For Fans, the Image Still Flies

In this town, for this weekend, everyone was a kid.

Fathers and grandfathers sat outside long past midnight, debating plot twists in comic books. They spent way too much money on toys.

Middle-aged men pulled on blue tights and red capes and forgot about their paunches. They puffed their chests and flexed their biceps and felt, for a moment, like heroes.

The 25th annual Superman Celebration drew more than 20,000 fans of all ages -- effectively doubling the population of rural Massac County, in the southernmost tip of Illinois. Some came for the carnival rides and the corn dogs. Some for the arm wrestling competition.

Most everyone was here for Superman.

They flew in from California and Hawaii and Texas, wearing Superman T-shirts and visors and capes. They drove for hours from Michigan, Kentucky and Ohio, in cars emblazoned with Superman logos. From Florida, South Carolina and New York they came to honor the comic world’s oldest superhero -- a defender of truth, justice and the American way for 65 years.

Steve Leslie, in full costume -- boots, briefs and all -- thrust his arms joyously into the sky, as though to take off in flight, when two little kids ran up to ask for a photo. He is 51. He wears a hearing aid. He admits he could use a few more muscles. But for this day, in this town, he could live out his dream. He almost felt he could fly. “I’ve been a Superman fan since I was a kid,” said Leslie, who’s from Kansas City.

The X-Men may have flashier costumes. Batman definitely has better gadgets. The Hulk might even, possibly, be stronger, though that’s debated in online forums. Superman, however, has endured in part because he’s a straight-up good guy.

“The comics today are dark and double-edged, but Superman is always clean-cut. Plus he can fly, and he has a secret identity. What more can you ask for?” said Gary Lindgren, 47, an appliance designer from Michigan.

Though edgier superheroes sometimes mock him as the “big blue Boy Scout,” Superman holds his own in two current TV shows: the animated “Justice League” on the Cartoon Network and the teen drama “Smallville” on WB, which traces Clark Kent’s adolescent angst.

“I don’t want to say it’s a religion, but he is an inspiration. It’s amazing what Superman means to people,” said Jim Hambrick, who moved from California to Metropolis with a 750,000-piece collection of Superman memorabilia to found the Super Museum.

Metropolis does not look much like the big, brooding city where Clark Kent works as a mild-mannered reporter for the Daily Planet, when he’s not zipping around the universe fighting crime. A faded riverfront town of about 7,000 set amid farmland that stretches flat to the horizon, it looks more like Mayberry -- or maybe, Smallville, the fictional Kansas town where Clark Kent grew up.

But the Illinois Legislature, seeking to boost tourism, officially recognized Metropolis as the Hometown of Superman in 1972. DC Comics sanctioned the boast. And the town raised $120,000 for a 15-foot bronze statue in front of the courthouse, now called Superman Square. There’s also a green boulder Kryptonite “meteor,” a safe distance away.

“Metropolis is like Mecca for Superman fans. You have to come,” said Steve Younis, 31, a graphic designer who came from Australia.

“You see the Metropolis signs and you pick up the Metropolis phone book and for a few moments, you get to pretend he’s real,” said Jeff Germann, 41, of Springfield, Mo.

Don Shackleford, a 42-year-old freight loader, drove from Xenia, Ohio, in a vintage wool costume. He was sticky with sweat. But he couldn’t stop beaming. He had been a Superman fan since his grandfather yanked him over to the couch to watch reruns of a black-and-white TV show when he was 3. He still feels the magic.

“Superman always does the right thing,” Shackleford said. “There’s very little of that left in this world.”

A young man ran up with a camera, asking for a photo.

“Feel free to look heroic,” he suggested.

Shackleford -- stoop-shouldered and graying -- barreled out his chest obligingly.

“With the children, it goes without saying that they’re totally in awe of Superman. But you see all these adults walking around with starry eyes too,” said Karla Ogle, the event’s co-chair.

