In the latest Comic Book Legends Revealed, discover whether DC seriously decided at one point that Superman literally could not smoke tobacco
Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the eight hundred and forty-first 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.
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COMIC LEGEND:
At one point in time, DC decided that Superman could literally not smoke tobacco.
STATUS:
True
In the late 1970s, on the Super Friends animated series, they would do occasional "health tips," and a popular Superman health tip was an anti-smoking advertisement where Superman explains that smoking is for losers...
(There is an adorable comment in reply to the YouTube video from a person who said that that clip directly led to their dad quitting smoking, as when they were three years old, the clip led to them asking their dad, "Are you a loser?" and the father decided to quit smoking)
Meanwhile, a few years later, in the early 1980s, there was a British anti-smoking campaign that used much better animation as Superman took on the villainous NIck O'Teen...
That's gorgoeus animation, right?
Well, interestingly enough, around the same time that that ad campaign came about, DC actually made a shocking revelation about the Man of Steel - he literally could not smoke tobacco!!!
First, though, let's see how that matches up with past Superman adventures.
In Superman #163 (by Robert Bernstein and Al Plastino), Superman is exposed to red kryptonite right before he changes back into his Clark Kent identity. The effects of this particular red kryptonite is to drive someone insane. So Clark suddenly starts walking on his hand, quacking like a duck, the whole nine yards. He loses his wallet during one of these stunts and so he has no idenfitication on him and is taken into an institution. While there, he starts hanging out with the other patients. After the effects of the red kryptonite wears off, he is now in a bind because his fingerprints are on file with the asylum and when one of the other patients reveals Superman's costume under Clark's clothes (Clark uses a pseudoynm of "Cal Ellis"), suddenly he is in a bind. He has to now pretend to be crazy and that any "Super feats" they see him perform are optical illusions until he can get rid of the fingerprints.
Well, one of the other patients kept winning boxes of cigars from a guard betting him that "Superman" couldn't do any super feats and Superman kept pulling them off (and then using tricks to make it look like he DIDN'T do the super feats). So when the head of the asylum got out the paper with Superman's fingerprints on them, Superman decided to take advantage of a "bomb" by smoking all of the cigars and blowing the smoke to cause a distraction...
Then Superman used his powers to mimic a bomb exploding, thus destroying the fingerprint evidence...
Later, in Superman #247, in the middle of a "Secret Life of Clark Kent" story by Denny O'Neil, Curt Swan and Murphy Anderson, O'Neil just decides to have Superman, in the middle of the story, figure he'll give smoking tobacco a shot...
The way he describes it makes Superman sound more alien than I can think of. Dude, you GREW UP IN AMERICA, how in the world are you doing this whole "Huh, people like smoking...a leaf?!?!" This isn't some Mork and Mindy routine, buddy! But in any event, Superman hated it...
That's the story that a lot of readers had in their mind when, in Superman #406, DC revealed that Superman CANNOT smoke!
The story was by the great Craig Boldman, with art by Alex Saviuk and Karl Kesel (who are also both great themselves). The concept of the story is that Superman has a contest where he challenges the people of Metropolis to identify something pretty much any normal human could do but that Superman CANNOT do.
There are various wacky guesses along the way, along with a plot where two criminals plan to rip off the contest, but in the end, it is Perry White who figures out the clues and comes to the determination that Superman CANNOT smoke! His Kryptonian lungs will not allow it...
It's a very weird story, especially because it doesn't even really work that well as a public service announcement, if that was, in fact, the idea behind doing the story, because Superman seems to just offer it up as some weird thing he cannot do and not something that humans SHOULDN'T do, even though that's a conclusion that Perry White comes to in the end, of course.
Thanks so much to reader Eddie D. for suggesting that I write about this very odd little Superman fact that I'm sure everyone at DC forgot about as soon as it came out (and obviously, there was a continuity reboot a couple of years later).
SOME OTHER ENTERTAINMENT LEGENDS!
Check out some entertainment legends from Legends Revealed:
1. Who Was the Surprising Mystery Owner of Yvonne Craig’s Batgirl Costume?
2. Did the Authors of Curious George Escape From the Nazis on Bicycles With a Copy of the Manuscript?
3. Was a Joke In An Issue of Cable/Deadpool Really the Inspiration for Ryan Reynolds Playing Deadpool?
4. Were TV Dinners Invented Due to Swanson Having Too Many Thanksgiving Turkeys Left Over?
PART TWO SOON!
Check back soon for part 2 of this installment's legends!
Feel free to send suggestions for future comic legends to me at either [email protected] or [email protected]
