From a characterization standpoint, my favorite Superman is the Siegel & Shuster original -- a slightly assholic man-shaped creature from another world who was clearly obsessed [as was the U.S. then*] with pursuing social justice over institutional mores and laws. These panels come from "The Empire In The Sky," a story bit later in the S&S run [ACTION COMICS #42] but have the flavor of the Superman I enjoy reading the most. Shuster had stopped drawing the strip by himself at least a year prior, with a studio of ghost artists assembled to handle the drawing chores of Siegel's scripts. This one must have been one of Leo Nowak's last jobs before he was drafted into the Army.
* Only Depression-era audiences could near-deify thugs like Bonnie & Clyde, Dillinger and Al Capone -- when a populace knows they're getting fucked over and there's nothing they can do to fight back without breaking the law, that's when their outlaws become their heroes. It's no surprise that the gangster genre and antiheroes in general made their big commercial comebacks in the country's profound disillusionment of early '70s and gangsta rap reigned supreme until the more extreme Mammonite hip-hop artists out-blinged them.
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