| Slot: |
Superboy 2 |
| Item: |
Superboy 2 Universal |
| Grade: |
CGC |
| Cert #: |
0913991001
|
Owner Comments
Superboy #2 is referenced in Fredric Wertham’s “Seduction of the Innocent” (SOTI) in the text on pages 35-36 and 226. On pages 35-36, Wertham is cataloguing the various types of “super” characters that appear in comics and describes Superboy as follows:
“There are also super-children, like Superboy. Superboy can slice a tree like a cake, can melt glass by looking at it (‘with his amazing X-ray eyes, Superboy proves the scientific law that focused concentrated X-rays can melt glass!’), defeats ‘a certain gang chief and his hirelings.’ Superboy rewrites American history too. In one story he helps George Washington’s campaign and saves his life by hitting a Hessian with a snowball. George Washington reports to the Continental Congress: ‘And sirs, this remarkable boy, a Superboy, helped our boys win a great victory.’ One third of a page of this book is a picture of Washington crossing the Delaware – with Superboy guiding the boat through the ice-floes. It is really Superboy who is crossing the Delaware, with George Washington in the boat. All this travesty is endorsed by impressive board of experts in psychiatry, education and English Literature.”
Wertham again references the Superboy and Washington on page 226 “Unquestionably it is fascinating to learn that George Washington needed the help of Superboy to cross the Delaware. But do you want to direct the child’s attention to the personality of the father of American democracy or to the exploits of a uniformed superman-youth?”
The Superboy and Washington excerpts that Wertham references in the SOTI came from the story “George’s Washington’s Drum!” contained in Superboy #2. To enrich your historical perspective, I have included a scan of a page from that story that contains the panel of Superboy helping George Washington cross the Delaware.
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