Pre-Crisis Superman Overview

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #157

Notes:

- The opening narration states that Superman can "run faster than any other man". I think that he and the Flash were not yet established to exist on the same Earth at this point yet, though.
- There's a PSA featuring Superboy in this issue, in black - and - white.

Feat Catalogue:

- Walks at slow speed through a wooden fence, saying he'll repair it later
- Stands unmoved and unharmed as a car rams into him (being unmoved by physical forces, like the Blob, is actually another power he has)
- Catches steel-jacketed bullets from two Tommy guns at close range
- Uses friction to melt the bullets down to a ball of steel and reshape them into a bowling ball, which he then throws at the gunmen, knocking them down
- Lifts a roller coaster track (the narration says he uses "the lifting power of 1000 mighty derricks") and tilts it so the train falls back towards him
- A giant safe is dropped on him from a helicopter, and it breaks around him when it lands on him, leaving him unharmed
- Cuts a piece of transparent quartz from a mine to serve as a platform to stand on, and then uses his super breath to propel himself through the air, fooling the devices on his ankles designed to detect if he leaves the ground.
- While doing this, grabs a helicopter and accelerates it to supersonic speed, then catches the parachuting criminals and delivers them to jail and leaves, all too fast to be seen.

Spoiler: Pretty good feat for control and power of his breath

Weirdness:

- A rival reporter poses as a shoe shine boy in order to slip some anklets onto Clark's feet, which will send a signal if he ever flies or runs faster than humanly possible, because he suspects that he's Superman. Instead of treating this as assault and just getting rid of them, Clark actually plays along and agrees to wear them for 24 hours.
- Apparently the anklets will register whenever his feet leave solid ground... so that ignores the possibility that a normal person could just jump, or sit on furniture with their feet off the ground, or any of the other ways it could happen... in fact, at one point he even says that he can't climb over a fence because it would trigger the anklets, but fence-climbing is something a normal person could do.

Superdickery:

- By accepting this silly bet (just to feed his own ego), he ends up having to cause a lot more damage and vandalism while crime fighting than he ordinarily would have.

Power Tracker:

- Low Herald level, still no change.

Action Comics #158

Notes:

- The opening narration says that Superman is "invulnerable to every ordinary force or weapon on Earth". It goes on to classify "blasting explosives, lightning bolts, raging flames, and crushing weights" as being among these "ordinary forces", and Kryptonite as not being one. Unsure about what else they fit into the two categories, though.
- The narration says that Kryptonians were "physically perfect and of immense intelligence and science"
- At this point, Superman's powers were not yet linked to the sun, as a flashback has a Kryptonian saying that the reason they would be so much stronger on Earth was solely because of its lower gravity.
- The destruction of Krypton here was attributed to it having a core made of uranium, which was going to undergo a nuclear chain reaction. Kryptonite was created when the material of the planet was transmuted in the atomic explosion.
- In this flashback, Jor-El built the rocket large enough to save both his son and his wife, but the latter refused to leave him
- We also see Jonathan and Martha Kent coming across the rocket in their car
- It's stated that Clark had X-ray vision as a baby in this issue
- It was also shown that he had a career as Superboy before becoming Superman
- The DC wiki actually says that many of the contradictions in Krypton and Superman's backstory in this issue are explained by this story taking place on "Earth-Two-A", in a universe where there are some elements of both the Golden Age Earth-Two and the Silver Age Earth-One. Of course, ever since the recent Dark Knights: Death Metal event, all of DC's histories were merged in some weird way, so all of this is still canon to most versions of Superman. Don't think about it too hard.

Feat Catalogue:

- Was going to stop a meteor from destroying a town, but only failed because it was made of Kryptonite
- Lifts a refrigerator with one hand as a baby
- Manages to intercept the Kryptonite meteor by throwing a boulder at it, saving the town
- After experimenting with Kryptonite, builds a "K-detector", a Geiger counter that responds specifically to Kryptonite.
- Pokes a hole in a metal gas pipe to create an alibi for him being affected by Kryptonite in his civilian identity
- Reproduces the K-detectors and places them in some robots, programming them to find and gather Kryptonite
- Wears a pack of explosives which detonate when the Kryptonite meteor gets near him with enough force to blast it back up into space, and is unharmed by the explosion
- Builds a giant slingshot and uses it to fling the remaining pieces of Kryptonite into space

Spoiler: Billiards with meteors

Spoiler: SCIENCE!

Weirdness:

- After baby Kal-El is removed from the rocket, it bursts into flame and disintegrates, due to its metal being "alien to Earth's atmosphere", leaving no evidence behind.
- Somehow, the idea of using heat vision or super breath to deal with the Kryptonite from a safe distance never occurs to Superman
- He borrows giant, humanoid, remote-controlled robots from a random small-town factory. In the year 1951. Apparently these robots are also sophisticated enough that they can be programmed to guard a chunk of Kryptonite, as well as chase down and arrest criminals.
- The fictitious element "Supermanium" makes another appearance, this time being shown to be unable to shield against Kryptonite rays, along with every other material Superman tries. He also tries to destroy the Kryptonite with acid and lightning, but fails to do so.

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- Nothing notable here, so still Low Herald Level.

Action Comics #159

Notes:

- Another non-copyright-infringing cameo, this time of the "Stacey Toy Parade".
- Clark briefly mentions his "Aunt Minerva" in this issue. See the next issue.

Feat Catalogue:

- Pushes a 'mountain' two feet so Lois can get her hat which fell into a crevice under it (it looked more like a large rock formation than an actual mountain, though)
- Sees a zoo lion attacking a tiger (from what appears to be only a few feet away) and runs behind a nearby building, changes to Superman, then returns in a split second to restrain the lion before it reaches the tiger.
- Fuses a rusted cage together with his grip
- Can hear a dog whistle from anywhere in the city
- Creates a tornado by spinning at super speed, drawing water (with fish inside) up from a river and taking it 10 miles to the outside of a window of a skyscraper, so a guy there can fish from his office. He then leads the tornado back to the river, and somehow manages to keep the current stabilized so the fish and water continue cycling through this path for a significant amount of time.
- Flies a guy from Metropolis to a jungle in Africa so fast he doesn't realize what happened, and the narration says it took "less time than it takes to blink an eyelash"
- After a few minutes, carries the guy back at the same speed
- Implies he could move the moon, but doesn't want to because it would disturb the tides and damage the Earth
- Flies to Jupiter "instantly" and borrows two of its moons, bringing them into Earth's orbit to provide extra moonlight

Weirdness:

- After losing a bet to Lois, Superman writes her a note that says he'll do anything she wants for 3 days, but she loses the note and it falls into the hands of some random guy, and apparently he has to consider that legally binding
- He didn't want to move the Earth's moon because of the damage it would cause, but he had no problem repositioning two of Jupiter's moons to Earth's orbit and back, even though they didn't seem that much smaller

Spoiler: Apparently this won't mess up the tides, like moving the moon would...

Superdickery:

- Is so annoyed by Lois' smug attitude that he agrees to a bet that Clark Kent can get a story printed before she does, and intends to use his superpowers to cheat on it. But he still ends up losing.
- Carries a guy to a pack of baboons in Africa just to scare him for yelling at his subordinates. Baboons can and will kill you if you piss them off.
- Lois temporarily loses her voice, and Superman exploits a loophole in their bet since the note said he'd do whatever she told him to do, so he doesn't accept orders in writing
- As Clark, mocks Lois for having lost her voice

Power Tracker:

- The moon thing is the best feat we've had in a while, but it's still only a Low Herald level feat, so it only solidifies him at that tier for now, rather than pushing him past it.

Action Comics #160

Notes:

- Clark's Aunt Minerva, briefly mentioned in the previous issue, makes her only appearance here. She's Jonathan Kent's younger sister, and apparently the last other living Kent, implying that Jonathan and Martha are dead in this continuity.

Feat Catalogue:

- Uses super breath to knock off Aunt Minerva's glasses before she can see him in his Superman costume
- Grabs a boulder and flies it around at super speed in the air until it glows white-hot, then uses it to write a message in the sky over Metropolis (you'd think moving something so large so fast would create a bunch of sonic booms and wake up the entire city, though...)
- Speaks a phrase hundreds of times in a minute to get a parrot to remember it
- Uses X-ray vision to see clearly through thick fog
- Changes to Superman in what the narration describes as a "lightning-fast switch" (not sure if that's meant to be literal or not)
- Spins at super speed to act as a propeller and move a ferry boat at high speed out of the way of another boat that was about to crash into it
- Dismantles a building and rebuilds it across town at super speed, before the building's residents could reach the building's new location
- Deliberately wrecks multiple cars while driving them, as part of an exhibition on car safety. He's unhurt, of course.

Weirdness:

- Apparently eating "Welsh rarebit" gives Clark bad dreams, and he talks in his sleep, too.
- If this cover wasn't on Superdickery, it should have been

Superdickery:

- Tricks some workers into thinking a train is about to run them over, to convince them to cross the tracks via a safer path
- Sets up his aunt with a guy who came across as a creepy stalker, just to get her out of his hair

Power Tracker:

- Nothing to change the Low Herald Level ranking in this issue.

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #161

Notes:

- Apparently, due to being born on Krypton, Superman is still subject to Kryptonian laws, if there exists any authority left to enforce them
- Notable line of dialogue: "That's something even Superman can't do... hold back the tide of time!" - only because we haven't reached the Silver Age yet :kaga
- The Superman Museum in Metropolis appears in this issue for the first time (although see the notes for issue #164)
- Pieces of Kryptonite from the meteor in issue #158 appear in this issue (continuity!)
- As established before, Kryptonite radiation can penetrate lead, although in this issue it seems to weaken its effect somewhat, as when surrounded by the stuff covered by a layer of lead, Superman just says he'll remain weak until he starves to death, not die from the Kryptonite directly
- Apparently Kryptonite can remain deadly for centuries, indicating it has a fairly long half-life
- Superman travels to the sun for the first time in this title. Notably, this was before it was established that he was powered or healed by the sun, so it's a pure durability feat

Feat Catalogue:

- Carves a message into solid marble with his finger (in cursive, no less)
- Catches the falling arm of a giant steel statue of himself
- Fuses metal from an abandoned vehicle together with pressure to make a giant hammer
- Melts steel by hitting it really hard multiple times with the giant hammer, then repairs the statue
- Somehow sees through lead, despite saying that his X-ray vision can't see through it in the very same panel
- Despite being trapped in a Kryptonite - lined spaceship hurtling into space, he manages to make his way to the engine room, and is still invulnerable enough to use his arm to jam the engines, sending the ship off-course and into the sun, where the Kryptonite was destroyed
- With the Kryptonite gone, he's unharmed while in the sun (although he appears to only be in the outer layers, not close to the core)
- Breaks free of the sun's gravity and flies at the speed of light back to Earth

Spoiler: Then how are you seeing through it?

Spoiler: Superman's first-ever sundip?

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- In the Superman Museum, there are two rockets that were built by Toyman and Lex Luthor, respectively

Weirdness:

- Some common criminals are able to trick Superman into thinking that one of them is a Kryptonian using a plane and electromagnets to make him appear to fly, shooting blank bullets at him, and arm-wrestling him while holding a piece of Kryptonite. They then convince him that he has to move to a new planet where other Kryptonian survivors are rebuilding, and he just accepts this unquestioningly. Not his brightest moment.
- These criminals are also somehow able to afford and build a rocket that's advanced enough to seem Kryptonian and break orbit and fly into deep space.
- Another one of the scams they pulled was having the criminal throw a truck made of rubber high up into the air... except something that size made of rubber would still weigh far too much for a normal human to toss like that.

Superdickery:

- A very minor one, but when he is led to believe that he will have to leave Earth forever, he writes a letter to Lois telling her his secret
identity instead of telling her face - to - face (obviously, she never ends up actually reading it).

Power Tracker:

- The sun feat is another one that establishes him at Low Herald Level.

Action Comics #162

Notes:

- Finally a more interesting and challenging adversary (although not quite a villain) for Superman appears in this issue. It's just a one-shot character, though.
- The 4th dimensional Being known only as "It" (not Pennywise, as Stephen King was only 4 years old at the time this was published) has some interesting powers, but is significantly below the 5th dimensional Mr. Mxyzptlk. I swear, I'm not trying to justify vsbattles' dimensional tiering nonsense, though.
- The plot of this issue (a powerful alien menace turns out to just be a child that means no real harm) is similar to the plot of Fantastic Four #24, which I covered in my FF thread. It's also similar to the Star Trek TOS episode "The Squire of Gothos", although those came out 12 and 15 years after this comic was published, respectively.

Feat Catalogue:

- Catches a windmill that was torn out of the ground by a high wind
- Creates giant bolas out of two drums holding steel cables, and throws them at a collapsing skyscraper, tying it up and keeping it intact
- Flies at super speed to draw a tsunami away from Metropolis and safely out to sea
- Digs to the Earth's core, and is unharmed by the heat
- Returns to the surface, grabs some giant metal pipes and bends them into a shape, then lures the creature into one of them and blows into it with enough force to send it into space, although it doesn't work
- Somehow determines that, since "It" feeds on electricity, it was sent to this dimension by an electrical storm
- Gathers all of the storm clouds in the US and brings them to Metropolis to create a giant storm
- Builds a giant structure from metal found in city dumps.
- Holds a cable connected to the structure while standing on the tallest TV mast in Metropolis, channeling lightning through his body into the structure, which somehow replicates the effect of the storm and sends the creature back to its own dimension

Spoiler: Another good strength and durability feat

Spoiler: He's lucky this worked

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

The 4th-dimensional "It" displays the following feats and powers
* Bullets fired at it pass through harmlessly, but are deflected, twisted, and deformed by its body, and sent in other directions
* Spins at 'typhoon velocity' to create a strong enough wind to rip a windmill out of the ground
* Shrinks and hides so fast that Superman can't follow it
* Intercepts bombs dropped on it and destroys them with unknown force rays
* Grows larger in size
* Fires beams of force at a skyscraper, causing it to start collapsing
* Pushes a small speedboat across the bay so fast that it creates a giant tsunami that endangers Metropolis
* Absorbs electricity from a live wire
* Shown to be intangible when Superman tries to punch it
* Follows Superman to the core of the Earth, is unharmed by the pressure, and creates a shield to repel the magma
* Resists Superman's attempt to launch it into space, becoming a giant rainbow that covers the Earth, then returns to its original size
* Outruns Superman again, losing him

Weirdness:

- Odd line of dialogue: "Better check on it - and take a camera, Lois - maybe you'll get a good pix of the thing!"
- A photo Lois took of the creature appears in the Daily Planet, with its colors intact, although color photography wasn't common in newspapers until the early 70s.
- Superman comes to the conclusion that "It" is from another dimension, rather than another planet, simply because no astronomers have recently reported seeing any spaceships. Because 1951 Earth's telescopes were that good, apparently.
- Superman says that "the most intense of all heat" is "the molten rock that is the Earth's core!" - you were just in the sun last issue.

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- We're racking up the Low Herald Level feats with the Earth's core thing. Not sure if he'll reach past that level before we get to the Silver Age, though.

Action Comics #163

Notes:

- Superman is shown to be essentially defenseless against mind-reading telepathy in this issue, probably because he didn't yet have much (if any) experience with it. He has resisted hypnosis before, but the ability to shield his thoughts from prying brains seems to be something he hadn't yet learned at this point.

Feat Catalogue:

- Casually lifts a block of steel weighing 3 tons
- Travels to another location in Metropolis in moments
- Travels to a distant part of the world (looks Middle Eastern) in minutes
- Burrows "deep in the heart of the Earth" (doesn't look to be near the core this time, though)
- Flies at super speed through an Aurora Borealis, blending in and hoping to use the electrical static to avoid having his mind read, although it doesn't work
- Flies out into space (the narration states "out in the limitless universe") in seconds
- Rides a magnetic comet through space for hours
- Tricks a telepath by coming up with a plan when she wasn't reading his thoughts

Spoiler: Another casual space travel feat

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- A woman who was granted powers by a machine (see the Weirdness section) can read minds and telekinetically move objects (she says she can move any object wherever she wants at lightning speed, but that sounds like a NLF, although she does toss the aforementioned steel block into space)
- The woman, Susan, uses her powers to telekinetically move Lois to a distant mountainous region and then back nigh-instantly, without harming her
- She also reads a criminal's mind to find the location of a bomb he planted and launches it into space where it explodes harmlessly
- She can also send telepathic communications to the minds of others
- She reads Superman's thoughts from across the planet and telekinetically moves him next to her so fast he couldn't even tell what happened (either that or she teleported him)
- Her telepathy is a bit blocked by the magnetic field of a comet, but she still finds Superman's general location in space and moves every space object within 1000 miles of the area into the same place to catch him

Weirdness:

- The opening narration says that humans will develop strange powers a million years in the future, but then changes that to hundreds of years a few sentences later.
- The opening page (which also never happens in the story) shows Susan waiting for Superman "in the jungles of Venus" with two bug-eyed aliens, waiting to force him into marrying her.
- A random scientist invents a machine that can give anyone superpowers for 24 hours by "speeding up the evolutionary process" by 1 million years. Of course, evolution doesn't work like that, but it's hard to fault a Golden Age comic for this when mainstream sci-fi shows were still making the same mistake in the 1990s. Anyway, this machine gives its user telepathy and telekinesis.
- The scientist then destroys the machine, presumably because it was too dangerous
- Susan seems to lose all of her memories of the 24 hours she had her powers once they wear off

Superdickery:

- Doesn't really seem to care when Susan uses her powers to mess with Lois, or even to read people's minds without their permission

Power Tracker:

- Still Low Herald Level. It's unclear how far out into space he traveled, as the only indication is a ringed planet that may have been Saturn in the background. Also, a comet with a tail would have to be near a star, probably the sun, so it's probably safe to say that he didn't leave the solar system.

Action Comics #164

Notes:

- The opening page shows the message that Superman carved into marble with his finger in issue #161, although it seems to be the end of the message, when in issue #161 we only saw the beginning. The full message reads "Farewell, my friends on Earth. Best wishes, Superman."
- One of the trophies in the Superman Museum is an "image of the Prankster carved from soapstone by Superman in solving Prankster's double life crimes". I don't know if this story was covered in another title, or if it's just a story that was never shown.
- A famous "adventurer" says that he was planning to search for the lost continent of Atlantis. Should have started by asking Aquaman.
- It's shown here that Clark's glasses had clear lenses, since he doesn't actually need glasses, so anyone examining them would figure out that something is up. He replaces them in this issue with glasses that were actually designed for a near-sighted person.
- The actual Superman Museum itself first opens in this comic - what we saw previously was actually the Superman section of the Metropolis Museum
- There's a black - and - white PSA featuring Superboy in this issue

Feat Catalogue:

- Squeezes a bunch of sand in his hand hard enough to turn it into a glass sphere, which he then uses as a mirror to blind some criminals in a helicopter
- Pulls the helicopter down to the ground and catches the criminals
- Uses telescopic vision to see into a guy's house miles away and examine his trophy collection
- There's a sword that was bent when it hit him, and a diamond that he created from coal in the trophy room
- Uses telescopic vision to spot the guy again, this time in a far-away forest, and see what he is doing
- In a flashback, hears a forest fire from a long distance away, flies there in moments, and puts it out by flying at super speed and creating a vortex to remove the oxygen, distorting the shapes of all the trees in the forest in the process.
- Visits the scenes of thousands of his past exploits all around the world to examine them 'in mere moments'. Said exploits include
* Building a giant pot for a picnic
* Building a table in the sky accessed by a staircase so a surgeon could operate on a patient who had to remain at the altitude of a plane
* Building a giant lyre from a mountain
* Leaving an imprint of his body on lava from an erupting volcano
* Flying from Mexico to the South Pole, grabbing an iceberg, and returning before the lava could travel a few feet, then using the iceberg to cool the lava
* Shapes a ship's anchor into a giant corkscrew, and spins it around underwater at super speed to cancel out a natural maelstrom
- Destroys the original impression he made in the lava
- Expands his muscles and makes another impression, which will not match Clark Kent's body
- Travels to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean
- Destroys the giant corkscrew he created
- Creates another giant corkscrew to replace it, without the evidence the first one had that he was Clark Kent
- Throws sand at an iced-over pond fast enough to pit the surface, but not fast enough to break it, so Lois can gain traction and walk on it safely

Spoiler: Great speed and reaction feat

Spoiler: Limited shapeshifting, one of his lesser-known and lesser-used powers

Weirdness:

Superdickery:

- Casually uses his super powers to invade a man's privacy, just because he suspected that the guy was trying to discover his secret identity (he wasn't)
- Knocks Lois' hat off onto a frozen pond and makes her go retrieve it, causing her to stumble and nearly fall

Spoiler: He's trolling her now

Power Tracker:

- Low Herald Level, not much else to say.

