How did you discover Superman?

[StarChampion]

Personally, I learned about Superman while watching The Iron Giant, but what about you?

[manwhohaseverything]

Superman tas new gods episodes.

[Dralokonda]

The Max Fleischers cartoon with the japoteurs, watched it ever since i was 3

[Sacred Knight]

My memory doesn't go so far back as to remember a time I didn't know Superman to know for absolute certainty what my first exposure was. But if I had to guess, it almost had to have been Superman: The Movie.

[manwhohaseverything]

My memory doesn't go so far back as to remember a time I didn't know Superman to know for absolute certainty what my first exposure was. But if I had to guess, it almost had to have been Superman: The Movie.

I knew superman ever since i can remember too. Heck! My grandmother knew who superman was. But, the thing that git me into superman was when dan turpin died in superman tas. It made it memorable for me. But, the first superhero i got into will always be phantom and mandrake .

[Denirac]

I knew about him from the Comics and the Christopher Reeve movies, but I became a fan through Smallville

[stargazer01]

I love the Iron Giant movie.

I learned about Superman since I was a little girl. He has always been part of my life since I have memory. I remember seeing George Reeves on TV. I liked it when he jumped. Also loved Superfriends cartoon, but became a big fan with the Donner movie. Superman has always been the greatest to me.

[K. Jones]

In the 80s I had this old VHS collection of old animated classics that had one or maybe two of the Fleischer cartoons on it. Certainly that's my first impression of Superman. "LOOK, UP IN THE SKY" and all that. Dun-duh-dah, dun-da-na! And I think I ... vaguely recall seeing commercials for Lois & Clark. But it was never on during times where I'd watch it.

In like 1992 or 1993 we finally got cable TV and I discovered Batman: TAS. I thought Superman was a little bright and silly by that point and didn't have much interaction with him besides just his style and look on kid's t-shirts or something. But having cable, at some point, around the same time period, I both saw the Christopher Reeve film and saw Dini & Timm launch Superman: TAS. So my first proper interaction with Superman was a double shot of really solid stuff. Reeve was instantly charming and sold me on the characterization. I'd loved Gene Hackman in all the other stuff I'd seen him in. Margot Kidder is like, totally my type and I knew it even at like age 9. And the charm of that movie has grown up with me, because I think it's just as much for adults as kids.

But Animated was the hardcore deep dive. I adored Batman and liked the contrast of styles. For a little while I kind of just watched Superman because it was on right after Batman and I didn't change the channel. I didn't adore the bright color pallet of Metropolis like I did Gotham but I liked Dana Delany's Lois a lot and I knew Tim Daly from Wings re-runs, and I sure as hell knew Luthor because he's The Kurgan (god bless cable TV in the early 90s). That trifecta of voice talent kept me invested. There was a lot of stuff that even as a little kid I was kind of cringing at in Superman: TAS. Gilbert Gotfried as Mxyzptlk irked me. There was always a kind of terrible episode to counter-balance the really good ones. And I knew that Jax-Ur and Mala weren't Zod and Ursa because I'd seen Superman II on cable as well. But the quality was consistent and I followed it through and the build-up with Intergang and Darkseid was truly epic, and the crossover with Batman did not disappoint. It's the best version of that first meeting I've ever, ever seen.

So a bit of a mish-mash, but definitely a pure 9, 10 year old discovers Superman I & II, and The Animated, around the same time.

I didn't jump into the comics until One Year Later because I saw an article and liked Geoff Johns's angle that he was playing with ... but frankly, really, I just loved Gary Frank's artwork. I think it was him straight up depicting Superman as Christopher Reeve that got my attention and I've been paying ... pretty close attention ... to the superbooks ever since. I think I've been pretty consistently reading from Last Son to Brainiac to New Krypton to Paul Cornell to Morrison's Action to Pak, to Yang, to Tomasi and Jurgens, right up to now. It's been a weird decade. Discovering Grant Morrison's work and going back and reading JLA, then reading All-Star Superman made me pretty happy. I'm not sure what story specifically it was where I really started identifying with Clark Kent personally.

