Our discussion in Superman's Trials & Tribulations about how often Mort Weisinger used continued stories prompts me to post my (two-part) column from CBG #1527-1527 (Feb 2003) discussing that topic. I've edited it into one column so you can just keep reading:
The best of (continued) Action!
Action Comics had lots ‘n’ lots of continued stories—but here are the choicest ones
Dear Mr. Silver Age,
Marvel Comics is well known for having stories that continued into the next issue back in the Silver Age. Why didn’t DC Comics do very many two-part stories?
Harvey D.
Gotham City
Mr. Silver Age says: DC editors tended to believe in the done-in-one approach to comics, Harv, most likely because the catch-as-catch-can nature of newsstand distribution meant many readers would have a hard time finding sequential issues. You only have to read the first-half of a couple stories to decide to spend your 12 cents on some other title from then on.
But there was one title where they threw caution to the wind and did full-bore, two-part stories. These were unlike Stan Lee’s patented format of creating a cliffhanger ending that was resolved quickly in the next issue, leaving plenty of room to continue the story and set up that issue’s cliffhanger. DC’s approach was to do self-contained stories, with a beginning, middle and end—but the end was in the next issue. And the vast majority of these were done for the Superman stories in Action Comics!
Ironically, Action #1 and #2 (Jun-Jul 38) kicked off the two-parter concept, but it was seldom if ever used through the 1950s, except for a big Lex Luthor battle in #141-142 (Feb-Mar 50). Then in 1959, continued Superman stories began to show up on occasion. After three appeared in 1964, a series of them ran in 1966. By 1967, continued stories were more the rule than the exception.
(My own research on these comics was supplemented by DC Geek #1 Mark Waid, who not only supplied me with pre-1960 story citations but was geeky enough check all his post-Tommy Tomorrow issues to ensure I didn’t miss any, without even being asked! Thank goodness he uses his power for good.)
In most cases, the stories’s second chapters began with a summary of the previous part, sometimes not even noting that the action was being summarized. This kept kids from feeling like they’d missed out, while those who had read the first part could quickly skim the opening few panels and head into the new story (assuming they still remembered it).
Some of these tales were truly great and memorable stories, and some were just, well, stories. To give you an idea of the stories being told, and in honor of Action #800 this month, here’s my list of The Top Ten Continued Superman Stories from Action Comics During the Silver Age!
Yes, I know, that’s such a small sliver of comics universe that it’s probably damning the stories with faint praise. But still, take a gander at these stories and tell me you don’t want to go read both—or more—parts right away. The stories are ranked in ascending order of coolness (just to get you riled up) and usually are identified by their first chapter, which tended to sum up the story best:
10. “Muto—Monarch of Menace!” in #338-339 (Jun-Jul 66): This storytechnically is a three-parter, with the first part appearing in Superman #181 (Nov 65). It introduced us to Klar Ken T-547, better known as The Superman of 2965, and showed us the world around him It included his robotic boss, PW-5598, his love interest, Lyra 3916 (who disliked Superman) and his arch enemy, the human mutant Muto.
As the eight-pager ended, Superman headed off into space to confront Muto. The final caption told us that this “epic duel” would appear in “an early issue.” But it actually showed up as an Action two-parter.
That story quickly brought us up to speed through some fast thought balloons and exposition. We received a quick review of arch foes of some of Klar’s ancestors, learned how two past Supermen had had their identities revealed, and then joined Supes as he hunted down Muto.
Part 1 had the two going at each other hammer and tongs until Muto lured The Man of Future Steel into a trap containing sea water, his only weakness (and a mighty big weakness it was, too).
In Part 2, Supes escaped (big surprise), but Muto continued to bedevil him with sea-water traps (including, duh, setting up his headquarters in the ocean). The two traded traps until the final showdown, when guess who won.
This story makes the list for its sampling of wacky futuristic ideas that served more to create a fairly traditional story about a future Superman than did most Imaginary Stories, which crammed major events and an ultimate resolution into one story.
