Kal El…. is literally Hebrew. It means Voice of God. He’s a Jewish illegal immigrant. For a reason. He was written in the 30s.
I mean Superman was literally written as an allegory for first generation American Jews dealing with the struggle of assimilation vs maintaining traditional culture. The birth of Superman as a comic was essentially Jewish Immigrant history.
Not all heroes wear capes, but a hell of a lot of supervillains hire uniformed thugs to terrorize innocent civilians.
If you run through this you come out in an upside-down world where everything seems the same and yet somehow horribly wrong in ways that you want to say out loud but cannot, the words die on your tongue and the things that are there in place of people stare at you like a weirdo, your reflection in the glass of storefronts matching theirs but you see your own hands when you look down, your own feet, and also your shoes and pants cuffs will be soaking wet.
Bass Reeves was so dedicated to the law, he even arrested his own son Bennie for the murder of his wife. Bennie was sentenced to life in prison. With over 3000 arrests, 14 kills, went his entire 32 year career in law enforcement without being shot once.
He was assigned to bring in the notorious female outlaw Belle Starr. Once she got wind who was after her she turned herself into the federal court.
Reeves was one of a few Marshalls who would venture into Indian territory *oklahoma*. After the age of 67 he retired in 1907. He enjoyed his short lived retirement as a police officer in Muskogee Oklahoma, his assigned beat had 0 crime reported until he died at the age of 71 of Bright’s disease.
He was one of the true gun slingers of the west.
I would expect nothing less from a man with such a magnificent mustache
I love the story of Bass Reeves!
One of his famous tactics was, if he was captured or in danger by a criminal he was hunting down, he would ask them to read a letter from his wife before they killed him. He used their distraction to free himself and get the upper hand.
He was also a freed slave. George Reeves, his owner and reason for his surname, took Bass with him to fight in the Civil War. However, George became violently angry after Bass beat him at a card game, and Bass was forced to fight him (or kill, on some accounts) in self defense.
After running away and entering Native American territory, Bass learned how to speak the languages of the ‘Five Civilized Tribes’ (Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muskogee, Seminole). This part of his life is where he mastered marksmanship. He got married and had a family after the Emancipation Proclamation was declared, and then later became a Marshal, going on the adventures listed above (and many more… Another famous criminal that Bass captured was Bob Dozier.)
He was the very first black US Marshal. May we never forget him, as history would suffer to lose such an outstanding figure.
Fun family story: when my aunt was marrying her wife everyone was really excited but also dreading it because my aunt is known for her insanely long speeches so everyone knew her vows would be like 9 hours long so when it came time for her to say her vows she had a shit ton of cue cards in her hands and even her wife started groaning and my aunt took a deep inhale and then unravelled all the cue cards which were taped together and they all just read ‘HOT DAMN’ in giant letters and those were my aunts vows.
