Since his 1938 debut in Action Comics No. 1, Superman has evolved into an even more powerful superhero than the original character. While he’s always been super strong and super fast, he didn’t initially have his now-famous ability to fly. You’ve probably heard the slogan “able to leap tall buildings in a single bound” — that comes from his ability to jump an eighth of a mile at a time, which is originally as close as he came to being able to fly.
The first implied instance of Superman taking flight was on an August 1939 cover of the British magazine Triumph, where the superhero appears to be flying into space. It was also hinted at in the second episode of The Adventures of Superman radio program in 1940. Then came artist Leo Nowak, who, assuming the hero had been given the power of flight, mistakenly drew Superman hovering above the ground in 1941’s Superman No. 10, which some now consider to be the first example of the character midflight. Funnily enough, Nowak was also the first to portray the villainous Lex Luthor as bald (earlier drawings depicted him as having red hair).
Superman officially gained the ability to fly in 1941’s The Mad Scientist, the first of 17 animated shorts from Fleischer Studios. The studio found it challenging to animate Superman’s leaping ability and asked DC Studios’ permission to make the character fly, which was easier to portray. (The request was granted.) In the comics, the first formal mention of this ability came in 1944’s Superman No. 30. While chasing a character named Mr. Mxyzptlk through the sky, Superman quips, “I thought I was the only one who could fly!!”
He was originally conceived as a villain
Superman wasn’t always the goody two-shoes we know him to be today; in fact, the original version was a villainous character. In January 1933, comic book writer Jerry Siegel published a short story titled “The Reign of the Superman” in an edition of Science Fiction. It centered around an evil supervillain with telepathic abilities who was dead set on world domination. The story also featured illustrations from Siegel’s friend and comic book artist Joe Shuster, but it wasn’t the smash hit they hoped it to be. In the wake of Adolf Hitler’s rise to power that same year, Siegel, who was Jewish, reimagined the “super man” as a force for good. The duo got to work on a new comic featuring the Superman character as a hero. The pair struggled in shopping around the idea until 1938, when DC Comics finally purchased the inaugural Superman story.
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