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In the latest Comic Book Legends Revealed, learn about how Superman used to have to elaborately fake his vaccinations growing up.
Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the eight hundred and twenty-third installment where we examine three comic book legends and determine whether they are true or false. As usual, there will be three posts, one for each of the three legends. Click here for the first part of this installment’s legends.
NOTE: If my Twitter page hits 5,000 followers, I’ll do a bonus edition of Comic Book Legends Revealed that week. Great deal, right? So go follow my Twitter page, Brian_Cronin!
COMIC LEGEND:
Superman used to have to fake vaccination scars.
STATUS:
True
Comics have long been involved in the world of vaccinations, like Tom Little’s 1956 editorial cartoon that won the 1957 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning.
Little (1898-1972) began working at The Tennessean (now known as The Nashville Tennessean) in 1918, while he was still in school. He stayed with the paper until his retirement in 1970 (he passed away two years later), over fifty years of service! He began doing whatever was needed of him (police reporter, etc.) but he eventually worked his way into the paper as a cartoonist, both as a news/editorial cartoonist and also as the creator of the popular nationally syndicated comic strip, Sunflower Strip.
He drew Sunflower Strip for 15 years but actually ceased the strip in 1950 due to concerns from editors that his comic, which detailed the adventures of southern blacks, was seen as looking down upon his subjects, something Little took great issue with, but decided it better to stop the strip than to continue if that was how people were seeing it. Little was a harsh caricaturist of politics, and he was quite an aggressive pursuer of issues that he felt needed to be brought to light, often in a very harsh, “take it to them” approach.
That was his approach, too, on this 1956 cartoon going after parents who wouldn’t get their kids vaccinated using the Jonas Salk Polio vaccine that became available in 1955.
“Wonder Why My Parents Didn’t Give Me Salk Shots?”
He really went RIGHT at them, huh?
DC Comics, meanwhile, was a huge supporter of the fight against Polio over the years, which makes sense, as it obviously affected a large deal of their readership. All of National (now known as DC)’s comics would frequently have notes about the fight against Polio…
And Superman, himself, would do PSAs for the March of Dimes…
Wonder Woman did this extensive bit on the needs for more Iron Lungs when the Iron Lung was first discovered as something that could help in the fight against Polio…
And DC Comics’ covers routinely promoted the March of Dimes on them…
This approach carries over to this day, as DC’s superheroes all promote people getting COVID-19 vaccinations…
The only problem, though, is that DC’s most famous superhero had a slight issue in this department. You see, Superman couldn’t actually GET vaccinated!
This early Superman panel shows the problem that DC was dealing with (you have to love how much of a jerk Superman is to the doctor. “No, just keep wasting needles. The 12th time is the charm!”), as Superman’s invulnerable skin wouldn’t ALLOW him to get vaccinated…
Meanwhile, a smallpox vaccination scar was seen as sort of the equivalent of a “vaccination passport” today. Dave Roos wrote about it for History.com:
In the overcrowded tenement districts of cities like New York and Boston where smallpox spread with deadly speed, health officials enlisted policemen to help enforce vaccination orders, sometimes physically restraining uncooperative citizens. Frustrated with the widespread resistance to vaccination, these vaccine squads began to ignore certificates altogether and go right to the source.
“Because certificates could be so easily forged, they’d insist on seeing the vaccine scar,” says Willrich. “Vaccine scars readily served as a physical form of certification.”
In 1901, respected physician Dr. James Hyde of the Rush Medical College in Chicago wrote an editorial urging public health officials to do everything in their power to eradicate smallpox and proposed using the vaccination scar itself as the sole entry ticket or “passport” to civic life in America.
“Vaccination should be the seal on the passport of entrance to the public schools, to the voters’ booth, to the box of the juryman, and to every position of duty, privilege, profit or honor in the gift of either the State or the Nation,” wrote Hyde.
So what about the Man of Steel, or his younger self, Superboy?
Well, as I noted recently, Mort Weisinger, the longtime editor of the Superman titles, was a bit ahead of the game when it came to interacting with his rather large audience. Even before Stan Lee was doing reader columns where he interacted with Marvel fans, Weisinger was doing the same with the Superman letter columns (I have a whole feature “Don’t Send Me No More Letters No” where I examine some of the odder responses that Weisinger had to letters). When Weisinger gained E. Nelson Bridwell as his assistant editor, Weisinger also suddenly had one of the most knowledgeable minds about comic book history that there ever was, and Bridwell paired well with Weisinger’s access to the readers and would take an idea that Weisinger had instituted of giving the readers occasional general facts about Superman and Bridwell went way in-depth with these pieces. In a 1967 piece about Superboy, Bridwell and Weisinger explained that Superboy (and Superman, too, presumably) used a fake smallpox scar to fool people into thinking Superboy was vaccinated…
Too funny. After Crisis on Infinite Earths, Superman slowly gained his powers as he aged (and soaked in that yellow sun), so he would have been able to get all of his vaccinations normally.
Thanks to my pal, Loren, for suggesting this one awhile back! I just had to find the right letters column!
CHECK OUT A TV LEGENDS REVEALED!
In the latest TV Legends Revealed – Did Hulk Hogan really pass up the opportunity to endorse what became the George Foreman Grill, missing out on hundreds of millions of dollars in the process?
PART THREE SOON!
Check back soon for part 3 of this installment’s legends!
Feel free to send suggestions for future comic legends to me at either cronb01@aol.com or brianc@cbr.com
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