Action Comics #186 – Comics Archeology

Action Comics #186 (1953)
by Edmond Hamilton & Wayne Boring
cover by Win Mortimer

There are two kinds of stories included in the Superman retrospective: those that are historically significant, and those that have a premise so outlandish and/or a twist SO absurd that I just have to talk about them.
This is the second category.

We begin with Superman missing for enough time that people notice.
Why, he’s always on the first line when it comes to attending beauty pageants!
Wait, what?

He’s brooding somewhere, certain that something terrible is about to happen.

I’m not the biggest Wayne Boring fan: he tends to draw everyone very stiff and numb.
But it’s not like he didn’t have talent, as shown by this gorgeous panel.

So Superman goes to therapy! Good for him, he REALLY needs it.

While he’s at it, I know someone close to him who would benefit from a psychiatrist even more.

This is most likely the very first time Superman uses super-memory to remember his time as a baby.

I should note that, in this period, the rocket that brought Superman to Earth burns up when it lands.
It will be established later that everything originating from Krypton becomes indestructible on Earth.

So that’s the first half of the premise of the story: Jor-El predicted that Earth would one day be destroyed, and Superman has to prevent it… without even knowing what the catastrophe is.

That’s not a bad premise, so far.

Surprisingly for a 1953 story, Superman makes the very logical deduction that if Jor-El predicted a disaster it couldn’t have come from Earth, because he was making the observation from another planet.

The threat is something that shows this story’s age: a “dark star”.
Hamilton is most likely using the term referring to what would be called today a black dwarf star: stars that are so old that they no longer emit light.
Not really sure why Superman can’t just move it away… I’m pretty sure he hasn’t moved a star YET, but it’s been implied he’s THAT strong.

Today we know that the universe is not old enough yet for this kind of star to exist: the universe is roughly 13.8 billion years old, and it would take trillions of trillions of years for black dwarf stars to become a thing), but that wasn’t clearly established in the 50s.
Hamilton liked the concept of dark stars enough that he will use them again in 1964 on Adventure Comics #321, in a Time Trapper story.
Which kind of makes sense, since the Time Trapper is from the veeeeeeery far future.

What doesn’t make sense, however, is the rest of this story.
Because now, ladies and gentlemen, is when the story turns completely bonkers.

Because it turns out that making Earth spin faster means everyone gets superpowers.
Sounds legit.

I hope that I don’t have to explain how GRAVITY DOESN’T WORK LIKE THIS, but… not only it’s COMPLETELY disconnected from Earth’s rotation, but if even assuming it worked like this: if three people just being close to a skyscraper are enough to move it, HOW IS ANYTHING STILL STANDING!?!?

You see Superman, if you hadn’t gone out of your way to sabotage the superpowers of anyone showing up, MAYBE people would believe you.

What SHOULD happen: Superman ignores the public being idiotic and just restores Earth’s normal rotation (he’s DEFINITELY strong enough to do THAT by this point).
What DOES happen: wasting time to micromanage.