In fact, Klar would go on to have one more adventure in World’s Finest #166 (May 67), in which Klar teamed with the future Batman to take on Muto and The Joker. Being WF rather than Action, it was only a one-part story.
9. “The Mighty Annihilator!” in #355-357 (Oct-Dec 67): Biochemist Karl Keller, serving time in an Iron Curtain forced-labor camp, stumbled upon some Kryptonian chemicals and explanatory tapes which he used to give himself explosive powers. He broke out of the camp and headed West to get revenge on the world—and on Superman, who he for some reason resented for not freeing him from the camp earlier. Karl may have won the Nobel Prize, but he was a few atoms short of a molecule, if you know what I mean.
Arriving in America, Keller dressed himself in a purple and green outfit—a sure sign that he was a villain, if you remember our discussion of costume colors in CBG #1523—and called himself The Annihilator.
He started pounding people, Superman showed up, and The Annihilator warned The Man of Steel that if Superman merely touched him, the world would be blasted to bits. Superman backed off to determine what to do.
In Part 2, Keller adopted a juvenile delinquent to create a better cover for his identity. But the juvie figured out the source of Keller’s powers and quaffed the brew himself—just as Keller began losing his own powers. In Part 3, Annihilator & Son conquered Washington, D.C., keeping Superman at bay. And then Son lured Supes into a kryptonite trap!
8. “The Immortal Superman!” in #385-387 (Feb-Apr 70): Police from the year 101,970 called on Superman to help them, but he couldn’t fly into the future due to a secret Army experiment. So The Man of Steel used a defective Legion time bubble—and upon arrival found he’d aged 100,000 years as a result. He quickly solved the future problem, but when he tried to return to his own time, he discovered The Time Trapper had trapped him in time by creating an impenetrable time barrier!
Upon returning to Earth, three super-powered heroes (who should’ve been able to solve the original problem themselves, frankly) paid homage to the original Superman by giving him three special gifts—immunity from kryptonite, magic and the deadly Kryptonian Virus X.
That, in essence made Superman immortal—literally a fate worse than death for a man cut off from his friends and time period.
In Part 2, forbidden from using his super-powers (long story), Supes met the inhabitants of the Home for Old Super-Heroes (including the last Green Lantern). He helped them in an adventure and then decided, since he couldn’t go into the past, he’d continue into the future looking for happiness.
In Part 3, now 8,000 centuries old, Superman watched the Earth die from pollution and abuse, tried to save it and fought to find a way back home. The ending is a bit too weird for words, but as with many other Silver Age stories, the entertainment was in the journey, not the destination.
7. “Hercules in the 20th Century!” in #267-268 (Aug-Sep 60): Dastardly and imprisoned Lex Luthor used a variety of household items to bring Hercules from the past (and mythology) to help him escape from jail and steal some gold.
But Herc realized Lex was lying, and he helped Superman catch Lex. So much for the first five pages. The grateful Superman gave Hercules a secret identity, and the two palled around for awhile in civvies, with Clark getting Perry to give “Roger Tate” a job. Hey, even the best Silver Age stories sometimes have a few parts that require suspending more disbelief than we can handle.
The pals got along swell until Herc met Lois Lane, who was like unto a goddess in his eyes. Herc tried to woo her, but he got shot down due to her unrequited love for Big Blue. Undaunted, Herc secretly returned to Olympus and convinced the gods to give him aditional power and weapons to take Superman out of the picture.
In Part 2 (after an unusually long two-page summary), Herc went about his plan, ultimately trapping Superman in suspended animation for 100 years—unless Lois married him.
6. “The Big Forget!” in #371-372, 374-374 (Jan-Apr 69): The set-up on this story, which led Superman through a variety of new secret identities, was quick: Late one night in his office, Clark Kent was examining a super-computer given to Superman by grateful other-dimensional beings.
