Superman's Symbol. Pop Art. An Icon. The Original. An unique piece of Americana.

Superman's "S" emblem is all of these things and more.

As it is, Action Comics #1 is the "Big Bang" of Super-Heroes. There is no "super" in "hero" before "Super"man, after all. And if the Super-Hero is the modern "mythology" in our culture, then Superman began a tradition that is steeped in historic iconography.

As Dan Brown's Robert Langdon would likely point out, symbols have power, and when Superman, the first and most successful Super-Hero in history, sported a Symbol on his chest, pretty much every superhero after that did, too (Batman, the Flash, Green Lantern, etc.). And not just the ones from DC, either - Atlas/Marvel did the same thing (at the beginning and even decades later, when they "reinvented" the Super-Hero) with Captain America, The Whizzer, Destroyer, Blue Diamond, Union Jack, Miss America, and then the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, Daredevil and the lot of them. When people think "Super Hero", they think of someone with a cape, tights and some kind of icon on their chest.

Superman's logo is instantly recognizable and you can see it utilized in advertisements for pretty much anything you can think of when someone wants to emphasize what they're doing is at the apex of its ilk, to the extreme, of the highest degree, the greatest ever. When it comes to attracting attention, Superman's symbol carries the day .



It didn't start out that way, though. Initially, it was not even considered a significant part of his costume by his publisher. In hindsight, though, it turned out to be the most important, overall, toward the end of protecting and sustaining the ability to publish the character in perpetuity.



Superman has been an icon for over 70 years and his symbol was the first of its kind. Prior to Superman, there was no such thing as a "Super-Hero", nor was there such a thing as a "Super-Hero Costume", nor was there a trademarked symbol that any fictional character had worn prior to Superman. As The Original Super-Hero, he and his symbol were the foundation upon which the comics industry has been built. There would have been no comics "boom" in the late 1930's, no Batman, no Sub-Mariner, no Human Torch, no Captain America, no Captain Marvel (Shazam! or otherwise) were there no Superman. There would be no DC Comics as we know it today. Marvel Comics would never have become a publisher of super-heroes and its Silver Age stable of characters (Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Daredevil, The Hulk, The X-Men) would be absolutely non-existent.



In 1945, National Periodical Publications (later simply known as "DC Comics") trademarked Superman's symbol, allowing the ability to print his stories in perpetuity, rather than allowing the printed material to become public domain after 75 years, as was the norm at that time. The ability to license and merchandise the character created another source of income for the comics industry.



Superman's symbol has become recognizable all over the world. However, at one time, it was not even very consistently drawn - and that is the crux of this article. Prior to having trademarked the symbol, it went through a great deal of metamorphosis (metamorphoses?). Here is the story as we know it.



NOTE: This page is currently under construction and will be updated as more information becomes available.



Metropolisplus.com has used primarily covers for the purposes of this article, as that is the part of the comic which attracted the most attention and were provided with the most detail and were printed with the best available reproduction of the day. We highly recommend the cover galleries for Action and Superman at The Grand Comics Database, which we have found to be extremely valuable for general research. While the images have been too small for our uses here, they were perfect for getting a fast look at 50 covers of one title at a time and being able to pinpoint the best covers to use.



In reviewing the symbol itself, first one must point to the origins of Superman. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster had created Superman years before he ever saw print. Only a few early drawings of Superman prior to publication survive to this day. Here is one of them, as published in Comic Book Marketplace #36:

As you can see, this symbol was quite different than it would become upon publication, with the exception of the cover of Action #1. Close inspection of superman's costume on the cover reveals that this was the same costume, boots/straps and symbol (this image was taken from Famous First Edition C-26, and we enhanced the coloring to follow the actual lines drawn for the symbol and the boots to clarify the image).

A representation of the first symbol (click here) in its earliest form provided for comparison. This shield represented something akin to the shape of a police officer's badge (which would later become the shape of the hand-held shield of a later hero known as "The Guardian", who was a police officer in his secret identity - but that's another story...).

Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster had intended Superman as a comic strip character, but had been turned down by numerous syndicates. When they prepared Superman for his first comic book appearance, Joe cannibalized the strips and reoriented them into page form with slight adjustments for the difference in medium. Superman saw newspaper publication a year after his first comic book appearance and his appearance was similar, but you can see from the examples below that there was a considerable difference in the quality of reproduction. Superman's symbol takes on a triangular appearance in the pages of Action Comics, newspaper comic strips and the first few issues of Superman Comics.

Superman only saw six other covers of Action Comics for the next 20 issues, one of which was a bit of a misrepresentation of his costume. The next time we see him on the cover of Action #7, his symbol appears more like that on the inside pages. This was further in evidence as late as 1940.

Click for a detail of Action #7.

Here are the covers of Superman #1 and #4, which is the last appearance of the symbol in this form on a Superman cover.

Click for a detail of Superman #1.

Click for a detail of Superman #4

Here is a representation of the symbol as it was published circa 1939.

Once Shuster had a studio with other artists, the symbol became a bit less sketchy (although, only slightly less so) and had a larger presence in Superman's costume. Take a look at Superman #6:

Click for detail of Superman #6.

Alex Ross is a tremendous fan of this particular symbol and has used it in his representation of Superman #1, as well as using the above cover as the model for the statue he designed for The Ultimate Superman Collection:

Click for detail of Alex Ross's Superman #1.

And here is a representation of the First Stylized Superman Symbol.