Polite Dissent

Superman #6 “The Construction Caper” (the fourth story in the comic)
Jerry Siegel, writer
Paul Cassidy, pencils

In one of his earliest adventures, Superman (with a little help from Clark Kent) exposed an unscrupulous construction firm who were using shoddy materials in their buildings. Unfortunately, Lois Lane was caught in the collapse of one of these structures. Clark Kent rushes her to the hospital. The doctors quickly determine that she needs a transfusion. Kent volunteers his blood.

Doctors: It’s amazing — incredible! Your blood conforms to all four types!

This statement makes sense given what was known of blood types in 1940 when the comic was published. At that time, physicians were aware of A, B, AB and O blood types. The Rh factor (the positive/negative blood typing system) was just being discovered. While doctors knew that blood types affected transfusions, they didn’t know why.

It wasn’t until the 1960s that scientists discovered that blood types represented certain proteins on the surface of blood cells. Blood type A has A proteins on its cells. Blood type B has B proteins on its cells. Blood type AB has both A and B proteins on its cells and type O blood has neither A nor B proteins*.

Thus someone whose blood “conforms to all four blood types” must have all of the cellular proteins present and has type AB blood – which would be a poor choice of blood to transfuse into type O Lois. But that’s the modern understanding of blood types, and we really can’t hold that against a story written 65 years ago.

Back to the story. After the transfusion, Lois recovers her strength almost immediately. I would be interested to know where Lois is bleeding. Finding and stopping that bleeding is at least as important as transfusing her.

Other Notes:

• It’s interesting that Clark is the one donating blood, not Superman. He wasn’t quite as careful about his secret identity in those days.
• Lois does not gain super powers from the transfusion, though she does (at least temporarily) from a later transfusion from Superman.
• As usual, Clark has to rip open his own skin to donate blood because no needle can pierce his invulnerable skin.
• Superman #6 features the first appearance of Jimmy Olsen.

*type O blood actually has the H protein on its blood cells, a much more basic version of the A and B proteins. It is not large enough to cause an antibody response, which is what leads to problems in transfusion reactions. H proteins are found on the blood cells of all blood types.