Action Comics #1 and Marvel Comics #1

Before superhero comics became sprawling universes full of timelines, reboots, legacy heroes, and multiverse-shaking events, they started with a few strange, bold ideas printed on cheap paper.In this episode of The Cape Gauntlet, Dave goes back to the late 1930s to look at two landmark issues: Action Comics #1 and Marvel Comics #1. One introduced the world to Superman, a hero who could leap tall buildings but had not yet become the nearly mythic figure we know today. The other gave readers Timely Comics’ first major icons: the original Human Torch, a synthetic man terrified by his own destructive power, and Namor the Sub-Mariner, a prince from beneath the waves who arrived less like a hero and more like a warning.These stories are rough, strange, sometimes dated, and often very different from the versions modern readers know. But inside them are the first sparks of something enormous: the superhero as symbol, spectacle, outsider, protector, threat, and myth.This is where the gauntlet begins.