Word: supermans
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Partly, too, Superman evolved in response to changes in American society, starting with the cataclysm of World War II. In one misguided early effort, his creators had him fly to Berchtesgaden and Moscow and haul both Hitler and Stalin before a League of Nations tribunal in Geneva. Believers in verisimilitude began wondering how Superman avoided getting drafted. Simple. Clark Kent patriotically went to take his physical exam, but when he looked at the eye chart, his X-ray vision caused him to read figures from a chart in the next room. He was rated...
...Superman went back to catching Axis saboteurs. The Army sent his patriotic adventures to G.I.s around the world, but when they returned home, they wanted more pizazz. Superman's physical powers became more and more extravagant. Not only could he fly through space, but he could wrestle planets out of their orbits, and with his superbreath could extinguish a distant star...
More significant, it was time for Superman to move on from radio and comics and enter a new medium, time for a mere mortal to impersonate the man of steel on the screen. Kirk Alyn, an agile dancer, began appearing in Saturday serials in 1948, letting his voice drop by an octave each time he reached for his necktie and declared, "This looks like a job for Superman...
...Hollywood's technology was still so rudimentary that when Alyn lifted his arms and cried, "Up, up and away!" only a spliced-in animated cartoon could show Superman in flight. "When I was Superman, I did it with my attitude," recalls Alyn, now 77. "In my mind, I'd visualized the guy I had heard on the radio. This was a guy nothing could stop. So that's why I stood like this, with my chest out, and a look on my face saying 'Shoot me.' " To demonstrate, the old man rises from his easy chair and adopts the Pose...
...true: when Superman moved to television, where George Reeves first donned the cape in 1953, his bulging muscles were made of foam rubber. No matter. There are plenty of viewers who can still recite, at any mention of Reeves in his foam-rubber muscles, a quasi-liturgical text: ". . . Strange visitor from another planet, who came to earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men. Superman! Who can change the course of mighty rivers, bend steel with his bare hands, and . . . fights a never-ending battle for truth, justice and the American...