Superman #1

And now we reach this milestone at last -- the first time an ongoing comic book will feature only one main character, and the first time a comic book will be named after a superhero.

This is also the comic book that gives Superman his origin story. We see clearly for the first time that it is Superman's alien heritage that gives him his ability to leap higher, raise tremendous weights*, run faster, and have bulletproof skin.

*So, technically, the alien race should automatically let you have the power Raise Car as well, but as already broken as the alien race is (game balance-wise), I decided to eliminate that one since Superman did not lift heavy weights as often as he used the other powers. Alien superheroes can still buff themselves with the Raise Car power. Perhaps I could tweak this in second edition Hideouts & Hoodlums, to say that Raise Car has double the normal duration for alien superheroes...?

Of course, if I wanted to "fix" the alien race, maybe I could restrict those three abilities to bonus powers, usable no matter what class the alien is, but still force the hero to activate them and stick to a duration, rather than making them "use at will" abilities.

This issue also features the first time a superhero appears in a text story. All the early comic books included one text story (to qualify for the cheaper mailing rate), but you wouldn't know that from this blog because I've been ignoring them. H&H is based on the actual comic book stories, not all of the contents of the comic books.

(The content not reprinted from Action Comics was read in The Superman Chronicles v. 1)