [Joe] Shuster gave both he and Wayne Boring free reign to interpret the scripts as they liked.

Old school library for the win. Why did you make that so hard, Google?

¹ Action Comics #13 is most famous for being the first appearance of Superman's first recurring super villain: a bald criminal mastermind who vowed to "use this great intellect for crime" who called himself The Ultra-Humanite. (What, did you think it was Lex Luthor? That second-rate knock-off wouldn't show up for another 12 months.)

² The original publication has no printed title, which is not uncommon at the time. Modern reprints often refer this story as "Superman vs. the Cab Protective League," named for a protection racket organized by, you guessed it, the Ultra-Humanite. His criminal genius obviously didn't extend to naming things.

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