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superman-logo-history.html
Evolution of the symbol

In its original inception in Action Comics #1, Superman’s symbol was an S with red and blue on a yellow police badge symbol that resembled a shield.

The symbol was first changed a few issues later in Action Comics #7. The shield varied over the first few years of the comics, and many times was nothing more than an inverted triangle with an S inside of it.

The shield first became a pentagon in the Fleischer cartoon serial Superman. It was black with a red S outlined with white (although it was on occasion, outlined with yellow).

The S has varied in size and shape and the pentagon containing it has also changed size and shape. Extreme examples of this would be the very large logo on the Dean Cain costume from the television series Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman

and the comparatively small version of the shield as depicted in the 2006 film Superman Returns.

It has, in most incarnations, retained its original color, while changing shape here and there. The classic logo is the basis for virtually all other interpretations of the logo.
In the mid-1990s, when Superman’s costume and powers changed briefly, during the “Superman Red/Superman Blue” comic book storylines, the shield changed colors and slightly changed shape, in accordance with the changes in the costume.

In the miniseries Kingdom Come, an aged Superman sported an S-like symbol against a black background in a red pentagon.

In the 2000s TV series Smallville, the S symbol originally appeared as a pentagon with a vertical infinity symbol (to be similar to the S), in an attempt to make it seem more alien. However, beginning with the Season Six opening episode “Zod,” Clark is given a crystal bearing the S logo in the style of the Superman Returns logo and is seen several times throughout the series and specifically in the season finale when a beam shaped like the logo hits a Phantom Zone escapee. The logo also appeared in the first episode of the series, when the students captured Clark by giving him a kryptonite necklace (which they didn’t know was a weakness) and tied him to a cross-like beam in a cornfield and painted an red ‘S’ on Clark’s chest (standing for Smallville, the town they live in) as a reference