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #165

Notes:

- Superman appears to lose a fight in this issue, but the whole thing was staged

Feat Catalogue:

- Flies to Mercury and mines a metal there that is not found on Earth, then builds a convincing - looking spaceship and an android out of it
- Yells loudly enough to be heard from high up in the sky
- Makes the ground shake while fighting an android in mid-air
- In order to fool a crime boss, Superman built the android and was continually switching places and costumes with it throughout the issue, so it's hard to know which of the following feats were performed by Superman, and which by the robot he created:
* Catches a falling sign weighing multiple tons and welds it back in place
* Rips the door off a safe
* Crushes a metal trophy in his hands
* Bends the safe's door back into place
* Uses some kind of jetpack to write messages in the sky
* Superman and the android punch each through walls, break lampposts on each other, throw manhole covers at each other, and fight with riveting machines
* One of them punches the other out of Metropolis, over its highest buildings
* Gathers tons of storm clouds to create a giant thunderstorm
* One directs the other into a lightning bolt from the storm
* One throws the other out of Metropolis, far out to sea
- Moves at "eye-blurring speed", punching a filing cabinet and causing all of the drawers to fly out and knock out some criminals
- Used ventriloquism to make the robot speak when he needed it to

Spoiler: Uh, blame his knowledge of Kryptonian technology, I guess...

Weirdness:

- The opening narration says that Superman can "leap incredible distances, laugh at bullets, and equal the strength of an Atlas". Oddly, the first part seems to be harking back to the early Golden Age, ignoring his flight power that he's had for years now.

Superdickery:

- In his unnecessarily convoluted plan to expose a criminal leader, Superman stages a fight with a robot he built himself that ends up causing tons of property damage to Metropolis. He also vandalizes and steals from a safe to get the trust of the criminals.

Power Tracker:

- Low Herald Level. The robot he built seemed to be at least comparable, although it was hard to tell since their fight was staged and they kept switching places.

Action Comics #166

Notes:

- Luthor doesn't know Clark is Superman, but he hates Clark anyway since he always writes stories in the papers exposing his criminal enterprises
- More writing around copyrights, with an appearance of "Bingling's Outdoor Circus"

Feat Catalogue:

- Shapes a large rock into a dome
- Pours molten steel over the rock and a tree and cools it rapidly to create a giant umbrella to protect Lois from volcanic debris
- Flies Lois from Mexico back to Metropolis
- Lifts a mountain on the moon and throws it to Earth, knocking away a comet right before it breaks up and prevents its fragments from hitting Lois (this throw would have had to be close to lightspeed, if not faster)
- Flies far from Metropolis in seconds to gather some distant clouds and bring a rainstorm over the city
- In seconds, flies underwater, searches a shipwreck, finds some silk, makes it into a parachute, then ties the parachute to Lois as she's falling from a plane so fast that he appears invisible and it seems as if her defective parachute worked properly
- Melts a bullet with X-ray(heat) vision before it hits its target

Spoiler: Is it just me, or are impressive feats like this becoming more common over the last few issues?

Spoiler: Not quite as impressive, but still pretty decent in terms of speed/reaction

Spoiler: And a fairly precise application of heat vision

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- Lex Luthor's laboratory is lined with lead so Superman can't easily find it (although you'd think he would find it odd that there was a big building completely covered in lead...)
- Kidnaps Perry White and replaces him with a robot
- Builds an "electronic ray" powerful enough to shatter a (small) comet

Weirdness:

- The opening narration refers to Lois as "Superman's pretty nemesis". Yeah, they argue a lot, and she and Clark compete for stories at the newspaper, but I'd hardly go so far as to call her his "nemesis".
- Astronomers identify a comet that will pass into the Earth's atmosphere, over Metropolis specifically, as the last remnant of a shattered planet from another solar system. That's... not how comets work at all.
- For some reason, Superman isn't able to use his X-ray vision to identify the robot imposter of Perry White. He only figures it out when he notices that the robot doesn't breathe.

Superdickery:

- Alters the weather to rain out a circus (and the rest of Metropolis) just so he won't have to cover it as Clark Kent

Power Tracker:

- Low Herald Level. Despite all the impressive feats lately, none of them have yet breached the Mid Herald barrier (the speed feat in issue #133 is the only one so far I'd say that reaches that level)

Action Comics #167

Notes:

- Superman says that Kryptonite has similar properties to radium, and it could serve as a substitute power source, and indeed it does help power a rocket in this issue.
- This story involves "one of the world's few samples of Kryptonite" - since most of the meteor was returned to space, and the majority of the leftover material was probably in that rocket in issue #161, this seems accurate. Of course there will be a lot more that shows up later.
- There's a black-and-white PSA featuring Superman in this issue

Feat Catalogue:

- Can adjust the wavelength of his X-ray vision to fire beams of visible light from his eyes, to illuminate the ocean floor
- Searches 100 square miles of ocean floor in a short amount of time. Implies he could search the entire ocean floor but it would take too long.
- Holds up a collapsing bridge
- Detects an ultra high frequency radio transmitter with his X-ray vision
- Flies at the speed of light (according to the narration) to a factory's loading platform, cuts the rubber off of a tire and forms it into a hundred yard long rubber rope, then uses it to catch one of the mysterious spheres that have been causing trouble in Metropolis
- The spheres have some kind of hypnotic effect on people watching them due to their rapidly whirling colors. Superman seems to be immune to this.
- Uses telescopic X-ray vision to see into a laboratory from a distance, and even hear what the guy is saying inside of it
- Flies at "rocket speed" and reaches a distant state in the US in moments
- Burrows down a hundred yards into the earth and moves a giant chunk of iron ore several hundred miles underground, placing it under the laboratory, which creates a magnetic field that prevents radar or radio communications from working in the area.
- Spins at super speed underwater, creating a whirlpool that draws down a box of Kryptonite to the ocean floor, which remains far enough away that it doesn't affect him
- Sees an alien ship after it has left Earth and is probably traveling interstellar distances at FTL speed, although he notes that it is "almost out of sight"

Spoiler: Another new vision power, and yet 'heat vision' hasn't been named yet

Weirdness:

- The mysterious spheres are assumed to be robots for most of the issue, until it's actually revealed that they're crash-landed alien bugs in armored shells, stealing materials to make rocket fuel to power their ship and leave Earth. Certainly creative, at least.

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- Nothing here to change his ranking from Low Herald Level.

Action Comics #168

Notes:

Feat Catalogue:

- A ray from an alien planet (presumably outside of the solar system) pulls Superman into space towards it at FTL speeds. He says he could break free but wants to know why it's happening, so he chooses not to.
- Captures a giant alien bird and builds a cage at super speed to contain it
- Uses a giant "Jovian Rope-Worm" to tie up some "Venusian diggers" and put them in a cage
- Somehow uses his X-ray vision to determine that some alien thought control crystals are fake (how can he tell that?)
- Switches a real crystal with a fake one at super speed so that no one sees it happen, not even the guy wearing the crystal
- Stops and restrains a giant "Plutonian Burden-Beast"
- Flies into space, finds a swarm of metal meteors, and punches them back to planet Zor, aiming them precisely at uninhabited areas
- Forms metal from the meteorites into a giant airtight ship to load all of the alien animals onto
- Flies the ship with the animals through space, taking them all back to their native planets, then flies back to Earth, all under his own power

Spoiler: FTL tractor beam = no big deal

Spoiler: Speed, strength, and precision

Spoiler: Another fairly impressive FTL feat

Weirdness:

- The surface of Venus is briefly shown in this issue as having trees and grass. Although to be fair, no one knew what the surface of Venus actually looked like until the first probe landed there in 1975. That's why so much old school sci-fi had it being an inhabited, Earthlike planet.
- Less excusable is the notion that Mars was populated by giant spiders, and Jupiter by "giant dragon-birds", though
- The aliens from planet Zor have 'telenewspapers', which are basically animated newspapers that work like movie reels. Yet apparently they still have to be printed and bought individually. The idea of something like the internet just wasn't in the minds of most futurist writers back then, I guess.
- In a very Silver Age - style plot, Superman assumes a temporary secret identity on the planet Zor as "Klarkash Kenton", a reporter for the "Daily Zorian", and is looked upon with suspicion by fellow reporter "Lura Lajos".
- Misspelling: "There's one way to prove or disprove my susicion!"

Spoiler: Who says you can't go home again?

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- Still Low Herald Level, although if feats like this keep up, we'll be solidly on our way to Mid Herald.

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #169

Notes:

- One panel in this issue uses both cliches of "faster than a speeding bullet" and Superman being mistaken for a plane. I think the writers were actually aware that these were becoming cliches at this point.
- In this issue, another Kryptonite meteor lands on Earth, apparently the largest one yet

Spoiler: Cliches ho!

Feat Catalogue:

- Helps a construction crew tear up a street and prepare to build the foundation of a new hospital
- Uproots a tree and builds a giant bow and arrow out of it "at rocket speed", then fires it near some dinosaurs to herd them into a corral he created with the arrows fired from the bow.
- Digs a large pit underground to put the Kryptonite in
- Builds harnesses for two dinosaurs and manages to train them to move the Kryptonite meteor so he doesn't have to get close to it

Weirdness:

- The plot here involves Lois and Clark stumbling upon a "Lost World" style jungle valley where dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures exist, alongside stone age humans. And these humans, completely cut off from civilization, somehow speak perfect English.
- Clark states that the valley has been isolated from the rest of the world for millions of years. Yet apparently the primates there evolved into blond, blue-eyed, modern-looking humans.
- Despite the Kryptonite meteor landing with enough force to trigger seismograph readings from across the planet, and knock enough Kryptonite dust into the atmosphere to affect Superman from that same distance, it's found just sitting in a small depression in the ground, completely intact, with no visible crater.
- In addition to prehistoric creatures and cavemen, there are unicorns in the valley. Yes, unicorns.
- One of the 'cavemen' knowing what glasses are, and that they are called glasses, is considered suspicious. But the fact that all of them speak English in the first place somehow isn't. It's later revealed that that caveman had been to the outside world and learned about it, but it's never implied that he taught the rest of them English.
- Somehow the Kryptonite meteor was reviving the plant life in the valley and allowing it to grow better. This was never explained.

Spoiler: Cavemen riding on a chariot pulled by a unicorn. Now I've seen everything

Superdickery:

- Leaves Lois alone with a tribe of cavemen. There's no way that could possibly go wrong.

Power Tracker:

- No real notable feats in this issue, so he remains at Low Herald Level.

Action Comics #170

Notes:

Feat Catalogue:

- Rubs his hands at super speed against the roof of an underground tunnel, creating frictional heat which is enough to make the spot on the ground above the tunnel as warm as summer in the middle of a snowy winter.
- Flies to the moon and carves a mountain into a statue of himself, which is large enough to be seen from Earth with a medium-sized telescope
- Spots some criminals from miles in the air while returning to Earth and catches them, tying their cars up with cables
- Says that he will return the mountain he carved to its original shape
- Runs across a street to intercept bullets fired from multiple police revolvers, after they were fired
- Digs up iron ore, rolls it up at super speed to melt it, and forms it into a giant flagpole. He apparently also mixed other metals into it, allowing it to be super strong and flexible

Spoiler: I don't believe that perspective can explain this...

Weirdness:

- When we first seen the moon statue, it looks to be of reasonable size, but later on it appears as a significant fraction of the size of the moon itself, and looks as if it is perched on top of the crescent moon
- Another example of the "Talking is a free action" trope, as a normal person is able to say several sentences after some bullets are fired but before they travel even a few feet.

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- Nothing too notable here, unless you take the size of the statue compared to the moon in the second scan as being literal. Either way, he's still Low Herald Level.

Action Comics #171

Notes:

Feat Catalogue:

- On the intro page, there are newspaper articles talking about how Superman saved a sinking ocean liner, and captured bandits who were using an armored car
- While testing weapons for the military, he takes point-blank shots from a dozen high-powered, armor piercing artillery cannon shells with no damage, and the shells disintegrate into powder upon hitting him
- No-sells more military weapons, up to and including an atomic bomb
- Weaves reins and halters from thousands of blades of grass at super speed, fast enough to use them to stop a stampede of horses before they can run more than a few feet
- Searches (seemingly literally) every inch of ground from Metropolis to the military proving grounds (a distance earlier stated to be many miles) within hours
- A doctor gives Clark a physical and says that he's the finest physical specimen he's ever seen
- No-sells more weapons, including tank shells and rockets from jet fighters, saying that he doesn't even feel the latter. Flamethrowers then only tickle him.
- A 60 ton tank tries to run over him but it tips over and he catches it
- Spins at super speed to create air currents to draw two thunderclouds together, and then intercepts a bolt of lightning from them with no effect
- Rolls a giant millstone like a bowling ball to crush some criminals' getaway car
- Tanks every weapon the US military has, including another atomic bomb, to no effect (although the A-Bomb does lift him into the air with its explosion)
- Flies around a building at super speed while carrying an iron manhole cover, creating a magnetic field to erase an audio recording on a tape
- Buries a time capsule "far beneath the Earth"

Spoiler: In case you forgot he was nuke-proof

Spoiler: Not sure how fast he would need to be to do this...

Weirdness:

- The opening narration refers to Superman as "The most amazing human of our century". Except he's not human...
- When a doctor uses a hammer on Clark's knee to test his reflexes, the hammer shatters. Doesn't really make much sense unless the doctor was swinging it with way more speed and force than he should have been.
- Lois got someone who looked very similar to Clark to dress as him, and apparently the shock of seeing his 'double' caused the real Clark to lose a few minutes of his memory. Weird.

Superdickery:

- Erases the data on every tape in a radio shop just to protect his secret identity

Power Tracker:

- Nothing here that we haven't seen before. Still Low Herald Level.

Action Comics #172

Notes:

- It's again shown that Krypton exploded from an atomic reaction, and Clark's rocket disintegrated after he was removed from it

Feat Catalogue:

- As Clark Kent, surreptitiously presses his hand against the side of a falling elevator car he's in, causing it to slow down and safely reach the ground floor.
- Fixes a broken statue with "super-pressure"
- Braces and then fixes a collapsing building, welding the broken girders with more "super-pressure"
- Squeezes some pebbles in his hands with more "super-pressure", then polishes them with "super-friction", creating imitation gemstones, then forms them into an exact copy of a talisman
- Picks up a leaky water tank and pours it from high up in the air, causing a localized rain to fall on only one specific person
- Uses super breath to blow off the man's hat from long range, so he can't see where the wind came from
- Flies into space at the speed of light, grabs a small meteor, and throws it down to Earth at a specific spot
- Shakes a building just enough to simulate a small earthquake, causing two giant dice decorations on the roof to fall off, but makes sure they land near some people and not on them
- Moves at super speed to create a dust storm and alters a sign while unseen
- Uses microscopic vision and super speed to identify and pick thousands of four-leaf clovers and place them in one area, in seemingly no more than a few minutes
- Bends a piece of scrap metal into a giant horseshoe
- Somehow makes a giant prism from material in a scrapyard, and flies it in front of the sun to create a rainbow

Spoiler: Decent little feat here

Spoiler: Is there anyone more gullible than Lois Lane?

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- Jor-El built a talisman that can emit invisible rays that destroy iron around it, in order to protect baby Clark's rocket from meteorites. It can be turned on and off. Clark still has it, although he notes that its power has weakened over time.

Spoiler: First panel here reminds me of certain people's attitude towards climate change

Weirdness:

- Apparently Superman thinks that the best way to convince Lois that she's no longer cursed is to bring a lot of good luck symbols to her at once... and it works.

Superdickery:

- When Lois' life is in danger from a "curse", he cares more about protecting his secret identity than saving her
- When Lois thinks that she's cursed, she tries to use it to force a guy (whose only crime was being a cheapskate) to sell his land for a city housing project. Superman decides to help her by using his powers to keep trolling the guy until he gives in.

Power Tracker:

- Low Herald Level, again.

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #173

Notes:

- I believe this is the first time that Smallville is mentioned by name in this title

Feat Catalogue:

- Flies from Metropolis to Smallville "instantly"
- Uses X-ray(heat) vision to melt some metal tongs being used to carry a case of radium
- Intercepts and destroys multiple antiaircraft shells before they hit a flying robot
- Picks up a bandstand from a music stadium and flies it to the top of a hill overlooking Metropolis in "an instant"
- Uses the shape of the bandstand to enhance his hearing to locate the robot no matter where it is in Metropolis
- Takes a lens from a giant observatory telescope and uses it to focus sunlight onto a top secret film reel the robot stole, damaging it and rending it worthless (as he couldn't use his X-ray vision to do so without triggering a bomb)
- Digs through a hill and into a train tunnel, removing goods from a train before the robot can steal them, while being careful not to set off the robot's detectors that will cause the bomb in Smallville to go off if they detect him using super speed
- Destroys the robot with a single punch. Said robot was previously shown to be bulletproof and capable of smashing through brick walls and ripping apart steel safes with ease.
- Repairs the damage from a bomb that went off in Smallville when no one was there. The repair job was so good that no one could even tell that a bomb went off at all.

Weirdness:

- Narration again refers to Superman as human

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- Still Low Herald Level.

Action Comics #174

Notes:

- At the end of the story, Superman says that he was tempted to toss a group of criminals "straight into the Milky Way". Since Earth is in the Milky Way itself, I'm not sure what he means by this... but I guess generously it could mean throwing them to the far side of the galaxy, if you want to take the maximum possible interpretation, and take it literally. Also, obligatory reference.

Spoiler: "Dragon toss your ass into the Milky Way" just doesn't have the same ring to it

Feat Catalogue:

- Breaks out of steel chains just by flexing his muscles, noting that this is a trick he's done many times before (a reference to one of his iconic images)
- Picks up and carries a crane while using its hook to lift a car, in order to stay out of range of the Kryptonite the criminals in the car are carrying
- Uses microscopic vision to identify Kryptonite residue on a chemical vat
- Intercepts bullets from a Tommy gun before they can hit the mayor and his assistants right next to him
- Sits inside a giant radium pile covered with special metal designed to withstand the atomic heat, and moves it around at super speed to tie up a helicopter.

Weirdness:

- A piece of Kryptonite is accidentally mixed in with a vat of chemicals used to make synthetic fibers, and it makes a thread that is effectively indestructible. But somehow it doesn't have the deleterious properties of Kryptonite. They actually try to explain this, by saying that "The Kryptonite must've had its radiations changed into a powerful bonding agent when mixed with the other chemicals", which still makes no sense. What makes even less sense is that milk, of all things, dissolves it.
- We have yet another example of criminals trying to steal radium. I guess the stuff was valuable, but back then they probably didn't appreciate just how dangerous it was. I can't see most people today being so willing to get near it.

Spoiler: It was around this time that Kryptonite started becoming an all-purpose plot device that could do anything

Superdickery:

- Doesn't care about collateral damage when trying to break free of his Kryptonite bonds, and accidentally knocks down a huge chandelier
- Seriously considers murdering some crooks by throwing them into space

Power Tracker:

- If he could actually throw those guys to the far end of the galaxy, that would be a Mid to High Herald level feat, but it's just a vague, unsupported statement that probably shouldn't be taken too seriously. I only really noted it because of the wording. So Low Herald Level.