[Riv86672]

My memory doesn't go so far back as to remember a time I didn't know Superman to know for absolute certainty what my first exposure was.

Same. I was going to skip replying until I saw it wasn’t just me.

But if I had to guess, it almost had to have been Superman: The Movie.

For me, it was likely reruns of the 50s Superman/George Reeves TV show, which I watched in the 70s.

[Adekis]

Yeah, my earliest memory of Superman, I already knew who he was. My Grandpa got me a tape of Fleischer cartoons. Really low quality transfer. Superman's costume looked black rather than blue in most of the shots. It actually made the whole thing kind of moody and cool to look at, if only by accidental happenstance. I loved the cartoons, either way.

I also remember a tape of Superman from the library featuring the first and last episodes of the George Reeves show, with the first Fleischer cartoon placed anachronistically in between them. And of course, my Grandpa had tons of old comics in his house from when my Dad was a kid, or just if Grandma found them at a garage sale or something, and I'd read those a lot too.

The first time I got lost in a Superman book was the "Giant" Jimmy Olsen # 140, which was nothing but Silver Age reprints! I had no idea who this "Jimmy" kid was (so maybe this was before the Reeves tape?) but the Legion of Super-Heroes, the "world of doomed Olsens," the Bottle City of Kandor, the dynamic duo of Nightwing and Flamebird, all stuck with me a lot, and there were so many stories in that issue that I felt like it went on forever! I was absolutely blown away by how cool it all was!

Like a lot of fans, I was more of a Batman kid (I think the Boy Wonder had a lot to do with it) but I came to love Superman more and more as time went on, and sometime during middle school he became far and away my favorite.

After that, the biggest change in my development as a far was when I bought Superman: The Dailies 1939-1942 in hardcover, which instilled a great love in my heart for the original "roughneck" Kal-L and his concern for the little guy. That prepped me for my later love of the New 52 Superman I suppose. And then it was now, and then I don't know what happened!

[Darkcrusade25]

N52 but it didn't hit me until I watched MoS.

Even then, I feel like the full impact of Supes didn't hit me until Jurgens and Tomasi's Rebirth runs. They created an amazing and inspiring Superman that serves as the golden standard of what I believe Superman is.

[charliehustle415]

The Max Fleischers cartoons on VHS when I was a kid; I knew then what I know now: that I am a life long Superman fan as well as superhero fan

[babyblob]

My first Superman experience came with the Reeves Superman movie, I watched an old VHS copy that my dad owned, and that almost turned me off because I was bored out of my mind. But then at a used book store I got a trade of Superman Time and Time again and loved it. I remember reading Booster Gold in it and thought man he is pretty cool. I started watching Superman TAS soon after and loved it.

[Jim Kelly]

This question makes no sense to me. It's like asking when I discovered breathing or that the sky was blue.

When I was little, Superman was something every kid always knew existed like the tooth fairy, Santa Claus and little Miss Muffet. He always existed in our consciousness. That was something we'd play at as kids--especially in the summer, in swim trunks, you'd tie a towel around your neck and pretend to fly.

The big discovery to me was when I started reading Batman comics (because of the Adam West TV show), I discovered that Batman existed in comic books, he wasn't just something they made up for a TV show, and he and Superman hung out in those comics. That was pretty weird that there were comic books where Superman had adventures with other costumed characters. I never thought that could be possible because Superman was such a big deal. That would be like Santa Claus having adventures with Jethro Bodine.

[JAK]

I was born in 1980, and (like others here) I don't remember a time before having a great love of Superman.

That said, my earliest memories of him are Super-Friends and The Super Powers Team, Superman: The Movie, and the Fleischer cartoons. Not long after, I found the George Reeves shows on Nick-At-Nite.

The first issue I remember getting is quite an odd one: Superman 414.