"As a distant planet was destroyed by old age..."

"...a scientist placed his infant son within a hastily devised space-ship, launching it toward Earth!"

So began the very first Superman story in the June 1938 issue of National Periodical's Action Comics (#1), and those words. written by a teenager from Cleveland, Ohio, would launch a new popular mythology built around the exploits of something powerful and primal, yet naive and outright ludicrous: the superhero.

From earliest Man, our species has thrilled to tales of heroic figures, adventurers imbued with larger than life abilities, attributes, morality and motivations. When Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster cobbled together a fresh kind of character for a new comic strip, they weren't creating out of whole cloth, instead, they were performing alchemy that combined (consciously or not) elements from Judeo-Christian mythology and their favorite science fiction pulps. Superman didn't spring fully formed from their brows, but he was the first of his breed and every superhero that tumbled after in his staggering success owes their existence to him.

As with any new trend that grabs hold of the public zeitgeist, many were anxious to hop on the bandwagon and exploit it for all its worth. Once it was apparent that this "superhero" thing was hot, soon came the merchandise. Toys, games, puzzles, lunchboxes, cereals - anything that might go in or on a kid was suddenly emblazoned with colorful, square-jawed crusaders for justice. There was money to be made. A lot of money.

And, never very far behind, Hollywood sat up and took notice.