Action Comics #175

Notes:

- There's a PSA in this issue featuring Superman, promoting UNICEF

Feat Catalogue:

- A random evil genius mad scientist (with a giant egghead-style brain) says that his brain and memory are only almost as good as Superman's.
- Uses super hearing to hear a burglar alarm from miles away
- Spins the propeller of a damaged plane at super speed, allowing it to continue flying
- Molds some scraps of metal into a fake replica of a new type of motor, and then, moving too fast to be seen, switches the real motor in a crook's hand for the fake one, so no one realizes what happened
- Destroys a falling vase at super speed, moving his hand so fast it looks like the vase just broke against a guy's head
- Causes another guy to seem to fly indoors by moving him with super breath

Weirdness:

- The mad scientist villain in this issue recruits 4 underlings who he uses his technology to give different 'superpowers' to, including one guy who is equipped with a bulletproof suit of lightweight plastic armor. All five of them run a police blockade, and the police fail to stop them because their bullets just bounce off the armored suit. Because apparently they never thought of shooting the other criminals who weren't bulletproof...
- Lois implies at the end of the story that Superman is the only person around with real superpowers. Even if we ignore the other DC superhero books and say they weren't in the same continuity at the time, we've seen several other people gain various superpowers in this title so far...

Superdickery:

- Tears the roof off a building in order to surprise and capture some criminals. It was never stated or implied that the criminals owned the building.

Power Tracker:

- Low Herald Level, again.

Action Comics #176

Notes:

- The cover of this issue was featured on Superdickery, and for good reason.
- Lois actually proposes to Clark in this issue, and they have an engagement party. Obviously they don't actually end up getting married.
- There's a PSA in this issue featuring Superboy, advocating for kids to join an air rifle sport club sponsored by the NRA. That didn't age well...

Spoiler: The infamous cover

Feat Catalogue:

- Hears a police radio broadcast
- Flies from the Daily Planet building to a hillside outside of Metropolis in moments
- Uses X-ray(heat) vision to dislodge a boulder on the hillside, creating a small avalanche
- Squeezes the lead from some pencils into a diamond
- Flies to South Africa, finds a gold nugget in an undiscovered mine, and returns back "moments later"
- Digs underground and rescues a miner from a collapsed mine shaft
- Lifts a swingset into the sky while rich kids swing on it
- Seeds a 200 acre farm in a few seconds
- Carves a giant vault with a combination lock out of a mountain
- At lightning speed, according to the narration, he picks up and puts together thousands of shredded letters on the office floor, then reads them all at super speed with X-ray vision.
- Rubs a crowbar at super speed, turning it into a magnet powerful enough to pull an escaping car back. I don't think it works that way...

Spoiler: The diamond trick again, and a nice speed feat

Spoiler: That makes... sense?

Weirdness:

- The entire plot is a weird one

Superdickery:

- Charges lots of money for helping people, as part of a plot to gather a fortune and lure a criminal into trying to steal it so he could catch him. Still acts like a dick in the process.
- As Clark, refuses to show up to his engagement party with Lois.

Spoiler: Classic superdickery

Power Tracker:

- Nothing to write home about here, so still Low Herald Level.

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #177

Notes:

- Someone in Metropolis says that there has never been a dust storm in that part of the country
- The plot of this issue involves an escaped Nazi general using the plans for Nazi superweapons that were never built in the war to commit crimes. These include an "artificial satellite" equipped with a giant mirror to focus sunlight and burn targets on the Earth's surface. This was published 4 years before Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, was launched in real life. Although you might think this is rather fantastical and should belong in the Weirdness section, in point of fact, the Nazis actually did construct plans for such a weapon. Fortunately, it was never built in real life, and unfortunately, it was never deployed in this comic either, so we never got to see Superman deal with it.

Spoiler: Believe it or not, that first one was actually a real thing that the Nazis were trying to build

Feat Catalogue:

- Changes to Superman and is in the air in a split second before a destroyed plane can crash
- The plane had been cut in half, but he safely flies the front half (where all the passengers and crew were) to the ground.
- Takes out a large spool of wire, ties a knot in it, and throws it over a skyscraper to prevent it from collapsing, all "at lightning speed"
- Destroys a giant bulldozer that was crushing skyscrapers and demolished a bank. He notes that he actually felt resistance when destroying it, indicating that the giant blade in front must have been made of "specially hardened steel"
- A giant wrecking ball, ten times as large as a normal one, deployed from an aircraft, smashes into the Daily Planet building. Before it can retract for another pass, Superman performs "a lightning change of costume" and reduces the ball to iron filings with a punch. Then, before the building can fully collapse, he uses an elevator cable to hold it back together and fix it (at least to the point where it wouldn't immediately collapse)
- Says that he will be able to spot anything attacking the city from miles away. Unfortunately, he didn't count on the Nazis attacking from underground.
- Before the city can collapse due to the underground Nazi drilling machine, Superman cuts a bunch of trees from a forest at super speed, takes them underground, and uses them to prop up the tunnels so the buildings above won't fall.
- Intercepts, easily overpowers, and captures a Nazi rocket (a similar rocket was earlier able to lift a huge freighter, filled with many tons of gold, out of the ocean and across many miles)
- Detonates the remainder of the Nazi weapons with his X-ray(heat) vision

Weirdness:

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- A few lower-ends in this issue (mainly regarding his speed, although that can be explained by him not wanting to take a chance of risking lives) but overall still Low Herald Level.

Action Comics #178

Notes:

Feat Catalogue:

- Changes costumes and moves at super speed to play multiple parts in the same movie, appearing to be up to 7 differently-clothed people at once, as well as manipulating various weapons and heavy machinery, as well as filming in multiple locations, all in seemingly a few minutes

Spoiler: Acting!

Weirdness:

- Another odd premise. A criminal scientist invents a way to give people custom-made dreams (by making them sleep in these indoor tents, having them wear headphones that play sounds, and using movie projectors to play scenes on the walls of the tents, with specially-devised movies he created that can induce hypnotic effects) and he uses this to give criminals more confidence in exchange for a percentage of the money they make. I can think of about three thousand better ways to use this technology...
- Clark is playing the role of Superman in a movie, and when someone tries to kill him by replacing the fake bullets in the scene with real ones, they still bounce off (because he actually is Superman), but oddly, he doesn't seem to be able to tell the difference between the fake and real bullets.
- Misspelling: "Kidnaped"

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- Very impressive (if unquantifiable) speed/reaction/thought speed feat, but still Low Herald Level.

Action Comics #179

Notes:

- Superman is given a dog in this issue, a Bloodhound named Sniffer (really a plan by a criminal to discover his secret identity). This was about 2 years before Krypto would first debut.
- There is an anti-racism PSA featuring Superman in this issue. Pretty progressive for 1953.

Spoiler: This was 11 years before the Civil Rights Act

Feat Catalogue:

- Flies to a forest a thousand miles away, and a huge paper factory (distance to the latter unknown), all in a split second
- Flies from Metropolis to Mapleville (shown to be somewhere in the vicinity of South Dakota) in seconds
- Remodels his new house at super speed, including installing a communications room that can 'keep him in touch with danger points all over the world'
- Reads half a million enclosed letters with X-ray vision in a few minutes.
- In an equally short amount of time, he sorts all of the letters, writes replies to all of them addressed to him (which seemed to be the majority), and throws them all precisely to their destinations all across the USA
- Spins at super speed to create a miniature tornado to clean all the litter off of a street, then directs it all into a garbage truck
- As a bridge starts to fail when a train travels over it, Superman flies to a stretch of abandoned train tracks, removes them at super speed, and brings them back and uses them to reinforce the bridge so the train can safely finish crossing
- Off-panel, apparently deals with a volcanic eruption in "Indo-China" inside of one night.
- Breaks off the top of a chimney and uses super breath to blow through it and put out a forest fire
- Uses invisible X-ray vision to trigger the Daily Planet's sprinkler systems

Spoiler: Some questionable aerodynamics here...

Weirdness:

Superdickery:

- Is seemingly completely oblivious to all of the chaos and disorder his presence is causing in Mapleville, until a mob with torches and signs comes to his house to complain

Power Tracker:

- We get another very nice speed, reaction, and precision feat, but this kind of thing isn't going to boost him past Low Herald Level.

Action Comics #180

Notes:

- In this issue, Superman puts on a telethon for charity, planning to raise $100,000,000.00 (Over $1.1 billion in today's money). He narrowly succeeds.

Feat Catalogue:

- Catches a bullet in his teeth and eats it
- Twists a steel bar into a knot
- Is locked in a steam room at a temperature of 10,000 degrees F for 10 minutes, and is unharmed
- Dredges the bottom of a river with his bare hands, picking up a huge amount of junk, and deposits it in a nearby junkyard
- Is unharmed by "the hardest steel saw in existence" and it bends out of shape when trying to cut him
- Unharmed and unmoved when a 40-ton tank tries to run over him
- Swallows the flame from an acetylene torch that could cut through a steel girder
- Breaks out of steel chains just by breathing
- Inhales and blows away all of the smoke from a volcanic crater
- Polishes rock to form a giant mirror to protect a camera from the heat of nearby lava
- Bathes in the lava lake of the volcano "Mount Kalawa" (which, as far as I can tell, is fictional)
- Melts a mountain made of ice with his X-ray(heat) vision. The narration says that he was using it at full strength, and this is the most intensive HV feat yet, but it shows that that power was not nearly as powerful as it would later become.
- Is unharmed by a cyclotron beam firing 450,000,000 volts at him. Notably it is said that it can smash atoms, but doesn't affect any of the atoms in Superman's body.
- Looks inside a safe deposit box in a distant bank with telescopic X-ray vision
- Uses X-ray vision to fuse the wires of a signal box and make a telephone ring, then uses ventriloquism to fake a call from Clark Kent over the telephone
- Uses friction to transform a large piece of quartz into "the largest diamond in the world"
- Punches the diamond into pieces
- He performed all of the previous feats (and was implied to have performed many others) over a continuous period of 3 days without any rest

Spoiler: Potential atomic level destruction hax resistance?

Weirdness:

- Some criminals, who recently killed their boss, are trying to use Superman to find where he hid his treasure, by making him search for it on the telethon. One of their ideas is to look inside the lava lake of an active volcano, as they figure their boss could have put his fortune in an insulated box and dropped it in there. How he would have possibly retrieved it, though, is never considered.
- Superman says that he sees no harm in melting an entire mountain made of ice in the Arctic. Obviously, this was before global warming became a concern.

Superdickery:

- The first time we've had a 4-issue post with no notable acts of Superdickery (aside from being slightly oblivious in one instance). Good job!

Power Tracker:

- As no one asked him to fly across the galaxy or move/destroy any planets, he's still Low Herald Level for now.

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #181

Notes:

- The opening narration says that only one element in all the universe (Kryptonite) can hurt Superman. The various other varieties of Kryptonite weren't introduced yet, and his other weaknesses weren't exactly "elements" (and also weren't introduced yet, AFAIK)
- Another Kryptonite meteor had fallen to Earth the previous year, and Superman knew about it, but since it fell into the depths of the ocean he didn't do anything about it

Feat Catalogue:

- Flies and dives five miles down to the bottom of the ocean
- Flies from one gangster's hideout to another (distance unknown) in seconds
- Uses microscopic vision to determine that the properties of certain substances have been transmuted by cosmic rays
- Flies into interstellar space (at least light-weeks away, judging from the dialogue), moves a meteor out of orbit and destroys the phenomenon creating the rays in space, all while being weakened by said rays. He says he wouldn't have been able to survive if he was caught in the explosion (probably due to the weakening effect).
- Uses X-ray(heat) vision to melt through a pane of glass, then melt a diamond a criminal is wearing without injuring him

Spoiler: Just some context for the following feat

Spoiler: This is planet level... I think?

Spoiler: Nice little HV feat

Weirdness:

- The plot of this issue has Superman become immune to Kryptonite, but in exchange he becomes vulnerable in the same way to diamonds (a much more common substance). His X-ray vision can also see through lead now, but even his normal vision can't see through transparent glass anymore. This is caused due to a burst of "super-cosmic rays" from a planetary collision in space that temporarily creates this effect (perhaps similar to what happened in issue #63). What's even weirder is that it's implied that the rays didn't actually affect Superman, but rather switched the properties of all of the Kryptonite and diamonds and lead and glass on Earth. These effects wear off by the end of the issue.

Superdickery:

- One from Lois, as she tosses a piece of Kryptonite at Clark Kent just to try to test if he's Superman or not (knowing that if he is, it could have killed him)

Power Tracker:

- Another instance of clear FTL flight, but it's a bit hard to understand what he actually did when he got there, as it seems that he used a meteor to destroy a cosmic ray source that was created by two planets that had already collided? I guess that's planet level but I'm unsure. It's also notable that he did it while being weakened. He's still Low Herald Level for now.

Action Comics #182

Notes:

- The destruction of Krypton is again stated to have been an atomic explosion, specifically that it exploded from "gathering atomic pressure at the core of the planet"
- Since this was still before the yellow sun was established as the source of his powers, Superman says he can't fly on Krypton due to its intense gravity. Recall in issue #161 that he was able to exceed the sun's escape velocity, so Krypton's gravity in this version must be pretty insane.
- The narration says that Superman experienced pain for the first time when he was injured by the gamma gun. I guess the pain from Kryptonite exposure doesn't count.
- The fake Krypton, its artificial gravity deactivated, is left floating in space at the end of this issue. No clue if we'll ever see it again.

Feat Catalogue:

- Flies into space at the speed of light to visit the "New Planet Krypton", flying past Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.
- Superman says that he knows what Krypton used to look like because he once traveled through the time barrier to the past and visited it (maybe in another title?)
- Builds a tank out of Kryptonian technology, using advanced Kryptonian tools
- Survives the destruction of the tank and is only slightly injured and bruised by the alien weapon that destroyed it
- Once he deactivates the artificial gravity generators on the imitation Krypton, he becomes immune to the gamma guns

Spoiler: Super gravity = weaker Golden Age Superman, apparently

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- Kryptonian scientists were able to build a perfect replica of their own planet, down to the tiniest detail. Although it was a hollow shell with artificial gravity generators to mimic Krypton's gravity.
- They also had interplanetary weapons
- They hand handheld weapons known as "gamma guns", which can one-shot a tank made of advanced Kryptonian materials which are far more durable than anything on Earth, and injured Superman while he was in the tank. It's unclear if these weapons were created by Kryptonians or their alien enemies, though. Either way, they should be on par technologically. Note that these weapons were unable to harm Superman once the false planet's artificial gravity was deactivated.
- They have healing balms that can quickly cure injuries
- They have a 'teleplanetary projector' that can project a 'combined sound-light wave' across space to Earth, which manifested as multiple giant holograms of Superman's head appearing all over the world, and translated his message into every Earth language

Spoiler: Those Kryptonians thought big

Weirdness:

- Earth's astronomers are somehow able to identify the planet entering the solar system as Krypton. Maybe Superman gave them pictures of what it used to look like?
- When the "New Krypton" enters the solar system, Superman says that it's following Krypton's old orbit around the sun. Except it was established, even in this continuity, that Krypton was never that close to Earth's sun, and didn't orbit it.
- Superman says that he can't use his X-ray vision on New Krypton due to its greater atmospheric density
- Superman can only remain underwater on Krypton for a few minutes. "Because of the greater exertion, I need more oxygen!" he explains. Yet wasn't it previously established that he didn't need oxygen at all?
- The New Krypton here is actually a replica of the original, built by Kryptonians, to fool extragalactic invaders. What.
- Superman again implies that Krypton used to be in the same solar system as Earth, but then he begins talking about how time is measured differently in different galaxies, so maybe he meant it was in the same galaxy?
- There are may more scientific errors in this comic. I know it's from 1953, but still, this one was particularly bad compared to a lot of what we have seen before.

Spoiler: RELATIVITY DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY!

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- I guess Low Meta Level under the fake Krypton's artificial gravity? Low Herald Level otherwise.

Action Comics #183

Notes:

- The opening narration states that Superman is immune to "every known weapon". We've seen before that this isn't completely true.

Feat Catalogue:

- Disarms a bunch of robbers at super speed, then crushes their guns into scrap metal and forms them into a giant handcuff, which he uses to tie them up
- Catches a cannonball fired from an antique cannon at point-blank range and throws it back at his attacker
- Identifies a tiny trace of Kryptonite (not enough to affect him) with his microscopic vision
- Shouts so loudly that it "echoes like a thousand thunderstorms in the sky". The vibrations from his voice also crack the walls of Luthor's fortress.
- Takes a shot from Luthor's Kryptonite artillery shell, which the latter thought would kill him, but it only knocked him out.
- Despite being weakened by the Kryptonite, uses X-ray(heat) vision to burn a hole in the fuel tank of Luthor's rocket, causing it to run out of fuel and fall back to Earth
- Survives the crash-landing of the rocket in the sea, despite still being weakened by the Kryptonite

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- Lex Luthor somehow manages to sneak into the Daily Planet building and place a tiny tape recorder with a prerecorded message onto Clark Kent's typewriter that activates when he strikes a key.
- Lex built a jet fighter piloted by a robot to attack Superman
- Luthor had a portable spectroscope to analyze matter with
- Refines a bunch of spent ammunition that was used on Superman into liquid Kryptonite
- Broadcasts his face and voice on every TV and radio in the country
- Luthor builds a rocket to send Superman into interstellar space, after being weakened by Kryptonite (didn't some villains already try this in issue #161?)

Weirdness:

- Luthor's plan this time is to shoot so many bullets and other weapons at Superman and then collect them, because apparently when any metal hits him it undergoes a tiny chemical/atomic change and gains some of the properties of Kryptonite, and if enough of it is brought together, it can be refined to create real Kryptonite.
- It's said that the police can't take any action because Luthor hasn't committed any crimes. Except threatening to kill Superman, and hijacking TV and radio broadcasts nationwide...

Spoiler: I have a hunch this phenomenon won't ever be mentioned again...

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- Nothing too notable here, so still Low Herald Level.

Action Comics #184

Notes:

- It's stated in this issue that buffalo (American bison) were nearly extinct, with less than 100 left in the USA, which was true at the time this was published. Their populations have recovered a lot today.

Feat Catalogue:

- Sees a truck about to collide with a recreation of a covered wagon, and, after a "lightning-swift change of costume", stops it
- Takes a giant carnival tent, reshapes it into a tube, and gathers all of the sand from a huge sandstorm and relocates it to the shore of a lake to create a beach
- Digs 300 feet underground to a water spring and brings the water to the surface
- Breaks off a huge boulder from a mountain, and uses "super-pressure" to form it into a ramp for a herd of buffalo to run upwards onto, diverting them away from the covered wagon
- Wraps up the buffalo in a net of vines and delivers them to a government game preserve
- Before some mounted horsemen can cross what looks to be only a meter or two, Superman digs underground, finds copper ore, forms it into a wire, ties it between two trees to create a slingshot, carves a giant boomerang from a dead tree trunk, calculates the precise angle and distance to fire it, and uses it (with the wire attached) to capture the attackers
- Grabs a burning barrel of gunpowder and throws it onto a cliff before it can explode, aiming precisely enough to knock down and daze a guy without hurting him

Spoiler: 1950s casual racism... good speed/reaction feat, though

Weirdness:

- A Native American idol of "Punwahee" is a plot device in this issue. According to my research (aka Wikipedia and Google), no such figure exists in any Native American mythology.
- Native Americans are referred to here as "painted redmen" and "redskins"... *nervous collar tug*
- An overly elaborate Scooby-Doo style plot involves a businessman trying to trick his business partner into thinking he's insane so he can take over his company, by recreating all of the same circumstances that his ancestor experienced in a covered wagon 100 years previously. To do this, he uses a giant wind machine to create a sandstorm, imports a herd of buffalo from Lithuania, and hires a bunch of goons to dress up as Native Americans (complete with redface, apparently) to stage an attack.

Spoiler: Well, at least Lois is making herself useful for once

Superdickery:

- Another four issues without any notable dickery! The Silver Age is coming up though, so you can bet we'll be seeing a lot more soon.

