Diamond Jim

One of the highlights of the Superboy pilot which I posted last week is the scene where Superboy creates diamonds out of coal. It is my recollection that one of the 1950s Superman episodes on TV was the first place this happened. According to this list, the episode in question is #40, Jungle Devil:

The reporters are on a jungle expedition that involves a valuable diamond used as an idol's eye. Superman creates a diamond by compressing coal.

The episode appears to have originally aired sometime in 1953.

Reading through the Superboy stories in Adventure, I noticed that beginning around late 1956, the Lad of Steel made a whole bunch of diamonds. For example, in Adventure #231, he makes them as consolation gifts for other boys who were turned down for a job in favor of him:

In Adventure #244, Ma and Pa Kent experience disaster as both their house and store burn down while they are away on vacation. To make matters worse, Pa had forgotten to mail off the insurance check before leaving, so they are paupers. Superboy tries to help them out here:

But the diamond turns out to be a problem, as the jeweler in Smallville doesn't believe it could be real and the one in Metropolis assumes they stole it.

In Adventure #257, Superboy goes into the past to help Hercules and Samson, who have been stealing jewels from the local tyrant and distributing them to the impoverished citizens, but there's something he can't do:


And in Superboy #88, in the story that follows the pilot for the TV show closely, Superboy creates replacement diamonds for those stolen so that a movie premiere can go off as planned:

Cecil Adams, who writes the Straight Dope column that appears in many arts and entertainment newspapers around the country, tackled Superman's diamond-creating abilities a couple years back in a discussion with his assistant, Una:

I gave it a shot anyway. I pointed out that HPHT required an elaborate press of intricate geometry to concentrate the compressive forces. It wasn't as if Superman could just grab a lump of graphite and squeeze it like a tomato.

He's Superman, said Una. According to Wikipedia, he can withstand the impact of a nuclear explosion. You're saying diamonds are going to stymie him because he hasn't got the right belt-press jig?

Me: I'm saying if "he's Superman" is the answer to all questions, why are we having this discussion? He can do anything he wants by magic. We're trying to establish what somebody with unlimited strength could do in real life.

Una: Nobody has unlimited strength in real life.

Me: I know that. That's the point. We have to set some reasonable bounds on the question. Let's say you've got enough strength to manage 130,000 atmospheres. Is that alone enough to create a diamond? I say no. Never mind the special press, you still need a temperature of 3,100 degrees.

Una: Heat vision.

The ability to create diamonds was featured in the otherwise forgettable Superman III back in 1983:

Skimming over the trees, Superman sees a coalmine, and lands there with Gus. Walking over to a pile of coal, he grabs one piece and uses his super strength to make a large diamond in his bare hand.

I can't remember coming across another example of the diamond-making bit in an Adventure issue prior to #231. My guess is that it happened in that Superman episode I recall, and the writers/Weisinger picked it up from there. I will look for examples of Superman creating diamonds in the comics as well and will update this post as needed. Any help from my readers and other bloggers is, of course appreciated.

Update: We have a new candidate for earliest appearance: Superboy #26 (June-July 1953):

Update II:The diamond trick apparently goes back into the 1940s; in Superman #60, Supes pretends to be secretly Perry White in order to flush out a gangster, and a man asks him for financial aid:

Update III: We can move it back a couple more years; Superman #60 is the Sept-Oct 1949 issue.  In Action #115 (Dec 1947) there's another example:

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The Superboy TV Show Swipe

While looking through the early 1960s letters columns in Adventure Comics to see if anyone had written in to complain about the Superboy swipes (see previous post), I came across this missive:

I had never heard about an early 1960s Superboy pilot, so I did some searching and found it on YouTube:

As you can see, after an origin sequence, the story starts out with a young man who's embarrassed because his dad's occupation is a lowly doorman at the local movie theater. I particularly love the speech his dad (the terrific and forgotten actor, Ross Elliott) gives starting around 5:10 about how if he gets his son through college and into his chosen profession, he'll consider himself as successful as anyone his son knows.

But that's not why I decided to do this post. I realized as soon as I saw the opening sequence in the school that the basic plot was swiped from a comic that I had read recently. Since I've been working my way through the Adventure issues featuring Superboy, I assumed it was there. But it turned out to be another swipe from Superboy #49. Here's a scene from that comic:

As you can see, the focus in the comic is on Captain Joe's phenomenal memory, while in the TV pilot, he's working on becoming an artist. But in both cases he identifies the crooks. The robberies are slightly different, with the criminals stealing diamonds from the movie theater in the TV version, while in the comic they stick up a bank nearby.

Both stories end with the young boy satisfied that while a doorman's occupation may be mundane, his father is not. And both include a job offer for the dad that he turns down:

The other thing that is interesting in the pilot is the relationship between Clark and Lana. In the comics it was occasionally hinted that they were more than just friends, but more commonly Lana was just an annoying secret identity pest. In the TV show, it certainly appears that they are dating; note the way they're holding hands after class when they catch up to Jimmy at around 2:48 into the first part.

Here are the other two parts of the episode:



Update: Commenter Tmdess remembered the story being published yet again, and it didn't take me long to find it (with an assist from Commander Benson), in Superboy #88 (March 1961). As you can see, this story is even closer to the Superboy pilot, with the diamonds being stolen from the movie theater while Superboy is dealing with a crook shooting madly from a hideout. It even has the bit where Superboy makes replacement diamonds out of coal.




One thing I can't tell is whether this story is swiped from the TV pilot or vice-versa. Either way, it's pretty obvious that what we have here is a double-swipe from the Superboy #49 story. Here's a list of the other proposed episodes (which were written but never filmed). As you can see, there were other swipes from the comics planned. For example, Superboy's New Parents, which I discussed recently, would be another double swipe, and The One-Man Team was also published in Superboy #88:

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