Professor Ernest Smalley was a mad scientist who specialized in chemistry. Needing test subjects for his experiments, the professor randomly chooses a homeless man named Bill Dunn from a Depression-era bread line telling him that in exchange for participating in the experiment Dunn would receive a new suit and a hot meal.

The experiment, a potion, granted Dunn telepathic powers. However, the man became power mad and decided to take over the world. Unfortunately for Dunn, the potion's effects are temporary and since he killed Smalley, the secret formula could not be duplicated. Dunn's powers begin to fade and he realized he will be returning to the bread line once more.

*Science Fiction: The Advance Guard of Future Civilization #3

*Bill Dunn was inspired by Hugo Danner by Philip Gordon Wylie.
*In 1934, after refusing editors, the two authors decided to recreate the Superman character who launched the Golden Age of Comic Books.
*Bill Dunn's appearance would later be used in two villains created by Siegel and Shuster: Ultra-Humanite and Lex Luthor.
*The Tangent Universe Superman is very much like the original concept story for "The Reign of the Superman" written by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster as the prototype for Superman. This character was bald, had immense mental powers rather than the physical powers of most incarnations of Superman, obtained his powers by a secret formula instead of alien heritage, and made use of his powers for wicked rather than righteous purposes. The two differences between the characters were ethnicity, and the fact that Dent had genuinely good intentions.
*Other than the narrator, no character refers to Bill Dunn as "Superman" in the story.

*Wikipedia
*[http://www.archive.org/details/ReignOfTheSuperman Internet Archive]
*[http://www.pjfarmer.com/chronicles/supermen.htm The Reign of the Supermen]
*[https://superman.fandom.com/wiki/Superman_(William_Dunn) Superman Wiki]
*[https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Superman_(The_Reign_of_the_Superman) Villains Wiki]
*[https://comicvine.gamespot.com/bill-dunn/4005-179068/issues-cover/ ComicVine]
*[https://www.comics.org/searchNew/?search_object=all&q=%22bill+dunn%22+%22superman%22&sort=relevance GCD]
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