6. Superman also appeared in newspaper comic strips
Beginning in 1939, and continuing into the mid-1960s, Superman appeared in a syndicated comic strip which ran both daily and Sunday strips. The comic strip is notable in the Superman legend for several things, including the first appearance of a bald Lex Luthor. It was also in the daily strips where Clark Kent first entered a telephone booth, to emerge as Superman. By mid-1941, with the character just three years of age, Superman appeared in hundreds of newspapers daily, in a fifteen-minute radio broadcast three afternoons per week, in the animated shorts, and in the Superman and Action Comics magazines. Licensing included Superman dolls, collecting cards, a fan club, costumes for children, and other items.
The radio program was sponsored by Kellogg’s Pep Cereal, a product devised to compete with Wheaties. Pep was advertised as a fortified cereal, from which its consumers derived strength and durability, attributes clearly associated with Superman. Ads for Kellogg’s Pep Cereal in print referenced the program, the beginning of a long association between Kellogg’s and the Man of Steel. In other ads not aimed primarily at children in the early 1940s, Kellogg’s touted the cereal’s mild laxative effect. Superman was everywhere, unvanquishable, just as the United States came under attack at Pearl Harbor, leading it to enter the Second World War. For Superman, the war presented challenges unlike any his creators had yet faced. What would be his role in the global war, presented to the American people as one of good against evil?