The Mystery of DC Comics' John F. Kennedy "Superman" Tribute Comic

[CBR News]

On the 51st anniversary of President John F. Kennedy's assassination, CBR explores the ongoing saga behind a 1964 "Superman" tribute story.


Full article here.

[Jim Kelly]

Maybe after Mort Weisinger pitched the idea for the story, with the Curt Swan and George Klein panel to promote it, he reworked the idea and gave it to Bill Finger to work up into a script. But given Finger's notorious lateness with scripts, Finger hadn't completed the script until after John F. Kennedy died. The script was then passed to E. Nelson Bridwell to edit down to a ten page story, with changes at the beginning and end. And then that completed script was handed to Al Plastino. While Plastino would have pencilled the whole story before turning it in to Weisinger and Bridwell, he was probably balancing a few different assignments, so there might have been a gap between when he began the pages and when he finished them--which he then misremembered as a much longer gap to fit with what he was later told had happened.

While original art was routinely taken out of the DC offices without anyone being bothered about that, I find it hard to believe that Weisinger wouldn't have made good on his promise to hand the art over to Harvard Univeristy, given his membership in the Democratic Party and his love for Kennedy. Mort might have been a difficult personality, but he was loyal to those institutions and people he believed in. Perhaps, by the time that Mort was ready to hand over the original art, that work had already left the building.

[Jim Kelly]

It's too bad the article gives away that spoiler. I realize it was more than fifty years ago now. But I like to think that everyone can have the same pleasure I had reading such stories not knowing the outcome and being surprised at the end. That's why when I talk about old stories, if there's a spoiler that I think shouldn't be revealed, then I try to write around it so as not to give it away.

[Brian Cronin]

Maybe after Mort Weisinger pitched the idea for the story, with the Curt Swan and George Klein panel to promote it, he reworked the idea and gave it to Bill Finger to work up into a script. But given Finger's notorious lateness with scripts, Finger hadn't completed the script until after John F. Kennedy died. The script was then passed to E. Nelson Bridwell to edit down to a ten page story, with changes at the beginning and end. And then that completed script was handed to Al Plastino. While Plastino would have pencilled the whole story before turning it in to Weisinger and Bridwell, he was probably balancing a few different assignments, so there might have been a gap between when he began the pages and when he finished them--which he then misremembered as a much longer gap to fit with what he was later told had happened.

I think that that is a very realistic scenario.

[iblogalot]

I read about these two issues years ago, and I got them both on Ebay. Not mint, just some cheap beat-up copies, but it's cool to see.