Power Tracker:

- Low Herald Level, again.

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #185

Notes:

- Apparently there's a gallery in Metropolis of just photos of Superman. I guess it's part of the Superman Museum?
- One of the photos shown in this issue is of Superman battling the extradimensional "It", from issue #162.
- There's also a photo of Superman carrying Santa Claus to an orphanage. It's unknown if this is meant to be the "real" Santa

Feat Catalogue:

- Lifts a bus with one index finger on the splash page
- Spots a meteor approaching the Earth from a million miles away, which is apparently traveling at the speed of light, and intercepts it, smashing it into dust and a few fragments
- Off-panel, he 'blasted a tunnel through Hadley Hill'
- Uses a welding torch to clean his face
- Willingly gets run over by a steamroller, leaving an imprint of his body on the roller
- Fixes the steamroller with his bare hands
- Bathes in a vat of molten steel
- Lifts a road to stop a runaway truck
- Destroys a hill with a boulder fired from a giant slingshot
- Moves a mountain to dam an overflowing river
- Lifts a building while posing for a picture, while thinking that he could have done it in "a thousandth of a moment without this fuss".
- Throws a plane into the air
- Holds two trains apart so they don't crash

Spoiler: Excuse the low quality scans here

Weirdness:

- The plot of this issue involves fragments of a meteor with an unusual property that makes anyone who comes in contact with them not show up on photos.

Superdickery:

- He tells a steamroller operator to drive over him, and the operator says that he hopes that he doesn't damage the steamroller. He damages it anyway. He then fixes it, but still.
- Roughs up a guy (and potentially does more than that to him) even though he didn't technically do anything illegal and was just trying to profit off of photos of Superman

Power Tracker:

- If you really wanted to stretch things, you could claim that stopping the meteor moving at lightspeed could be a feat of infinite strength/power, due to relativity, but obviously that's a huge reach. If it actually was moving at lightspeed (perhaps via some kind of space warp or other cheat... it was a weird meteor with unusual properties, said to come from another solar system), or even close to it, it goes give Superman FTL reactions/perceptions here. Of course if we assume some kind of relativity cheat on the part of the meteor, that also throws a wrench into any attempt to quantify the power needed to stop it. Anyway, nothing concretely above Low Herald Level.

Action Comics #186

Notes:

- Nice alliteration in the opening narration: "A puzzling premonition of peril puzzles him!"
- Interestingly, it's shown that Superman can't see all the way through the Earth from the surface due to lead-bearing minerals in the crust, but he can once he dives deep enough
- The "Dark Star" mentioned in this issue is an outdated concept from astronomy, which is what scientists now refer to as a black hole.
- Related to one of the feats in this issue, the most powerful telescope when this issue was published (November 1953) was the Hale Telescope in California.

Feat Catalogue:

- Due to having a "super-mind" and "super-memory", he is able to accurately recall events that occurred when he was a baby. The narration even says that his is "the world's most powerful mind".
- Also, this previously subconscious memory was accurate enough to give Superman nightmares and premonitions as the exact date that Jor-El predicted approached
- Dives under the Earth's crust to examine all of the world's major fault lines
- Examines all of the world's largest and most dangerous volcanoes in moments
- Dives to the bottom of the ocean and examines the ocean floor for signs of tectonic instability
- A few minutes later, he's examined all of the polar ice to make sure it's not melting (this was before global warming kicked into overdrive, of course)
- Flies into space, and, using his vision that "outmatches the greatest telescopes in the world" (see notes), locates the approaching disaster in deep space
- Flies to the edge of the solar system and inspects a "dark star" passing through, which apparently has such a gravitational effect on Earth that it increased its spin significantly, which somehow caused its gravity to lessen so everyone could fly and had super strength and speed
- Superman implies that he could stop the "dark star" and change its course, but doesn't do so because it might hit other planets
- Quickly flies back to Earth from the edge of the solar system
- Yells loudly enough for everyone in Metropolis to hear him
- Lois again can't properly control having superpowers, so Clark prevents her from colliding with another guy at super speed
- Tries to slow down the Earth by pushing it, but just tunnels through a mountain (no tactile TK here, it seems)
- Switches back to Clark at super speed and rescues Lois
- Uses his body as a drill to carve a huge block of granite into a giant dome, and tries to use it to slow down the Earth's rotation, but his strength causes it to melt and fuse from friction.
- Creates a giant drill from metal ore he dug out of the ground, and drills into magma below Earth's crust
- Carves a channel from the sea into the hole he drilled, creating a massive jet of steam that slows the Earth's rotation back to its normal speed

Spoiler: Super - memory

Spoiler: Speed, strength, and durability

Spoiler: Too bad he didn't actually move the thing

Spoiler: Tactile telekinesis? What's that?

Spoiler: Nice try

Spoiler: I'm pretty sure that much steam would instantly kill everything on Earth

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- Jor-El is able to predict a "dark star" passing near the solar system and destroying Earth many decades in the future, from his observations on Krypton

Weirdness:

- The physics of pretty much everything that happened here are hilariously wrong
- In issue #159, he was able to move two large moons of Jupiter, which would require TTK, but here, he was unable to easily slow the Earth precisely because he didn't have that power.

Superdickery:

- Tricks Lois into thinking he beat up Clark Kent

Power Tracker:

- When I skimmed this issue earlier without actually reading it all, I predicted that this would be the one to get him to Mid Herald. However, it seems that's not the case. The "dark star" wouldn't have all the same properties of a black hole (no event horizon or infinite gravity) but it would be a lot more massive than the sun, and was implied to be traveling very fast (passing through the solar system in a matter of days, at most). If he had actually deflected it like he said he could, that would be a solid Mid to High Herald Level feat, but, as it's just an unproven claim, we can't give that to him yet. As for slowing the Earth's rotation, it seems the only reason he had trouble doing so was his lack of TTK, as the implication seemed to be that otherwise he could have done it without much of an issue. Still, it's not quite a feat, and even if it was it's not necessarily above Low Herald Level.

Action Comics #187

Notes:

- The opening narration states that Superman "can move at the speed of light, pulverize giant rocks with his bare hands, see through the thickest walls with his X-ray vision". Funnily enough, the third one is the only one of these statements that doesn't undersell his powers.
- In this issue, the arrangement of bodies in the solar system was about to match up exactly to the way they were when Krypton exploded. This has no effect on the plot other than being a red herring.

Feat Catalogue:

- Lifts a truck filled with dynamite
- Moves a large model of Saturn (much smaller than the real thing, of course)
- While disguised as a criminal in a gang's hideout, flies at super speed back to his apartment, grabs his spare Superman costume, changes into it, and returns in a brief moment while the criminals are distracted

Weirdness:

- Superman, falsely believing that he has become immune to Kryptonite, says "For the first time in my life, I can overcome the force of Kryptonite!" Did you forget about issue #181? So much for "super-memory".
- Some random criminal gang somehow gets their hands on a bomb capable of completely destroying Metropolis. Said bomb was also roughly the size of a small suitcase.
- The villains also have a flying, remote-controlled camera that can broadcast video in real time, a technology decades ahead of the time when this was written
- The main villain in this issue actually pulls off a very clever plan to trick Superman and ends up having him dead to rights. But instead of using the Kryptonite to just kill him, he tries to use him to extort money, and then moves the Kryptonite farther away so one of his henchmen can have a boxing match with Superman, which gives him just enough time to escape and turn the tables on the villain.

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- No real notable feats here, so still Low Herald Level.

Action Comics #188

Notes:

- This issue and its cover were featured in The Iron Giant animated movie
- The opening narration gives the typical Superman spiel as "Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap the highest mountain-" not quite the most familiar version. It also refers to him as "the idol of millions" - but that's supposed to be Ben Grimm's title!

Feat Catalogue:

- Rips open a door made of six feet of solid lead like paper
- Approaches and stops a new type of nuclear pile from overloading, although he seems to have some trouble with it. Looks like a low showing, or it could be because it was stated to be a "new type of radiation".
- While radioactive, flies around at super speed in the night sky, releasing a bright glow that fools some criminals into thinking a meteor is about to hit them
- Intercepts and absorbs lightning to protect a helicopter

Spoiler: What kind of radiation is this, exactly?

Weirdness:

- This story seems to just be a straight rehash of the plot from issue #124: Superman stops an overloading nuclear pile and becomes radioactive, and then has to stay away from everyone. Although in this case, the pile was stated to only be powerful enough to destroy Metropolis, not the entire Earth, and he had more trouble with it than he did with the Earth-destroying one. Possibly explained by it being a new type using a novel form of radiation, though.
- It seems that whatever form of radiation that had affected him also attracts and amplifies the power of lightning bolts, to the point of making him dizzy when enough of them hit him
- This time, he's cured of the radiation by being hit by lightning bolts.

Superdickery:

- The splash page makes for a good out of context one, as we see a crowd of people running in terror from Superman's mere presence
- Was fully willing to gruesomely kill some thieves via deadly radiation if they didn't surrender

Power Tracker:

- Despite the possible low showings, still Low Herald Level

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #189

Notes:

- The Korean War is indirectly referenced in this issue, having recently ended at the time it was published. One character was stated to be a naval pilot who was lost when flying home from Korea.
- This issue had the archive error, so sorry for the non-full-page scan

Feat Catalogue:

- On the splash page, intercepts lightning from a thundercloud before it reaches the ground
- Stops a burning runaway ocean liner and pushes it underwater for a few minutes to put out the fire
- After a bunch of dynamite detonates, destroying a cliff, he quickly changes to Superman, outruns the explosion, intercepts and knocks the stray rocks back onto safe paths, and then changes back to Clark Kent, too fast for anyone to see
- Guides an out-of-control experimental rocket from the stratosphere safely back to Earth, and prevents it from crashing in Metropolis
- After landing the rocket, heads inside it and changes back to Clark Kent at super speed so no one can see it happening
- While tied up as Clark Kent, expands his muscles to stretch the ropes and slip out, then changes his clothes and fills his Clark Kent clothes with stuffed paper at super speed to make it look like Clark is still held captive, while the kidnappers have their backs turned
- Runs past the kidnappers invisibly at super speed, reaches the basement of the building, shakes a support beam to simulate an earthquake, and a moment later returns back to the chair he was tied in and reassumes the identity of Clark Kent
- Builds an exact, working duplicate of a type of plane from scrap metal
- Creates a cyclone by flying in circles at super speed and using his super breath on the ocean. Said cyclone was powerful enough to blow a plane hundreds of miles away.
- Rescues a guy stranded on a remote Pacific island and flies him back to Metropolis
- Uses X-ray(heat) vision to fuse and damage an audio tape during playback, then uses super ventriloquism to make it seem as if the tape said something other than what it did

Spoiler: Decent breath feat

Weirdness:

- A couple who lost their child finds out that Clark is an exact doppelganger of him. So they immediately ask to adopt him (Ma and Pa Kent are both dead in this Golden Age continuity, remember). He refuses, but a doctor says that the grieving mother might die of a broken heart, so he is forced to accept. He eventually gets out of it when he finds their lost real son.

Superdickery:

- See the second feat. He probably ended up drowning people there.

Power Tracker:

- Nothing to really note here, so still Low Herald Level.

Action Comics #190

Notes:

- The opening narration states "If you dropped an atom bomb on Superman, or buried him under Mount Everest, or chained him beneath the deepest sea in the world, he'd be completely unharmed!"
- Although this is still the Golden Age, Mr. Mxyzptlk appears in an early version of his Silver Age costume in this issue
- Mxy says he is more powerful than Superman, and Superman doesn't attempt to contest that

Feat Catalogue:

- Punches holes in a metal plate and throws it out the window in a way to make eerie noise and light from friction (lolwut)
- Throws a beaker of dangerous chemicals into space before they can explode

Spoiler: This could also go in the weirdness section

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- Mr. Mxyzptlk places multiple pieces of Kryptonite in strategic places to weaken Superman at key moments
- He telepathically implants thoughts into a boy's mind
- Makes an endless supply of chocolate sodas appear from a billboard depicting one
- Transforms a mountain into a pile of bonbons
- Transforms a junk heap into a load of toys

Weirdness:

- It's a Mxy story. 'Nuff said.

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- He barely does anything in this issue. Still Low Herald Level.

Action Comics #191

Notes:

- Lois states that she has taken a course in nursing

Feat Catalogue:

- Flies to a nearby town "faster than any wind"
- Lifts a highway and uses it to divert a tornado out to sea
- Catches a tree before it can fall on a car
- Carries the car with one hand to the center of the town in "a few moments"
- Holds the ends of two broken electric wires to conduct thousands of volts of current through his body to power a building
- While still holding the live wires, uses his X-ray vision to help a doctor conduct surgery
- Uses X-ray(heat) vision to heat up a thermometer in order to fool a doctor into thinking he has a fever
- Uses "super-pressure" again to fix some blown out tires and uses his super breath to reinflate them, then carries the car so smoothly the driver can't tell that it was damaged
- Flies from a rural house to a quarry in instants
- Punches rock hard enough to shatter it and melt it into glass
- Uses an iron pipe to blow the glass into a sphere, then cuts it in half to form a giant glass dome, and installs doors in it with a lock and key, and places it over a house and its yard to help quarantine it
- Uses his microscopic vision to follow a nearly imperceptible set of car tracks
- Uses super-ventriloquism to project his voice inside of a house from a distance outside, making it seem to be coming from a radio
- Shakes the house slightly to give the people inside the illusion of dizziness
- Moves to a brushfire at super speed and puts out the fire by inhaling all of the air around it
- Breathes the hot air from around the fire into a chimney, then breathes in cold air from the stratosphere right afterwards, in order to make the people inside the house feel hot and then cold, tricking them into thinking they have a fever

Weirdness:

- A gangster steals the only copy of a dead chemist's explosive formula - and somehow hides it inside a bullet in his gun, which he fires at a policeman, and it isn't surgically removed until years later.

Superdickery:

- Uses his powers to get his story into the paper before Lois can, even though they were both there when it happened

Power Tracker:

- Nothing too notable here. Seems we're having a dearth of really impressive feats in these last few issues. Anyway, still Low Herald Level.

Action Comics #192

Notes:

- The opening narration says that Superman's "super brain can solve the most complicated problems"
- This issue had the archive error, so sorry about that

Feat Catalogue:

- Rubs his thumb over a door catch at super speed, causing the metal to heat up and expand from friction, thus jamming the door
- Creates a "super-strong plastic bubble" and fills it with a day's worth of compressed air, so he can carry a guy around in it
- Breaks off the undamaged part of a bridge and bends it so it forms a loop, returning back to shore, so no one drives off it
- Forms part of a steel bridge into a boomerang and throws it, catching some criminals' getaway car as it returns to him
- Uses his X-ray vision to identify poison gases in underground caverns
- Uproots a tree, hollows it out into a giant straw, and uses it to breathe in the poison gases from the caverns, as they can't harm him
- Flies "far out in space" in moments, and breathes out the gases, then returns to Earth
- Subdues a giant squid underwater and carries it to a cave thousands of fathoms deep
- Uses his finger to write messages on an underwater rock, fast enough to keep up a conversation with someone speaking

Spoiler: Not exactly quantifiable but seems pretty fast

Weirdness:

- A store is advertising a sale by having a guy pilot a giant robot with an advertising message on it through the streets. Said robot is strong and durable enough to crush cars when the pilot blacks out and can't control it anymore.
- While dragging around the efficiency expert in the plastic bubble, the comic remembers that someone underwater has to ascend slowly. But previously Superman dragged the guy to the depths of the ocean in seconds, with no harm to him.
- There's an ad in this issue for stamp collectors, offering rare stamps with Hitler's picture on them. Really.

Spoiler: When I first skimmed through this comic, I thought this robot was built by a supervillain. The truth is much weirder

Superdickery:

- Threatens to let a guy be eaten by sharks just to show him that safety is sometimes more important than efficiency
- Deliberately endangers the guy by cracking the plastic bubble so he could force him into admitting he was wrong

Spoiler: This guy had committed no crimes other than being annoying

Power Tracker:

- Nice speed feat, but nothing to put him above Low Herald Level.

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #193

Notes:

Feat Catalogue:

- Flies into an active volcano as it's about to erupt, uses X-ray vision to identify a large piece of gold ore in the mountain, rips it off, and uses it to plug the volcano, holding it down against the force of the eruption (which he says is 'millions of tons of explosive force'). Notably he says that he has to use "every ounce of his super strength" to do this, so this is a rather low-end showing.
- Punches a large rock formation to pieces in order to remove the molten gold that had solidified on his hands
- Removes the last of the gold from his hands by rubbing them together at super speed
- Uses his X-ray vision to detect strange, invisible rays emanating from his hands after he removes the gold from them
- Intercepts a ricocheting bullet before it hits a bystander
- Puts his hands in molten iron at thousands of degrees of heat, to create iron gloves for himself after it cools
- Throws part of a gold straw out the window and into space
- Uses the other part of the straw like a whistle to direct his breath, hitting his typewriter keys so he doesn't have to touch them
- Borrows some glass blowing machinery and uses it to cover a house in a dome of shatterproof glass
- Takes a "quick trip to outer space" and throws the now-golden glass blowing equipment into orbit
- Uses a metal girder and wire as a thread and needle to fix a collapsing building

Spoiler: Off day, huh Supes?

Weirdness:

- Do I really have to expound on the scientific implausibility of the volcano feat? Even if the gold ore was strong enough to block the eruptive force (it wouldn't be, it would break), the gases and lava would just blow a hole somewhere else, like in the side of the mountain, and escape that way. Instead, it "forced the explosion to reverse course and go off deep underground".
- That's nothing compared to the premise of this issue, which is that, while doing the volcano stunt, the vaporized gold ore somehow penetrates into his skin, giving him the Midas touch, so that anything he touches with his hands turns to gold. If that's the best scientific explanation you can come up with to justify this, then you might as well have just made it due to magic, or unexplained alien technology or something. BTW, it wears off when he touches "pure gold", but the gold he created himself doesn't count for this, because it's "better than natural gold". What.
- There's a museum exhibit, shaped like a giant asteroid, labeled "Inside - what Mars looks like - its animals and plants, admission - one dollar". This is a version of the DCU, though, although Martian Manhunter and his backstory didn't debut until a year later in the Silver Age, so who knows what kind of life there was on Mars in this universe, assuming the exhibit is at all accurate.

Spoiler: Because this makes sense

Superdickery:

- After two criminals trick him into turning their house into gold for them, he traps them and the house in a giant glass bubble, with no air holes. He only returns when he thinks of using the gold object one of them has to undo his Midas powers (otherwise he may well have just let them suffocate). Also, when he trapped them, the criminals weren't known to be wanted for anything.

Power Tracker:

- This low-end showing doesn't do much to negate the large collection of feats he has so far placing him at Low Herald Level.

Action Comics #194

Notes:

- This issue is a sequel to an issue of the Superman title, which was the first appearance of the now-familiar 'three Kryptonian criminals invade Earth' plot. Said plot has been reused and reinvented many times over the years in different continuities and versions. The one that is probably familiar to the most people is the Superman II movie version from 1980.

Some differences between that and this version include:

* Instead of Zod, Ursa, and Non, the villains here are named U-Ban, Kizo, and Mala.
* Instead of 2 males and one female, here all 3 villains are male, and they are also brothers.
* The concept of the Phantom Zone had not been created yet, so it didn't exist in the Golden Age continuity, so here they were instead exiled by rocketship.

Feat Catalogue:

- In a flashback (to the events of Superman #65), Superman defeated the 3 criminals and built a prison ship to send them into space on
- Is unharmed by being thrown into space so fast that his civilian clothes burn up
- Catches the bricks of the Great Pyramid before they hit Cairo, and then rebuilds it in seconds
- Chases Mala around the solar system, and catches Lois before she collides with (fake) Earth
- Destroys a duplicate Earth created by Mala by gathering asteroids and bombarding it with them until it explodes
- Collects drifting fragments of Kryptonite from deep space
- Uses super breath to blow the Kryptonite at the criminals without having to get near it

Spoiler: Game of keep away

Spoiler: Did he really have to destroy it, though?

