Superman: The Silver Age Newspaper Dailies

Dean Mullaney was one of the founders of Eclipse Comics and is currently the Creative Director of The Library of American Comics, which includes such collections as Bloom County The Complete Library, Flash Gordon & Jungle Jim, and Steve Canyon, which are published by IDW. In very exciting news, IDW & The Library of American Comics are teaming up with DC Entertainment to bring Superman: The Silver Age Newspaper Dailies Vol. 1: 1959-1961 to print. Westfield’s Roger Ash Spoke with Mullaney about this exciting project.

Westfield: How did this collection come about?

Dean Mullaney:  Greg Goldstein and IDW have been negotiating with DC for years to try to get the Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman strips for The Library of American Comics. This year DC said yes! We’re leading off with Superman because he’s still the most iconic of all superheroes — and we heard something about a new movie coming out, so we thought it might be a good idea to sync up with that!

A Superman daily from 1959. Art by Wayne Boring.

Westfield: The Superman daily strip started in 1939. Why did you decide to start with the strips from 1958 and go back to the early strips later?

Mullaney: Many of us remember the Silver Age Superman comic books with great fondness so it seemed like an appropriate place to start. In the ‘90s, Kitchen Sink and DC collected the first few years of the Superman strip, so we thought it might be a kick to start later in the series and present readers with more hard-to-find material right up front in our run.

Westfield: What can you say about the stories told in the strips in this volume and how do they compare to the Superman comic book stories of the era?

Mullaney: What’s incredible about the late-1950s/early-1960s newspaper strip is that the stories are alternate versions of classic stories from the comic books. So if you every wondered what Jerry Siegel would do if he had the chance to write “Superman’s Return to Krypton!” a second time, here it is. If you’ve ever wondered what “The Superman of the Future’ would look like drawn by Wayne Boring instead of Al Plastino, this is it. Superhero fans and science fiction buffs love “what if/parallel dimension/alternate universe” stories — this is like one of those types of yarns, except it’s real-life! The whole thing is kind of amazing.

A Superman daily from 1960. Art by Curt Swan.

Westfield: The Library of American Comics always has informative features in the collections as well. What can readers look forward to in this volume?

Mullaney: The introductions will contain background information on the creators, plus an analysis of how the newspaper stories vary from the classic comic book versions. Most of the original scripts are by Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel, adapting stories written for comic books by Otto Binder, Robert Bernstein, and Jerry Coleman. As usual, we’ll try to frame the material so readers have a deeper understanding and appreciation of the folks who did this work, how the strips came to be, and what made them successful (which in this case is pretty easy — it’s Superman! That says a mouthful!).

A Superman daily from 1961. Art by Wayne Boring.

Westfield: After this volume, what are your plans for future Superman collections?

Mullaney: The Superman Sunday strip was separate from the dailies. We’ll start publishing Sunday collections in the fall, alternating releases with the Dailies.

Westfield: Any closing comments?

Mullaney: It’s not a dream, not an imaginary story — we’re actually doing this!

Purchase

Superman: The Silver Age Newspaper Dailies Vol. 1: 1959-1961