Action Comics #15
Action Comics #15 (cover date August 1939, on sale June 24, 1939) occupies a firm place in the early architecture of the Golden Age as the fifth-ever cover appearance of Superman — a milestone that, in retrospect, charts the rapid pace at which the character was crowding out his anthology co-stars to claim the title as DC's flagship property. The issue also marks the debut of Gargantua T. Potts, a supporting character whose introduction into the Tex Thomson strip — however freighted with the era's racist caricature — is documented by historians precisely because it illustrates how Golden Age adventure comics imported pulp-fiction racial tropes wholesale into the new medium. The Zatara story scripted here by Gardner Fox, in which a mad scientist floods multiple coastal cities by melting polar ice, is a strikingly large-scale catastrophe for a 1939 backup strip, and it represents Fox's early creative ambition with DC's supernatural characters. Taken together, the issue is a cross-section of everything the young Action Comics anthology was: an evolving Superman serial, a rotating cast of globe-trotting adventurers, and an early glimpse of the story ambitions that would later define Fox's celebrated DC work.
In "Superman on the High Seas," Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster deliver a classic early adventure as Superman dives into uncharted waters to uncover a long-lost treasure, hoping to save the struggling Kidtown orphanage. With Paul Cassidy's inks lending depth to Joe Shuster's dynamic art and Fred Guardineer’s striking cover capturing the hero’s daring quest, this 1939 issue offers a rare blend of heart and high-seas action.
In "Superman on the High Seas," Clark Kent uncovers a hidden underwater treasure while on assignment at Kidtown, where he learns the institution faces financial ruin without $2 million to stay open. As Superman, he sets out to claim the riches, diving into the deep to uncover the lost bounty before time runs out.
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The issue was edited by Vin Sullivan (credited in the indicia as Vincent A. Sullivan), who had steered Action Comics since its launch and continued to preside over its anthology format. The cover was drawn by Fred Guardineer — a fine-arts-trained illustrator who had joined Harry 'A' Chesler's comics packaging studio in 1936 before going freelance in 1938 — and it depicts Superman rescuing a distressed U.S. submarine in a composition that the Grand Comics Database notes is unusual for rendering Superman's cape fastened by a yellow thong around his neck rather than tucked into his collar, a detail reminiscent of rival Fawcett's Captain Marvel. Interior art and story credits are spread across a large talent pool: Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster on Superman, Gardner Fox and Guardineer on Zatara, Bernard Baily (signed) on Tex Thomson, Bob Kane and Bill Finger on Clip Carson, and Homer Fleming on Chuck Dawson, with Guardineer also lettering the Pep Morgan strip under his pseudonym 'Gene Baxter.'
Trivia · 8 facts
- Cover date: August 1939; on-sale date: June 24, 1939; published by Detective Comics, Inc.; edited by Vin Sullivan; cover price 10 cents; 68 pages.
- The Fred Guardineer cover is Superman's fifth cover appearance in the Action Comics run (behind issues #1, 7, 10, and 13), making the original cover art the earliest Superman cover artwork known to have survived to the present day.
- First appearance of Gargantua T. Potts, a character who joined the ongoing Tex Thomson strip as a recurring ally of Thomson and Bob Daley; Potts was created by writer Ken Fitch and artist Bernard Baily and appeared through Action Comics #25 before exiting the strip.
- The Tex Thomson story 'The Devone Diamond' (script: Ken Fitch; art and letters: Bernard Baily) introduces Potts in the context of a diamond-smuggling adventure, reflecting the strip's pulp-adventure roots — though Potts is drawn as a racist blackface caricature, a harmful convention DC's own indexing has since formally acknowledged.
- The Zatara backup story 'The Ice Menace' is scripted by Gardner Fox and drawn by Guardineer; its plot — a villain uses a heat ray to melt polar ice, raising oceans and flooding New York City — is notably ambitious in scale for a 1939 short strip, and the story's continuity is quietly abandoned in subsequent issues.
- The Superman story 'Superman on the High Seas' (script: Jerry Siegel; art: Joe Shuster/Paul Cassidy) features Clark Kent, Lois Lane, and George Taylor (the Daily Star editor); Superman uses an underwater treasure from a sunken Spanish galleon to save 'Kidtown,' a rehabilitation facility for underprivileged boys.
- Writer-artist Fred Guardineer appears in this issue under two credits: his own name (Zatara art) and the pen name 'Gene Baxter' (Pep Morgan lettering), a dual-credit practice he had used from Action Comics #1 onward.
- The Superman lead story has been reprinted multiple times, including in Superman: The Action Comics Archives Vol. 1 (DC, 1998), The Superman Chronicles Vol. 2 (DC, 2007), Superman: The Golden Age Omnibus Vol. 1 (DC, 2013), and DC Finest: Superman — The First Superhero (DC, 2024/January 2025).
Cast · 13 characters
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Reprints
↩ Reprints New York World's Fair Comics #[1] (1939), All-American Comics #5 (1939), Movie Comics #5 (1939)
Reprinted in Superman from the Thirties to the Eighties #[nn] (1983), Superman in Action Comics #1 (1993), Superman: The Action Comics Archives #1 (1998), Clásicos DC #6 (2005), The Superman Chronicles #2 (2007), Continuum #6 (2008), Superman: The Golden Age Omnibus #1 (2013), Superman: The Golden Age #1 (2016), DC Finest: Superman: The First Superhero #[nn] (2025), Aventures #21/1941, Aventures #22/1941, Aventures #23/1941, Aventures #24/1941, Aventures #25/1941
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