Superman’s Halloween Adventures
Superman has never been a character to adapt easily to horror stories. Monsters can work, providing they’re of the sci-fi variety, but ghosts and goblins and things that go “bump” in the night are an ill fit for a character as upbeat and powerful as the Man of Steel.
Unlike Batman, who operates in the shadows of a big, scary city and has one foot in the world of horror from the start, Superman works the sunny side of the street. In classic Superman comics of the Atomic and Silver Ages, “monsters” are presented as harmless fun, creatures who wreck property and cause panic but rarely if ever claim lives; punching bags for Superman to pummel. Titano The Super-Ape is King Kong without the attitude (he’s a good monkey at heart). Frankenstein is just a movie character (and a heart-throb for viewers on Bizarro World). Lois Lane becomes a “witch” without embracing necromancy; she just gets a pointed hat and a broom and she’s in business. Jimmy Olsen becomes a werewolf, but finds lycanthropy is mostly just a social handicap, like acne.
I discovered comics in the early 70s, when America was obsessed with horror films and fiction; The Exorcist, Jaws, Amityville Horror, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, etc. Then as now comics were more into following trends than setting them, so the spinner racks were filled with four-color forays into the macabre. Batman battled Man-Bat, the Spook, vampires and werewolves. Spider-Man grew an extra pair of arms and battled Morbius, the Living Vampire. Dracula and Frankenstein got their own books, joined by made-for-comics characters like Swamp-Thing, The Demon, Man-Wolf and Man-Thing. Long-languishing “suspense” titles like “House of Mystery” and “Tales of The Unexpected” found new popularity, and Warren’s black-and-white “Creepy” magazine, freed from the constraints of the Comics Code Authority, grew so successful it inspired even mainstream Marvel to publish its own line of “adult”-ish b/w mags.
In the midst of all this, Superman was definitely a fish out of water, with his brightly colored costume, his “can-do” attitude and virtual omnipotence and a still-bright and shiny sci-fi-oriented mythos created at the height of 60s optimism. Luckily (I suppose) he still had that well-documented vulnerability to magic, so there were always sorcerors, necromancers, voodoo priests and even vampires (who are “kind of” magic…I guess) to help Superman dip his toe half-heartedly into the fad of the moment. But it wasn’t really the same.
Maybe someone can help me out here, but I really can’t think of any horror-themed Superman stories that would make it onto a “Best Of” list. There was a nice post-Crisis Action Comics annual featuring Superman and Batman against bayou vampires, but that turned out to be a better Batman story in the end.
The “spooky” covers were often great, however, as witness the gallery below.
Anyway, since the first time a kid pinned an “S” to his chest and tied a cape round his neck, through the days of Ben Cooper masks right up to today’s deluxe, “muscle-chest” super-suits, Superman has always been a mainstay of the Halloween tradition, even if monsters and boogeymen never really cut it in the Man of Steel’s universe.