I have the album…couldn’t tell you if I ever listened to it.

There were lots of non-Kryptonite related means also used to give Collyer some space from the show…episodes that featured Batman & Robin, episodes where Superman is simply KOed, etc.

It’s a safe bet that the story was tossed not because of K-Metal, but because of the fact that Superman’s identity was revealed to Lois. It’s entirely possible that someone thought K-Metal was a great idea that ought to be salvaged. Isn’t the idea that Superman’s one weakness is a chunk of metal from his home planet just too odd to have been dreamt up by two people?

If I recall correctly, it was more one of those “guys in their late teens trying to act like ‘professionals’” things.

In the recent book by Les Daniels it mentions that they used a real life model for Lois, and one of the creators ended up marring her. Can’t rememer full details of the top of my head.

So much so that they have to get her a part in Sin City 2, or there is no justice in the world.

I’m the sadistic bastard who lent Kevin Church my issue of Nightcat. While the backstory involving Jaqueline Tavarez is interesting, the comic itself if off-the-charts horrible. It makes your jaw drop. The damn thing is nearly unreadable. I think the closest cinematic comparison I can make would be to the movie “Showgirls” except rated PG and without the gratuitous nudity. Getting Stan Lee to write the script in 1991 was a really poor choice, a horrible idea — the man was decades past his prime.

I will treasure my copy of Nightcat forever. (Well, once I get it back from Kevin, that is…)

In 1949, Republic Pictures announced they would make a Superman serial. They issued a flyer showing drawn scenes of super feats and adventure sequences. It’s reproduced in THE ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN COLLECTING.

The project fell through, and in 1941 Republic tried negotiating again. Again it didn’t happen, and they filmed CAPTAIN MARVEL, and some of the sequences in the flyer appear in MARVEL.

But the script for the 1940 Superman serial was used with minor changes and released as the MYSTERIOUS DOCTOR SATAN serial.

Now you have Doctor Satan who has a Mechanical monster rampaging, and the masked hero named the COPPERHEAD stopping him.

But some Superman vestiges remained.

(1) The good scientist opposing Satan has a reporter daughter named Lois Neal.

(2) The flying summy used in Marvel was crafted for Superman and a light silk costume was created for it. No photos remain. The dummy was redressed for COMMANDO CODY, and oddly enough made it’s last appearance on THE ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN TV series, in the episode THE DOG WHO KNEW SUPERMAN, it is seen flying into a hole in the ground.

(2) The secret identity of the Copperhead also has ties to the reporter’s newspaper.

(3) And most important to this thread, is that the robot is fueled by a strange rare substance that ends in “ite.”

Some accounts state that Republic planned for Superman to battle an army of robots. This idea got plainly lifted later for the Paramount cartoon MECHANICAL MONSTERS.

But having a rare substance powering the robot also makes it possible for the thing to battle Superman and survive. It also makes sense when the robot and Doctor Satan perish in the last chapter.

A viewing of the serial also has some odd cliffhangers. In one, the hero and Lois are drowning in a diving bell. The hero is more concerned that Lois not find out he is the Copperhead than in saving their lives. That’s a Superman motif.

Viewing stills of the hero and Lois also makes it plain they were originally cast for Superman. Robert Wilcox looks a lot like the early version of the hero.

So, Jerry came up with K Metal, and both the radio show and Republic Pictures heard of it and used it, most likely.

Remember, the radio show was produced by the folks at National Periodicals so far as the creative end.

Mike Curtis

A for Superman, he’s too quick for something like that to happen.

They talk about Nightcat there. “The character was based on the real-life Jacqueline Tavarez, whom Marvel hired to attend conventions in her Night Cat outfit. Apparently, Marvel fired her later after she appeared in a Joey Buttacuoco music video.”