Spoiler: Kryptonite is useful for once

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- The three Kryptonian criminals' rocket collides with an asteroid and is destroyed, but they are unharmed
- Mala flies from the vicinity of Saturn to Earth in an unspecified timeframe, although the narration calls it "soon after"
- Swoops down into Clark Kent's apartment (not realizing that he's Superman), grabs him, and throws him out the window into the air so fast that he catches on fire from atmospheric friction
- Mala steals the Eiffel Tower, the Washington Monument, the Colosseum, and "many other famous landmarks"
- He tries to steal the Sphinx, but Superman arrives to stop him, so he uses super breath to blow the bricks of the Great Pyramid into a nearby city (presumably Cairo)
- Mala returns all of the landmarks overnight
- He then builds a "glassoid chamber" to give Lois air while he takes her into space as bait for Superman
- Leads Superman on a chase around the solar system, and then throws the sphere with Lois in it back to (fake) Earth
- Somehow built a fake Earth, with fake copies of the monuments he temporarily stole
- Threatens to destroy the real Earth

Spoiler: How did he create this, exactly?

Weirdness:

- One of the Kryptonian criminals tries to take over the identity of someone on Earth in order to hide from Superman. The person he chooses? Clark Kent. And when caught using his powers in that identity, he covers himself by claiming that Clark Kent is Superman, not knowing that he actually is.
- It's never explained how Mala created the fake Earth, or why he needed to create copies of a few famous landmarks to put on it

Superdickery:

- Temporarily makes Lois believe that he destroyed the Earth

Power Tracker:

- This is another ambiguous one. Obviously we have the planetbusting feat, but it's never explained where the fake Earth came from, or how it was built. There isn't enough loose material in the inner solar system to create something like that. It's possible Mala built it from objects in the Kuiper Belt or Oort Cloud. It did seem to have the same surface gravity and features as Earth (enough to fool Superman and Lois at first) so it should be equivalent to destroying the real Earth, although the way he did it (bombarding it with multiple asteroids instead of in a single attack) isn't the most impressive. Mala building it was probably more impressive, actually. Some decent speed feats too, but I think there is nothing here that really exceeds Low Herald Level, albeit we're pushing the top of that category.

Action Comics #195

Notes:

- The opening narration refers to Lois Lane as "the prettiest girl reporter in Metropolis"
- Perry White says his catchphrase, "Great Caesar's Ghost", here. I don't recall if it's the first time he has said it in this title, but I don't specifically remember seeing it before this.
- Superman was willing to reveal his secret identity to Lois in order to return her to her normal state of mind
- Archive error, so sorry about the bad scans

Spoiler: The first time he said this? I honestly don't remember

Feat Catalogue:

- Falls into a vat of boiling molten steel, and says it only felt like a lukewarm bath
- Lifts a road to throw an escaping car into the air and make it land upside down
- Searches Metropolis for Lois at super speed
- Drills a hole through a mountaintop to turn it into a giant megaphone, then shouts through it to try to contact Lois, his voice seemingly reaching not only all of Metropolis but a lot further too
- Intercepts a meteor before it hits the atmosphere, then carves words and a picture of Lois into it, and throws it down so people can read it as it burns up (what?)
- Uses his super sense of smell to locate Lois in Metropolis by tracking the scent of her perfume
- Listens to a police radio broadcast
- Searches an area at super speed (the narration says "lightning-swift") while carrying the delusional Lois
- Grabs a bunch of criminals' guns and molds them into a giant handcuff
- Delivers the criminals to the police and returns to their hideout in seconds

Spoiler: Super - smelling

Weirdness:

- In this issue, a female crime boss appears to "kill" Clark Kent, and seeing this shocks Lois so much that she loses her memory, and then later believes she is said criminal

Superdickery:

- Tears up a city road to catch some escaping criminals
- Some sexism: "Gosh! Now that she knows Clark is alive, she's mad at him! Just like a woman!"

Power Tracker:

- Nothing too notable here, so still Low Herald Level.

Action Comics #196

Notes:

- This is generally considered to be the last Golden Age issue of Action Comics. Now it's on to the Silver Age (which is what I suspect many of you have really been waiting for)
- Lois seems rather put off by the idea of a superhero more powerful than Superman. At the end of the issue, when "Mental-Man" is revealed to be a fake, she exclaims "I knew it! There no one more powerful than Superman!" I wonder who's going to break the bad news to her when she meets Dr. Fate and the Spectre?
- There's an ad here for the first issue of "Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen", one of the more infamously silly Silver Age comic books. I'll be covering it here too, if I can make it that far.

Feat Catalogue:

- Grabs a falling wooden platform and the scaffolding supporting it "in the next instant", before it can crush a guy
- Easily outspeeds a plane moving 500 miles per hour, causing the pilot to comment that it seems like he's standing still in comparison
- Flies 10 miles in seconds, rips a giant stone face carving off of a mountainside, and carries it away, then builds a solid gold replica of the face, covers it with a layer of stone, then returns back, all in 20 minutes
- Uses heat vision to melt the stone covering of the gold statue
- No-sells a grenade, and the explosion just injures the criminals around him

Weirdness:

- Superman plots with a comic artist to run a comic strip in the Daily Planet featuring "Mental-Man", an imaginary superhero who has the power to transmute elements into gold. This is in order to trick a cartel of gold racketeers into suspecting that Mental-Man is actually real, which the artist claims he is, and then trying to bring him to their leader to trick him into making gold for them. However it's actually Superman in disguise, and he captures them. One of the weirdest and most convoluted plots yet.

Superdickery:

- Vandalizes a giant stone "Indian monument"

Power Tracker:

- And we end the Golden Age with Superman still at Low Herald Level. There are possibly other showings in different Golden Age titles that would put him higher, but I'll get to those when I get to them. For now, we're moving on to the Silver Age.

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #197

Notes:

- This is generally considered to be the first issue of Action Comics featuring the Earth-One version of Superman and Metropolis, and thus the first Silver Age issue.
- My original plan for this thread was actually to skip the Golden Age entirely and start from here, since the Silver Age is where most of the crazy feats and crazier plots happen. But, in retrospect, I'm glad that I didn't. The Golden Age is still very important.

Feat Catalogue:

- Uses telescopic X-ray vision to read a small list on a piece of paper in a criminal's pocket
- Hits a baseball hundreds of miles (accidentally using a bit of his super strength when he wasn't supposed to)
- Flies hundreds of miles in seconds and intercepts the baseball he hit before it lands
- Uses his body to replace a broken section of train track so the train can drive safely past it
- Repairs the train tracks at super speed, all the while tracking the escaping criminals (who destroyed the train tracks as a distraction) with his telescopic vision
- Uses a combination of heat and X-ray vision to melt the lock on a safe without damaging the walls of the house it's in. He could presumably do the same thing to someone's internal organs if he felt like it.
- Finds a thunderstorm and flies to it in seconds, then returns "within a few short moments"
- Superman explains that his costume is made of an indestructible super-fabric from Krypton, and demonstrates it by using a blowtorch on it, to no effect

Spoiler: Selectively applying heat to only certain interior objects... that has some frightening applications

Spoiler: Hemming it must be a bitch, though

Weirdness:

- Some criminal scientist tricks some thugs into stealing various shirts with S symbols on them, so they think he's just an eccentric collector, but he really only wanted Superman's shirt so he could duplicate the material and sell it to criminals. Actually a fairly mundane plot for a Silver Age story.

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- Since their histories were merged together later, I'm just going to continue with the power tracker here as if this issue is a direct continuation of the last one, even though Earth - Two and Earth - One Superman are technically different characters. So going by the feats in this issue, and the previously established feats that put him at Low Herald Level, there is still no change here.

Action Comics #198

Notes:

- Perry White sends Clark to cover the story of "the world's first atomic generator" being tested. This comic was actually published a few months after the first working grid-connected nuclear power plant was brought online, but that was in Moscow, whereas in the comic here, it's in America. The one in the comic also didn't end up working.
- The old myth that Christopher Columbus was trying to prove the world was round when everyone thought it was flat is brought up in this comic. However, since this happens in the context of a delusion that Lois was having, it could just be that she believed that myth herself.

Feat Catalogue:

- Flies from Metropolis to Kenya in a few seconds
- Intercepts a barrage of flaming arrows before they can hit a building
- Borrows a bunch of logs from a logging camp, fills a bunch of abandoned gas tanks with red, white, and blue dyes, uses the logs to stir them, goes to Afghanistan to get wool from mountain sheep, and sews a giant American flag
- Ties some criminals up with a lamppost
- Says a rifle bullet tickles
- Uses X-ray heat vision to burn a small cog in a nuclear power plant, alerting its operators to the fact that another part of it is defective
- Uses his body to shield Lois from an exploding nuclear generator
- Repairs the wall the blast destroyed at super speed
- Flies "countless thousands of miles" in moments to the North Pole while carrying Lois
- Flies her from there to the equator in seconds, then back to Metropolis
- Changes clothes from Clark Kent to Superman and back and stands in two places so fast that it looks like both of them are standing there separately
- Moves with the speed of light (according to the narration) to once again appear to be in two places at once

Spoiler: Even this wouldn't convince a modern-day flat earther

Spoiler: Neat trick

Weirdness:

- Some pretty cringy racial stereotypes going on here: "An uprising of wild bushmen" led by a "crazy witch doctor" are making trouble in Kenya, and it's because the witch doctor (who speaks in broken English, of course) insists that he has to be the only one to treat sick people in his tribe
- The premise of this issue is that when Lois sees Superman change back into Clark Kent, she is so shocked that she loses her memory and her sense of identity and starts believing that she's actually several historical figures, since she was writing a story on them for the paper. Superman has to play along with her delusions so she doesn't completely snap.

Spoiler: Er...yikes

Superdickery:

- Vandalizes a lamp post
- Seems to care more about his secret identity potentially being revealed than Lois' severe mental health issues

Power Tracker:

- Going with the same rules as before, nothing to put him below or above Low Herald Level.

Action Comics #199

Notes:

- This is listed on the DC wiki as being the first appearance of the Earth - One (Silver Age) Lex Luthor, whose full name was Alexis Luthor. The Earth - Two version we've seen up until now was actually named Alexei Luthor.
- There's a PSA featuring Superboy in this comic, but it's one that we've seen already
- I find it interesting that shortly after covering an issue with a plot very similar to Superman II (3 escaped criminals from Krypton invade Earth), we cover one with a plot similar to Superman III (Superman fights an evil copy of himself created by a mad scientist). Makes me wonder if we're going to see a Nuclear Man any time soon.

Feat Catalogue:

- Uses "super-pressure" to fix a broken dam
- Outraces the floodwaters that already escaped the dam, digging a channel for them to follow, redirecting the water back to the river
- Stops a crime wave and catches so many criminals that they need to add a new wing to the jail, which he builds himself at super speed
- Catches a giant ocean liner thrown into the stratosphere by his evil copy and brings it safely back to the dock
- Somehow determines that the only possibility is that Lex Luthor duplicated him scientifically, and that the copy needs to be periodically recharged
- Tracks the invisible "energizing beam" that powers the copy back to Luthor's laboratory
- Safely lowers the Daily Planet building back to the ground
- When he clashes with his double, their impact creates powerful lightning bolts
- The battle proceeds into the ocean, creating a giant whirlpool
- He manages to defeat the copy, holding him until he runs out of power, then disguises himself as the copy to catch Luthor

Spoiler: Superman vs. "Phantom Superman"

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- Lex Luthor builds a "three-dimensional materializer" which is basically a camera that can create a physical duplicate of anything it takes a picture of, down to the atomic level (except it's in grayscale for some reason). He uses it to take a picture and make a copy of Superman, who has all of his powers. The copy is also under the command of Luthor.
Feats demonstrated by the copy include:
* Breaking into a laboratory and stealing a lightning-powered government machine
* Bulletproof
* Flying to Africa and stealing a cart full of diamonds from a mine
* Burning a small piece of paper with heat vision from a distance without harming the guy holding it
* Smashing a dam
* Runs 7 million miles in an hour without tiring
* Immune to Luthor's disintegrator ray
* Has X-ray vision and super hearing
* His costume is indestructible like the original's
* Lifts a giant ocean liner out of the water
* Tanks a punch from the real Superman
* Uses one hand to toss the ocean liner up into the stratosphere
* Lifts the Daily Planet building
* Fights the real Superman roughly evenly for an hour

However, the copy has to be charged with 'atomic energy' every few hours to retain its power.

- Luthor also built a disintegrator ray, which he describes as powerful, although it can't hurt the duplicate Superman

Spoiler: Couldn't he just use this thing to duplicate any valuable substance and become as rich as he wanted?

Weirdness:

- We have a math contradiction on the very same page, as in one panel a worker says that a dam is worth 10 times the $100,000.00 demanded in exchange for sparing it, and on another panel it's referred to as a "multi-million dollar dam".

Superdickery:

- After realizing that the copy Superman isn't a phantom or ghost, he immediately assumes it's a robot, and then immediately tries to destroy it, not considering any other possibilities.

Power Tracker:

- Still going with Low Herald Level. The same presumably applies to the copy, except for the weakness of needing periodic recharging.

Action Comics #200

Notes:

Feat Catalogue:

- Flies from Metropolis to an area "far from the reaches of civilization", "in the wink of an eye".
- Uses super breath to prevent a tree from falling long enough for the guy who was cutting it down to escape and avoid being crushed
- Dives underwater and spins at super speed to reverse the direction of a whirlpool
- Flies to the Arctic Circle within seconds, breaks off a chunk of an ice mountain weighing a few million tons, and flies it back to the Indian village in another few seconds
- Crushes the ice into fragments which fall down through the atmosphere and become rain
- Is unharmed by a barrage of arrows and one of flaming spears
- Eats one of the flaming spears just to show off
- Is attacked with tomahawks but they break when they strike him
- Uses X-ray(heat) vision to break off the handle of an axe that was filled with dynamite, so it flies away and explodes at a safe distance, not harming the man wielding it

Spoiler: Instant rainstorm

Weirdness:

- We get more racist stereotypes, with American Indians who wear loincloths and huge feathered headdresses and speak in broken English, adding "-um" to the end of random words. They also apparently live in the woods in a stone age society. This is equal parts hilarious and painful to read.
- One of the Indians gives a headdress and honorary title to Perry White at the end of the issue, for no apparent reason

Spoiler: I actually have nothing to say here

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- Low Herald Level, still. Seems we'll have to go further into the 200s to find those insane Silver Age feats.

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #201

Notes:

- When Clark Kent is sent back in time with a group of others by a time machine, he later explains his presence there as Superman by saying that he used his power to follow them back through the time barrier. No one questions this, showing that this power is already established for the Silver Age version of him as well.
- It seems to be implied in this issue that he can't take other people through time along with him.

Feat Catalogue:

- In the split second after an explosion starts but before it can hurt the people right next to it, switches to Superman and breaks a hole through the roof of a cave, redirecting the explosion and debris out through it so no one is injured
- Somehow is able to quickly learn and translate the language spoken by cavemen
- Creates a giant skillet out of clay and uses it to cook a dinosaur egg
- Digs through a stone wall and creates a tunnel underground at super speed
- Somehow creates a giant net and uses it to grab a bunch of pterodactyls so fast that it seems like they instantly disappeared
- Splits a large boulder in half with a karate chop
- Stops a herd of stampeding titanotherium and herds them away in a safe direction. (Another anachronism, as these creatures lived millions of years after dinosaurs)

Weirdness:

- A random criminal named "Benny the Brute" was stated to be Public Enemy #1 in this issue. This is also his only appearance. Wonder what he did to get a higher spot than Lex Luthor?
- A random scientist (this is also his only appearance) creates a working time machine in this issue. This is actually not that weird for a universe like DC or Marvel.
- A dinosaur (looking like a T-Rex but it's hard to be sure) is shown to be bulletproof
- Dinosaurs and cavemen are shown to coexist in the past. As mentioned before, there are several possible explanations for this going by the weirdness of the DCU.
- The cavemen are all white for some reason. Some of them even have blonde and red hair.
- The scientist destroys the time machine at the end of the issue. Won't stop more from being built later by others, though.

Superdickery:

- Punches a dinosaur, instead of just relocating it peacefully
- Steals a dinosaur egg from a nest and cooks it

Power Tracker:

- Nothing too notable here, so still Low Herald Level.

Action Comics #202

Notes:

- This is the first issue in this title to have the "Approved by the Comics Code Authority" stamp on the cover.
- A character named Cat, who works as a reporter for the Daily Planet, appears in this issue. She acts like a diva and brags about how many boyfriends she has. This was 32 years before the character of Cat Grant, who fits pretty much all of those descriptors to a T, debuted. The only real difference seems to be that this Cat doesn't have blonde hair.

Spoiler: Cat Grant?

Feat Catalogue:

- Inhales a bunch of gas in a room and flies up in the sky to release it harmlessly
- Digs a tunnel underground to follow a car without them seeing him, keeping track of it with his X-ray vision
- Sticks his hand up from underground underneath the car, puncturing the gas tank, and then when it runs out of gas, he hollows out the area underground right before the car's criminal driver steps on it, causing him to fall through
- Uses X-ray(heat) vision to weaken the shoulder strap of Lois' purse, so it will fall off without her noticing, and he can take her X-ray glasses

Weirdness:

- Some scientists are working on creating special glasses designed to let people safely and closely observe atomic blasts, but when their manufacturing process goes awry, they throw the resulting glasses out as worthless, not realizing that they now give anyone who wears them X-ray vision. Naturally, Lois Lane is the one who happens to find them.

Superdickery:

- Ruins Lois' purse and steals her glasses just on the suspicion that they might give her X-ray vision

Power Tracker:

- Still Low Herald Level.

Action Comics #203

Notes:

- This cover was featured on Superdickery. Without context, it is pretty funny.

Feat Catalogue:

- Builds a makeshift printing press from trees and rocks
- Directs his super breath through the window of a ship's cabin to specifically knock a guy out of the room
- Disguises himself as a criminal by using friction to singe a rope which he uses for a fake mustache
- Intercepts multiple shells from shore guns aimed at a smuggling ship
- Changes to Superman and grabs a car as it falls through a dock, before it can hit the water below
- Rubs his hands at super speed on a car to scrape off the lead paint

Spoiler: I only really put this scan here because it would take too long to explain everything he did otherwise

Weirdness:

- The plot of this issue involves the Daily Planet setting up branches in Paris, London, and India, with Lois, Jimmy, and Clark working at each of them, respectively. Many of the foreigners are also portrayed as not knowing how a newspaper works or what qualifies as news, which is weird.
- Clark Kent apparently carries putty around in his clothes, which he uses for molding his face into different shapes for disguises.

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- Still nothing too notable, so Low Herald Level.

Action Comics #204

Notes:

- Again, the opening narration gives us the semi-familiar lines of Superman being faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, and "able to leap the highest mountain".

Feat Catalogue:

- Intercepts a large meteor heading for Metropolis. Although he appears to misjudge its toughness (see the second weirdness entry for the real explanation) and doesn't hit it hard enough at first, forcing him to intercept and destroy it right before it hits the street, and blow away all of the resulting fragments with his super breath
- Digs to the center of the Earth to retrieve some rocks. Also, on his way down, kicks a large piece of Earth miles upward and into space, creating a foundation for a building
- Throws baseballs precisely to deflect a car towards an elevator shaft, and cause the elevator to lift the car into the air
- Dives off a skyscraper, into a giant fishbowl, and continues moving below ground, then punches a hole in a water main and alters the shape of the hole to direct a spray of water to gently carry a crashing aircraft to the ground
- Hears an alien language in a sound range no human is capable of

Spoiler: The explanation for this is insane

Spoiler: Placing a building there might be a bad idea...

Weirdness:

- "Professor Reynolds" is testing an "experimental flying saucer". Because.
- Some random aliens were using a "beam of counter energy" that neutralized Superman's powers, but only while he was right-side-up and not upside-down. The hell?

