Returning to cinemas next week, the superhero may be known as the ultimate all-American Mr Nice Guy – but, back in the 1930s, he didn't begin that way.

James Gunn's new Superman film will be flying into cinemas next week, but ever since the first trailers were released, superhero fans have been having online debates about whether the Man of Steel played by David Corenswet is true to the one in the comics. Is he too gloomy? Is he too woke? Should he still be wearing red swimming trunks over his blue tights? Underlying these debates is an agreement that a few details are non-negotiable: Superman should be faster than a speeding bullet and more powerful than a locomotive. He should come from the planet Krypton and live in a city called Metropolis. And he should be in love with Lois Lane. Beyond that, he should also be noble and wholesome – and perhaps a bit of a bore. While the likes of Batman and Wolverine are popular because they break the rules, Superman has to be a law-abiding, upstanding all-American Mr Nice Guy.

But that hasn't always been the case. The first Superman strips were written by Jerry Siegel, drawn by Joe Shuster, and published in Action Comics magazine in 1938 by DC (or National Allied, as the company was then called). And in those, he was a far more unruly, and in some ways far more modern character. He was "a head-bashing Superman who took no prisoners, who made his own law and enforced it with his fists, who gleefully intimidated his foes with a wicked grin and a baleful glare", says Mark Waid, a comics writer and historian, in his introduction to a volume of classic Action Comics reprints. "He was no super-cop. He was a super-anarchist." If this rowdy and rebellious Superman were introduced today, he'd be hailed as one of the most subversive superheroes around.

"I had no idea the character was like that until I started writing my book," says Paul S Hirsch, author of Pulp Empire: A Secret History of Comic Book Imperialism. "But it blew my mind when I saw it. He's essentially a violent socialist." The earliest issues of Action Comics bear out this assessment. When there are wrongs to be righted, Superman knocks down doors and dangles suspects from fifth-storey windows, and he makes hearty jokes while he's doing so: "See how easily I crush your watch in my palm? I'll give your neck the same treatment!"

Some of the people who are roughed up by this boisterous outlaw are pistol-packing racketeers, but usually they are a less glamorous brand of villain – a domestic abuser, an orphanage superintendent who is cruel to children – and the majority are so wealthy that they don't need to rob banks: there is the mine owner who skimps on safety measures, the construction magnate who sabotages a competitor's buildings, the politician who buys a newspaper in order to turn it into a propaganda sheet. Rather than being a typical costumed crime-fighter, then, the Superman of 1938 was a left-wing revolutionary.

"I absolutely love those old issues," Matthew K Manning, the writer of Superman: The Ultimate Guide and John Carpenter's Tales of Science Fiction, tells the BBC. "They're clearly the work of young people frustrated with the injustices of the world, and rightfully so. Keep in mind, these were two Jewish men reaching adulthood just before the start of........

© BBC