In "When We First Met," we spotlight the various characters, phrases, objects or events that eventually became notable parts of comic lore, like the first time someone said, "Avengers Assemble!" or the first appearance of Batman's giant penny or the first appearance of Alfred Pennyworth or the first time Spider-Man's face was shown half-Spidey/half-Peter. Stuff like that.

Today, based on a suggestion by SO MANY READERS (seriously, like, seven people wrote in asking about this one), I will spotlight when Clark Kent/Superman first winked at the audience in the comics.

In the early days of Superman comic books, the stories were designed to be read as short installments that was part of an overall anthology. Even when Superman got his own comic book, the stories in Superman were just more of the same stories that were appearing in Action Comics and World's Finest Comics. Of course, there was a modicum of continuity in these comics, so, like, when Ultra-Humanite shows up and seemingly dies, we learn that he survived when he shows up next. The same thing happened with Luthor when he took over as Superman's main rival. However, the stories were still pretty much inherently "done in one stories." In other words, everything was wrapped up by the end of the story (an amusing exception to this was the very first Superman story, but that was only due to how the story was put together. Since it was cut up samples of a possible Superman comic strip by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the space constraints forced them to basically cut the story off mid-way through the story, so it became a two-parter by default).

Now, once you have decided to wrap everything up at the end of the story, then you sort of start to come up with, well, for lack of a better term, "sign offs." These would often be comedic in nature. Think about the end of a sitcom, where everyone stands together and laughs as the screen freezes. Superman stories ended like this all of the time.

Like in Action Comics #20...

and Action Comics #23...

See? It's basically them telling us, "Well, I guess the story is over now!"

Superman #4 is a particularly interesting example of this, as the last three stories of the four stories in the comic seem to end with a panel that really COULD have had a wink in there if they chose to go that route...

So even before there was ACTUAL winking at the end of Superman stories, there already was a lot of stories that were BASICALLY like that.

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Interestingly enough, the first Clark/Superman wink came at the end of the very first Superman cartoon film from Fleischer Studios...

It was then worked into the comics in 1942's Superman #19 (by Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, Ed Dobrotka and John Sikela), where Clark and Lois go to watch the Superman cartoon. It's such a delightfully odd breaking of the fourth wall that I will spotlight that story in further detail in a future column, but for now, let's just note that it ends with Clark and cartoon Superman winking at each other...

And it was soon just an accepted part of the comics! Generally speaking, just the stories that involve Clark tricking Lois when she tries to prove that he is Superman, so sort of letting us share in the feeling of defeating her schemes.

Thanks to the readers who suggested this one!

If anyone else has a suggestion for a comic book first, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!