Spoiler: That's the Silver Age for you...

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- While the alien weapon was trained on him, he was maybe Low Meta Level while right-side-up, and Low Herald Level while upside-down. That was certainly a sentence I never expected to write.

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #205

Notes:

-As it says on the cover, Superman is temporarily given the military rank of Sergeant in this issue, while helping the army carry out their war games

Feat Catalogue:

- Unharmed by blasts from guided missiles, tanks, and a new model of flamethrower
- Uses a bunch of spent shell casings as thrown projectiles to intercept a bunch of mortar shells so they detonate harmlessly high in the air
- Pulverizes a boulder into dust at super speed before a tank can fall on it, and the dust cushions the fall so the unstable explosives in the tank don't go off
- Peels a bunch of potatoes that would take a normal person a week in seemingly no more than a few minutes
- Throws a rifle with a bayonet at the speed of a bullet, precisely pinning a guy's parachute to a tree so he stops before landing on a minefield
- Lifts a rocket-launching tube weighing multiple tons and uses it as a giant straw in reverse to blow air into a lake, splashing water to put out a nearby forest fire
- Detects a colorless and odorless underground pocket of natural gas

Weirdness:

- The military was not only using live ammo, but armed land mines in their war games, against each other rather than unmanned targets. Somehow I don't think that's actual policy.

Superdickery:

- Doesn't do or even say anything about the military's ridiculously and unnecessarily dangerous war games

Power Tracker:

- Still Low Herald Level

Action Comics #206

Notes:

- The cover declares: "In this issue, Superman marries Lois Lane!". Of course, it's actually a dream sequence.

Feat Catalogue:

- Braces a collapsing building and saves Lois from it
- Spins at super speed, creating a waterspout and using it to put out a fire on an oil tanker

Weirdness:

- The majority of this issue was Lois' dream and didn't actually happen

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- He hardly did anything outside of the dream sequence, and even if you include the feats in the dream, they still wouldn't put him past Low Herald Level.

Action Comics #207

Notes:

- Apparently it's been a tradition for 4 years in-universe at this point for Superman to award medals for heroism at the annual Metropolis policemen's dinner.

Feat Catalogue:

- Superman's super hearing can be used as a lie detector, to detect abnormalities in a person's heartbeat
- Throws steel girders to trap some escaping criminals by creating a makeshift cell around them
- Grabs a flaming meteor from space and uses it to kill a huge swarm of locusts that threatened hundreds of farms
- Rips the top off a mountain and uses it to plug a volcano
- While performing the previous two feats, was keeping track of a cop with his telescopic vision and noting his heroic acts
- Uses what looks like a giant spool of thread to create a web to catch some airplanes used by smugglers
- Identifies a criminal by reading his fingerprints through his gloves with his X-ray vision
- At "meteoric speed", searches all of Metropolis in seconds to locate one specific person
- Flies a guy who was formerly a test pilot into the stratosphere, in order for him to regain his memory.

Spoiler: Lie detector

Spoiler: There's probably an easier way to kill bugs, also, kind of creepy spying on someone like that

Spoiler: Good senses and speed

Weirdness:

Superdickery:

- Pretends that a random boulder is Kryptonite and lets some criminals get away, just to try to trick a guy into risking his life to save him
- See that last feat? Yeah, he did that without giving him a plane or any kind of protective clothing. Could have killed him. And if he hadn't lost his memory of standing in for Clark Kent earlier, we don't know what Superman might have done to keep his secret...

Spoiler: This guy was lucky he lost his memory of Superman's secret identity, otherwise he might have suffered an 'unfortunate accident'

Power Tracker:

- Again, nothing to change him from Low Herald Level.

Action Comics #208

Notes:

- Mr. Mxyzptlk's fifth-dimensional powers are explicitly referred to as magic here. This would be retconned several times, but I'm pretty sure the current explanation is that he has access to legit magic as well as other sources of power
- Mxy is unaware that Clark Kent and Superman are one and the same. He could probably find out with ease, but one of his character traits is being scatterbrained and easily tricked, so it kind of makes sense. He does suspect it in this issue, but uses a very roundabout method to test his suspicion, and is again tricked
- A university professor asks Superman to find the name of the Roman king who was the grandson of the founder of "Aetbes". I can't find any results for "Aetbes" anywhere, so it probably doesn't exist.

Feat Catalogue:

- Searches Metropolis using X-ray vision for hours (but fails to find Lois, as she was in another dimension)
- Flies from Metropolis to an ancient Roman city in an unspecified but implied to be very short timeframe, and digs underground to find ancient ruins
- Realizes that Mxy is back and trying to trick him
- Bends a metal letter 'S' into a 'U' so fast that Mxy doesn't see what happened, and thinks that his powers glitched
- Gathers thousands of balloons and paints them with Mxy's face, then places them in the air for all of Metropolis to see, in what couldn't have been more than a minute or two
- Uses super breath to blow a piece of paper out of his hand, but makes it look like a tuba player did it instead
- Creates a wax dummy of himself that he controlled like a puppet to fool Mr. Mxyzptlk, and melts it with his X-ray(heat) vision to make it seem like it disappeared
- Moves faster than Mxy can see to plant a radio in his hat
- Disguises himself as both a doctor and a pharmacist, switching identities in the time it takes Mxy to go from seeing one to the other (and remember, he can teleport)

Spoiler: Faster than a lazy 5th-dimensional imp

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- On the splash page, Mr. Mxyzptlk makes a giant bottle of glue from the picture on a billboard become real, and pours it on the street, causing everyone to stick to the pavement
- Makes himself invisible and undetectable, even to Superman's senses
- Conjures up a letter for Lois
- Apparently he figured out that when he gets someone to say their own name backwards in his presence, they disappear for 24 hours into the Eighth Dimension
- Makes a fake ancient Roman statue appear, inscribed with the name "Namrepus" (Superman backwards), in English, for some reason
- Causes the statue to crumble to dust
- Easily follows Superman to an ancient Roman city and back to Metropolis
- Makes Perry White invisible, and causes him to fall asleep
- Transforms himself into a duplicate of Perry White
- Changes letters that fell on the floor into the specific ones he wants Clark to read
- Makes all of the traffic lights in Metropolis turn red and stay that way, then later changes them back to normal
- Changes the text on a piece of paper
- Disguises himself as a TV show host

Weirdness:

- It's a Mxy issue. 'Nuff said.
- Superman volunteers to be a cheerleader at a sports stadium. Really.

Superdickery:

- Turns into a destructive drill when doing archaeology, damaging the ruins
- Tries to make Mr. Mxyzptlk a laughingstock of the city, because he knows that he hates being ridiculed

Power Tracker:

- It's interesting that he was able to blitz Mxy and move faster than he could perceive, as Mxy is himself someone with super speed. However I don't believe this means you can take Mxy's best ever speed feats and scale Superman to them... So still Low Herald Level for now.

 

[Solar Sailor]

Action Comics #205

Notes:

-As it says on the cover, Superman is temporarily given the military rank of Sergeant in this issue, while helping the army carry out their war games

Feat Catalogue:

- Unharmed by blasts from guided missiles, tanks, and a new model of flamethrower
- Uses a bunch of spent shell casings as thrown projectiles to intercept a bunch of mortar shells so they detonate harmlessly high in the air
- Pulverizes a boulder into dust at super speed before a tank can fall on it, and the dust cushions the fall so the unstable explosives in the tank don't go off
- Peels a bunch of potatoes that would take a normal person a week in seemingly no more than a few minutes
- Throws a rifle with a bayonet at the speed of a bullet, precisely pinning a guy's parachute to a tree so he stops before landing on a minefield
- Lifts a rocket-launching tube weighing multiple tons and uses it as a giant straw in reverse to blow air into a lake, splashing water to put out a nearby forest fire
- Detects a colorless and odorless underground pocket of natural gas

Weirdness:

- The military was not only using live ammo, but armed land mines in their war games, against each other rather than unmanned targets. Somehow I don't think that's actual policy.

Superdickery:

- Doesn't do or even say anything about the military's ridiculously and unnecessarily dangerous war games

Power Tracker:

- Still Low Herald Level

Action Comics #206

Notes:

- The cover declares: "In this issue, Superman marries Lois Lane!". Of course, it's actually a dream sequence.

Feat Catalogue:

- Braces a collapsing building and saves Lois from it
- Spins at super speed, creating a waterspout and using it to put out a fire on an oil tanker

Weirdness:

- The majority of this issue was Lois' dream and didn't actually happen

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- He hardly did anything outside of the dream sequence, and even if you include the feats in the dream, they still wouldn't put him past Low Herald Level.

Action Comics #207

Notes:

- Apparently it's been a tradition for 4 years in-universe at this point for Superman to award medals for heroism at the annual Metropolis policemen's dinner.

Feat Catalogue:

- Superman's super hearing can be used as a lie detector, to detect abnormalities in a person's heartbeat
- Throws steel girders to trap some escaping criminals by creating a makeshift cell around them
- Grabs a flaming meteor from space and uses it to kill a huge swarm of locusts that threatened hundreds of farms
- Rips the top off a mountain and uses it to plug a volcano
- While performing the previous two feats, was keeping track of a cop with his telescopic vision and noting his heroic acts
- Uses what looks like a giant spool of thread to create a web to catch some airplanes used by smugglers
- Identifies a criminal by reading his fingerprints through his gloves with his X-ray vision
- At "meteoric speed", searches all of Metropolis in seconds to locate one specific person
- Flies a guy who was formerly a test pilot into the stratosphere, in order for him to regain his memory.

Spoiler: Lie detector

Spoiler: There's probably an easier way to kill bugs, also, kind of creepy spying on someone like that

Spoiler: Good senses and speed

Weirdness:

Superdickery:

- Pretends that a random boulder is Kryptonite and lets some criminals get away, just to try to trick a guy into risking his life to save him
- See that last feat? Yeah, he did that without giving him a plane or any kind of protective clothing. Could have killed him. And if he hadn't lost his memory of standing in for Clark Kent earlier, we don't know what Superman might have done to keep his secret...

Spoiler: This guy was lucky he lost his memory of Superman's secret identity, otherwise he might have suffered an 'unfortunate accident'

Power Tracker:

- Again, nothing to change him from Low Herald Level.

Action Comics #208

Notes:

- Mr. Mxyzptlk's fifth-dimensional powers are explicitly referred to as magic here. This would be retconned several times, but I'm pretty sure the current explanation is that he has access to legit magic as well as other sources of power
- Mxy is unaware that Clark Kent and Superman are one and the same. He could probably find out with ease, but one of his character traits is being scatterbrained and easily tricked, so it kind of makes sense. He does suspect it in this issue, but uses a very roundabout method to test his suspicion, and is again tricked
- A university professor asks Superman to find the name of the Roman king who was the grandson of the founder of "Aetbes". I can't find any results for "Aetbes" anywhere, so it probably doesn't exist.

Feat Catalogue:

- Searches Metropolis using X-ray vision for hours (but fails to find Lois, as she was in another dimension)
- Flies from Metropolis to an ancient Roman city in an unspecified but implied to be very short timeframe, and digs underground to find ancient ruins
- Realizes that Mxy is back and trying to trick him
- Bends a metal letter 'S' into a 'U' so fast that Mxy doesn't see what happened, and thinks that his powers glitched
- Gathers thousands of balloons and paints them with Mxy's face, then places them in the air for all of Metropolis to see, in what couldn't have been more than a minute or two
- Uses super breath to blow a piece of paper out of his hand, but makes it look like a tuba player did it instead
- Creates a wax dummy of himself that he controlled like a puppet to fool Mr. Mxyzptlk, and melts it with his X-ray(heat) vision to make it seem like it disappeared
- Moves faster than Mxy can see to plant a radio in his hat
- Disguises himself as both a doctor and a pharmacist, switching identities in the time it takes Mxy to go from seeing one to the other (and remember, he can teleport)

Spoiler: Faster than a lazy 5th-dimensional imp

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- On the splash page, Mr. Mxyzptlk makes a giant bottle of glue from the picture on a billboard become real, and pours it on the street, causing everyone to stick to the pavement
- Makes himself invisible and undetectable, even to Superman's senses
- Conjures up a letter for Lois
- Apparently he figured out that when he gets someone to say their own name backwards in his presence, they disappear for 24 hours into the Eighth Dimension
- Makes a fake ancient Roman statue appear, inscribed with the name "Namrepus" (Superman backwards), in English, for some reason
- Causes the statue to crumble to dust
- Easily follows Superman to an ancient Roman city and back to Metropolis
- Makes Perry White invisible, and causes him to fall asleep
- Transforms himself into a duplicate of Perry White
- Changes letters that fell on the floor into the specific ones he wants Clark to read
- Makes all of the traffic lights in Metropolis turn red and stay that way, then later changes them back to normal
- Changes the text on a piece of paper
- Disguises himself as a TV show host

Weirdness:

- It's a Mxy issue. 'Nuff said.
- Superman volunteers to be a cheerleader at a sports stadium. Really.

Superdickery:

- Turns into a destructive drill when doing archaeology, damaging the ruins
- Tries to make Mr. Mxyzptlk a laughingstock of the city, because he knows that he hates being ridiculed

Power Tracker:

- It's interesting that he was able to blitz Mxy and move faster than he could perceive, as Mxy is himself someone with super speed. However I don't believe this means you can take Mxy's best ever speed feats and scale Superman to them... So still Low Herald Level for now.

Being fair to Mxy, it seems in that flashback that he’s trailing behind him so while it may seem like he blitzed him, it might also be that he also kept himself out of his line of sight too

 

[Endless Mike]

Being fair to Mxy, it seems in that flashback that he’s trailing behind him so while it may seem like he blitzed him, it might also be that he also kept himself out of his line of sight too

Maybe. But you have to keep in mind that Mxy takes all of this as just fun and games, and is rarely ever serious.

When he actually does get serious, he's absolutely terrifying.

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #209

Notes:

Feat Catalogue:

- The opening narration states that "You've seen Superman span space - leaping from planet to planet with the ease of a lad playing leap-frog."
- Somehow builds a giant shovel, twice as big as a condemned building, in order to tear it down. He digs up the building and scoops out the foundation for a new one at the same time.
- Throws the building, foundation, and shovel into the sea far from the coast
- A character with similar super strength hits him over the head with a giant iron mallet, using a tree trunk for a handle, and it shatters and leaves him unharmed
- Superman digs underground, gathers a large amount of iron ore, forms it into a mallet, and uses a tree trunk for a handle, then swings it over the other guy's head
- Uses his X-ray(heat) vision to melt a meteor hundreds of thousands of miles away in space.
- Sits inside a block of Arctic ice for an hour with no discomfort
- Sits inside what appears to be a furnace with no discomfort either
- Flies "far out in space" to an asteroid where Kryptonite is present
- Flies back to Earth
- Disguises himself as a brick wall and tanks the repeated blows of a guy with similar strength to himself
- Sees through a trick meant to lure him away from Earth
- Uses super hearing and telescopic vision to spy on another guy with similar super powers without him noticing

Spoiler: Best HV feat yet

Weirdness:

- In two early scenes in this issue, Superman is too slow to stop a stray bullet from hitting a guy, and a falling boulder from later hitting the same guy. Even though these are necessary for the plot, it's still a low showing.
- Some random evil scientist finds a meteorite that can give someone exposed to its radiation Superman-like powers (minus the vulnerability to Kryptonite) for 3 days. How many of these meteorites with wacky properties are we going to end up seeing?
- Also, the guy's plan was to give one of his minions superpowers, and have him try to convince Superman that he was a Kryptonian survivor too, and he had gained the Kryptonite immunity by spending a week on a planet with weird radiation, to try to get Superman to leave Earth for that time so they could commit crimes. He said that it was a better idea than using his powers to fight Superman directly. But couldn't he have used the meteorite to empower multiple people and gang up on him? Or even if he could only empower a single person, he was able to find Kryptonite in space, and wasn't affected by it, wouldn't it have made more sense to just get the Kryptonite and use that on Superman?
- Superman paints himself like a brick wall for no real reason, when he could have just stopped the criminals normally

Spoiler: The point of this disguise was...?

Superdickery:

- Uses his super breath to knock a guy off a bridge just to test to see if he has superpowers. He plans to save him if he doesn't, but still.

Power Tracker:

- This is almost certainly the best heat vision feat we've seen yet, in terms of both range and power. However, he's still Low Herald Level.

Action Comics #210

Notes:

- Apparently Lois Lane, Clark Kent, Jimmy Olsen, and Perry White are famous enough as "Superman's friends" that people will swarm them for autographs
- At one point in this issue, a theater is shown playing Superman cartoons. One of them has him fighting a giant green dragon, and this is likely meant to be a reference to "The Arctic Giant", one of the 1941 Fleischer Superman cartoons. See the Weirdness section for a further note on this.
- Krypton's core is stated to be made of uranium again in this issue. This shows that that applies to the Silver Age continuity too, at least at this point.

Spoiler: Definitely a reference to the cartoon

Feat Catalogue:

- Uses super ventriloquism to disguise his voice and throw it across the room
- Travels from a merry-go-round to a recreation of the Daily Planet and back faster than the eye can see, to grab a wax dummy of Clark Kent and put it on the merry-go-round so he has an alibi
- Stamps a bunch of envelopes faster than a printing press could, and then sorts them all at super speed. It was said it would take the post office staff days to do it otherwise, and this seemed to take no more than a few minutes at most
- Switches clothes and switches positions with the Clark Kent dummy at super speed again, again so fast that no one can see
- Uses multiple heat vision beams at once to sign autographs on fake pieces of Kryptonite
- Thought quickly to prepare an escape from Luthor's trap

Spoiler: Quick thinking

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- Lex Luthor once again has created synthetic Kryptonite in his laboratory

Weirdness:

- The whole premise of this issue is that a huge amusement park solely based around Superman has just opened. Not the weirdest thing in-universe, but it is kind of gauche in its presentation.
- The Fleischer Superman cartoons, which were being shown in the amusement park in-universe, clearly revealed Superman's secret identity as Clark Kent. I guess we have to assume the in-universe versions were different and didn't reveal that fact.
- One of the attractions at the amusement park was a recreation of Krypton's destruction, using a paper-mache model and a "jet-powered rocket". The weird thing is that the rocket was actually capable of reaching space (although it's possible that Luthor had modified it)
- Lex's plan is, yet again, to launch Superman into space in a rocket filled with Kryptonite. This is the third time in just this title that this has been tried so far. It wasn't the charm.

Superdickery:

- Gets away from Lois and Jimmy by deliberating attracting a mob of autograph-seeking fans to their location to distract them.

Power Tracker:

- No real notable feats here, so still Low Herald Level.

Action Comics #211

Notes:

- The international editions of the Daily Planet are apparently still a thing, but they're mentioned to be published in France, Greece, Italy, Holland, and Japan, instead of France, the UK, and India like in issue #203
- The 'bird/plane/Superman' cliche is repeated in one of the panels in this issue exactly as it is most famously known
- The cover promises that we will see Superman "holding up the world". Unfortunately, no such thing happens in the actual comic.
- It's directly stated in this issue that Krypton was in another solar system

Feat Catalogue:

- Lifts the Eiffel Tower easily with one hand
- Flips it over and holds it upside-down with one hand (possibly one finger, it's hard to tell)
- Builds a wooden replica of the Trojan Horse and lifts it
- Flies into space, gathers a bunch of small asteroids together and molds them into a small model of the Earth, then takes it back to the surface and lifts it, and throws it into space
- Captures two lions with his bare hands, and captures a third by throwing javelins through a wall, creating a barricade of metal bars in front of it
- Pulls a chariot around an arena faster than horses pull another one
- Cuts down a bunch of trees at super speed by flying past them with his arms extended
- Cuts the trees into wooden planks, and then uses them to assemble a giant pair of wooden shoes at super speed, then grabs masts and sails to make it into a boat
- Picks up and carries an unused windmill and attaches it to the shoes, then spins the blades at super speed, creating a propeller to drive the boat
- Gathers a bunch of rice pulp, builds a giant press, and uses it to create a huge amount of rice paper, which he forms into a giant Japanese lantern
- Creates a giant candle to fit inside the lantern, and somehow lighting it illuminates the entire island of Japan at night

Spoiler: Let's hope he put it back precisely the way it was

Spoiler: Is there any reason he couldn't have used rocks on Earth to make the model?