Introduced as a comic-book hero in 1938 -- during the Great Depression, as war loomed in Europe -- Superman won over Americans with his strength and his virtue. He used his powers to do good, but he didn’t flaunt them. He was unassuming and unbeatable.

The character took off, and Superman was soon putting villains in their place on the radio, on TV, in the movies and even on Broadway. He’s still at it today: In the latest issue of the Adventures of Superman (No. 617), he battles sinister twins from the 5th Dimension who are after Daily Planet Editor Perry White.

Many middle-aged fans say they’ve been hooked since they watched Christopher Reeve soar to the rescue of decent Americans everywhere in the 1978 movie. The special effects brought to life the hero they had imagined since childhood. And it prompted them to go back to the comic books they had collected as kids, back to the old TV series with George Reeves, back even to the first Superman films, starring Kirk Alyn, in the late 1940s.

Because he’s been around so long, Superman offers endless episodes to explore -- and endless memorabilia to collect. “I think about Superman all the time. I look forward to [his new adventures] every day,” said Steve Kirk, 42, a props designer from Los Angeles.

The most loyal, or perhaps most obsessive, of fans waited hours at the festival for autographs from Noel Neill, who played Lois Lane in the 1950s TV show, and Bob Holiday, who played Superman on Broadway in 1966. At a question-and-answer session, they barraged Neill with questions about half-century-old twists in their hero’s career. One man called out, “Refresh my memory about the episode when Superman took a lump of coal and squeezed it into a diamond.”

Several hundred collectors crammed a sweltering theater until 1 a.m. to bid on memorabilia, from a Superman lava lamp (it fetched $80) to a purple Ultrawoman costume from the 1990s TV series “Lois and Clark” (it sold for $5,000).

Mostly, though, the fans just walked around, talking.

Who should play the lead role in a new Superman movie? Remember the episode when Superman was exiled into outer space? How could archvillain Lex Luthor let Kansas be destroyed? Strangers stopped one another on the street to discuss the difference between a “George Reeves ‘S’ ” and a “Christopher Reeve ‘S’.”

“You can’t talk Superman stuff with just anybody,” said Lindgren, who had gone on a diet -- losing 30 pounds -- to better fit into his homemade costume.

“There’s an instant camaraderie,” said Younis, the Australian. “Superman does what he does because it’s the right thing to do. He has no ulterior motive. And Superman fans everywhere are very similar in their morals and in their ethics, in the way they welcome people.”

Civic leaders here learned just how much the Man of Steel has captured the public imagination when the man who had long played Superman at the festival announced three years ago he was hanging up his tights.

The Metropolis newspaper -- the Planet, of course -- put out a call for volunteers. The story was picked up by Associated Press and ran in papers worldwide.

“The next day we had all three phone lines ringing constantly: Did they need to send videos? Did they need to send photos? We had guys calling from Japan, from Germany, from Australia,” recalled Becky Lambert, the festival co-chair.

The winning entry came from an aspiring actor in Los Angeles, Scott Cranford, now 35. Not only did he have Superman’s chiseled jaw, but as it turned out, he was a superhero aficionado, who had designed his own universe of comic-book characters and created a superhero coloring book for kids. He was so excited to play the part in Metropolis that he postponed his wedding.

Cranford preps year-round. He reads all the Superman comics so he can keep up with the storylines, in case a smart-aleck teen tries to trip him up.

More important, he pumps iron to make sure he fills out the costume: “They always punch you in the stomach or squeeze your bicep really hard to see if the muscles are real. You can’t get away with foam.”

Watching Cranford autograph kids’ capes, Chance McFadden had to smile. A Superman fan since he was 3, McFadden, now a grandfather, drove eight hours from Iowa to honor his hero.

“He represents everything that should be right with this world,” he said.

Biceps bulging, Cranford posed for the cameras.

“It’s Superman!” a little boy shouted, running up. Another toddler, about 3, in cape and boots, just stood there, mouth open, clinging close to his dad. Cranford knelt to give him a hug. The boy’s face lighted up. So did McFadden’s.

“Everyone wishes there really was a Superman,” he said.