Just then, he was attacked by a spy trying to steal the computer. Taken by surprise (and how hard must that be to do?), Clark pretended to be knocked out—and fell directly into a ray projected from the computer that eliminated his memory. The spy put the dazed Clark into the Planet’s helicopter and set it to crash far away.
The crash didn’t kill Kent, of course—it just left him far from home with no memory of who he was other than Superman. After finding no clues in Metropolis, he flew to Washington, D.C., figuring the President would know his secret identity (I’m not sure if the president in 1969 did, although earlier ones did).
Superman learned that the President was missing—and decided the reason was that he was the President! He made himself up to resemble the Chief Executive and had a variety of adventures until the real Prez returned. That left Superman without an identity—and he knew he wasn’t Clark Kent, because he’d met Kent (being played by the spy who kayoed him).
In Part 2, he learned that a professional wrestler called The Masked Superman was missing. He decided it was too coincidental not to involve him—and, let’s face it, anytime but in the Silver Age, he’d be correct.
He reported to the wrestler’s manager and soon was performing in the ring. But after dodging a nosy female reporter’s suspicions that he might be the real Superman, he began to realize that what he wasn’t was the real Masked Superman. So off he went again.
After a quick break for a Supergirl 80-Page Giant, Superman became convinced he was Super-Thief, a spectacular bank robber. That identity caused him all kinds of confusion—which led him to a psychiatrist, which only furthered convinced him of his guilt. But he soon learned he again was wrong again.
In Part 4, he decided to disguise his face with glasses and become a reporter. He showed up at The Daily Planet, was immediately recognized, found a key to his apartment at his desk, and went home—to find the other Clark Kent awaiting him!
This series was a nifty idea that could have continued for much longer if the creators had wanted to really run with it. And the situations didn’t stretch our Silver Age credulity too much—well, at least, not more than many other Action stories did.
5. “The Battle With Bizarro!” #254-255 (Jul-Aug 59). This two-part adventure followed shortly after Bizarro’s introduction in Superboy #68 (Nov 58), a story that apparently was well enough received that he was reintroduced as Superman’s foil.
(In fact, after the Superboy story appeared, a version ran in the Superman newspaper strip, substituting The Man of Steel for The Boy of Steel).
This tale began with Luthor learning of the machine that had created the Bizarro Superboy some years earlier and stealing its plans. He then tricked Superman into standing before the machine and created a Bizarro Superman.
And then, as Bizarro’s boss, he ordered Bizarro to fight Superman! But, you see, being a Bizarro, Bizarro didn’t follow orders real well. In fact, he was ticked off at being brought back to life—well of course a Bizarro is mad about being alive! He got so mad that he carted Lex off to jail.
The cops were horrified when this super-monster showed up, despite Bizarro’s protestations that he really was a nice guy. After one more good deed that ended with people screaming in horror at his face, he spent some time trying to kill himself—until he met Lois Lane, who loved him for his scoop-producing value. Misunderstanding her interest, he kidnapped her to his Bizarro love nest.
Lois revealed her real feelings, so Bizarro stole the duplicator machine and created an imperfect duplicate of himself—which, of course, looked handsome. But the new version was still dumb as a box of rocks, and conceited to boot.
Now ticked off herself, Lois proclaimed she liked the first Bizarro better, and a heated battle began! Bizarro continued to battle for Lois’ affection for many more pages in a classic Bizarro tale that gave him a fine introduction to Superman’s life.
Considering Lex lasted only four pages but created a character who reappeared many times, he had both one of his biggest failures and successes this time.
4. “The Death of Luthor!” in #318-319 (Nov-Dec 64): Lex again, and this time he had a good plan. He snuck aboard a space ship that he piloted to Lexor, the world where he was hailed as a hero—and Superman (who had no super-powers on the planet) was reviled as a criminal.