Spoiler: That must be one bright candle!

Weirdness:

- The various stunts that Superman does to promote the paper in different countries seem somewhat destructive or at least disruptive, such as lifting the Eiffel Tower off of its foundations, chopping down a bunch of trees, and lighting up all of Japan
- He creates a sailboat in the shape of a giant pair of wooden shoes, powered by a windmill. Really.
- The Japanese people in this issue are literally drawn with yellow faces, and speak in stereotypical broken English

Spoiler: WTF

Spoiler: Racist caricatures! Collect them all!

Superdickery:

- Is rather rough with the lions he captures, grabbing one by the tail and tossing both of them through the air

Power Tracker:

- Low Herald Level, again.

Action Comics #212

Notes:

- This was the first issue of the year 1956, and it focused on a 1956 calendar featuring Superman, which was both made in-universe and included in the comic itself
- "The world's biggest and oldest glacier" is stated to be in the Arctic in this issue, but in real life it would be in Antarctica

Feat Catalogue:

- Lifts and carries an elephant while Perry White rides on it
- Is bitten and scratched by lions with no effect
- Flies to the Arctic, smashes off a piece of "the world's biggest and oldest glacier" and takes it to Metropolis, where he crushes it into snow, and due to it being "the hardest ice in the world", it lasts a long time without melting. He uses it to make a giant snowman and cover a hill with snow for kids to sled on
- Builds a giant Valentine heart from scrap paper and flies across the city with it
- Uses super breath to create wind by inhaling repeatedly, then tilts a condemned building so it looks like he's propping it up against the wind
- Creates a giant umbrella from canvas and scrap in a junkyard, large enough to cover an entire baseball stadium, and holds it up for the duration of the game while acting as umpire for the game
- Lassos a giant whale and pulls it out of the ocean, then throws it back in, without hurting it (or so he claims, at least)
- Carries a large platform with 2 newlyweds and a minister on it from Metropolis to Yellowstone National Park in seconds (somehow without them falling off or dying from speed and friction with the air)
- Lights a giant firework-like rocket and then intercepts the exhaust before it can hit the ground and cause damage
- Catches up with the rocket and lands it safely
- Creates a giant fan and spins it around at super speed to cool off the hot city streets
- Moves a school building to another location
- Puts a giant wooden Jack-O-Lantern (that he presumably built) on the top of a building's lighted spire
- Flies into space and searches at FTL speed with his telescopic vision to find a fragment of Krypton where his parents' home used to be
- Creates an airtight bubble (although he calls it a cylinder for some reason) to take a guy into space with him
- Uses wires to hold up Perry White dressed as Santa Claus, complete with sleigh and reindeer, and fly him through the sky

Spoiler: Some questionable physics again

Spoiler: Pretty good speed/senses feat

Weirdness:

- The 'villain' in this issue is a businessman who tries to trick Superman into signing a contract to make his calendar, saying that 100% of the profits will go to charity, but in the contract Superman signs, it specifies that he has to perform all of the stunts for the calendar exactly as envisioned, or the businessman will keep all the profits. Wouldn't it be simpler to just agree from the beginning to give half the profits to charity? It would still be a lot of money and Superman probably wouldn't have an issue with it.
- He kept trying to sabotage each picture, and the April one was supposed to be sabotaged by the baseball game being called on account of rain, yet the picture itself showed Superman holding the giant umbrella that he used to get around that
- Somehow the exact chunk of Krypton that Kal-El's childhood home was situated on was blasted into space with the building intact. Unless he just found a random Kryptonian building and lied about it being his house.
- The 'villain' should have technically won, as he specified that each of the scenes had to be recreated exactly, and the November scene showed Superman returning to an Earth house with a slanted roof and trees and hedges around it, not a sci-fi style alien house in space.
- There's an ad in this issue for what appears to be a live miniature Chihuahua, which you can receive - in the mail - by handing out coupons. Somehow I don't think this would fly with today's animal rights laws.

Spoiler: The things they could get away with in the 50s...

Superdickery:

- I'm not convinced that whale was completely unharmed...

Power Tracker:

- Another confirmed FTL feat, although unless we know exactly how far away Krypton was it can't be precisely quantified. Still Low Herald Level at this point.

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #213

Notes:

- It's shown in this issue that emergency broadcasts on public radio sometimes specifically ask for Superman's help.
- It's also stated that the sound of Superman taking off sounds like a rocket

Feat Catalogue:

- Flies thousands of miles north to the Arctic circle, in an unspecified but implied to be short timeframe
- Destroys some icebergs, and throws some other ones into space, then moves them towards the sun to melt them quicker
- Stops a tornado (for some reason called a hurricane, but it's clearly a tornado) by using a giant paint vat as an air pump, then saves every object caught up in the tornado and lowers them all safely to the ground
- Uses X-ray(heat) vision to melt the soles of a guy's shoes from long range without him noticing, so he sticks to the ground

Spoiler: That is clearly not a hurricane

Weirdness:

- There's the aforementioned tornado falsely referred to as a hurricane

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- Nothing too notable here, so still Low Herald Level.

Action Comics #214

Notes:

Feat Catalogue:

- According to the narration, punches a battleship so hard that every single atom of it disintegrates
- Scans the entire world with his X-ray vision to locate the biggest diamond (at least near the surface), flies to Africa to dig it up, shapes it into a knife, uses it to cut a building safely from the surrounding buildings, flies the building to an uninhabited area, and smashes the building to pieces
- Throws the diamond knife in the ocean so no one can recover it
- Creates a giant hammer and metal gong from some metal ore and hits it, causing a vibration that shatters a giant glass palace
- Digs a huge pit underneath an explosives factory, and causes it to fall in, exploding underground and sealing up the pit
- Travels all around the world to listen to every language spoken on Earth
- Flies to an undiscovered planet at the edge of the solar system
- By scanning the planet with his X-ray vision and super hearing, masters the aliens' language in only 5 minutes
- Hurls a replica of the Sphinx, as well as several other buildings, into space
- Lifts an amusement park (and the piece of land it's on) and throws it into orbit around the alien planet at the far edge of the solar system
- Evacuates the Daily Planet building and throws it into space
- Builds a new Daily Planet building at super speed

Spoiler: This some Saint Seiya type shit here?

Spoiler: Senses, speed, strength

Spoiler: Okay. Color me impressed.

Spoiler: I guess we can just trust them to never cause trouble again...

Weirdness:

- An eccentric millionaire, known for making false doomsday predictions, intercepts and decodes alien transmissions planning an invasion of Earth. The aliens use an invisible ray on 10 specific objects and buildings on Earth, which causes them to gain explosive properties and detonate like atomic bombs when the aliens send a signal. The millionaire buys all of them, then tricks Superman into signing a contract that requires that he destroys them all, in order to protect the Earth. Goofy, yes, but still not peak Silver Age.

Superdickery:

- The cover implies that Superman is wantonly destroying stuff for no reason (even though in the actual comic, everyone knows that the millionaire is making him do it, but not the reason why)

Power Tracker:

- Some really impressive sensory and intelligence feats in this issue, but those alone won't get him past Low Herald Level.

Action Comics #215

Notes:

- We are shown the Metropolis of the year 2956 in this issue, but this was published 2 years before the Legion of Super Heroes was introduced, which explained what was going in the 30th and 31st centuries in the DC Universe. So any contradictions here can probably be chalked up to it being a different future timeline.
- The writers here did predict that newspapers would no longer be printed, but they didn't predict the internet, as instead the newspapers are broadcast like radio transmissions to each home individually.

Feat Catalogue:

- Travels faster than light and through time, 1000 years into the future
- Flies from Earth to Mars
- Destroys some meteors between the Earth and Mars so spaceships don't crash into them
- Beats up a giant robot used for digging canals on Mars
- Closes the gates to the Mars canals before any water can get out, and then fuses them together by hitting them so hard that the metal melts, since the lock was broken
- Follows a rocket unseen by hiding in its exhaust
- His X-ray vision sees through an invisibility shield that deflects light
- Creates a fake mock-up of a power plant out of scrap steel to trick the villain
- Travels back 1000 years to 1956

Spoiler: More time travel

Weirdness:

- In the year 2956 A.D., Metropolis is home to the "Daily Solar System" newspaper, run by one of Perry White's descendants that looks just like him (named "Parri Wyte"). There's also a female reporter named "Lyra Lee" who acts just like Lois does.
- Also, all electrical power on Earth was supplied by a single atomic energy plant, which broadcasted it wirelessly. If the plant was shut down, destroyed, or removed, it was stated that every machine on Earth would stop functioning. Ever heard of redundant systems, maybe?
- The guy who stole the power plant also sent an ultimatum via video broadcast, saying everyone would have to follow his orders or he wouldn't return it. But how could he even give those orders if no machines would function to carry his transmissions?

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- I think this is the best and furthest time travel feat we've seen so far, but still nothing puts him above Low Herald Level.

Action Comics #216

Notes:

- Batman is namedropped in this title, for the first time I believe (outside of ads). Superman knows his secret identity.
- Apparently there had been no war on Krypton for thousands of years before Jor-El's lifetime
- The ship that Superman came to Earth in was apparently a prototype/model of a much larger ship Jor-El also built
- There's a coupon in this issue, featuring Superman, that gives free admission to the Palisades amusement park in New Jersey. That park closed in 1971, although even if it was still open today, I doubt the coupon would still be valid.
- There's a PSA featuring Superman in this issue

Spoiler: Took long enough for Batman to get a mention

Feat Catalogue:

- Instants after being smacked away by a Kryptonian robot, Superman returns with a bunch of metal pipes he borrowed from a city supply depot, and uses "super-pressure" to weld them together into a giant acetylene torch
- Using the torch (powered by his super breath), he severs the robot's tail, then carries it away
- The robot self-destructs but he tanks the explosion
- Attaches a wire to a high building, and when lightning strikes it, takes the wire and attaches it to a Kryptonian machine to short-circuit it while the lightning bolt is still in transit
- Crushes a large boulder of feldspar into dust, brings the dust to the hurricane machine and blows it around the inside to reveal fingerprints, then uses his X-ray vision to make the fingerprints glow purple (what?)
- Uses X-ray(heat) vision to melt strings of Kryptonian metal that were strong enough to bind him
- Throws the string-creating machine into the sun
- Instantly identifies a feather as belonging to a rare species of bird native to the Amazon Rainforest
- Digs to the core of the Earth and throws the miles-long Kryptonian ship into it

Spoiler: Don't know why he had to wait for the lightning bolt to hit, but still it's a good speed feat

Spoiler: Super Detective Work

Spoiler: Throwing a robot from Earth to the sun

Spoiler: A lot of what was in that ship could have been useful...

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- A Kryptonian robot is made of metal so tough that Superman's strongest punches can only dent it
- It also swats Superman away with its tail
- Another Kryptonian machine, a giant hurricane-making fan, has blades that Superman can't bend
- Yet another one traps Superman in a web of metal strings that he can't escape with his strength
- All of these machines and robots were brought to Earth by another robot, which was built by Jor-El
- Jor-El also built a spaceship miles long to take old Kryptonian war weapons to a space station he designed, with a prop city for the weapons to destroy, to try to convince the other Kryptonians of the folly of war

Weirdness:

- When examining one of the Kryptonian machines, Superman finds the imprints of fingers in the metal, which leads him to determine that it was built by someone with super strength. Later, when checking the fingerprints, he finds that they all belong to a single person. That person is later revealed as Jor-El.

Two problems with that, though:

1. On Krypton, Jor-El wouldn't have had super strength
2. Jor-El didn't build these weapons, just recovered them from a museum, as stated in the comic

Superdickery:

- Suspecting there is another Kryptonian around building the machines, Superman spies on several people that Lois has previously suspected of being him, including creepily stalking them around town. He also interrogates a guy pretty harshly just for traveling to a slum and changing his clothes.

Power Tracker:

- Throwing the robot to the sun was nice, but still not above Low Herald Level.

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #217

Notes:

- Eating food grown on Krypton temporarily granted a human toddler Kryptonian powers. I don't know if this phenomenon will ever be referenced again.

Feat Catalogue:

- Quickly scans the entire neighborhood around his home with his telescopic vision, looking for a letter that flew out the window. He doesn't find it, though.
- Quickly flies from Metropolis to "a remote and isolated wilderness"
- Digs to the center of the Earth to get iron (no idea why, since there's plenty on the surface)
- Flies to the Amazon Rainforest and back to get rubber trees and fashion them into a giant rubber ball
- Creates various other giant toys for a toddler with super strength to play with, in seemingly no more than a few minutes
- Flies in seconds to a place that would take 2 hours to drive to
- Finds the letter he was looking for as it's burning up in the city incinerator, and gets inside, picks it up, and reads it in the split second before it burns up
- Uses super speed and telescopic vision to find and retrieve the toddler after he tunneled out of his giant playpen
- Scans the area with telescopic vision again to find a construction worker using dynamite
- Uses super breath to suspend a bunch of giant wooden alphabet blocks in mid-air to spell out the message "DANGER BLASTING NEARBY", that could be seen for miles.
- Looks through the letters in "every post office" (in the world?) at super speed to find a letter that matches a specific sample of handwriting. He says this takes "awhile", though.

Spoiler: There are easier ways to get iron, you know

Spoiler: How many post offices did he search, exactly?

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- The unnamed "Super-Baby" throws a giant rubber ball so high and so fast into the air that an airplane pilot mistakes it for a meteor falling up instead of down
- Somehow creates giant wooden alphabet blocks and a giant rattle
- Ties together the fraying rope holding up a falling safe at super speed, so that Lois only sees a blur

Weirdness:

- We're getting into more of the craziness that the Silver Age is known for. A random toddler wearing a Superman outfit suddenly appears on Clark's doorstep, having all of his powers. Apparently his parents decided to dress him up like that and give him to "Superman's friend" when he spontaneously developed those powers, so that Superman could raise him. And he's actually willing to do so, until the kid's powers wear off, as they came from eating Kryptonian food that was attached to Clark's rocket.
- Throughout the whole issue, the toddler is only referred to (even by himself and his parents) as "baby". They never named him? Or is his name literally "Baby"?
- To explain why there are giant alphabet blocks and a giant rattle laying around (Lois doesn't know about the baby), Superman says he built them for warning people of dynamite blasting, and attracting attention to a plane advertising a charity fund. Lois is completely convinced by this.
- When the kid's powers wore off, his intelligence also somehow reverted, as he lost the power of speech and the memory of the time he had his powers

Spoiler: Sure comic, this makes perfect sense

Superdickery:

- Leaves a toddler alone in the wilderness for several hours. Said toddler did have Kryptonian powers, but still.

Power Tracker:

- A casual trip to the Earth's core is nice, but nothing we haven't seen before. The post office searching feat can't really be quantified. Still Low Herald Level.

Action Comics #218

Notes:

Feat Catalogue:

- Uses microscopic vision to identify an ape's handprints on the metal of a wrecked car in a photograph
- Builds a giant stockade in a few minutes to herd jungle animals into to save them from an erupting volcano
- Creates a new vent in an erupting volcano to divert the lava down a different path so it won't kill the animals
- Is paralyzed by Kryptonite dust for many days, but still manages to use his X-ray(heat) vision to start a fire in the dry season and burn away the Kryptonite dust.
- Uses the logs from the stockade he built earlier to make a giant wooden paddle which he uses to extinguish the fire he started
- Intercepts a shell from a large cannon shortly after it is fired
- Carries a bunch of kidnapped animals back to their native habitat in Africa
- Flies to many different planets (presumably in different star systems) to locate several Kryptonian apes and brings them all to an uninhabited planet, then returns to Earth.

Spoiler: More interstellar flight

Weirdness:

- Apes, especially gorillas, were very popular during the Silver Age. Look at the Flash's rogues gallery for instance. This comic features a Kryptonian ape that was sent in a rocket to Earth in order to test if the rocket was safe. There were other apes sent to other planets as well. Also, he can talk for some reason.
- The villains in this issue, a pair of poachers, tell the Metropolis police that the city is going to be destroyed by an ape with superpowers. The police uncritically accept this immediately and arm themselves to prepare, rather than thinking that the two are nuts. Then again, it's not that much stranger than many of the other things that routinely happen in Metropolis...

Spoiler: I've reached the point now where I don't even find this all that weird

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- Another FTL feat that isn't exactly quantifiable, so still Low Herald Level.

Action Comics #219

Notes:

- A helicopter pilot says, when following Superman, that "if he really speeds up, nothing can overtake him!" Obviously he was referring only to Earth aircraft here, but I like to collect these hyperboles anyway, so they can be used if someone tried dishonestly using hyperboles themselves

Feat Catalogue:

- Uses X-ray vision to find gold ore in a mountain, smashes it open to get it out, builds a crucible out of rock and refines it in a volcano (while standing in the lava), and forms it into gold bars.
- Takes a pearl from a giant clam "deep under tropic seas"
- Digs up coal in Antarctica and squeezes it into diamonds with "super-pressure"
- Flies into space, finds two meteors made of pure iron, smashes them together so hard they both melt, forms the molten iron into steel "harder than any ever made" and uses it as a door to his treasure vault
- The door he created is able to shrug off blows from an "experimental battering-ram tank" without even a dent
- Catches two tank shells at close range
- Ties a tank's gunbarrels into knots
- Sees an underground drilling machine with X-ray vision and redirects it to the Metropolis jail
- Uses trees and branches to create a giant net to catch some skydivers
- Some scientists developed a new "atomic cutting-torch" that can supposedly cut through anything - except Superman himself. So he created the vault door to lure the criminals who stole the torch, since apparently the door was so durable that only that torch could cut through it
- Flies faster than lightning (according to the narration) to fix a collapsing elevated road
- Digs underground into the treasure vault he created
- Squeezes a bar of gold so that it melts and coats himself with it, making him look like a golden statue
- Is unharmed by the "atomic cutting-torch", which did previously cut through the steel vault door he built in only a few seconds

Spoiler: Inflation, ho!

Spoiler: Super strong steel door

Spoiler: Relatively minor speed and reaction feat

Spoiler: Setup for the cutting torch feat

Spoiler: And the feat itself

Weirdness:

- After catching the thieves, Superman gives all of the treasures he had accumulated to charity. Except he said in a previous issue that he couldn't let wealth he created with his super powers get into circulation because it would upset the world's economy.

Superdickery:

- The cover and beginning of the story try to portray Superman as a greedy miser.
- Makes a giant drill ruin the foundation and floor of the Metropolis jail to deliver some criminals there. Also, since they hadn't technically done anything illegal yet (assuming they owned the drilling machine), he also sent them to jail for no reason.

Spoiler: Rich people be like

Power Tracker:

- Despite how much it was hyped up, I doubt the cutting torch was planet level (or really anywhere close to that) in attack potency, so Low Herald Level again.

Action Comics #220

Notes:

- The opening narration says that Superman can "lift a mountain, move faster than lightning, hurl any weight into the sky, and leap any height"

Feat Catalogue:

- Is drawn across interstellar distances by a tractor beam again. Notable is that it can only take him when he decides to let it.
- Throws a thousand-pound weight a meter or so away, despite being weakened by the presence of Kryptonite
- A robot that was strong enough to throw a discus so that it orbited a planet and landed behind him charged Superman at his full speed and was destroyed by the impact, with no harm to the Man of Steel
- Uses vaulting poles as tongs to handle a block of Kryptonite and throw it into space
- Flies back to Earth under his own power, arriving "soon", according to the narration

Spoiler: Superman vs. FTL Tractor beam 2: Electric Boogaloo

Spoiler: How strong the robot Bronno is

Spoiler: What happens when he faces a non-weakened Superman

Spoiler: Disposes of the Kryptonite and returns to Earth

Weirdness:

- After observing his feats on Earth, aliens pull Superman into space to complete in the "interplanetary Olympics". Why an interplanetary contest would be named after a contest on Earth (which most of the aliens say they have never heard of) is a mystery.
- One of the contestants was a robot, which was covered in lead so Superman couldn't tell. But wouldn't he find it suspicious that his X-ray vision didn't work on someone?

