When did Superman first start experiencing his legendary power creep?

[HalEmmerich]

I'm vaguely familiar with Superman's history. I know that Silver Age Superman, for instance, is crazily overpowered, being able to sneeze galaxies into oblivion and withstand a barrage of energy equal to thousands of suns. This is a stark contrast to what I know about Golden Age Superman, who is super strong and fast, but far more toned down compared to his later self.

I was wondering, when did this massive power creep happen? Was it gradual, or was Superman avoiding being shocked by power lines one issue and juggling planets the next? Either way, when did we first start seeing Superman evolve into the demi god he's known as being in the Silver Age? Any particular story to look at?

Just curious!

[Superdog]

Well, in the early stories he kept getting new powers regularly. He started with super speed, super strength and invulnerabilty. He quickly added super hearing, x-ray vision, telescopic sight, hypnosis, and some kind of putty face super disguise power.

[Whirlwind Dinamo]

The SilverAge run of Superman about 1959 ish, the late 50s and early 60s were strange and new times. Inspirational influence on writers and artists of the time starts with the mass socio recreational use of LSD, writers are also influenced by births of science fiction tv shows like Flash Gordon etc and the growth of a clownish conservative group that helped self-imposed censorship take flight. This clownish conservative group was called the Comics Code Authority. Of course not all blame can be put at the CCA, highly publicized congressional hearings existed on juvenile delinquency and McCarthyism put the boot on some people but the CCA were still idiots and these boys ended Romance, Horror and Western genres. The Silverage runs from about 1959 to 1969/1970, at this time lot of changes were happening in the real world and on the opposite side just wacky things were happening in comics. Back then big changes came to comics and new ideas and characters came to light, DC was now a parallel Earth like some Star Trek episode, Xavier was slowing going all civil rights and could mess with mutants minds, Lanterns didn't bother with civil rights commentary and instead were doing wacky stuff, Manhunter was doing fancy stuff before Flash came along...and some of the writers experienced the flower power revolution and smoked crazy stuff. All of a sudden Superman got into this pissingcontest with every other character in comics or on tv, anything wacky Thor's hammer could do or Manhunter did...well Superman did it better....any speed feat the Flash did....well Superman did it faster....any strength feat Hercules did....well Superman did it stronger. Silver age Superman even built a solar system and living planet with people in six days just to prove how lazy 'God' was of course the Batman was unimpressed as a black dude and white dude go try to kill each other with hatchets on this new world built by Superman in 5 days instead of 7....like I was saying lots of LSD . The Silverage ends around 1969 or 1970 and soon comes the Bronze Age, now we get other ethnic characters like Sunfire, John Stewart GL, Storm, Blade etc Artists start drawing more realistic artwork instead of cartoonish panels, drama, romance and horror like GhostRider and Dracula return and we get more real life stories like Green Arrow got drug use in the family, Ironman addicted to drink or Spider-Man seeing his friend Gwen die. Also at the end of the silverage came the dreaded CompanyCrossover which lead to such forgettable classics as Spawn and Sonic or Superman and Aliens