I had a strange version of the cold, flu, and plague recently that laid me low for a couple of weeks and turned me into a barely sentient pile of goo. All I was capable of was collapsing on the couch in the BigAssTV room until it was time to stumble off to bed just in time for the fever dreams to kick in.
I couldnt follow any plot more complicated than a 3 Stooges short so for my viewing pleasure I decided to watch some episodes from the fifties TV show, Adventures of Superman, starring George Reeves. Inertia through illness allowed me to sit back day after day while all 104 episodes washed over me.
When the last season wrapped up I watched the two Superman serials made in 1948 and 1950 starring Kirk Alyn as The Man of Steel. Most sane people would have given up after slogging through Superman and the Mole Men but I kept going and watched the first two Christopher Reeve Superman movies, the 2006 reboot, Superman Returns, and the latest entry of the franchise, Man of Steel. As my health improved I slowly regained a reasonable facsimile of sanity. I was once again capable of going outside and pretend I am a normal person. As Alex at the end of A Clockwork Orange said, I was cured all right!
Isaac Newtons third law states for every action there is always an equal reaction. Thats How Things Work. But little did I know, following the days of steeping in All Things Superman, what my reaction was going to be after delving into all that weirdness.
In 1939 Supermans creators, writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster, came up with Ultra-Humanite, the first super-villain encountered by Superman. As super-villains go, Ultra-Humanite, a criminal mastermind with a crippled body but a highly advanced intellect, just wasnt that super. But one year later Siegel and Shuster came up with a super-duper villain, Lex Luthor.