GLADIATOR OF IRON

Will Murray


On those rare occasions when he talked freely about creating Superman, Jerry Siegel was pretty consistent. In 1941, he said, "I am lying in bed counting sheep when all of a sudden it hits me. I conceive a character like Samson, Hercules and all the strong men I ever heard tell of rolled into one."

Years later, he put it like this:

"The idea came to me in bed one night. A champion for good with the strength of Atlas, as invulnerable as a perfect Achilles, plus the morals of Galahad."

There are some who believe that Siegel should have been
citing more contemporary pulp fiction characters like Zorro, John Carter of Mars and Doc Savage. Regarding the Doc Savage influence, Siegel deflected the issue by saying, "Of course I read Doc Savage at that time, but that is so long ago that I can't really intelligently answer that question."

That may be, but the early Superman demonstrates some very specific Doc Savage tricks like putting people to sleep via pressing on a neck nerve and climbing brick walls by the sheer strength of his fingertips. Several early Superman plots are lifted straight from the pages of Doc Savage Magazine with minimal changes.

In the case of Clark Savage, the Man of Bronze, I suspect Siegel of being disingenuous. As far as I know, Siegel never commented in print on the impact reading Philip Wylie's novel, Gladiator, had on the formative Man of Steel. It's been rumored that he reviewed it glowingly in the May, 1933 issue of his fanzine, Science Fiction, but that bald assertion has since been debunked.

That Siegel did read it, and was influenced by Wylie's prototypal superman, Hugo Danner, seems inescapable. If there was a seminal influence on Superman, more than any other work, Gladiator was it.

Wylie's biographer says as much in his book.

"One of the main challenges to Wylie in writing Gladiator was the need to devise spectacular feats for Hugo to perform and then to make them seem probable," wrote Frederick Keefer. "Our exposure to the Superman comic strip unfortunately obscures the originality of many of these inventions, which, according to Wylie, as well as recent scholars, were 'borrowed' from Gladiator. Hugo hurtling across a river in a single leap, bounding fifty feet straight up on the air, holding a cannon above his head with one arm, killing a shark by ripping its jaws apart, felling a charging bull with a fist between the eyes, lifting an automobile by its bumper and turning it around in the road--all of these were, in 1930, fresh and new and very exciting to read about."

The story behind Gladiator is intriguing. Philip Wylie
wrote the book in 1926. It was his first novel. Perhaps wisely, his publisher held it back, thinking that before releasing such an improbable work, Wylie should first establish himself. When finally published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1930, Gladiator constituted Wylie's third opus.

At the turn of the 20th century, Colorado scientist Abednego Danner is fascinated with the disproportionate strength possessed by certain insects. Ants are capable of lifting several times their weight. The grasshopper can jump the equivalent of a mile. Can these attributes be transferred to other species? Danner's successful experiments with creating supernaturally-strong tadpoles lead him to inoculate a newborn kitten he dubs Samson. At six weeks, Samson can bring down a full-grown cow as prey.

Danner finally decides to inject this serum into his unborn child. His goal? "To produce a super-child, an invulnerable man." He succeeds beyond his wildest dreams.

"He's strong, stronger than a lion's cub," Professor Danner
tells his distraught wife. "And he'll increase in strength as he grows until Samson and Hercules would be pygmies beside him. He'll be the first of a new and glorious race. A race that doesn't have to fear--because it cannot know harm."

The parallels between Professor Danner and Jerry Siegal talking about his super-offspring are striking, but possibly coincidental. It's interesting that neither invoke more folklore figures like Paul Bunyan or John Henry, or a professional strongman like Joe Bonomo or Charles Atlas.

Just like baby Clark Kent did in his first published story, Hugo breaks his crib apart. (A cage of iron replaces it.) And like the young Superman, he learns that he is not simply stronger than normal, but possesses unbelievable speed, endurance, and leaping abilities.

Hugo is only ten when a run through the woods turns into a paroxysm of self-discovery:

In those lonely, incredible moments Hugo found himself. There in the forest, beyond the eye of man, he learned that he was superhuman. It was a rapturous discovery. He knew at that hour that his strength was not a curse. He had inklings of his invulnerability.

He ran. He shot up the steep trail like an express train, at a rate that would have been measured in miles to the hour rather than yards to the minute. Tireless blood poured through his veins. Green streaked at his sides. In a short time he came to the end of the trail. He plunged on, careless of obstacles that would have stopped an ordinary mortal.

"Have you ever heard of Colorado?" Hugo asks a curious
French general.

"I have not heard. It is a place?"

