Swiped and Then Swiped Again

Mort Weisinger's enthusiasm for swiping story ideas from earlier issues of Superboy does not seem as high as it was for Adventure Comics, but here's a pretty impressive example of a double swipe.  For starters, here is the cover to Superboy #52 (October 1956):

And Superboy #85 (December 1960):

As you can see, in both cases, Superboy is startled to discover another super-powered boy on an alien planet. He changes into civilian clothes and confronts the lad:

The other boy comes from a startling place:

Clark realizes how the other boy got his powers:

So it looks like Superboy is finally going to have a super-powered buddy.  But as they start off together, something happens:

Superboy eventually realizes that it's his presence that is causing the other superlad to lose his powers, and thus he must leave, resulting in a sad ending:

Weisinger recycled that ending in Superboy #87 (March 1961), in a Krypto story.  Krypto rescues a beautiful female dog:

You've gotta love that he calls her Toots. She doesn't have super-powers, but it turns out that Krypto knows where she can get some:

And so she drinks from the pool and becomes super. Unfortunately:

Krypto soon realizes that he is no longer super when near Kolli, and so we get the same ending as in the two Superboy tales:

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Some Lesser Swipes

As I mentioned the other day, I have been working my way through the mid-1950s Superboy issues looking for more swipes by Weisinger and company.  I came across two more, although these were not quite as blatant.  First:

Despite the rather obvious swipe of the cover concept, the stories themselves have only a superficial similarity.  In the Superboy story, Clark was unaware that his teacher had instructed the class to wear Superboy costumes for Superboy day in Smallville, because he had been absent from the classroom when the order was made.  In the Supergirl story, a TV producer had given everybody at Stanhope copies of her uniform (including Linda), but hers was damaged when she used it on a mission in her other identity.  The latter story turns out to be an effort by the TV guy to expose Supergirl's secret identity.  In the former, Clark sweats it out that the reason he was chosen to be dressed in plainclothes was that someone had guessed his secret, but it turns out instead that hidden inside his jacket was a letter signed by everybody in town thanking Superboy.

It's comparable to these two stories with identical titles:

Same concept, different execution. In the first story (from Superboy #50) a gang of crooks have come to Smallville to hide out with their loot, although one of the underlings is worried about the rumors that a young lad has super powers has recently been making things tough for the local criminals.  The boss, as shown, finds the concept of a Superboy to be ridiculous, although he soon learns otherwise.  In the later story, Superboy goes to a nearby old West town where the local hoods haven't heard of him.

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The Secret Origin of Pete Ross

I've been working my way through the mid-1950s issues of Superboy, looking for more stories that were later swiped by Weisinger, and the first one I found is rather significant.

Did you know that Pete Ross' original name was Billy Todd?  He popped up in Superboy #47 (March 1956).  When we meet him, Billy is helping Clark deal with some bullying:

Just as Pete did in Superboy #86 (January 1961):

He offers to be Clark's pal, but the Boy of Steel is too worried about protecting his secret identity.  Fortunately, Ma and Pa Kent intervene, inviting the new chum to dinner.  After the meal, Clark shows off his hobby:

As he would later to Pete.

Billy later shows off his own hobby, which is creating miniature replicas of famous structures, such as the Eiffel Tower, the Empire State Building, and the Golden Gate Bridge.  Pete has different pastimes: acting and detective work.

Now that they are friends, Clark finds himself (as Superboy) often saving Billy from perilous situations:

As he also did with Pete:

Which leads inevitably to some awkward moments:

Clark is disturbed to learn that his new pal is checking Superboy's measurements:

Which leads him inevitably to the conclusion that his supposed buddy is plotting to betray him.  But fortunately there is an innocent explanation:

Pete Ross went on to become a recurring character in the DC Silver Age, albeit a minor one. As I have discussed earlier, he became the only person other than Ma and Pa Kent to know Superboy's secret identity.  Billy Todd?  As best as I can tell, this was his only appearance.

Update: Kirk House pointed out in the comments that in Action #457, Pete Ross's son apparently lost his will to live.  Only one thing could save him; if Superman divulged his secret identity to the young lad.  The story is pretty good; ironically the many times that people have suspected Clark Kent as Supes works against the disclosure, as Jon Ross cites those incidents for his skepticism.  Fortunately he has figured out another way to prove it that Clark had not protected himself against:

There are a couple of interesting ironies about this story.  First, Pete could have told his son that Clark was Superman, or at least confirmed it, except that Supes himself was unaware that his boyhood chum knew the truth.  Second is that the many times Clark had been suspected of being the Man of Steel and managed to deceive people into reconsidering actually worked against him.  This echoes a Golden Age Batman story where Bruce Wayne lost his position as the guardian of Dick Grayson, in large part because he had convinced the public that he was a dissolute playboy.

The concept of someone making a deathbed request to learn a superhero's secret ID had been used several times already, including at least two Batman tales and one in Jimmy Olsen:

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The Superboy TV Show Swipe

While looking through the early 1960s letters columns in Adventure Comics to see if anyone had written in to complain about the Superboy swipes (see previous post), I came across this missive:

I had never heard about an early 1960s Superboy pilot, so I did some searching and found it on YouTube:

As you can see, after an origin sequence, the story starts out with a young man who's embarrassed because his dad's occupation is a lowly doorman at the local movie theater. I particularly love the speech his dad (the terrific and forgotten actor, Ross Elliott) gives starting around 5:10 about how if he gets his son through college and into his chosen profession, he'll consider himself as successful as anyone his son knows.