Lex received an alien ticker-tape parade, but things quickly went awry when The Man of Steel arrived. In trying to recapture Lex to return him to Earth, the non-super Superman slugged Lex, and he hit his head on a stone statue. And he died!
Outraged Lexorians captured Superman and put him on trial for murdering their greatest hero. The two Lexorians selected to defend him weren’t thrilled by their role or by Superman’s flimsy story.
Part 2 featured Superman’s trial, which was interrupted when The Criminal of Steel escaped in a desperate attempt to clear his name. It was always fun to visit Lexor, and this visit, with Superman on trial, was a suspenseful trip without a lot of the usual physical action.
3. “Superman, King of Earth!” in #311-312 (Apr 64): Trying to immunize himself against red kryptonite’s effects, Supes experimented on a piece of red k that had once split him into an evil Superman and a good but non-powered Clark. Instead of helping him, the experiment again split him into two entities—but this time, the Superman side deduced, the split was permanent.
The new Supes quickly cut off contact with Kandor, destroyed the super-robots and crushed the Phantom Zone projector, eliminating three key plot-spoilers right off the bat.
Fearing that killing Kent might kill him too, Superman returned Clark to Metropolis and went to the United Nations to demand that he be elected King of Earth. After wreaking a little havoc, nuclear and otherwise, he got his way—except for a few hardy revolutionaries led by a certain mild-mannered reporter.
In Part 2 (which included a two-page summary two pages in as Clark reviewed what had gotten them where they were), Clark’s plans went awry, and he got shot and nearly died in a river.
Lori Lemaris fished him out (pun intended) but told him she couldn’t save him. Kent told the fish-docs to turn him into Metallo, which not only would save his life but give him a pretty nifty weapon to use against King Superman (and create a darn exciting cover image).
Thus outfitted, Clark went off to do battle. The conclusion was just a tad too complicated for my taste, but it’s still a wowser of a story.
2. “Zha-Vam The Invincible!” in #351-353 (Jun-Aug 67): This story was nominated by Mark Waid as the best continued tale in Action Comics, so you know it’s high-class stuff. (Waid touted it after I asked him if he knew of many continued Action stories prior to 1960, and he pulled out his issues and sent me a list of every continued Action story through #400.
The guy outgeeks me six ways from Sunday, and I don’t consider myself a slouch in that category.)
Don’t stop me if you’ve heard this set-up before, but Zha-Vam was an Olympian hero whose name was derived from the gods who gave him his powers: Zeus, Hercules, Achilles, Vulcan, Apollo and Mercury.
He suddenly appeared one day to demand to be named leader of the United Crime Syndicate, and after showing off his powers one by one, he was elected by acclaim.
He set off on a crime spree that even Superman couldn’t stop—especially since, in addition to his Zha-Vammy powers, he also had a belt that gave him the powers of additional gods. He defeated Supes, but The Man of Steel vowed to take him down.
Things didn’t go quite that way in Part 2, in which Zha-Vam challenged Supes to a duel, with Supes selecting which belt power Zha would use to cream him. Just his luck, Superman selected G—which turned out to be for Gorgon, whose power turned Kal into The Man of Stone.
He escaped but pressed a few more buttons in return engagements which really weren’t much better. Then Mr. Vam unveiled his secret weapon and gave Supes a solid butt-kicking.
In Part 3, Supes devised the cunning plan of going back in time to learn Zha’s origin. As we learned in last week’s column when we discussed Lex Luthor bringing Hercules to the present to fight Superman, Earth-1’s version of ancient Greece apparently included a Mount Olympus stocked with honest-to-goodness gods (which only makes sense since, in Superman, it had plenty of honest-to-god goodness).
The extra knowledge that The Man of Steel gained spying on these guys (plus his own special magic belt) did him some good, but it wasn’t easy. It truly was a clash of the titans.
1. Virus X in #362-365 (Apr-Aug 68): One of the most memorable Superman stories! Actually it was about three stories rolled into one, taking more of a Marvel approach to continued stories of creating a cliffhanger that was resolved next issue before creating another cliffhanger.
