Power!, by Dennis O’Neil
So you wanna be a superhero. Okay, where are your powers going to come from?
For years – nay, hundreds of years; nay, thousands of years – the brief answer was: From out there. Somewhere. The first superbeings in popular culture (the only kind there was, back then) were either gods, or pals of gods, or imbued with magical abilities, the origins of which weren’t necessarily clear or important. What was important was…wow! – look at what he/she/it can do! And so much the better if it, whatever spectacular thing it is, is being done for reasons I approve of.
That’s still what’s important. But our minds seem to be wired to want reasons for what we see, which is certainly why there’s science and may be why there’s art and civilization. But, oddly, once a reason is supplied, many of seem to be satisfied and require nothing further. The great cosmic snortlefish created the oceans? Swell, now I know why there’s all that water and what’s for dinner?
By the time Jerry Siegel got around to thinking up Superman in the summer of 1934, magic wasn’t terribly fashionable and it had long since become divorced from religion. But science…ah, science was going to deliver us and besides, it was real. And Jerry was a reader of science fiction, which, in those happy days, at least claimed to be rooted in physics and chemistry and astronomy and stuff like that. So it was natural, maybe inevitable, that he would give his übermensch a science rationale. Guy comes from another planet, sure – that’d be why he could be so powerful. Makes sense. Made sense to Jerry in 1934, probably would have made sense to me when I was the age Jerry was when he created Superman, if I’d thought about it.
In case the change in weather hasn’t hit your area yet, let us remind you that pages of the calendar are flying by as fast as in a one of those old Hollywood movies and those holiday are rushing closer. That being said, keep in mind a lot of our links do make way cool gifts! 
Today we celebrate the birthday of one of comics most creative contributors, the great 
Norman Mailer died this morning, age 84, at Mt. Sinai Hospital in Manhattan. You can scour the news to read about his importance to literature in the Twentieth Century, from his ground-breaking novels to founding the Village Voice. But did you know he also helped change comics?
