The Fortress at 50: Loyal Friend or Creepy Stalker?

Celebrating 50 YEARS of Superman's
Fortress of Solitude

As you've seen over the past several days, the Fortress of Solitude is a pretty amazing place. With its immense scale and unique exhibits, Superman's arctic hideaway exemplifies all the greatness and nobility of comics' original superhero.

Er....except for the Friendship Exhibit wing, which reveals some astonishingly bizarre and disturbing aspects of the Man of Steel...or in this case: The Stalker of Steel!

Sure, much of the strangeness of the Friendship Exhibit panels can be attributed to the slam-bang pacing of 50's and 60's comic books, where any attempt at poignancy or emotional shading was usually steamrolled by the frantic 8-page story format.  So, instead of providing deep insight into the hero's human friendships, the "emotional shorthand" of that era's comics made Superman's Friendship Exhibits come across as a little nutty or (at times) deeply insane.

Case in point:  Not only did Superman make wax statues of his costumed friends (Batman and Robin) and family (Supergirl), but he also stuck statues of their secret identities right next to them...complete with handy labels (a common compulsion of the Silver Age Superman Family). 

Why would Superman, whose powers included a perfect memory, need a physical reminder of what his friends looked like and what their real names were? Even if you allow for the occasional memory gap, ever hear of "photo albums"?  Also...think about it:  a secret fort filled with a small army of mannequins that look like your friends and family...that you made and dressed yourself.  Worrisome.

Anything crazier than making wax dummies of your loved ones?
 
Yeah...making wax dummies of yourself (with labels)...
and then putting them in a room dedicated to yourself.

Oh, yeah...in case you're wondering why Superman was fiddling with circuit boards on the Batman, Robin, and Supergirl statues, he was rigging all of the statues (including his own) to instantly explode when an intruder entered the Fortress of Solitude.  Shrewd...or stone-cold crazy? You be the judge!

When he wasn't booby-trapping wax statues of his loved ones, Superman was creating elaborate rooms (or, more accurately, "shrines") dedicated to his closest friends.

In one story, Clark Kent's boss Perry White accidentally gains mind-warping superpowers and invades the Fortress, taking the battle straight into the Perry White Room:

Although it's hard to get any crazier than a pot-bellied Perry White dressed in a superhero costume and brandishing a Kryptonite sword to attack a lead-encased Superman, take a closer look at the tiny house in the background.

That's right...a tiny scale model of Perry White's home! It's bad enough Superman has a room dedicated to his boss, but taking the time to build a tiny replica of his home?  Stark.  Raving.  Mad.

Naturally, Superman's girlfriend Lois Lane also received her own Friendship Exhibit room...though I'd imagine more than a few women might be creeped out by a room plastered with paintings, photos, and busts of their image.

For the handful of you ladies unruffled by such a spectacle, how about beholding a lock of your hair under glass?

Beyond the stalker-like intensity of this room is the added dimension of Superman's death fixation.  Located within each exhibit is a final gift Superman intends to give to that person upon his death. For Lois Lane, Superman was creating a necklace of perfect pearls, as he reminds himself in the panel below:

In the Jimmy Olsen room, Superman refers to himself in the third person (yet another sign of mental illness) as he builds a homemade sports car for his young pal...

Finally, a Robot Detective was ready to make Batman's life alot easier upon Superman's death.  But...if he's such a great friend, and defeating crime is Batman's driving mission, why wouldn't Superman give the contraption to him right now?

Of course, it's a little silly to expect logic from such an obviously addled mind.  As great as the Fortress of Solitude is, perhaps too much solitude can make you a little crazy.  The hair-collecting, model-house-building, exploding-wax dummy kind of crazy.

Comments

[John Nowak]

Ahem.

"Agonized with the knowledge that the history and art of Krypton is lost forever, Superman becomes obsessed with insuring those he loves will not be lost to history. The Fortress is his time capsule, designed to be found when it breaks free of the polar ice cap in six centuries."

Hmm. No, still kind of crazy.

[Mark Engblom]

LOL! Where did you get that quote? It sounds familiar (I've probably run across it during my research this past week).

I suppose on one hand it's kind of touching that Superman is so motivated by his sense of personal loss and the need to preserve the things he has....but wow, lighten up a little, Supes.

[John Nowak]

Sorry; as far as I know, the quote's original to me. There's a good chance that someone else has come up with the same idea, of course.

[googum]

Oh, crazy as all get out, but I still like it better than the crystal movie fortress: no cool stuff, no giant key, no doors...

[Mark Engblom]

Ah...but the movie Fortress has that huge bed with the shiny silver sheets. That's gotta count for something.

"Shiny Silver Sheets". Say that ten times fast.

