Over at Comic Book Resources, author Chris Knowles has been ringmastering a debate or discussion or some sort of inquiry as to whether the Superman pose on the cover of Action Comics #1 (seen above right) was derived, copied or inspired by the painting of Hercules, "Heracles and the Hydra," painted in the year 1475 by Antonio Del Pollaiolo. See here and here for such discussions. Several folks, including Chris, have asked me to weigh in so I'll weigh in…
Of course not.
There. I've weighed in. Really, I think this one is three notches below Ridiculous on the Absurdity Scale. The overwhelming number of those who've voted in the site's online poll agree. As of this moment, 952 votes have been cast and 750 feel as I do, that the poses are way too different to indicate any connection and that there's no "there" there. Of the rest, 149 think it's an "homage," which I guess means that it was inspired but not copied, and only 53 think it was copied. I don't know what those 53 are looking at. I'm sure Joe Shuster was inspired by all kinds of heroic figures he'd glimpsed but so is every artist who draws anything. I'd hate to think how many drawings have been done that were copied from the cover of Action #1. I'll bet more artists in history have imitated Shuster's composition than Del Pollaiolo's.