The story’s opening chapter detailed how the popular Ventor the Ventriloquist was in fact a demented criminal genius who hated Superman, because The Man of Steel had jailed Ventor’s brother, and he’d died in prison. Ventor refused to admit this, creating a life-size dummy of his brother and making it talk while his henchmen lugged it around being creeped out.
Ventor’s gang held up an armored car in which Clark happened to be riding for a story. Ventor kidnapped Kent to brainwash him to use against Superman. To hide his identity, Clark played along—but the brainwashing device included mechanisms scavenged from a defective Superman robot, and it worked on The Man of Steel.
As a result, many tricks and strategies later, Clark was hypnotized into going out to kill Superman!
Part 2 kicked off in prison, where Lex Luthor had convinced officials to allow him to work in a lab to help prevent a cattle epidemic. Instead, he succeeded in replicating Virus X, a deadly Kryptonian plague.He then passed the vial of toxin to Ventor during a prison performance, and Ventor gave it to Kent to use against Supes.
But the brainwashed Clark, in laying his trap for Superman, spilled the Virus X on his own hand and became infected. That snapped him out of his brainwashing—but it left him dying from Virus X. Even worse, the virus was highly contagious, killing anyone who touched him.
By Part 3, the leprosy-like virus had covered Superman’s entire body, leaving him searching desperately for a cure before it killed him. His skin slowly turned green and wrinkled, and he had to wear a special suit to avoid contaminating humans.
Part 4 contained “Superman’s Funeral!” which is pretty self-explanatory and Part 5 dealt with the ramifications of “The Substitute Superman!” in which another Superman took The Man of Steel’s place!
Holey moley, hearing the storyline in those last two parts is giving me déjà vu all over again! But while it took DC many months and titles to tell the death of Superman in 1993-4, including chapters in Action, it took only two parts of a five-part epic to tell it in the Silver Age.
That tale, the longest continued Superman story in Action Comics to that point and for many years afterward, was an epic well deserving of the top spot in Mr. Silver Age’s ranking.
-- MSA
Replies
2003?!? You wrote this back in 2003? Geez Louise, I actually had this article in the back of my head when I was posting to that other thread, but I didn't have an easy way to find it. I would've guessed it was from about 2010 or so. Man, where did THAT decade go?
So what was the Lex two-parter in ACTION 141-142 all about, and has that two-parter been reprinted somewhere? Interesting that ACTION 141 was exactly 100 issues before Superman's Silver Age is said to have begun ("Super-Key to Fort Superman").
No surprise, our mileage varies somewhat on the Top Ten best ACTION continued storylines featuring Superman (as opposed to all those that featured Supergirl, of which of course there was a ton, though few were particularly memorable other than the Lesla-Lar epic that ended with Supergirl being revealed to the world). I would go along with Waid and put Zha-Vam in the top spot, and I'd drop the Virus-X storyline down several notches at least. Part of the problem with the Virus X adventure you noted in your write-up -- it wasn't really a coherent storyline, sort of jumping from one story to another, and picking up back issues at random, it took me decades before I realized the crazed ventriloquist story had anything to do with Virus-X. Also, the Andru-Esposito art never thrilled me on Superman -- it just made everything look goofy, like a typical Metal Men story.
The Big Forget was also about 3 issues too long for my taste. It could've made for a decent done-in-one story, but it just got too nutty the longer it went, especially since DC had published a ton of "what if Superman had another secret identity" stories by then, so adding four more to the mix didn't really do much for me. Besides, I never had a problem with Clark Kent being his secret ID, and never saw much point in the stories where he adopted a different guise.
