Hercules

The Most famous Greek legendary hero, a mighty hunter and warrior born to Alemene and fathered by Zeus.

In May-June 1944, a member of Metropolis’s Liars Club wins the club’s coveted Best Tall Tale award for a tale he concocts concerning a fictional meeting between Superman and Hercules. In the story, Superman encounters the legendary hero after allowing himself to be sent into the distant past, to ancient Greece in the age of the mighty Greek gods and goddesses, in order to test a time machine invented by scientist Professor Button. To his great surprise, the Man of Steel discovers that the man who has been immortalized in myth as a great hunter and warrior was actually a puny, cowardly weakling. And so, to safeguard Hercules’s hallowed place in folklore, Superman performs the legendary twelve labors in Hercules’s stead, thereby keeping alive Hercules’s reputation as the greatest Greek Hero. (S No.28, May-June 1944 "Stand-In For Hercules!")

In August 1960 “renegade scientist” Lex Luthor, serving out a term in Bleak Rock Prison, constructs an ingenious “time Ray” out of parts from an alarm clock and other everyday materials and uses it to draw the mighty Hercules “through the time-barrier” from the ancient past to Luthor’s prison cell in the twentieth century. By duping the legendary hero into believing that he has been wrongfully imprisoned by “an evil king” who stole his gold and hid it underground, Luthor is able to trick Hercules into using his superhuman strength to break Luthor out of prison and help him loot Fort Knox. Ultimately, however, Hercules discovers that he has been duped into helping Luthor commit crimes, and he seizes the evil scientist and turns him over to Superman.

When the Man of Steel offers to return Hercules to his own era by carrying him back across the time barrier, Hercules asks if he might remain in Metropolis awhile “to observe your future civilization!” Superman consents, but suggests that Hercules adopt an alternate identity during his sojourn in the twentieth century so that he will not be mobbed by curiosity-seekers everywhere he goes. Superman rents Hercules a place to stay, buys him a wardrobe of modern clothes, and gets him a job as a newspaper reporter, under the pseudonym Roger Tate, on the Daily Planet.

Hercules, in his many forms, has appeared in the following Superman Comics

• (S No.28, May-June 1944 "Stand-In For Hercules!")
• (Adv No.257, Feb 1959 "The First Two Supermen!")
• (AC No.268, Sep 1960 "Superman's Battle With Hercules!")
• (AC No.279, Aug 1961 "The Super-Rivals!")
• (S No.155, Aug 1962 "The Downfall of Superman!")
• (AC No.308, Jan 1964 "Superman Meets the Goliath-Hercules!")
• (AC No.320, Jan 1965 "The Three Super-Enemies!")
• (AC No.353, Aug 1967 "The Battle of the Gods!")
• (DCCP No.57, May 1983 "Days of Future Past!")