Action Comics #124

Action Comics #124 (1948)
written by unknown
pencils by Al Plastino
cover by Wayne Boring

The cover makes it look like this is one of the dozens of 40s stories with Superman fighting mobsters. If the cover showed the actual story, it would probably be more well-known.

I mean it STARTS with an city having to be evacuated because of a nuclear accident!!!

Forget the glasses, how does Superman fool anyone if he has this GIGANTIC JAW as Clark Kent?

Sometimes I wonder if Perry White secretly knows Clark is Superman, considering the amount of times he goes along with his excuses.

I’m not sure I follow the timeline here. First the Daily Planet is informed about the city being evacuated, then the plant makes a press conference calmly stating that “the chain reaction may destroy the Earth”… and only THEN there’s the danger of the place exploding soon?
I get if they originally thought it would take longer, but still, if there’s ANY danger of this thing to DESTROY THE PLANET… is it really the time to call for a press conference!?!?

The representation of the atomic pile as a bunch of bricks.
Sounds legit…

…because it is!
This comic’s depiction is CLEARLY inspired by the first ever nuclear reactor.

Well… kind of. That picture was from 1942.
This is a 1948 comic book, and by then atomic piles were MUCH bigger.

Superman takes the soon-to-explode pile to “the dark abyss of interstellar place”.
Which is apparently not dark and not interstellar.

There are multiple references to this thing blowing up Earth. What was in that experiment!?

It can’t be Kryptonite, since this comic pre-dates its first comic appearance by a little more than a year. So of course Superman is fine.

However it’s not Superman who should be worried. It’s EVERYONE ELSE.

This story does not pull its punches in how much destruction Superman is bringing.

Now he’s radioactive! That can’t be good!

Little known fact: in the 1940s, the only person on the planet standing up to crime was Superman.
Law enforcement had not been invented yet.

But there’s still six pages to go, so Superman is not going to sit this one out.

By lassoing criminals from the sky!

And then, ladies and gentlemen, is when the story goes completely bonkers.
Yes.
Now.
Because Superman sings.

In order to break a building.

Great job, Superman. You just prevented the theft of millions of dollars by causing millions of dollars of damages.

In order to keep Superman away, the criminals kidnap Lois Lane.
Because of course they do.
Considering the previous scene, I wouldn’t put past Superman to completely destroy Fort Knox in order to stop the criminals from robbing Fort Knox.

Since Superman can’t show up without killing everyone, he fashions himself a lead suit.

Completely covering himself in lead means Superman wouldn’t be able to see anything, but the comic would get out of this by remembering that he has enough other super-senses to compensate.
It sure would be silly to specifically mention the only power that does not work against this specific metal.

Even Lois Lane has lost count of how many times she’s been kidnapped.
Fun fact: dc.fandom.com keeps count… up to about thirty kidnaps, after which they give up.
And that was dozens of issue ago.

Also: it’s a bit outside of my knowledge, but I’m pretty sure lead CAN become radioactive only if it’s exposed to very high doses of neutron radiation. So while it’s generally unlikely, given that the explosion Superman was exposed to was powerful enough to blow up the planet, I can buy it.
Or to put it simply:

Superman confronts the mobsters, just in time for our time-honored tradition of Guess The Stupid Ending!

What’s going to happen now?

A) Superman’s radioactivity has been cured by the lead suit
B) Superman was never radioactive, he’s been faking it
C) Superman was never radioactive, that was a Superman robot
D) Superman was never radioactive, he was knocked out and dreaming this
E) Superman leaves Earth forever: this is an early Imaginary Story

And the answer is…

Too bad that thanks to the multiverse this is probably and Earth-Two story, otherwise Chief might have based Radioactive Man’s bandages on Superman’s lead suit.

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Historical significance: 0/10
I could swear there’s at least one other story where Superman develops the touch of death, but I couldn’t find it.
But one day, Superman will use the Miracle Machine to turn a song into a frequency that destroys Darkseid. Given that’s a Grant Morrison story, I wouldn’t put it past him to have been inspired by this story.

Silver Age-ness: 6/10
Over-the-top nuclear explosions and an insane way to stop a robbery, but lowered by the slightest bit of scientific realism.
Also A BIRD BURNS UP ALIVE.

Does it stand the test of time? 3/10
I remind you that this score is NOT the same as a quality score, because I personally really enjoyed this one. But it’s undeniable you couldn’t do most of this stuff today while skipping dealing with A LOT of implications, which would turn it into a completely different story.
That being said… holy crap do some of those panels hold up!

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What else was in Action Comics #124?

It’s interesting to note that, ten years after Superman’s debut, Action Comics is still committed to the original formula of having multiple series.

We have what is possibly one of the serials with the most generic title: Federal Agent.
Not a specific agent, I assume.

We also STILL have Zatara.

I can assure you that Zatara’s stories don’t make much more sense with the context.

Don’t believe me? The context is that a parrot learned magic words, and Zatara saves the day by speaking into his hat underwater.
See, does that make more or less sense now?

Speaking of Action Comics habituals, we still have Congo Bill and Vigilante.

We have a short comedy story by Henry Boltinoff. He did a lot of those strips; you probably recognize the name from his brother Murray Boltinoff, writer and editor for DC Comics…

…who you saw in the last Doom Patrol story of the classic run in that weird fourth-wall break.

To give you an idea of when we are: there’s an advertisement for Superman’s first movie serial.
Notice that it’s on top of him appearing in comics, newspaper strips, and the radio show is still running.

I don’t know, Kirk Alyn doesn’t have that much of a jaw.
Then again, who does?