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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105/2537. Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale (2025)
I don't like the only movie theater in my town, so Mom and I drove up to Peachtree City to catch the third Downton Abbey movie. Again, the stakes are delightfully small (Is Mary to be a social pariah... again? Will they have to consider selling the Abbey... again?) I liked this more than the second, especially because it took such great pains to tie up every possible loose end. Sure, it was a bit weird to spend so much time in London without visiting Lady Rosamund, but it is a big cast and some sacrifices had to be made, I suppose. (Look at me mentioning relatively minor characters when my introduction to the whole ensemble was the short primer that ran in theaters before the first movie. As usual: late converts are the most zealous.)

106/2538. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Three More (2024)
This Netflix-exclusive Wes Anderson quadrilogy was the whole reason I wanted access to Netflix in the first place. Essentially monologue recitations of Roald Dahl's writing (like an incredibly elaborate staging of Peter and the Wolf), it is neither Anderson's best nor most engrossing work, though I admit that I'm not a particular fan of Dahl. However, Anderson fan that I am, I considered it an elaborate tech demo of what he might try in a bigger, better production.

107/2539. Wet Hot American Summer (2001)
It takes about thirty minutes for this spoof of 70s/80s camp movies (a la Meatballs) to reveal its truly lunatic, absurdist heart, but once it does, it becomes immediately obvious why it has reached such cult success. (And what a cast!)

108/2540. Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga (2020)
"Play Jaja Ding Dong!" The ABBA is strong with this one. What was most striking to me while watching was how almost every character, even Will Ferrell's selfish protagonist, meant well from their own point of view. Even the secret murderous antagonist. Even the romantic cad played by Downton Abbey's Dan Stevens! Great music and endearing performances from people who clearly have a soft spot for the real Eurovision made for a great time.

109/2541. Pee-Wee's Big Holiday (2016)
The last Pee-Wee movie was clearly made with a smaller budget and a lot of CGI, but Paul Reubens still makes it work by evoking the good natured manchild Pee-Wee Herman of years past. (Have I ever mentioned that Pee-Wee's Big Adventure was the first DVD I ever bought? I have? Well, I'm mentioning it again. It's that good.) What a great character he was.

More to come.

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Since I usually post about Georgia home football games, I suppose I should mention that the final tickets in my annual season package were for today's home finale against the 1-9 Charlotte 49ers. I did not go. I gave the tickets to the daughter of a high-school friend who went to Georgia Tech (ha-ha!), which means I watched from the comfort of my couch as freshman running back Bo Walker's two-touchdown debut paved the way to a 35-3 route. Good for Bo. I hope he makes a lot of other people's money playing ball.

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I just read that famous performance artist Yoko Ono, who everyone knows only because of her famous performance art and for no other reason, once published a "book of instructions" (Grapefruit) containing a conceptual think piece ("Number Piece 1") in which she instructed readers to "Count all the words in the book instead of reading them." My knee-jerk response to that knowledge was, "damn, that's stupid." That's the same as telling someone to go a museum and focus on measuring the size of all the frames. And then, as I was feeling very superior in my judgment, it dawned on me that counting the number of words in a book is exactly the sort of thing I might do without being prompted. (122 so far. Now 126. Is this art?)

I do not understood what this says about me, but I do have the sudden urge to go find a band to break up.

154.

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