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The Graphalo

Action Comics #1 Crochet Graphghan PATTERN SC 182 X 284

Action Comics #1 Crochet Graphghan PATTERN SC 182 X 284

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From The Graphalo - Fandom and pop culture crochet and knitting patterns perfect for everyone from absolute beginners to experts.

Action Comics #1

Action Comics #1 (cover dated June 1938) is the first issue of the original run of the comic book/magazine series Action Comics. It features the first appearance of several comic book heroes—most notably the Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster creation, Superman—and sold for 10 cents (equivalent to $2 in 2019). It is widely considered to be both the beginning of the superhero genre and the most valuable comic book in the world. Action Comics would go on to run for 904 numbered issues (plus additional out-of-sequence special issues) before it restarted its numbering in the fall of 2011. It returned to its original numbering with issue #957, published on June 8, 2016 (cover-dated August) and reached its 1,000th issue in 2018.

On August 24, 2014, a copy graded 9.0 by CGC was sold on eBay for US$3,207,852; it is the only comic book to have sold for more than $3 million for a single original copy.

In January 1933, Jerry Siegel wrote a short prose story titled "The Reign of the Superman", which was illustrated by his friend Joe Shuster and self-published in a science fiction magazine. It told the story of a bald villain with telepathic powers. Trying to create a character they could sell to newspaper syndicates, Siegel re-conceived the "superman" character as a powerful hero, sent to our world from a more advanced society. He and Shuster developed the idea into a comic strip, which they pitched unsuccessfully.

National Publications was looking for a hit to accompany their success with Detective Comics, and did not have time to solicit new material. Jack Liebowitz, co-owner of National Publications, told editor Vin Sullivan to create their fourth comic book. Because of the tight deadline, Sullivan was forced to make it out of inventory and stockpile pages. He found a number of adventurer stories, but needed a lead feature. Sullivan asked former coworker Sheldon Mayer if he could help. Mayer found the rejected Superman comic strips, and Sullivan told Siegel and Shuster that if they could paste them into 13 comic book pages, he would buy them.

The original panels were rewritten and redrawn to create the first page of Action Comics #1:

  • Baby Superman is sent to Earth by his scientist father in a "hastily-devised space ship" from "a distant planet" which "was destroyed by old age".
  • After the space ship lands on Earth, "a passing motorist, discovering the sleeping baby within, turned the child over to an orphanage".
  • The baby Superman lifts a large chair overhead with one hand, astounding the orphanage attendants with "his feats of strength".
  • When Superman (now named Clark Kent) reaches maturity, he discovers that he can leap 1/8 of a mile, hurdle 20-story buildings, "raise tremendous weights", outrun a train, and "that nothing less than a bursting shell could penetrate his skin".
  • Clark decides that "he must turn his titanic strength into channels that would benefit mankind, and so was created 'Superman', champion of the oppressed...."
  • Two new panels offering a "scientific explanation of Clark Kent's amazing strength" were added. The panels do not identify Superman's home planet by name or explain how he was named Clark Kent.

The next twelve pages showed Superman attempting to save an innocent woman about to be executed while delivering the real murderess, bound and gagged, and leaving her on the lawn of the state Governor's mansion after breaking through the door into his house with a signed confession; coming to the aid of a woman being beaten up by her husband, who faints when his knife shatters on Superman's skin; rescuing Lois Lane (who also debuts in this issue) from a gangster who abducted her after she rebuffed him at a nightclub, which leads to the cover scene with the car; and going to Washington, D.C., instead of South America, to "stir up news" as his editor wants to investigate a Senator who he suspects is corrupt, and prompting a confession by leaping around high buildings with the terrified man, which leads into the next issue. All the while, Clark tries to keep Superman out of the papers.

Single Crochet 
Throw Pattern
182 x 284 Stitches

The final stitch count is provided. The instructions are for right handed but if you're left handed you can read the rows backwards or add an extra row at the beginning of each panel so row 1 in the pattern will be your row 2, row 2 will be your row 3 etc.

The finished size of the graphghan will vary depending on the hook size and yarn.
This listing is for pattern only- not a finished graphghan. Pattern Copyright ©2019 The Graphalo


***"Copyright includes PATTERN not THE ORIGINAL ARTWORK. Please do not sell, change, share a copy or reproduce in any way. All photos are also copyright protected and may not be used unless I give you written permission.
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Pattern by @TheGraphalo

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