Source: Superman vol.1 #182 (1966)
Type: The real thing (since retconned)
Continued from last week... His Clark Kent identity made useless by a blinding weapon, Superman set off to find another. His second attempt is Clark "the K" King, a British disk jockey, because hey, he likes to do accents!
A Superman based in England instead of Metropolis? And in the nowhere town of Wapshire? An interesting change of scenery and maybe one America's youth would respond to given we're at the height of Beatlemania and the British Invasion. But a disk jockey? Only if he can get the job. With no experience, how is he going to manage that? Well, all the applicants will do a show, and whoever gets the most fan mail, gets the job. (Anyone who's worked in radio - and it just so happens I have - will tell you this is an unfair competition because time of day and day of week has a huge impact on your number of listeners, but this is the Silver Age and all things appear to be equal.) Now, do you remember how Clark Kent got a job at the Daily Planet? That's right, he cheated and gave HIMSELF the first Superman interview, scooping star reporter Lois Lane. So are we at all surprised he cheats the DJ job interview as well?
I bet he also flew at superspeeds changing the channel to this particular station in that extra 100-mile radius. Because why would you be checking this station's frequency if it's never reached you before? However he did it, his broadcast reaches 10 times as many people and he gets 10 times the fan mail. Well jolly good, tally-ho and pip pip, old boy, he gets the job. And yes, that's my impression of Superman's impression of an English person. Even with half a disguise (a monocle now?), no one recognizes him as Superman because we're ABROAD, but that could soon change as Superman starts doing Britishy things like saving the queen's yacht from crashing into the White Cliffs of Dover (colored brown-orange because someone isn't reading the stories they color). You'd think being Superman when your job only lasts a couple of hours a day would be easy ("why does the crime rate peak only a certain time of day?!"), but Clark the K has other duties, like choosing the next big band:
We can't hear music on the printed page, so it's really about who has the best gimmick. The Mutations' horror masks, or the Piccadilly Jailhouse Trio's prisoner uniforms and criminal records to match? As Clark takes a break for fish'n'chips, we'll break too, because his quest for talent will bring us into contact with a THIRD Superman. Jerry Siegel's last Superman story concludes... next week!
Type: The real thing (since retconned)
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