Superman: The Golden Age Newspaper Dailies: 1942-1944 (Superman Golden Age Dailies) Hardcover – April 4, 2017

Bought it as a Xmas gift for my Son-in-law. Unfortunately I had to return it because I found out that he already had it. Return was no problem.

Nice book. Great collection of Superman dailies from World War II.

Over the last fifteen years, the early Superman dailies have been reprinted several times in several formats. In 1998, Kitchen Sink (in collaboration with DC) published a “definitive” volume of the daily strips from 1939 to 1942. (Another reviewer mentions the 2006 Sterling collection.) And, IDW has done a nice job reprinting the “Silver Age” dailies from 1959 to the strips end in 1966. What has always been missing are the ones in between. I own original art for several of these strips and it was nice to finally see how they fit into the stories.As well, I am glad that IDW skipped directly to this set of years simply for my own selfish reasons. If they had started with the same years as KS, it would take a couple of years to get to this volume and avoids the “redundant” book as I already have the KS volume. That also saves me waiting. Plus, these war years strips give an interesting insight into what the “every day Joe” might be thinking in 1943 as the war raged on. As you’d expect, the portrayal of the Japanese, Germans and Italians is not flattering or currently politically correct. I do believe that one has to read the stories in context with the times for historical perspective. For example, there is one story about a Japanese internment camp justifying the effort and basically claiming that using the Japanese in those camps as free forced labor was good for the war effort. Today, that would be called a disgrace and counter to everything America stood for. Not truth; not justice and certainly not something Lois and Clark would stand for.While the art in the 1942 and 1943 strips has the Shuster shop look to it (with Shuster supplying Superman’s face), a definite shift occurs around 1944 when Wayne Boring takes over for pretty much for good with inks by Stan Kaye and others. Like the other reviewer, I was glad these were reprinted in glorious black and white, and while not all of the images are as sharp and clean as I’d like them to be, they are definitely larger than the clipped strips I own. So I can see a lot more detail.Overall, I give the book a 4-4.5… primarily because of the clarity of images. The paper, covers and binding are all excellent. And I am definitely looking forward to IDW moving through the war years and into the 1950’s as the paper drives and then the reduced interest in super heroes when the soldiers returned home made it harder to find nice runs of these strips. I especially look forward to the Win Mortimer years.

Superman Daily comic strips from 1942-44. We get the classic story of how Clark Kent ended up not being drafted because of messing up the vision test with his X-Ray vision, and a few episodes with Superman fighting various spies and saboteurs. We also get the most unfortunate Superman stories in which the story defends the practice of Japanese Internment and uses a story with very stereotypical Japanese villains. Still, even there, they acknowledge that most Japanese citizens are loyal and good Americans. However, its still not a great moment.The book begins to resemble post-War Superman stories towards the end of the book as wee meet a lying little girl named Susie, Mr. Mxyztplk appears for the first time in the strip, and Jimmy Olsen is kidnapped taken to a country where he's a double for a king.Overall, these are good strips with pretty solid art. Be aware that its an artifact of its time, but even with that, there's some good art and fun stories to read.

Such a great peek into the history of my favorite superhero. The stories may not all hold up; but they're a fascinating lens into history.