This is "Look Back," a feature that I plan to do for at least all of 2020 and possibly beyond that (and possibly forget about in a week, who knows?). The concept is that every week (I'll probably be skipping the four fifth weeks in the year, but maybe not) of a month, I will spotlight a single issue of a comic book that came out in the past and talk about that issue (often in terms of a larger scale, like the series overall, etc.). Each week will be a look at a comic book from a different year that came out the same month X amount of years ago. The first week of the month looks at a book that came out this month ten years ago. The second week looks at a book that came out this month 25 years ago. The third week looks at a book that came out this month 50 years ago. The fourth week looks at a book that came out this month 75 years ago. The occasional fifth week looks at books from 20/30/40/60/70/80 years ago.

Today, we go back to October 1945 to see a Superman comic book story that was actually censored during World War II!

I wrote about much of this last year as a Comic Book Legend, but now, it's a Look Back!

Years ago, my first book came out, called Was Superman A Spy? And Other Comic Book Legends Revealed.

If you'd like to order it, you can use this code if you'd like to send me a bit of a referral fee.

The title of the book was a reference to one of my favorite old Comic Book Legends Revealed columns about how the U.S. War Department took issue with the Superman comic strip having a storyline involving atomic energy, specifically the use of a cyclotron in a series of strips by writer Alvin Schwartz and artist Wayne Boring.

However, what's interesting is that that storyline actually WASN'T the first time that the War Department had gotten involved in Superman comics! In fact, the other time, the War Department actually succeeded in getting to a Superman story BEFORE it came out.

There was a story called "Battle of the Atoms" that was set to be released in an early 1945 issue of Superman (#34, to be precise). The War Department asked them to hold off on the story and so it did not see print until eight months later, well after the United States had used an ACTUAL atomic bomb on Japan (TWICE).

The problem that the War Department had at the time was that they would periodically check in on what the big comic book companies were up to, but they really didn't think it was worth their effort, so they were continually trying to push for the companies to just self-report sketchy stuff like any discussion about atomic energy.

What's hilarious, of course, is that the actual story (by Don Cameron, Pete Riss and George Roussos), was not even really remotely connected to actual atomic energy.

The splash page references the conflict (and it is funny to see the comic book story actually bragging about the fact that it was censored, as if it were a mark of pride to be censored by the government during the war)...

But the story is really just about Luthor doing some experiments when Lois Lane and Clark Kent happen upon his lab. Honestly, a lot of the story involved the rivalry between Lois Lane and Clark Kent, as they were vying for the story of what was going on in the laboratory and Luthor, naturally, did not want them to get involved there at all, so he sends some goons after them, but Superman interrupts them and saves Lois (and Clark, of course, but Clark isn't there when she is saved). Luthor freaks out, and decides to fly to the Daily Planet and destroy it before Lois can write about what she saw in his lab.

Superman, naturally, intercepts Luthor on the way to the Daily Planet and they have a pretty cool aerial battle, but the whole thing is just over the top and not realistic at all. I don't mean that in a negative way, though. It's a cool story, but it just isn't anything based in reality. It's just an over-the-top super-battle between Superman and Luthor's ship.

Finally, though, when Luthor meets Superman head on, Luthor then throws an "atomic bomb" at Superman to no avail...

And that, of course, is the problem with the story from the perspective of the United States government. The War Department's concern back in those days was more that they didn't want people to think atomic bombs or atomic energy were silly, comic book-esque topics. So they took out any mention of atomic bombs in comics, even when the atomic bombs were silly stuff like in this comic book. Once the actual bombs were dropped in Japan, though, there was no longer any fear of that anymore, so the restrictions were lifted.

There were some other restrictions coming regarding atomic energy, but in general, it was much more open than before.

If you folks have any suggestions for November (or any other later months) 2010, 1995, 1970 and 1945 comic books for me to spotlight, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com! Here is the guide, though, for the cover dates of books so that you can make suggestions for books that actually came out in the correct month. Generally speaking, the traditional amount of time between the cover date and the release date of a comic book throughout most of comic history has been two months (it was three months at times, but not during the times we're discussing here). So the comic books will have a cover date that is two months ahead of the actual release date (so October for a book that came out in August). Obviously, it is easier to tell when a book from 10 years ago was released, since there was internet coverage of books back then.