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The Atlas Obscura Podcast

Joe Magarac: The Other Man of Steel

The Atlas Obscura Podcast

SiriusXM Podcasts & Atlas Obscura

Society & Culture, Places & Travel

4.61.6K Ratings

🗓️ 30 January 2025

⏱️ 21 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Joe Magarac is a folk hero that allegedly was born from the stories of immigrant steelworkers in the early 20th century. He is the Paul Bunyan of Steel Country. But is the legend of Joe Magarac an American immigrant folk story or is he the product of the imagination of writers and the steel executives?

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hey, Dylan. Hi. How's it going? Hi, Alexa. I had a question for you. Are you a superhero person? Like, do you keep up with Marvel and DC universes? You know, I think I probably suffer a little bit from the same fatigue that most people have at this point. But the honest truth is like, yeah. Like, as a kid, I collected superhero cards.

0:22.6

I still have my binder of superhero trading cards, and I still look at them with my

0:29.3

nine-year-old son on a relatively regular basis.

0:32.3

So, yeah, I guess I am kind of a superhero person.

0:36.6

Wow, that's amazing. Do you have a favorite? When I was a kid, I was I am kind of a superhero person. Wow, that's amazing.

0:37.6

Do you have a favorite?

0:38.7

When I was a kid, I was really into Gambit because that was a, he's an X-Men.

0:43.0

And he, he like came out while I was like a kid collecting comics.

0:48.3

So I was like, oh, this is like the new Wolverine.

0:51.5

I like saved up like 30 bucks.

0:53.6

And I went and bought a first appearance of Gambit

0:56.7

comic, which is today worth almost certainly less than $30.

1:04.8

So you are, you're not a casual superhero person. And so then, as you know, there's a,

1:10.0

there are ton of characters in

1:11.4

those universes yes and some of them were inspired by real things in real life and i bring this up

1:18.8

because there's this very specific bad guy in one of these issues from 1977 and the issue is called

1:25.7

captain marvel fights the man of steel.

1:28.0

Uh-huh.

1:28.7

And not, so not Superman.

1:30.1

Not Superman.

1:31.1

No, this is an alternative Superman because Captain Marvel, he's in Pittsburgh, of course.

1:39.4

Naturally, where you spend your time as a superhero, totally.

...

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