Stealing Superman is a true story that is so crazy, insane and unbelievable it takes an eight-episode podcast from iHeart to to make us believe it.
The iHeart Original was hosted by Dana Schwartz (Anatomy: A Love Story, Immortality: A Love Story) with the first episode of Stealing Superman dropped on November 3, 2022 with the final episode hitting major podcasting platforms like Apple and Spotify on December 21.
Stealing Superman tells the story of a one Nicolas Cage and his love for comic books, specially his love for Action Comics #1. Cage once had an impressive comic collection at his home in Los Angeles, Calif., including the first appearance of Superman. However, the story is not just about Cage’s comic book and Superman love, but how his Action Comics #1, along with three other comics, were stolen from his home in 2000 and the attempt to recover them over the years.
iHeart lays out the story in a perfect amount of episodes, each tackling a section of the story and allowing the episode to begin and end with an entire story within the story. Schwartz handles the telling of a story surround comics in a way that allows both avid collectors, fringe collectors and those who know almost nothing about the comic world to enjoy the podcast.
The only real complaint was with some of the interviews. As a host of a podcast that mainly hosts his guests through video chat, one knows first hand there are some things you have to work through to get quality audio and a great discussion. However, there are definitely some things that should always be a no-no, like a smoke detector battery low-battery alert interrupting the discussion.
Otherwise, this podcast is one of the best of 2022 and I have personally recommend the listening of it to most of my friends, family and people I pass on the street. As a fan of National Treasure, this story is all to much in the same realm, but real.