Superdickery:

- Arrogance: Superman assumes that he will be able to win the contest easily, without even knowing what powers the other competitors have. This comes back to bite him.

Power Tracker:

- When in the stadium, since he was near the Kryptonite but not right on top of it, he was maybe High Street Level. Without the influence of the Kryptonite, Low Herald Level.

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #221

Notes:

- The opening narration says "Everyone knows about Superman's super-powers: his super-strength and super-speed, his invulnerability, telescopic and X-ray vision, and super-keen hearing". They forgot to mention quite a few, even just going by the ones we've seen in this title so far.

Feat Catalogue:

- Flies into space and destroys what is described as "a small comet" with an "unusually powerful magnetic charge"
- Deflects and destroys some meteors that were magnetically drawn to him
- In this issue, Superman temporarily gets magnetic powers a la Magneto. He uses them to:
* lift a train car
* stop a criminal getaway car
* remotely grab some steel girders,
* attract a bunch of molten steel before it hurts people
* spin at super speed around a wire to generate electricity for all of Metropolis
* extract iron ore from a mountain in minutes that would have taken miners months
* lift a gang leader in his steel bulletproof vest out of the window of a house and then put him back
* lifts a building by its metal beams while hiding in a low cloud
* redirect a car to the police station
* lift the gang leader again using the nails in his shoes and fly him to prison
* inadvertently draws a huge lightning storm to Metropolis, then flies off and pulls it away after him.
- Uses telescopic X-ray vision to see an accident in a steel mill that releases molten steel, and flies there (avoiding planes or other metallic objects since he's magnetic now) and arrives before any of the molten steel falls on anyone
- Flies the molten steel up to the stratosphere in seconds where it cools and solidifies
- Is struck by tons of lightning bolts more powerful than he had ever seen before, but they don't affect him, other than removing his magnetic powers

Spoiler: Destroying comets and meteors

Weirdness:

- An encounter with a magnetic comet temporarily gives Superman magnetic powers. Par for the course for the Silver Age, really.

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- Even with the extra magnetic power, he'd still be only Low Herald Level. He loses it at the end of the issue, anyway.

Action Comics #222

Notes:

- The opening narration states "Before your eyes is about to occur the most incredible event of all time... the death of Superman! Not an imposter - not an illusion... but the man of steel himself!" Spoiler: It's not really him that dies. Wait until Doomsday shows up in 1992 (which is after COIE, so I won't be covering it here).
- Lead is shown to provide some shielding against Kryptonite radiation here, whereas in the Golden Age (issue #158, to be exact), no element was able to shield against it.
- The DC wiki refers to the bomb in this issue as a cobalt bomb, but in the comic itself it's only referred to as a "Q-Bomb"

Feat Catalogue:

- Tanks the explosion of a "Q-Bomb", said to be equal to 100 H-bombs. Although it has an odd effect on him...
- Both Supermen "bore through mountains like cheese", take baths in molten lava, and tie each other in a race to the moon
- Using telescopic vision, one of them reads the name of a ship from 3000 miles away
- One of the two duplicate Supermen smothers a bomb with his body, so it doesn't damage anything around it
- The two Supermen eventually end up fighting each other, and, as you can probably predict, neither is able to gain the advantage
- One of them flies out into space at super speed, having earlier used his telescopic vision to see a giant Kryptonite meteor heading towards Earth
- He successfully deflects the meteor, but is killed by the impact due to being weakened by the Kryptonite
- Sees his other self deflect the meteor and die in space
- Reconstructs a golden idol that the other Superman damaged earlier

Spoiler: What does the Q stand for?

Spoiler: The Death of Superman! (36 years before Doomsday)

Weirdness:

- An experimental military bomb somehow splits Superman into two identical copies of himself, except one lacks telescopic vision and the other lacks X-ray vision. We'll see this kind of thing again later, but more often red Kryptonite will be the cause.
- One of the Supermen steals a valuable golden idol in order to get at the lead inside it to make a shield for himself. There were plenty of other, less conspicuous ways to get lead, that wouldn't lead him into a fight with his duplicate.
- After one of the Supermen dies, the narration says that "instantly, all the super-energies formerly embodied in the destroyed twin radiates back to their original common form back on Earth!" and the other Superman is at full power again.

Superdickery:

- As mentioned before, one of the Supermen decides that the best way to get a source of lead was to steal a gold idol from a museum
- Makes up a lie about stealing the golden idol as a plan to fool some crooks, in order to explain why his other self took it from the museum

Power Tracker:

- The narration seemed to imply that each Superman was half as powerful as the combined whole, but he's already so near the very top of the Low Herald Level category that even the weakened duplicates would retain that designation.

Action Comics #223

Notes:

- In this issue, Kryptonian civilization was stated to be 10,000 years old before it was destroyed
- The summary of this issue on the DC wiki says that Jor-El's experiments also replicated the yellow sunlight of Earth, but no such thing is mentioned in the comic, just the gravity and atmosphere. I'm guessing that's because, at this point, the yellow sunlight factor still hadn't been introduced, yet as this was technically the Silver Age, it should have been in play, so the writers of the summary on the wiki just assumed that the yellow sunlight was also replicated by the machines. That could be the case, or it could be another one of those hypertime/alternate-but-not-quite-the-same universes that cross over with Earth-1 and Earth-2. Either way, it's all canon now.
- Most of this issue is told in the form of a flashback, with Jor-El as the main protagonist, not Superman
- The ending here is actually pretty sad

Feat Catalogue:

- Spots a piece of Krypton in space with his telescopic vision and flies out to investigate it
- Modifies a movie projector to play Kryptonian records as films

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- Jor-El's diary worked as a hologram recorder and projector as well
- Kryptonians were taught "atomic equations" at age 3
- They had giant mechanical "building-machines" that could construct buildings
- Jor-El built an atomic-powered drilling machine that he used to tunnel thousands of miles into Krypton's core and investigate it
- The Kryptonians celebrated the 10,000th year of their civilization with "atomic skywriting"
- Jor-El's instruments were able to scan and study Earth from a distance, learning of its inhabitants and civilization
- He built "gravity-distorting machines" to replicate Earth's gravity on part of Krypton's surface, and presumably also recreated Earth's atmosphere, as that was mentioned as well
- He then used the building machines to create a replica of an Earth city in the area, and discovered that under those conditions, he had super strength and other powers
- The same building machines are later used to create interstellar rockets to travel to Earth
- Jor-El takes his drilling machine even further down, near the core of Krypton to confirm that the atomic chain reaction that will destroy the planet has begun and is building up in power

Spoiler: And yet they couldn't figure out that their planet was doomed...

Spoiler: Drill, baby, drill!

Spoiler: As much as people criticize the yellow sunlight explanation, it works better than this

Spoiler: Feels...

Weirdness:

- Just like his childhood home was somehow still intact on a fragment of Krypton in issue #212, here he finds Jor-El's desk and the remnants of his laboratory on another drifting fragment. Awfully convenient.
- Even though the projector had to be modified to play them, the Kryptonian records still looked like film reels. What happened to the thought-activated holographic memory discs shown in issue #149? Yeah, I know that was in the Golden Age, but it doesn't make much sense for the writers and artists to make it seem as if Krypton's technology in the Silver Age is more primitive than it was in the Golden Age.
- For some reason, Krypton is shown using the English alphabet and Arabic numerals. They also measured distance in miles. Probably just a convenience for translation's sake.
- Jor-El's wife (and Superman's mother) is referred to as "Lora" in this issue, when it should be "Lara"
- There's another ad in this one for those miniature Chihuahuas... thankfully, I did some research and found out that these were scams, and no actual dogs were ever shipped.

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- Almost nothing to actually note here other than another interstellar flight feat. You know what that means, still Low Herald Level.

Action Comics #224

Notes:

- This is another very silly cover which was featured on Superdickery, IIRC
- This issue had the archive error, so sorry about the low quality scans

Feat Catalogue:

- Creates an island (shaped and colored like himself) by throwing mountains into the ocean, fusing the rock together, and covering it with soil and plants
- Somehow installs air jets on the island that keep planes from landing there
- Builds a lighthouse on the island that projects a giant hologram of himself
- Also sets up a recording of his voice to play to warn ships away if it's too foggy to see the lighthouse
- Travels to "a distant volcano" to smelt steel from iron ore, then brings it back to the island and uses it to create a bunch of huge tractors and earth moving machines
- Searches around the world for Kryptonite, taking an Antarctic glacier, a mountaintop, and some of the stuff from the bottom of the ocean.
- Creates a giant shovel out of rock and uses it to dig up some Kryptonite he found underground with his X-ray vision
- Hears his own recorded voice from a distant place on Earth
- Destroys two of the machines he built by throwing one at the other
- Flies from Metropolis to his island in seconds
- Lifts the island and throws it into space

Spoiler: In case you ever wondered about the context of the infamous "Super-Landscaping" panel

Spoiler: Throws his own island into space

Weirdness:

- This issue is the source of the infamous "Super-Landscaping" panel
- The plot itself is silly, as a scientist tells Superman that he is working on building an electric generator powered by Kryptonite, and Superman offers to gather as much as he can for him. Then the fact that Superman met with the scientist is published in the newspaper, but not the reason why. Superman creates an island (in the shape of himself for some reason) to store the Kryptonite, but when the generator doesn't work he gets rid of it.

Superdickery:

- Throws a small mountain into the water right next to a cruise ship. If the resulting wave didn't capsize it, they were lucky.

Power Tracker:

- It's been exactly 100 issues since I first upgraded Superman to Low Herald Level... and he's still there. Go figure.

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #225

Notes:

- According to the DC wiki, this is the first story named "The Death of Superman" in any media. However, the term was used before in issue #222.
- Robot duplicates of Superman would later become a major recurring plot device. This is the first time we've seen one in this title, although I'm not sure if it's the first time one has showed up.

Feat Catalogue:

- Builds a robot copy of himself, which is indistinguishable in appearance, and seems to have all of his powers (although at a weaker level than the original)
- Was said to have stopped a "runaway meteor shower from a distant galaxy" that might have destroyed the Earth
- Changes to Superman, flies outside, and enters the next room through the window before Lois, Perry, and Jimmy can walk through the door.

Spoiler: I'm certain these robots will never cause any trouble from here on...

Spoiler: As it was shown that Superman faked his death, that means he did stop the meteors

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- The Superman robot demonstrated the following abilities/feats
* Flight
* Immunity to Kryptonite (obviously)
* Detached a helicopter blade from a helicopter and spun it around at super speed in one hand, creating a vacuum to pull some criminals upwards
* X-ray(heat) vision strong enough to vaporize a falling steel beam before it hit a crowd
* Smashed a giant meteor before it struck Metropolis
* Flew unharmed into an open hearth furnace
* Self-repair capability
* Tunneled underground to try to fill a dry lake with water from underground springs, but was damaged by some kind of "new hydrogen demolition material". This created what was referred to as an "atom blast" and created a mushroom cloud, and damaged the robot beyond the point of repair, but left its frame relatively intact. It was implied that the blast would not have been able to hurt the real Superman, but this was never tested.

Weirdness:

- We pay a visit to "the law offices of Wenn, Wye, How, and Weir".

Superdickery:

- Fakes his own death and makes the entire world grieve for him, in order to get a lawyer to illegally release a document.

Spoiler: I'm pretty sure this is against the law

Power Tracker:

- We have a warning from astronomers about meteors that could have "destroyed the Earth" (although that can mean many different things), and a strong implication that Superman stopped them without any real trouble. Still too vague to give him anything above Low Herald Level yet, though.

Action Comics #226

Notes:

Feat Catalogue:

- Follows the sound of a gunshot to track a sniping Lex Luthor "with eye-blurring speed"
- Puts out a fire with his super breath
- Fixes a telephone pole and welds it back together with X-ray(heat) vision
- When an alien copies his X-ray(heat) vision, he is able to block it with his cape
- Flies around in circles to create a miniature artificial hurricane, diverting heat rays with the same temperature as the sun from harming a building
- Bends a piece of magnetized steel from a foundry into a giant magnet
- Creates a bomb coated in iron and throws it at the alien to trick him (as the alien could become intangible if he knew an attack was coming)
- Quickly flies to the North Atlantic, grabs an iceberg, and returns.
- Is able to identify "telepathy radiations" the alien is using to communicate with him
- Cuts the iceberg he retrieved into blocks, then reassembles them into the form of a spaceship
- Sees the alien's homeworld across space with his telescopic vision, and throws the makeshift spaceship (with the alien inside) at FTL speeds back to his home planet. He's later able to observe him in real time and even somehow hear him from Earth.

Spoiler: Cape durability

Spoiler: Ah, Silver Age... you're so silly

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- Lex Luthor, after years of experimenting with his "super atom-smasher", created a new synthetic isotope of Kryptonite that he made into a bullet (presumably it's more stable than the stuff he created previously)

Weirdness:

- Archaeologists discover a petrified alien right next to a buried spaceship. There are scientists who want to study it, but they have to compete with a circus owner who wants to exhibit it as part of a sideshow. Guess who wins?
- The alien had the unexplained ability to copy any kind of power or phenomenon he saw, including becoming intangible for real by watching it happen in a movie (where it was done with special effects)
- Spaceship made of ice, thrown an interstellar distance at FTL speeds, and doesn't melt. 'Nuff said.

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- The spaceship throw feat is pretty insane in terms of strength, speed, senses, and precision. Still, I think I need a bit more before going up the next tier, so still (very high end) Low Herald Level.

Action Comics #227

Notes:

- I think this cover was featured on Superdickery
- There's a statue in this issue dedicated to a "General Van Sturtant", which portrays him in American Revolutionary War - era garb. Some quick research shows that no such historical person existed.
- The premise of this issue is that, due to a sudden dose of extreme radiation, Superman suddenly gains the same downside to his power as Cyclops has (he can't shut off his destructive eye beams). This issue came out 6 years before the character of Cyclops debuted.
- Superman temporarily gets a seeing-eye dog in this issue, which appears to be a German Shepherd. He previously had a Bloodhound in issue #179. Krypto had already debuted at this point, but he isn't seen or mentioned in this issue.

Feat Catalogue:

- The opening narration states that "with telescopic vision, he has spanned the solar system - his microscopic vision has seen the tiniest dust particle - while his X-ray vision has pierced every substance except lead"
- While flying above the clouds with his eyes closed, uses super hearing to determine that there is no life in a desert below
- Still with his eyes closed, tunnels underground until he finds lead, which he can detect with his 'super-sensitive fingers'.
- Forms the lead ore into a pair of solid lead goggles, while still keeping his eyes shut. Compresses more lead into sheets thin enough to be transparent, to use for his glasses in his Clark Kent identity.
- Flies back to his apartment guided only by his sense of hearing
- Quickly repairs a wall in his apartment caused by his out - of - control X-ray(heat) vision
- As Clark Kent, uses his hearing and memory to find his way to his office in the Daily Planet without using his eyesight
- Uses a polished lead ring like a mirror to read a story Lois wrote in a split second and then memorizes it so he can recite it afterwards
- Tracks down some criminals' getaway car by using his hearing to determine that it's moving faster than other cars in the area.
- Superman claims that if he looks into space, he might burn a hole in the moon, or overheat the sun
- Still blind, is shot out of a cannon into space and collides with a comet, destroying it
- Inadvertently evaporates a pond when testing to see if his X-ray vision is back under control (it isn't)
- Someone claims that, before his X-ray vision went out of control, Superman could "see clear across the universe"
- Melts a giant iceberg field with his X-ray(heat) vision
- Uses X-ray(heat) vision to create a firebreak to contain a forest fire
- Flies "millions of miles away from our solar system" (that's sort of like saying 'inches away from our country', but whatever) to visit an uninhabited planet, and uses super hearing to confirm that it's bereft of life
- Uses up his excess X-ray energy by "burning a whole planet to ash". It looks like surface destruction only, though.

Spoiler: "My fingers are super-sensitive!" You may giggle now.

Spoiler: Interestingly, this is a tactic I have previously suggested he use to defeat a certain other character in the OBD...

Weirdness:

- The title of this story is "The Man with Triple X-Ray Eyes!". He never gets a third eye, and the "triple" part of the title has absolutely nothing to do with anything in the story.
- You've seen me use the term "X-ray(heat) vision" in this thread a lot. That's because, at this point in Superman's history, his X-ray vision and heat vision were not yet considered to be two separate powers, but rather the same power (just a different application of it). In most cases this doesn't make much of a difference, but it does in this issue, as he states that lead is the one substance impervious to his X-ray vision, and he creates lead glasses to keep his destructive X-ray vision under control. You would think this would also mean that the heat application of his X-ray vision can't melt/damage lead, but that is shown not to be the case. He just can't see through it.
- A bunch of scientists build a giant cannon to shoot Superman into space, since he can't aim himself, in order to destroy a comet that they think is causing the problem with his X-ray vision.

Spoiler: Something about this is just inherently funny

Superdickery:

- The cover has him wantonly melting a traffic light, causing everyone to flee from him in fear.

Power Tracker:

- So close! By "overheat the sun", I presume he means it would become so hot that it would become destructive to Earth. If he actually did that instead of just making a claim, that would easily be Mid Herald Level. Same as if he had actually mass scattered that planet with the same ease, although it seems that he only fried the surface. We also have a hyperbole about seeing across the universe (although that may not remain hyperbole for long). But for now, he's still at the very top of Low Herald Level.

Action Comics #228

Notes:

- Superman decides to create a museum of his past exploits, yet we've seen that Metropolis had a Superman museum in previous issues. However, those were Golden Age (Earth-2).

Feat Catalogue:

- Creates a giant fan using scrap metal from a junkyard, and uses it to blow toxic smog away from Metropolis
- Puts a fence up around the land he wants to build on
- Cuts a large amount of stone blocks from a cliff with his bare hands
- Flies north and uses X-ray vision to identify a coal seam and iron ore underground, and extracts them, then takes them back to Metropolis
- Makes a giant furnace from solid rock and uses it to smelt iron into steel to make girders
- Welds the steel girders together with "super-pressure" again
- Builds a giant skyscraper, higher than any on Earth (even today, as it's said to be miles tall)
- Installs a giant mirror/light beacon to warn planes away from the skyscraper
- The elevators in the building are jet-powered (however that works)
- In a flashback, stops a runaway locomotive as Superboy, but accidentally damages it in the process, although he repairs it later.
- In another flashback, shapes a steel sign into a mirror and polishes it with "super-friction", then somehow uses it to reflect the sonic waves from one of Luthor's weapons back at him (huh?)
- Digs underground to release some dangerous gas and vent it through the skyscraper he built safely into the upper atmosphere
- Flies from underground to the top of his skyscraper faster than the escaping gas to rescue Lois before it hits her
- Built the skyscraper so it could be disassembled and reassembled into a housing project, which he does

Spoiler: Eat your heart out, Burj Khalifa

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- In a flashback, Lex Luthor built a tank with a sonic weapon that could shatter buildings and bank vaults

Weirdness:

- How do you reflect sonic waves with a mirror!?
- In a flashback, Superman explains how he stopped remote-controlled robotic replicas of a bunch of mythological creatures, that were being used for evil.
- The whole purpose of building the skyscraper museum was in order to disguise a giant smokestack that he needed to vent dangerous underground gas away from Metropolis. Couldn't he have just created a whirlwind/tornado to funnel it away instead?
- The criminals who snuck into his skyscraper were arrested, but they didn't actually commit any crimes at that point, save trespassing

Spoiler: MIRRORS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY!

Superdickery:

- Makes everyone think he made the museum just to boost his ego (and who's to say that wasn't part of it...?)

Power Tracker:

- Unlike the last several issues, there's nothing really notable here, so he's still on the very top of Low Herald Level.