For well over half a century, Superman and his supporting cast have met real life, famous people, within their very fictional realities. I was looking up something and came across this amazing visual display of all kinds of personalities. Pat Boone, Antonino Rocca, JFK, Alan Funt, Ann Blyth, Jerry Lewis, Perry Como and Orson Welles to name just a few. Some surprisingly, I even remember reading. But who was the first person we would designate as a “celebrity” to share the stage with the Man of Steel, between the covers of a DC comic? Inquiring minds, sir.
I believe that would have to be 1949’s Action Comics #130, “Superman and the Mermaid.” In the story, Superman and Lois attend the shooting of a mermaid film, starring Golden Age Hollywood starlet Ann Blyth as the titular mermaid – and it’s Superman to the rescue when Blyth is captured by a mechanical octopus operated by set-raiding pirates. Also featured in the issue is film screenwriter Nunnally Johnson, overseeing the production of the film when Blyth is captured.
How did this all take place? Well, it just so happened to be an early marketing stunt for an actual mermaid film being promoted at the time, Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid – naturally starring Blyth, and written and produced by Johnson.
Well done sir, great find! You are, and remain, the MAN!
I suppose the answer is technically a young John Wilkes Booth, who appeared last week in The New Golden Age #1. He was a celebrity before he was an assasssin, after all.
Interesting fact: Lincoln was his biggest fan.
Never meet your heroes.
He did not meet him. Only that feeling in the back of his head met him.
Yoooooo!!!
Note: I’m not going to keep updating this thread for new celebrity appearances. There’s a whole other thread for that.
fair enough
Hey HCQ,
I only have the lower tier of DCUI, so where I am, the “current” roster of the JL is the team as it existed at the end of the ongoing that concluded with #75. Out of that roster, how many of the core members know each other’s secret identities (where applicable)? I finally read more than thirty issues into Tom Taylor’s Injustice and it’s a little weird trying to keep track of who knew whose secret identity before and during the events of the story, and I’d like to avoid such confusion in future.
It’s pretty safe to assume everyone in the Justice League knows who everyone else is.
Hey, so, there are many storylines in which a “lead-lined bunker” is used to hide someone from Superman’s powers. What confuses me is, wouldn’t a big box appearing in Clark’s (or any other Kryptonian’s) line of vision be just as conspicuous as whatever someone’s trying to hide? The same way you know someone’s swearing if it’s bleeped out, even if you don’t know exactly what they said.
Superman’s been able to find something hidden from him that way exactly through that method in the past. But in Metropolis, there have been so many different attempts to pull this trick all over the city, usually by Luthor, that it’s difficult to investigate them all outright.
In Superman the movie Luthor exploited this by leaving a trap in the conspicuously lead box. Logically Clark should beware of traps.
They’ve been very hard to keep track of, over the years. Mainly because of their different names, shapes and appearances, depending on what writer, artist and editor combination has gotten their hands on them. Of course I refer to the original hosts of the Witching Hour. A companion title to House of Secrets and HoM that also ran back in those days.
The hosts, known as Cynthia, Mildred and Mordred (at the time), have taken on many different aliases and forms, as I’ve mentioned. Currently “residing” (along with Cain 'n Abel) as supporting background characters in the Sandman’s world. Waiting to be called forth, for their next appearances on stage.
Are they also supposed to represent the 3 Fates (or Furies) of Greek Mythology? Like those we’ve seen depicted in Wonder Woman, and elsewhere. Or were they just 3 witches DC found wandering the halls years ago, in need of a hosting gig? Because they seem like very different characters. Just curious.
Stay safe, be well.
As first seen in The Witching Hour, the three witches were meant to represent the neopagan archetype of the maiden, the mother, and the crone, as expressions of the triple-witch goddess Hecate. But one of the major themes of Sandman is that the recurring archetypes throughout all cultures are merely expressions of the same idea. Thus do the furies, the fates, and the three facets of Hecate all morph into manifestations of the same archetypical concept within the collective subconscious. Just as Dream himself is a manifestation of all sleep and dream myths through history and culture, so too does Gaiman treat the Witches Three.