This looks like a job for Superman.

Hello and welcome to a bonus episode of Down These Mean Streets,

where today the mean streets are in the city of Metropolis.

In just over a week, Superman returns to the big screen in a brand new, big budget movie and another attempt to successfully relaunch the Superman franchise.

And to celebrate, I'm bringing back a bonus feature from years past with Superman Summer. Each week in July, I'll post a bonus episode featuring chapters of one of the biggest serialized adventures of the Superman radio series.

It's the Man of Steel's battle against the kryptonite-powered Nazi agent known as the Adam Man.

But first a quick refresher on the Superman radio show,

which was the first depiction of Superman in media outside of comics.

Superman made his radio debut on February 12, 1940,

about a year and a half after the character's

first appearance in Action Comics, Issue 1. The radio series introduced characters

that were soon incorporated into the comics, including blustery Daily Planet Editor Perry White,

copyboy Jimmy Olson, and Metropolis police inspector Henderson.

The first time Superman teamed up with Batman and Robin came on radio, and radio gave us

Superman's Achilles heel of kryptonite. Radioactive fragments of Superman's home planet, which, when exposed to Earth's atmosphere,

robbed the man of steel of all of his strength.

By the way, the writers came up with kryptonite because it was a way to both incapacitate

the otherwise invulnerable Superman and to allow his portrayer Clayton Bud Collier to take a vacation.

With Superman unconscious and suffering the effects of kryptonite exposure, Collier could get some time off.

Today we'll kick off our Superman summer with the opening chapters of the Adam Man saga.

It's a story that begins with a retelling of Superman's origin and the last days of the doomed planet Krypton.

It leads to the revelation that Kryptonite can destroy Superman.

...