Strange thing in Gerstein's foreword to Volume 5 of the FLG?

[Scrooge MacDuck]

In his foreword to Volume Five of Fantagraphics' Floyd Gottfredson Library, David Gerstein speculates on whether the 1952 Superman episode “The Mystery of the Broken Statues” (wherein a mysterious villain keeps smashing cheap plaster busts) was in any way inspired by the then-recent 1949 reprint of Mickey Outwits the Phantom Blot, where, as we know, the Blot's puzzling crime spree has him smashing cheap cameras. And that seems… odd. Did Gersteint temporarily forgets that Outwits' plot was based on the very famous Sherlock Holmes short story The Six Napoleons, or what? Because Napoleones also has the objects of the thief's wrath be plaster busts, so it seems clear to me the Superman episode was most likely drawing from that…

[Dr Ivo G Bombastus]

Hard to tell if it was a direct inspiration or just an accidental similarity.

Of course not everyone is a Sherlock Holmes buff; I'm familiar with the story but never made the connection myself.

[sirredknee]

SIX Napoleons (but five orange pips).

[Scrooge MacDuck]

May 31, 2018 23:12:38 GMT Dr Ivo G Bombastus said:

Hard to tell if it was a direct inspiration or just an accidental similarity.

'm pretty sure it was a direct inspiration. At the very least, it'd be very hard to convince me the Superman story was based on Outwits rather than Napoleons. 

[Ramapith]

Like Bombastus says—not everyone is a Holmes buff. While I now see that "The Adventure of the Six Napoleons" is cited on the Blot's Wikipedia page, and has been for several years, I don't think—rather amazingly, in fact—that I've ever seen a reference to the Sherlock story in any printed English language work about the Blot.

In the 1970s and 80s, when Gottfredson spoke with Tom Andrae and the other scholars who—decades later—would write for the FGL, Gottfredson referenced all kinds of influences on his story, but not "Napoleons." This led many, myself included, to overlook the similarities; even after years of Mickey research.

Jun 1, 2018 9:39:40 GMT Scrooge MacDuck said:

'm pretty sure it was a direct inspiration. At the very least, it'd be very hard to convince me the Superman story was based on Outwits rather than Napoleons. 

I'd mostly agree: now that I'm aware of "Napoleons," I can only think that yes, it had to have influenced both "Outwits" and Superman.

But I'm still willing to guess that "Outwits" had some direct influence on Superman as well. "Outwits" was serialized for six months (in its redrawn version) in WDCS at the height of its circulation—millions per copy—just two years before the Superman episode went into production. It seems hard to believe others directly involved with comic characters didn't notice it.

Superman writer, in my imagination: "Hey, nice Mickey serial... kinda like that old Sherlock Holmes story with the statues, isn't it? Well, if Mickey can imitate Sherlock, so can we..."

In the final book of the FGL, I included an errata page with comments about mistakes and omissions we'd had in earlier volumes. I hope we have a second printing one day, so I can add a note about Sherlock!

[Scrooge MacDuck]

Jun 1, 2018 17:30:08 GMT Ramapith said:

But I'm still willing to guess that "Outwits" had some direct influence on Superman as well. "Outwits" was serialized for six months (in its redrawn version) in WDCS at the height of its circulation—millions per copy—just two years before the Superman episode went into production. It seems hard to believe others directly involved with comic characters didn't notice it.

Superman writer, in my imagination: "Hey, nice Mickey serial... kinda like that old Sherlock Holmes story with the statues, isn't it? Well, if Mickey can imitate Sherlock, so can we..."

True, when you put it like that, it does seem like a likely sequence of event.

At any rate, glad to have helped!