Legend

(WildStorm, 2005)
™ and © WildStorm, an imprint of DC Comics

It is common knowledge that Superman creators Siegel and Shuster were partly inspired to create the man of steel by Philip Wylie’s 1930 novel Gladiator. Legend is how writer Howard Chaykin and illustrator Russ Heath update that original novel and adapt it to comic book form.

Hugo Danner is a farm boy from the Midwest with startling super powers. Hugo’s scientist father injected his mother with a serum to create a superman in his unborn son, and it worked. Hugo grew up able to leap tremendous distances, run at immense speeds, and his skin proved impervious to bullets. Unsure of his purpose in life, Hugo becomes a football star, does a stint as a soldier during the Viet Nam War (where he totally lets his powers loose for the first time) and debates becoming a pacifist. It is plain to see where the seeds of Superman were sown in this classic story of an all–powerful man searching for his place in the universe.

— Jerry Smith

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