"A place in America. A place that has scarcely been explored.
I was born there. And all the men of Colorado are born as I was born
and are like me. We are very strong. We are great fighters. We cannot
be wounded except by the largest shells."

Change Colorado to Krypton, and it could be Superman talking--
right down to the upper limits of his invulnerability. Wylie actually
describes his hero in action as "a being of steel."

A one-man army, Hugo Danner accelerates the cessation of
hostilities. He swiftly becomes a battlefield legend:

He was a great man--a man feared. The Colorado of the
Foreign Legion. Men would talk about what they had seen him
accomplish all through the next fifty years--at watering places in
the Sahara, at the crackling fires of country-house parties in
Shropshire, on the shores of the South Seas, on the moon, maybe.
Old men, at the last, would clear the phlegm from their skinny
throats and begin: "When I was a-fightin' with the Legion in my
youngest days, there was a fellow in our company that came from
some place in wild America that I disrecollect." And younger, more
sanguine men would listen and shake their heads and wish that
there was a war for them to fight.

After the Armistice, Hugo doesn't know what to do with
himself. War lost its glory for him when in an episode Wylie clearly
took from The Iliad. Like Achilles, Hugo loses a close friend to
war and vents his unstoppable wrath upon his foes, in this case
the Germans.

Returning to New York, Danner ponders his future:
What would you do if you were the strongest man in the
world, the strongest thing in the world, mightier than the
machine? He made himself guess answers for that rhetorical query.
"I would--I would have won the war. But I did not. I would run the
universe single-handed, literally single-handed. I would scorn the
universe and turn it to my own ends. I would be a criminal. I would
rip open banks and gut them. I would kill and destroy. I would be a
secret, invisible blight. I would set out to stamp crime off the
earth; I would be a super-detective, following and summarily
punishing every criminal until no one dared to commit a felony.
What would I do? What will I do?"

This is the pivotal point in the novel, the beginning of the
critical last act in the strange saga of Hugo Danner, seminal superman.
Wylie referred to it when he penned a rarely-seen introduction
to Gladiator for its pre-hardcover publication appearance in the
March, 1930 issue of The Book League Monthly.

"A temperamental consciousness of material force brought Hugo
Danner into being. The frustration of my own muscles by things, and
the alarming superiority of machinery started the notion of a man
who would be invincible. I gave him a name and planned random deeds
for him. I had him tear down Brooklyn Bridge and lift a locomotive.
Then I began to speculate about his future and it seemed to me that
a human being thus equipped would be foredoomed to vulgar fame or
to a life of fruitless destruction. He would share the isolation
of geniuses and with them would learn the inflexibility of man's
slow evolution. To that extent Hugo became symbolic and Gladiator
a satire. The rest was adventure and perhaps more of the book
derives from the unliterary excitement of imagining such a life
than from a studious juxtaposition of incidents to a theme."

It would be interesting the speculate on where the career
of Hugo Danner might have taken him had he followed the super-
detective impulse in the traditional heroic mold. Interesting, but
ultimately fruitless. Hugo Danner is a walking tragedy.
On the eve of this crusade, Hugo is summoned home by
Professor Danner. Rushing to his father's death bed, Hugo lays
out his intentions:

"I except to go to Washington soon to right the wrongs of
politics and government. Vicious and selfish men I shall force
from their high places. I shall secure the idealistic and the
courageous. The pressure I shall bring against them shall be
physical and mental. Here a man will be driven from his house
mysteriously. There a man will slip into limbo. Yonder an
inconspicuous person will suddenly be braced by a new courage;
his enemies will be gone and his work will progress unhampered.
I shall be as an invisible agent of right--right as best I can
see it."

True to his vow, Hugo goes to Washington. Danner is a lot
like the early Superman when he confronts the first public enemy
he decides to make an example of, a corrupt pro-war lobbyist
named Willard Melcher.

After making short work of a bodyguard ("The tough one drew
back his fist, but he never understood afterwards what had taken
place. He came to in the kitchen an hour later.") Hugo gives
Melcher an ultimatum to get out of Washington, or face his wrath.
"I happen to be more than a man, I am--" he hesitated,
seeking words--"let us say, a devil, or an angel, or a scourge. I
detest you and what you stand for. If you do not leave--I can ruin
your house and destroy you. And I will."
Melcher appeared to hesitate. "All right. I'll go.
Immediately. This afternoon."
Hugo was astonished. "You will go?"
"I promise. Good afternoon, Mr. Danner."=

Hugo rose and walked toward the door. He was seething with
surprise and suspicion. Had he actually intimidated Melcher so
easily? His hand touched the knob. At that instant Melcher hit him
on the head with a chair. It broke in pieces. Hugo turned around
slowly.