By far the best year of the Silver Age for Superman was 1964, and you tapped two really good storylines from that year for your list. It's kind of amazing to me, reading every Silver Age issue of ACTION and SUPERMAN in consecutive order, how little Luthor appears after 1964, when he was virtually a co-star of the two main Super-titles. Brainiac doesn't do much during the latter half of the 1960s, either, other than occasional cameos. True, they appeared in other DC titles of the period, but not much in the lead story in ACTION or in SUPERMAN. At least Lex brought the SIlver Age to a close in the final two Weisinger issues of SUPERMAN, either though it was an Imaginary Story.
Thanks for reprinting this, Mr. Age! Great stuff!
The problem with most of the multi--part stories in the '60s is that I would miss one of the parts usually. I missed the final part of the Zha-Vam story, I missed the middle part of the Immortal Superman story. But those were two of my favourites.
The Immortal Superman is one of my favourite stories of all time--it's too bad the inking was so terrible. If the inking had been better that would be one of the greatest stories ever printed. I guess it doesn't really qualify as a '60s story--well it came at the very end of the '60s.
Definitely I'd say that '63-'64 period was the high point. I was sorry I'd missed it. Good thing there's reprints and back issues.
Action Comics was one title I never had a problem finding. It's possible the Superman titles were given enough prominence that one drugstore or another, if not all, always had them out. So I don't think I missed any of them, at least once I was old enough to make the rounds on my bike by myself. The same was true for the other Super-Family books.
Amazingly, that Luthor two-parter has never been reprinted to my knowledge. Very few stories were reprinted in later comics before #164, and the Archives have only made it up to #85 and don't seem to be in any hurry to continue. It could be that those were too unlike SA+ stories, which most people know, and by now, the audience for those stories is too small.
Most online sources I find only know what they copied from the GCD, which isn't much. In #141, Luthor invents synthetic kryptonite, but there's not much plot source after that, and #142's cover isn't much help.
I admit that I tended to give more points to epic scope for the continued stories, as that showed more daring back in the days of spotty distribution. I can see that one contained story in many parts has a better feel to it. Zha-Vam is certainly well liked.
I agree that the Virus X story had a helter-skelter approach, but that kind of added to its charm, because we didn't know what was coming next, even as it barreled along with no breaks. I do think that Mort was trying to take a cue from Marvel with these longer stories to see if continuing them could help sales (as it seemed to do for Marvel, aided by their bad art).
Keep in mind, this was only the best stories and was designed to work as a sampler in a limited amount of space. And, never one to pass up a free column idea in a time when I was coming up with new ones weekly, I also did Supergirl's best continued Action stories. One or the other of the strips seemed to continue each month, no doubt by design. I can post those too if there's any interest.
-- MSA
There were very, very few titles during the 1960s where I purchased three issues in a row; offhand I can only think of three times when that happened: the Zha-Vam trilogy (ACTION #s 351-353), SUPERMAN #s 199-201 (includes the first Supes-Flash race and the 200th issue), and FLASH #s 173-175 (the last two Infantino issues, not that I knew who he was then, and the second Supes-Flash race). I can't think of a single instance when I bought four issues in a row, of any title; that probably didn't happen until the sand-Superman saga in 1971. And I'm guessing the first time I managed a long unbroken string of issues was PLOP!, which I bought from the first issue to the end (I was a regular reader of MAD at the time, too, since MAD much easier to collect than any random comic book). And I think maybe the only other title I made sure I bought every issue of, no matter what -- at least, up until I got my driver's license and could pretty much follow any comic book I wanted to -- was Marvel's b&w PLANET OF THE APES.
ACTION was certainly one of the easier titles to find off the spinner racks, but even so, on a limited budget as I was back in the 1960s, I generally only bought a couple comics per month, so I had to be very selective. And if I saw something I just had to have that cost a bit extra, like an 80-PAGE JIMMY OLSEN, then sometimes I had to settle for just one comic book that month. But I never went wrong with an 80-PAGER, so it was always worth it.
