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Podcast: What Mad Universe?!?
Episode: Chapter Five: I Teach You The Superman!
Description: The man of tomorrow, the ubermensch. The perfection of the human form into something godlike, beyond mere mortality. Since the Enlightenment this dream has taken the place of the myth of the demigod or chosen one...and eventually, it saw its realization in the superhero genre. But before Clark Kent ever stepped into a phone booth, there was a story that gave rise to the superhero, and turned it on its head.
In this chapter we look at Philip Wylie's Gladiator, a book that's at once ground zero for the superhero and a strange path not taken...