The Night of March 31st (spoilers)

[Jim Kelly]

I'm putting a spoiler warning here, in case anyone doesn't know the big secret in SUPERMAN 145 (May '61). With that date approaching, I decided to look at The Night of March 31st again. It's not a story I've given much thought before. It's an example of the goofy things that could happen in a National Periodical Publication and the oddball yarns that could appear in Mort Weisinger's Superman titles--often written by Jerry Siegel who had a gift for the oddball.

I wouldn't want to promote the yarn as some kind of Alan Moore or Grant Morrison lucid dream--but what makes the story work is really fundamental to Superman at that time.

First off you have to understand things like Superman wears a cape and other basic principles--that seemed immutable--in order to understand what is so odd in almost every panel of the story. You have to understand that colour errors (and lettering errors) were common--so it's something to see them done deliberately. And you have to be a kid--at heart, if not in reality. It's a kind of "Where's Waldo?" story. Kids love these--it makes them feel smart. And feeling smart is good for a kid's self-esteem.

There's also Mort's psychological concerns. I don't think being in psycho-analysis was the great woe that people want it to be. If you go by CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM or Woody Allen movies, every Jewish male born in or near New York City is in psycho-analysis. I think it's nearly a status symbol--it shows that Mort had made it in life, because he could afford treatment for his neuroses. This would not be important except that his sessions probably educated Mort in the oddities of character and percepton.

There's a kind of Kafka reality to Superman's inexplicable day-mare. And as I noted in my blog, the characters themselves are never delivered from their Boo-Boo world. The reader gets some relief with the text at the very end of the story. But there's no Editor clearing things up for the Superman in this story--which is open-ended with no in-story resolution.

[Jim Kelly]

The Night of March 31st be nigh. My telepathic powers tell me that Superman will lose the plot.