Even though I liked 80 pagers, they often interupted a continued story. And I never bought the 80 page ACTON COMICS issues that featured Supegirl. Which has hampered me filling in my ACTION run in latter days, because getting a reasonable copy of an 80 page comic is a lot harder than getting a regular size comic.
Likewise, I usually didn't get every issue of a title in the '60s. Partly because of poor distribution, I assume, and partly because there was so much on a given Saturday that I wanted to get and my limit was two issues or one 80 pager (which is what my 25 cent allowance would buy). Sometimes on the next Saturday, I would look for one of the comics I passed over, but it wouldn't always be there.
Back then, the longest unbroken run of any title I got was DETECTIVE COMICS from 361 - 369. Nine issues and never a miss.
I was going to ask why the Sally Selwyn stories were not mentioned but then I looked it up and found they were in Superman, not Action. So it seems that Action was not the only place it was happening then.
Andy
Not only were they in Superman, but they weren't a continued story. The first appeared in #165, then Sally returned in #169, six months later. Sandra and Magi likewise made three appearances in SPJO, but that doesn't make them continued stories. Action stands out for being the home to continued Super-stories, at least until Mort started breaking up Lois stories between two issues on occasion.
-- MSA
Mr. Age wrote: Action stands out for being the home to continued Super-stories
Well, that's only true if we don't consider the Legion in Adventure to be "Super-stories." Jim Shooter's first story in 1966, as I recall, was a two-parter, and there were at least a couple other Legion two-parters during the Silver Age (Fatal Five and Mordru come to mind, and I think there might have been one or two others). However, I don't offhand recall ANY continued solo Superboy stories during the Weisinger era.
There was actually quite a run of two-parters, now that you bring them up, starting in 1965: Dynamo Boy, Starfinger, Computo, Super-Stalag, Karate Kid's intro, Forgotten Legion, Fatal Five, Adult Legion, Universo, another Fatal Five, Mordru, Legion of Super-Villains Academy. They were fairly steady from 1965 well into 1968.
I suppose that shows that I don't think of the Legion as a "super" family book so much--he certainly wasn't the reason I was reading them. But Action's were even more relentless, and since one or the other story was so often continued, it was hard to get an issue with two standalone stories in it. After all, I did lists of the Top Ten best Superman and Supergirl continued stories, so that's 20 continued stories just with those, and they weren't all just two-parters.
Superboy switched from multiple stories to one longer story with chapters, but I don't remember any continuing, either. It'd be interesting to know how they decided what stories were worth expanding to two issues and why those and not more, and why some titles but not others, but nobody has ever gone into that. Maybe we should ask Shooter how they worked that out.
-- MSA
What I think is that you have to think like Mort Weisinger and Jack Liebowitz--and how they thought you thought about the comics--as opposed to how you actually thought about the comics.
First off, from their actions, it seems like they thought that you thought of ADVENTURE COMICS as a Superman family comic--and one for special adventures of Superboy (with the Legion of Super-Heroes).
But both ADVENTURE and ACTION would be for the more evovled reader. They must've imagined that someone who just had thought of maybe reading a Superman comic or a Superoby comic would look on the stands, see SUPERMAN or SUPERBOY and that's the comic you would buy if you were just someone with a passing interest.
But now if you're mored deeply interested in Superman or Superboy--then you'll graduate to ACTION or ADVENTURE. And because you're more invested, you'll be willing to follow those comics every month. So those can afford to have continued stories.
JIMMY OLSEN and LOIS LANE are somewhere in between--which would explain why they sometimes had continued stories, but not as often. You don't have to be really into Superman to want to read about Jimmy or Lois, but you'd have to have some interest to know about them.
This isn't how I perceived those comics. I was usually motivated by the scene shown on the cover and I bought ACTION before I bought SUPERMAN (i think I picked up ADVENTURE and SUPERBOY at the same time). But we shouldn't assume that Liebowitz and Weisinger were accurate in their presumptions. It seems like comic book executives had a lot of wild theories about why kids read their comics--most of which were off base.
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