Number 1827: “...a very strange enchanted boy.” Nature Boy

Nature Boy was a short-lived superhero, appearing in three issues of his own comic in 1956-57. He was created and written by Jerry Siegel, and the origin story issue was drawn by John Buscema.

David Chandler, aka Nature Boy, got his powers from some gods no one has ever heard of. Well, except for Neptune, but the rest of the pantheon was unknown before Siegel invented them. In the first issue we even see a god named “King Blasto, the monarch of explosives” (!) which, if nothing else, showed Siegel still had a sense of humor.

I’m showing the entire Nature Boy contents of the issue (there was also a Blue Beetle reprint, which I’m not showing). There is an odd two-page feature called Nature Man, which appears to be a grown-up Nature Boy. Nature Man did not appear any other time. Since Nature Boy’s creator was Jerry Siegel, my opinion is he included a short Nature Man feature in case Nature Boy became a success, so no one else could create a Nature Man to compete. It may seem far-fetched, but it happened to Siegel and his partner, Joe Shuster, when DC introduced Superboy, kicking off Siegel and Shuster’s long series of lawsuits against their publisher.

From Nature Boy #3 (actual #1), 1956:

I believe Nature Boy was inspired  by the 1948 hit song by Nat King Cole, which was written by proto-hippie eden ahbez (spelled with no capitals). Read more about ahbez and see a video of the song in this post from Insomnia Notebook.

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