"I understand. You mistook me for a dangerous lunatic. I
was puzzled for a moment, Now--"

Melcher's jaw sagged in amazement when Hugo did not fall.
An instant later he threw himself forward, arms out, head drawn
between his shoulders. With one hand Hugo imprisoned his wrists.
He lifted Melcher from the floor and shook him. "I meant it, Melcher.
And I will give you a sign. Rotten politics, graft, bad government,
are doomed." Melcher watched with staring eyes while Hugo, with his
free hand, rapidly demolished the room. He picked up the great desk
and smashed it; he tore the stone mantlepiece from its roots; he
kicked the fireplace apart; he burst a hole in the brick wall--
dragging the bulk of a man behind him as he moved.

"Remember that, Melcher. No one else on earth is like me--and I will get you if you fail to stop. I'll come for you if you squeal about this--and I leave it to you to imagine what will happen."

Hugo walked into the hall. "You're all done for--you cheap swindler. And I am doom." The door banged. This personifies still another Siegel summation of his
original Superman inspiration: "A combination Samson, Hercules and
Atlas plus the morals of Sir Galahad whose mission is to smack down
the bullies of the world."

Moving on, Hugo discovers only disappointment and
frustration. He takes on Washington with the idea of reforming
the nation, only to discover that no matter how powerful one is,
the schemes and foibles of greedy humanity are greater still. The
grandiose plan to reform the world crumbles in disillusionment.
His dream in collapse, he once again ponders his fate:

Hugo realized at last that there was no place in this
world for him. Tides and tempest, volcanoes and lightning, all
other majestic vehemences of the universe had a purpose, but he
had none, either because he was all those forces unnaturally
locked in the body of a man, or because he was a giant compelled
to stoop and pander to live at all among his feeble fellows, his
anachronism was complete. Deciding to join an expedition to Mayan ruins in Yucatan, Hugo Danner finally meets someone who understands and appreciates his value to the world. Atop a rainswept mountain, Hugo Danner meets his ultimate fate.

Reading the final chapter of Gladiator, you get the feeling
that Philip Wylie simply didn't know what to do with his
superhuman protagonist. How could he? He was not writing escapist
pulp adventure, but literature. He had no guideposts, no fixed
star to follow. By the conservative standards of early 20th
Century literature, the superman was doomed by virtue of being a
superman.

It took Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster to show that wasn't
necessarily so. After 1938, it was okay to be Superman. Provided
you bent your abilities to constructive ends, and didn't attempt
to run the world for humankind.

Gladiator became a best-seller--a rare accomplishment for
a science fiction novel at that time. Wylie went on to write
more science fiction novels, The Murderer Invisible, When Worlds
Collide, and its sequel, After Worlds Collide, which were adapted
as a newspaper strip called "Speed Spaulding" in 1938, the year
Superman debuted in Action Comics.

In When Worlds Collide, a rogue planet enters the solar
system on a certain collision course with Earth. Earthmen build
rockets to escape the doomed Earth, which will take them to a new
life on a newly-discovered Earthlike planet. People point to Edgar
Rice Burroughs' John Carter of Mars and Jack Williamson's The Girl
From Mars as probable inspirations for the infant Superman's flight
to Earth, but Wylie's best selling 1932 novel is just as likely.
As Joe Shuster put it, "Jerry reversed the usual formula of
the superhero who goes to another planet. He put the superhero in
ordinary, familiar surroundings, instead of the other way around,
as was done in most science fiction."

Jerry Siegel is said to have denied ever reading Gladiator.
There are rumors that Philip Wylie threatened to sue DC Comics for copyright infringement in the early 40s. DC management had
Siegel produce a point-by-point refutation of the charge. No suit was filed, as far as anyone knows. Rumor has it that Wylie backed down when he discovered his publisher had neglected to copyright
Gladiator in the first place. He hadn't a legal leg to stand on. But if you read through the earliest issues of Action
Comics, the coincidences sure do pile up, starting with Clark Kent's decision to keep his origin and powers a secret.

Some of the earliest challenges Siegel gives the Man of Steel are right out of Gladiator. In the two-part story published in Action Comics #1 and #2, once Superman and Clark Kent are introduced Kent is assigned to cover a war in the South American republic of San Monte. Instead of following his editor's instructions, he goes instead to Washington DC, where he bullies an unsavory lobbyist named Alex Greer. This leads the Man of Steel to the munitions magnate behind the war, Emile Norvell. Superman runs him out of town and down to San Monte where, in a series of scenes reminiscent of Hugo Danner's mighty exploits in the Great War, the Man of Steel enforces his own brand of peace.

