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.

I am pretty sure that a reader asked me about this, but I can't find the e-mail where they suggested it, so if you were the reader who suggested this one, shoot me another e-mail at brianc@cbr.com and I'll edit in a mention of you suggesting it!

Anyhow, an important thing to remember about Superman and about comic book superheroes in general is that the very IDEA of the superhero costume was, in effect, non-existent by the time that Action Comics #1 came out. That isn't to say that there were no costumed heroes, as of course there were. The Phantom, for instance, appeared as a comic strip years before Action Comics #1 came out. However, while the Phantom certainly had a superhero costume, it really wasn't the sort of traditional types that we associate with the period. No, the typical superhero costume of the late 1930s/early 1940s (which, in turn, would define the superhero costume for generations of superheroes to come) was essentially created by Joe Shuster's design of Superman's costume in Action Comics #1.

The interesting thing of it, though, is that Shuster is pretty clearly just looking to the tradition of the circus strongman with his initial design of Superman's costume...

See what I mean? The fabric is clearly nothing special. It's barely even form-fitting.

Clearly, when the Superman feature began, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster did not give much thought to Superman's costume besides "it is his costume." Heck, that was the case for most of the superheroes to follow Superman into the pages of the many different comic books of the era. People were not exactly going out of their way to give thought to how these things worked in practicality. Early Batman stories had Batman keeping his costume in a trunk at the foot of his bed. There was no thought about how Superman's costume survives the bullets fired in the above pages. The costume wasn't torn because the costume wasn't torn. That really was the extent of the thought process.

As Superman became more and more popular, though, then suddenly things that no one bothered to think about were suddenly topics that writers were figuring, "Eh, maybe we SHOULD have an explanation for that."

So in 1940's Superman #5 (by Siegel, Shuster and Wayne Boring), we learn that Superman's costume is made out of a special cloth that Superman invented himself...

Of course, as you might expect, no one really necessarily paid attention to that concept (that same story has another major reveal about Superman that writers ignored - I might write about that in the future).

However, it is definitely consistent in the comics of the era that his costume IS indestructible. It just is sort of silent on WHY it is that way.

That is, until we finally learned the "origin" of Superman's costume!

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Superman did not get a real full-fledged origin until his tenth anniversary in Superman #53 (in a story by Bill Finger, Wayne Boring and Stan Kaye). Twenty issues later, that same creative team re-visited Superman's youth and added in a little addendum, where they revealed that Superman's costume was created out of blankets found in baby Kal-El's spaceship...

And his clothes were "super" all the way until Crisis on Infinite Earths. John Byrne revamped Superman's powers so that now he just wore a a normal, non-superpowered costume. The New 52 introduced a special Kryptonian armor that Superman wore.

However, it was FIRST truly a "super" costume in that Bill Finger story years ago.

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