Big Audio Wednesday - Superman Returns

As a daily serial, The Adventures of Superman often played out like a soap opera, spinning out extended stories undreamed of in the comics where Superman was born. And one of the longest and most elaborate was "Superman vs. Atom Man," running from early October to early December of 1945.

The storyline had its earliest beginnings right after the end of "Dr. Blythe's Confidence Gang," the Superman/Batman storyline I posted back in January. Superman learned that the (at the time) only Kryptonite meteor on earth had been stolen from the Metropolis Museum, and was desperate to get it back. Turns out the meteor was stolen by a woman named the Scarlet Widow, who broke the meteor into four pieces and put them up for sale to four of the most notorious criminals in the world, including an ex-Nazi scientist named Der Teufel (The Devil). The price: one million dollars each.

After the Widow has demonstrated the Kryptonite's effectiveness to her potential customers by taking Superman prisoner, Der Teufel steals his piece at gunpoint and flees. The Scarlet Widow vows revenge against Der Teufel and tries to use the Kryptonite to destroy Superman once and for all. She fails, of course, but by the time Superman recovers, both the Widow and the Kryptonite have disappeared.

In the meantime, Der Teufel has hatched a plan to use his Kryptonite fragment to create a super-warrior powerful enough to destroy Superman--an Atom Man.

Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha....

And now...