In Action #4, a disguised Superman infiltrates a college football team, becoming the tackle to end all tackles, in an effort to root out criminal influence. In college, Hugo Danner proved to be a one-man football team. At one point in Gladiator, Hugo does some prizefighting, but walks away from a lucrative career in the ring. One of the earliest Superman newspaper sequences puts the Man of Steel in a similar situation. And while World War I was long over by the time the Man of Steel reached adulthood, Superman was interceding in European ground wars on the eve of World War II, performing much the same cannon-crushing feats as Hugo Danner a generation before.

The peculiar and definite combination of powers, not just super strength, but the fresh concept of super speed, with the addition of near-total invulnerability, is simply too much for coincidence.

Like Wylie, Siegel invokes the ant and the grasshopper as
a rationale for Superman's powers in a feature page in Superman #1. Why not take a page from Tarzan and say Superman possesses the strength of a hundred gorillas? Just as the pre-flying Superman would literally race across states to get somewhere, Hugo charges around at speeds that eclipse that of even upper-limit human endurance. And the number of times the early Superman outraces locomotives to save a human life makes one think Siegel was already running out of amazing feats for his Man of Tomorrow to perform.

Of course, over a long career the Man of Steel might
eventually find himself on the battlefield, the gridiron, or even in the ring. But these striking parallels all occur within the first year of his career. It's as if Siegel was squeezing
every last drop of plot and situation out of the Wylie novel in an effort to meet those monthly deadlines.

There are parallels that are probably coincidence. As a
boy, Hugo Danner assembles out of huge boulders a hilltop fortress where he can play in solitude. It may be too much of a stretch to link this to Superman's classic Fortress of Solitude, since it didn't show up until the 1950s and was out of Doc Savage anyway. But it smacks of the mountaintop fort the Man of Steel built in 1942 as retreat from the world.

Even Hugo's straightforward reformist idealism is mirrored in the early Superman, who was forever shaking crooked mine owner and unscrupulous politicians in his mighty fists.

These were not the approaches of Doc Savage or--The Shadow for that matter. They are the actions of a naive protagonist in Hugo Danner's case, and naive creators in Superman's. Siegel's denials may have been simply to avoid legal action against him.

It's hard to accept them at face value against the
parallels between Gladiator and the Superman of 1938-40. Even if by some extreme unlikelihood he never read the novel, as a huge science fiction fan, he could hardly have been unaware of it. It was one of the most important science fiction novels of the Great Depression. And it was reviewed in Amazing Stories, June, 1930. And through the 1930s, Philip Wylie stood head and shoulders above all other contemporary SF writers. Not stuck in the pulp magazine ghetto, he wrote for the best slick magazines and book publishers, not to mention adapting the works of H. G. Wells for Hollywood. At a time when Science Fiction was confined to the literary ghettoes of pulp magazines and comic strips, Philip Wylie was the genre's Great White Hope.

Being unaware of Philip Wylie and Gladiator is like a modern
science fiction fan not knowing who George Lucas is.
Siegel himself admitted this: "Well, as a science-fiction fan, I knew the various themes in the field. The superman theme has been one of the themes ever since Samson and Hercules..." Could Jerry Siegel really have been ignorant the most famous superman novel of the 1930s?

Then there is this: In his first appearance, and only in his debut, Superman wore instead of the now-classic red boots, a type of footgear normally associated with Roman legionnaires, or gladiators.

Jerry Siegel did comment on this. Again, he was consistent: "I had classical heroes and strongmen in mind, and this shows in the footwear. ..Superman wore sandals laced halfway up the calf. You can still see this on the cover of Action #1, though they were covered over in red to look like boots when the cover was printed.

It's hard to imagine Siegel and Shuster taking their
emulation of Gladiator to such an obvious extreme, but one never knows. Yet precursors and influences aside, Jerry Siegel and
Joe Shuster accomplished something Philip Wylie never did. They created an enduring myth, the first full-blown superhero, an an American culture hero that may never expire. This is a mighty achievement, no matter where they found their inspiration.
Immediately after Gladiator, and before returning to the kind of science fiction themes that dominated his career, Philip Wylie wrote two mainstream novels to please his publisher, Heavy Laden and Babes and Sucklings.

In his Book League Monthly introduction, he said of them: Both are realistic stories of people and places which I had known. The brief I held for realism convinces me less and less. Space is wide. Man is small. That he exists is romantic. The novelist now usurps the chair of the educator, the pulpit of the preacher, the columns of the journalist. Yet his original
purpose of entertaining may have been his highest purpose.

There, Wylie and Jerry Siegel may have found themselves on exactly the same page....

HD