CAPELESS: SUPERMAN TAKES ON NEW IMAGE IN MARCH

"You don't tug on Superman's cape,

"You don't spit in the wind,

"You don't pull the mask off the ol' Lone Ranger

"And you don't mess around with Jim."

Jim Croce's popular song "You Don't Mess Around With Jim" may have to be rewritten: Superman won't have a cape to tug on anymore.

After 60 years of wearing the trademark red, yellow and blue costume highlighted by a flowing cape, Superman is getting a complete make-over, with white and blue tights but no cape.

The new white-hot and blue-clad super hero will debut in an early March issue of Superman, said Ken Murphy of Mo Better Comics, 1030 Broadway.

"The costume is electrical looking,' said Murphy. "He still wears an ~'S' on his chest, but not the one we're used to."

The angular ~`S' and jagged stripes resembling lightning bolts are in keeping with Superman's new "energy-based" powers.

"Bullets don't bounce off the new Superman," said Jim Hambrick, owner and curator of the Superman Museum in Metropolis, Ill., hometown of Superman. "They go right through him," said Hambrick, an avid Superman collector.

Don't think this won't cause some problems at first: Where will the bullet go when they pass through the crusader from Krypton?

Hambrick, like many old-Superman fans, is less than happy with the change.

"The museum here received more than 200 telephone calls over the past weekend," said Hambrick. "Not one of the calls favored the new look."

The new Superman looks more like a "Power Ranger," said Hambrick.

Beth Clanahan of Metropolis described the feeling of a typical Superman fan in Metropolis.

"I don't like the looks of the new character," she said. "It looks too much like a cartoon character. It's certainly not Superman."

Through the years Superman has stood for truth, justice and the American way, said Clanahan, who works in Metropolis City Hall. "I'll stick with the old super hero," she said.

As the only Metropolis in the U.S., Metropolis, Ill., has proclaimed itself as the hometown of Superman. The town of 7,500 has a giant, 15-foot bronze statue of the old Superman in its courthouse square.

Hopefully, Mike Carlin, DC Comics executive editor, and others at DC Comics will have second thoughts about the new Superman, said Hambrick.

But don't bet on it.

Meanwhile, Murphy is excited about the change.

"There are changes in all of our lives," said Murphy. "There should be some changes with Superman, too."

The new look may be all right, with a positive attitude about it, said Murphy.

"If the creative team can weave a good story line, I think everything will work out."

This is not the first time that Superman's creative team has tinkered with the superstar.

The DC writers killed him off in 1992. But through some miracle and the healing baths of the matrix chamber, a device similar to the capsule his father, Jor-El, used to send his infant son (who became Superman) to Earth, he was revived nine months later.

Last October Superman joined the ranks of married men. But soon after his marriage to Lois Lane, Superman's powers dwindled away. He tried different ways of boosting his energies and his powers, and it is these things that have combined to alter him into the electrical looking character he soon will be.

"His powers are coming back," said Murphy. "But they are energy powered. The new costume is needed for this new energy source.

Superman dates back more than six decades.

Although he will be celebrating his 60th year next year, the idea for the super hero dates to 1933-34, when a pair of high-school students -- writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster -- concocted the original idea for Superman.

The duo tried four years to sell their comic strip hero to newspaper publishers but collected only rejection slips.

In 1938 the company that eventually became DC Comics was looking for a new character to headline a new comic book. Action Comics No. 1 was the result, and Superman was the lead character. Superman became an instant success, selling more than 1 million copies of the book.

Two years later Superman got his own comic book. The rest is history.