By 1936, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster had begun to contribute stories and features to the small line of comic books published by Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson, a firm that eventually would grow into becoming DC Comics. While they’d had no success in getting anybody to bite on their sensational brainchild Superman, the pair paid the bills by producing more conventional fare. One such strip, which ran in the pages of NEW COMICS, was Federal Men, an adventure series dedicated to the exploits of Steve Carson, F.B.I. operative.
But by issue #12, something was clearly in the air. NEW COMICS had added the small word ADVENTURE to its title, and in a few issues, it would transition into the long-running DC anthology series ADVENTURE COMICS. And wanting to do more outre material that lined up with their interest in science fiction, Siegel and Shuster took this opportunity to devote most of this issue’s Federal Men story to a projection of the future, and how the G-Men of tomorrow might handle teh criminals of that era.
What makes this of note in the context of Superman is the fact that Siegel names the futuristic G-Man the episode focuses on Jor-L. It’s impossible to say whether he’d originated the name for Superman’s father first or whether this use was its initial conception and he wound up simply liking the sound of it and repurposing it later. But it does create a little bit of a connection between this obscure strip and Superman.
The pair also experimented with doing fewer and larger panels on their pages, something that the Major appears to have been open to. In the coming months, after Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson was forced out by his business partners Harry Donenfeld and Jack Liebowitz, word would come back to Siegel and Shuster that they were expected to feature at least eight panels every page, and that having fewer was tantamount to cheating the readers and the publisher.
At four pages, Federal Men was one of the longest strips in NEW ADVENTURE COMICS #12, even though it ran towards the back of the book. Most other features in the issue were only two pages in length. So while the story here is pretty bare-bones and truncated, it represents an improvement on what was then the norm.
The Tom Brevoort Experience 
“…word would come back to Siegel and Shuster that they were expected to feature at least eight panels every page, and that having fewer was tantamount to cheating the readers and the publisher.”
This is an interesting editorial tidbit. I wouldn’t have thought that as early as ’36 that such a stringent rule would be in place. An 8 panel minimum seems like a lot but a quite glance at golden age pages shows 10 and 12 panels per page.
Sort of kind of related….but when Kirby had to crank out breakdowns he tended to lean heavy on the 6 panel grid.
As always… Shuster’s art works for me like butter on toast.
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Joe Shuster in the comic strip introduced a new, much more detailed origin for Superman and here we learn the name of the planet that Superman came from, as well as the name of his parents and his actual Kryptonian name. Here, though, it was Jor-L and Kal-L …. [ When Did Superman Gain the Name ‘Kal-El’? https://www.cbr.com/when-deid-superman-gain-the-name-kal-el ][ Googled — Kal-L in the second daily newspaper strip published on January 17, 1939 ] and George Lowther ( one of the writers for the radio show ), wrote a novel about Superman in 1942 [ The Adventures of Superman ]… it was in that novel that the names Jor-El and Kal-El debuted. In More Fun Comics#101 ( by Siegel and Shuster ), we get to see Jor-El adapted into comics ( a Superboy story ).
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In this issue, Captain Jim of the Texas Rangers got 3 pages and The Blood Pearls got 4 pages. Plus H. Rider Haggard’s Novel She had 2 pages for Episode 7. Other 2 page adaptations were Wheeler-Nicholson’s serial Golden Dragon in Short Stories magazine ( March 1933 ) and Charles Dickens’ A Tales of Two Cities.
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