Despite what many believe, Superman’s first appearance wasn’t in Action Comics No. 1 in June 1938. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster first published the character in a 1933 illustrated short story called Reign of the Superman as a bald supervillain not unlike Lex Luthor. Instead of physical superpowers, though, Superman had the power to read and control people’s minds, all in an effort to take over the world. Siegel, however, had second thoughts about Superman as a villain and reimagined him as a hero—some speculate that the inspiration for the change was the murder of his father at the hands of a robber. The revised character had enough strength to lift a car and the ability to jump great distances, exactly one-eighth of a mile.

When the comic book was still a nascent medium in the late 1930s and early 40s, Superman was more of an enforcer on behalf of the poor and disenfranchised. He rallied against the social injustices created by the corporate and political greed that led to the Great Depression. In the beginning, Shuster and Siegel’s Superman was very much grounded in the real-world problems facing many Americans: poverty, inadequate housing conditions, mobster violence, and corporate and political corruption. In his book Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters and the Birth of the Comic Book, Gerard Jones describes the early Superman in this way, “This was a grim, almost cruel Superman. His feats had no flamboyance ... The whole strip had the metallic odor of the early Depression.”

This Superman was far from the godlike hero and the epitome of morality he’s frequently portrayed as. In the first issue of Action Comics, for example, Superman faces off against a female criminal wielding a gun. She shoots at him and as he grabs her gun, crushes it in his hand, and threatens to do the same to her—something the “newer” Superman wouldn’t dream of doing. In another story, a villain threatens to shoot Superman, who responds by threatening to shoot him in return. Superman lives more by the Old Testament code of an “eye for an eye” rather than the “turn the other cheek” philosophy of Jesus’ Biblical sequel. This might not sound like a big deal, but Superman over the years has morphed into an ideal for fans to aspire to; as a symbol of hope, he’s held to a higher standard. As Marlo Brando, as Superman’s father Jor-El, says to his son in Richard Donner’s Superman: The Movie, “They can be a great people, Kal-El. They wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way. For this reason above all—their capacity for good—I have sent them you, my only son.”

And yet in Bradford Wright’s book Comic Book Nation, the author writes:

Audiences familiar with the rather stiff and morally upright character that Superman would later become would be surprised to discover that Siegel and Shuster’s original character was actually a tough and cynical wise guy, similar to the hard-boiled detectives like Sam Spade who also became popular during the Depression years. Superman took to crime-fighting with an adolescent glee, routinely taking the opportunity to mock and humiliate his adversaries as he thrashed them.

The early Superman not only makes threats, he also delivers on them. And what makes his actions even more uncharacteristic is that he’s threatening mere mortals, not evil superhumans. In one story, a madman with a container of poisonous gas drops it on the floor as Superman advances toward him. As the gas fills the air, choking the man, Superman watches him die saying, “You’re only getting a taste of the fate you planned to doom others to,” effectively being a murderer by purposely refusing to save him. (And it happens other times throughout the hero’s 77-year-history). In another scenario, Superman threatens to leave two criminals hanging underneath an airplane as it’s about to land. He tells them what to expect if they don’t give him answers: “When the plane lands, you won’t make a pretty sight. Confess, or I won’t release you.” Luckily for the thugs and for readers, they do.