Superhero by night
Posted by Smokey Stover on August 24, 2009 at 07:09
In Reply to: Superhero by night posted by Sandy on August 23, 2009 at 11:27:
: There's a popular culture phrase that originated either in the movies or in comic books about superheroes that I keep hearing all over the place but can't track down where it all started or what the original words in the phrase were.
: I keep seeing things like 'CEO by day, Superhero by night'; or 'mild mannered writer by day, Superhero by night'; and all sorts of variations on this.
: My own thoughts were that it came from either Batman or Hong Kong Phooey but I've been unable to confirm this.
: Apologies if you don't do origins of popular culture phrases on this forum, but this phrase is really bugging me now and I'd love to find out where it came from.
"Mild-mannered" is a dead giveaway for Superman, or specifically, "mild-mannered Clark Kent." If, on the other hand, it were "Who was that masked man?" we'd think immediately of the Lone Ranger.
If Batman was a CEO by day and a superhero by night, that can only be a recent slogan. The expression CEO was not common when Batman got his start. For that matter, neither was superhero.