Not exactly. Before
Christopher Reeve, I never followed
Superman at all. But then Husband called my attention to this cool article
in…wait for it…AARP magazine, the June/July 2013 issue. Just arrived. It’s an
uncredited piece entitled Five Things You
Never Knew about Superman.
Check it out:
1. He has a social security number. Makes
sense. He’d have to have one to work at The Daily Planet, after all. The
number, 092-09-6616, was revealed in a 1966 Action Comics issue. The SSN
actually belonged to New Yorker Giobatta Baiocchi, who had died a year
earlier. His relatives are still puzzling
over this bizarre identity theft.
2. He doesn’t just fight fictional villains.
In 1940, Look magazine commissioned a
story in which Superman hauls Hitler and Stalin through the air to a war crimes
tribunal in Geneva. In a 1946 radio show he battled the KKK. Then
in 1978 he boxed with Muhammad Ali, but that must’ve been as Clark Kent. He
lost.
3. He failed his Army physical during WWII.
Wha-a-a-t? Seems that due to his
x-ray vision, he read the eye chart in the next room by mistake.
4. He’s (probably) Jewish. His creators,
Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel, dropped plenty of clues. Kal-El, his name on
Krypton, is Hebrew for “vessel of God.” And, like Moses, he was launched to
safety by his parents where he was adopted by gentiles. Cool, huh? Straight out
of Exodus.
5. Superman’s middle name is Joseph. That
revelation came in 1997. No, that’s Clark Joseph Kent. Not Super Joseph Man.
C’mon, people!
2 comments:
Did you know that the town he comes from petitioned to officially be called Smallville Kansas one day a year? =)
Whoa! Sorry I'm just now finding this! No, I didn't know about the "Smallville" petition. Did it succeed?
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