Polite Dissent

A mysterious disease has struck Metropolis. Citizens are turning purple and dropping dead. No cure is available and no one knows the cause of the disease. The populace is terrified and people are barricading themselves in their homes and refusing to venture outside. “Bring out your dead” carts parade through the city collecting the dead and dying.

Dr Travers, a young scientist, recognizes the symptoms as belonging to the “Purple Plague,”, a disease from the middle ages long thought extinct. He is able to isolate the germ and develop an “antidote” against it. Unfortunately, when he gives a demonstration of his serum to the local scientific society, it doesn’t work and he is derided as a fraud and kicked out of the organization.

Discouraged, Travers wants to give up, but Superman encourages him to continue his experiments. His chance for redemption comes when the young son of Dr. Greenley — the head of the scientific society — contracts the plague and only Travers’s serum can save him. This time, his serum works and Travers is readmitted to the society and his cure is distributed across the city, stopping the plague.

Notes:
1. This story is from Action Comics #19 (December 1939) by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.

2. Though he plays a mostly sideline role, the actual villain of the story is the Ultra-Humanite, who is using the plague as a biological weapon against the city (though why he is doing this is never explained; he was probably just being a cranky mad scientist). I believe this is the Ultra-Humanite’s final appearance in his original body.

3. Swap the main characters with their similar counterparts, move the story to Gotham City, pad it out (about 20 times), and you have Batman: Contagion.

4. I’m disturbed by Clark’s near use of alliteration in the headline. He actually thought “vivid” was a good fit? He should have just gone with “mauve” for the full alliterative headline.

5. A single patient, be it a success or failure, simply isn’t enough evidence for or against Dr Travers’s serum. It’s concerning that a society of supposed intellectuals — scientists, physicians, and Superman — seem unable to grasp this fact.

6. There are several instances of questionable medical ethics in the story: The worst has to be Clark riding in an ambulance that is rushing to help a dying person so he can be the first reporter on the scene.

7. Speaking of Clark/Superman’s questionable actions, Superman steals the supplies Dr. Travers’s needs from a local chemical warehouse, instead of, you know, paying for them. He also punches a huge hole in their wall. I hope they have good insurance.

8. Dr. Travers cure is most likely a serum containing antibodies against the plague germ. When given to patients, it induces a passive immunity (as opposed to active immunity, where the patient makes their own antibodies against the germ) and provides several months of protection against the disease. This should be plenty of time for the epidemic to die off. (I’ve discussed passive immunity before, and here’s what the CDC has to say on it).