[suedenim]

I like seeing cool Silver Age Superman elements re-appearing in modern stories by Kurt Busiek, Grant Morrison, and others... in large part because, while we've seen them many times before, we generally haven't seen them in a context that *wasn't completely bugf*** insane!*

[Pat Curley]

Terrific series of posts, Mark. I seem to recall at one point that Supes made the Clark Kent room so that if anybody stumbled on the friends' wing they wouldn't be curious as to why Superman had rooms dedicated to Lois, Jimmy and Perry, but none for Clark. Of course, that's completely contradicted by the statue of Supes as Clark's secret identity.

[Mark Engblom]

"I like seeing cool Silver Age Superman elements re-appearing in modern stories by Kurt Busiek, Grant Morrison, and others"

Yeah, as you've probably guessed, I'm pretty happy with how they've been handling Superman's current Fortress....after years and years of stumbling around. It's now a mix of the classic Fortress I've been highlighting, along with the look of the crystal movie Fortress...which to me is the best of all worlds (though, admittedly, I kinda miss the giant gold key).

Another version of the Fortress that can't be missed is Morrison's take on it in All-Star Superman #2. The regular-sized key made from ultra-heavy white dwarf material was a stroke of genius.

"Of course, that's completely contradicted by the statue of Supes as Clark's secret identity."

Glad you've enjoyed the posts, Pat. As for the Clark/Superman statues, it's apparent there was really no overarching editoral policy about what was actually in the Fortress each time it appeared, which explains alot of the features that only appeared once and then never again (like the dinosaur Superman would take for a trot). This was obviously before anal retentive fanboys like us began demanding that this stuff be written in stone, so the Fortress evolved and shifted quite a bit over its nearly 30 years of active "service" (before John Byrne tossed it out with the bathwater in 1986).

[suedenim]

IIRC, the "Clark Kent Room as deception" notion might have been in Action Comics #500, an anniversary issue whose framing device was Superman and Supergirl giving a bunch of ordinary folks a tour of the Fortress.

That was a really fun issue, one I'll have to dig out sometime and re-read. It also included the revelation that lots of Earth-1 regular folks *thought* Superman and Supergirl were either brother and sister, or married to each other.

There was a great text feature, too, all about Action Comics #1's *other* features, and tracing the history of Action's non-Superman features down through the years. Very interesting, and the first time I'd even *heard* of weird stuff like Congorilla as a kid.

[Mark Engblom]

Hi, suedenim. You're right, Action Comics #500 is fantastic issue...and one of the highlights of my early collecting years. I still remember buying it and being amazed at how fat it was...just packed with great stuff. The "infinity cover" was pretty cool, too (loved the "Price Is Right model" look to both Lois Lane and Supergirl). The story, written by fan-turned-pro Martin Pasko, was a wonderful way to bring much of the 1960's Fortress lore into the context of 1970's storytelling...still retaining many of the odder elements, but smoothing them out a bit with the more sophisticated style of the late 70's. Pasko also included some surprisingly poignant bits...one of which I recall in a scene showing Superboy and the newly-found Krypto, as Superman remembers finding another being who knew what it felt like to "feel the wind in my face as I flew"...or something like that.

[John Nowak]

Reading these is nothing but pure delight. Of course, I'm the one who made The Amazing Transformations of Jimmy Olsen my personal favorite comic of 2007, although they are reprints.

I'm not sure if I prefer "Cosmic Brain Olsen" (Jimmy is evolved into a future human species with heads like lightbulbs, and shows his terrifying other-ness by mocking Lois Lane's primitive typewriter) or the time Jimmy Olsen drank part of a Chamelion Boy Power Potion and was able to turn his head into almost anything.

It's every bit as deranged as Fletcher Hanks, with none of the uncomfortable feeling that I'm laughing at someone with a mental condition.

[Captain Average]

A great week of posts Mark! Today left me thinking about different stories about the alien superhero motif, and that no matter how much they try to adjust to Earth's culture(local culture really), they can't escape their lack of innate understanding of humanity that all people should have. Maybe that's why Superman needs a quiet place where he can be stone cold insane.

[Mark Engblom]

That's an interesting thought, Cap. Despite all those years living among humans...being raised as a human...it still doesn't quite erase his "otherness". The Fortress allows him to celebrate that otherness rather than trying to discount it. I guess that still doesn't quite explain the exploding wax dummies, but it speaks to a place that Superman can just let his blue-tinged hair down and be his truest self...not a public persona or a caricatured oaf, but just himself.

[Vincent]

This is like the deranged guy in "Seinfeld" whose room was a shrine to Elaine Benes.

[Pat Curley]

Found it! In Superman #152, The Robot Master, robot duplicates of Clark, Jimmy, Perry and Lois wander through the Fortress and on page 6, the robot Clark says "How clever! Superman built this room as a decoy! If intruders found rooms honoring all his friends but Kent, they'd suspect Kent was secretly Superman!"