But that's not why I decided to do this post. I realized as soon as I saw the opening sequence in the school that the basic plot was swiped from a comic that I had read recently. Since I've been working my way through the Adventure issues featuring Superboy, I assumed it was there. But it turned out to be another swipe from Superboy #49. Here's a scene from that comic:

As you can see, the focus in the comic is on Captain Joe's phenomenal memory, while in the TV pilot, he's working on becoming an artist. But in both cases he identifies the crooks. The robberies are slightly different, with the criminals stealing diamonds from the movie theater in the TV version, while in the comic they stick up a bank nearby.

Both stories end with the young boy satisfied that while a doorman's occupation may be mundane, his father is not. And both include a job offer for the dad that he turns down:

The other thing that is interesting in the pilot is the relationship between Clark and Lana. In the comics it was occasionally hinted that they were more than just friends, but more commonly Lana was just an annoying secret identity pest. In the TV show, it certainly appears that they are dating; note the way they're holding hands after class when they catch up to Jimmy at around 2:48 into the first part.

Here are the other two parts of the episode:



Update: Commenter Tmdess remembered the story being published yet again, and it didn't take me long to find it (with an assist from Commander Benson), in Superboy #88 (March 1961). As you can see, this story is even closer to the Superboy pilot, with the diamonds being stolen from the movie theater while Superboy is dealing with a crook shooting madly from a hideout. It even has the bit where Superboy makes replacement diamonds out of coal.




One thing I can't tell is whether this story is swiped from the TV pilot or vice-versa. Either way, it's pretty obvious that what we have here is a double-swipe from the Superboy #49 story. Here's a list of the other proposed episodes (which were written but never filmed). As you can see, there were other swipes from the comics planned. For example, Superboy's New Parents, which I discussed recently, would be another double swipe, and The One-Man Team was also published in Superboy #88:

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A Graphic Analysis of the Adventure Comics Superboy Swipes

While making my way through reading all of the Superboy features in Adventure Comics, I've been quite startled at the number of swipes. But some things only become obvious when you look at things in a graphic fashion, and here's a look at what I've uncovered so far:

This may not be a complete look at the swipes, but I am confident I have identified most of them.

There are two obvious patterns in the data:

1. The swipes all fit into the course of 27 issues; in that run, there were 9 swipes. Thus, about 33% of the Superboy stories from Adventure #276-302 were swiped from earlier tales. These issues were published from September 1960 to November 1962. Note that this applies to the story in Superman #145 as well, which bore a cover date of May, 1961.

2. The stories they were swiped from came from the course of 24 issues of Adventure; #176-199, or May 1952-April 1954. The story in Superboy #49, which was swiped in Adventure #276 falls out of this range, appearing in June 1956.

Of course, the question becomes why did Weisinger swipe so many stories during 1960-1962? I suspect the reason can be seen on this cover:

Do you see the clue? It's this:

The comics companies were all under pressure to raise their prices in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Dell Comics tried to lead the way to a 15-cent cover price in 1958, but eventually had to go back to 10 cents when the competitors didn't budge. But in December 1961, DC raised the cover price of all its magazines to 12 cents and their competitors followed suit.

I strongly suspect that Weisinger was trying to cut costs wherever he could to maintain profitability. It would make sense that he could pay his writers somewhat less for recycled stories; as I have documented, many of the stories were almost word for word swipes from the earlier tales.

Why did he stop the swipes? I suspect there are several reasons:

1. The price increase reduced the pressure to cut costs. Two cents may not sound like a lot of money, and in all probability DC split the increase with their retailers so that they only netted a penny. But in 1962, Adventure Comics was selling 415,000 copies an issue; that works out to an additional $4,150 in revenue to DC. It's true that circulation did drop with the price increase, from 460,000 in 1961, but if we assume again that DC was only getting half the old 10-cent cover price from their retailers, the net increase is still $1,900.

2. The increasing influence of fandom may have caused Weisinger to cut back on the swipes. Although I was unable to locate a letter in the Adventure letter columns complaining about the recycled stories, I doubt that it went completely unnoticed by the older fans.

And it's not as if Weisinger entirely discontinued the practice; he just became a little more transparent about it. In Adventure #317 this announcement appeared:

The Hall of Fame classics were published until Adventure #345, after which the Legion stories were expanded to book-length.

Incidentally, I first became aware of the Superboy swipes sometime in the 1960s or early 1970s when DC reprinted the story in Adventure #191 and its swipe in Adventure #290. I can see that the latter tale was reprinted in Superboy #147, but the GCD does not show when the former tale was republished. Anybody know what issue that was?

Update: Discovered that Adventure #279 was a swipe from #187; I have updated the graphic and a few other places in the original post.

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Super Swipe #9: Space Circus

Up till now, all the swipes I have covered involve stories updated for either Superboy or Superman. But here's one where a Superboy tale was converted into a problem for his adult counterpart:


In both stories, a circus advertising itself as being from another world sets up on the outskirts of town (Smallville and Metropolis, respectively). Both circuses require coins instead of bills:


The updated version does have one of my favorite goofy Silver Age panels:

In each case, Kal El prevents a disaster from occurring, resulting in a surprising offer:


But the circus owner won't take no for an answer, and sics some of his monsters against the Lad/Man of Steel. At first he is able to defeat them, but:


Neither beast can beat Supes, but he cannot beat them either. It looks like a stalemate, but the circus owner threatens to loose the monster on the nearby town. So Superboy/Superman agree to join the circus reluctantly, but warn that they will leave if they can figure out away to defeat their nemesis. Which they shortly do:


Incidentally, these stories fit Weisinger's seven year pattern nearly precisely with Adventure #198 coming out in March of 1954, while Superman #145 carried a cover date of May 1961.

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