Superman and robots may be new to the this film’s marketing, and indeed, to Superman movies in general. But they have a long history in the comics. In throughout the Silver Age, Superman often employed robot clones of himself, sometimes to throw off people who suspect his secret identity, and sometimes just to mess with Lois Lane.
Since Crisis on Infinite Earths rebooted the DC Universe in the mid-1980s, the robots tended to be more insect-like assistants who tended to the Fortress of Solitude. The movie version appears to combine the two approaches, as they appear to be caretakers of the Fortress with more spindly features, but they still sport the shield and capes of their masters.
However, the whole idea of robotic assistants and a hidden fortress goes back even further than the Silver Age, even before Superman even started the superhero comic book genre with Action Comics #1 in 1938. They are concepts Superman inherited from pulp novels and magazines, high adventure stories about people with remarkable powers, who sometimes put on costumes and took on alter egos.
In particular, they come from the adventures of Doc Savage, created by Henry W. Ralston, John L. Nanovic, and Lester Dent, and debuting in 1933’s Doc Savage Magazine #1. Dubbed the Man of Bronze, Doc Savage was a genius mathematician, scientist, and adventurer, who fought evildoers with the help of his team of experts. Savage operated mostly out of his office on the 86th floor of the Empire State Building, but also had a secret arctic hideout called the Fortress of Solitude.
To be clear, Doc Savage didn’t fill his Fortress with robots. But in the 1935 novel The Fantastic Island, Savage employs Robbie the Robot as a synthetic double to confound his enemies, just like Superman would do two decades later. But he did fill it with his assistants and aids, a common trope found in fellow pulp heroes such as Zorro, Tarzan, and the Shadow.
Superman’s creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster alter that trope for the first adventures of their hero, using Superman’s secret identity as Clark Kent and his friendship with Lois Lane as an alternative to the band of experts on which the pulp heroes relied. But the trope soon resurfaced, with Superman not only getting help from his pal Jimmy Olsen and boss Perry White (both additions from the radio show The Adventures of Superman), but also with fellow heroes Batman and the Justice Society of America.
