Jess Nevins calls early bodybuilder Eugen Sandow and his followers the first transhumans and describes the backlash that followed the Physical Culture movement’s stunning growth:
In 1905 Staff Surgeon A. Gaskell, in the British Statistical Report of the Health of the Navy for the Year 1905, claimed that “the physically strong man as trained by the original Sandow or other system withstands the attacks of disease very badly,” and that the strong man who is the product of Physical Culture rarely reaches old age, and is, in Gaskell’s words, “a giant with muscles of brass and, in a constitutional sense, feet of clay — that the strong man is a whited sepulcher.” In 1907 Herbert Forder, a former instructor at Sandow’s school, turned on his former employer, describing the “utter worthlessness of Sandowism.” By the mid-1930s official opinion of Physical Culture was almost universally negative, and American physical educators claimed that Physical Culture as a movement was based on “faulty conceptions of human nature.”
Nor was Sandow exempt from criticism. H.G. Wells parodied Sandow and the marketing and claims of Physical Cultures in Tono-Bungay in 1909. Rumors spread during World War One that Sandow was a German spy, and in 1915 the San Francisco Chronicle claimed that he’d been executed in the London Tower by the British government for spying.
The Physical Culture Movement had been aimed at the working and middle classes, and the Physical Culture bodybuilders had advertised themselves as beings that any follower of Physical Culture could become, and the bodybuilder superhumans of popular fiction were often explicitly described as being ordinary people apart from their superhuman physical abilities. But the working and middle classes, the intended audience for Physical Culture’s claims, eventually turned on the movement. A typical reaction appears in James Joyce’s Ulysses, in which Leopold Bloom sees Sandow as the last hope for “rejuvenation” but also feels intimidated by Sandow and by his own failure to live up to Sandow and his exercise regimen. After the enthusiasm for Physical Culture faded, the common reaction to the movement and to the prospect of potential superhumanity, available to all, was insecurity, depression over the inability to achieve it, and envy toward those who had. Envy, as it will, became jealousy, and then dislike, spreading from individuals to the movement itself.
Adding to this dislike was the embrace of Physical Culture by the nascent American and British fascist movements in the late 1920s and early 1930s and then by the Nazi party in Germany in the mid-1930s, and by Physical Culture’s embrace of fascism. Interest in the Physical Culture movement surged in the 1920s and 1930s after a post-World War One wave of fears over the physical decline of the white race. But many in the Physical Culture movement saw fascism as the answer to this problem, just as many British, American, and German fascists celebrated the “body beautiful” and saw Physical Culture as the best way to achieve it. Many in Physical Culture reacted negatively to the fascists in the movement, but to the American and British public only saw the linkage between Physical Culture and fascism.
The backlash was slower to appear in popular fiction, but was more emphatic. From 1919 to 1954, roughly 75% of all superhumans in popular fiction outside of comic books either lost their powers, had them fade away without explanation, or got married and abandoned using their superhuman abilities. Doc Savage, The Shadow, and The Avenger were the most popular superhumans in the pulps. Each began with superhuman abilities: Doc Savage, his strength; The Shadow, his ability to cloud men’s minds so they could not see him; and The Avenger, his ability to rearrange the muscles in his face so he can take on any other person’s features. By the Avenger’s last appearance in 1944, an operation has cured the facial paralysis which gave him his superhuman ability. By Doc Savage’s last appearance, in 1949, he is simply a talented, strong human being, his superhuman strength having disappeared years before without explanation. By the Shadow’s last appearance in 1954, his powers have disappeared and he is merely a standard private detective.
Numerous other examples appear. In 1931 Philip Strange is “the Brain Devil,” an ESP-wielding pilot and agent of American Army Intelligence; by 1939 Strange’s mental powers have faded away and he’s just another pulp flying spy. In 1940 the Red Knight has superstrength, invisibility, and mind control. In 1943 he loses his powers during a mission in Japan. In 1940 Scarlet O’Neil can turn invisible by pressing a nerve on her left wrist. By 1949 O’Neil is merely a fast-talking crime-busting reporter, her invisibility long-since forgotten. In 1919 cowboy Dan Barry can talk to animals. In 1923 he is turned into a villain and killed by his lover. In 1939 the Black Bat can see in the dark thanks to an eye transplant. By 1953 that ability is gone. And so on.