Alan Kistler's History of Superman - Part 2

This essay is part of my Superman Files and covers Superman's history from the late 1950's to 1986. To skip to later parts in Superman's history, just check out the main files.

 This is continued from Part 1 and is a companion piece to Superman in Media and the History of the S-Shield.

THE SILVER AGE BEGINS

In 1959, Siegel returned to DC and joined with Weisinger in making Superman into less of a guy who dealt with strange mishaps, pranks and magical creatures and more into a sci-fi/action adventurer. As super-heroes were becoming popular again, the Silver Age of comics was in full swing now and Superman's whole world was getting a touch-up.

One major step was to add more meat into Superman's past. It had been established a few years ago that the Superboy stories were now cannon and thus Clark had actually been defending the planet ever since he was an adolescent. But a new wrinkle was added in 1960 when readers learned that Luthor (finally given the first name of Lex) had actually known young Clark Kent in Smallville when both were teenagers. Luthor (despite his arrogance) had even helped Superboy on some cases, not realizing that the Boy of Steel was also his friend Clark. Luthor had so much respect for Supeboy that he actually said their first meeting was the most thrilling experiment of his life. And being a scientist even then, young Luthor was able to help out his costumed buddy with incredible gadgets and devices.

Later on, Luthor experimented to try and find a cure for kryptonite poisoning. During another experiment in which he created artificial life, Luthor's experiment literally blew up in his face. Superboy saved him, but Lex lost his hair as a result. The lab's destruction meant the loss of years of work and there was no guarantee that Luthor would be able to create the life form again. He blamed Superboy, saying that the accident had been due to direct sabotage, that obviously the Kryptonian was jealous of his greater intellect. Thus, he swore eternal vengeance.

Over the years, certain writers would simplify this story by saying that Luthor had sworn revenge on Superboy due to his hair-loss, not mentioning the fact that Luthor had essentially created life and then had the Nobel-Prize winning discovery blow up in his face. Though I'm sure losing his hair also didn't help matters.

Later, it was shown that Kal had met Mr. Mxyzptlk as Superboy years before their first adventure when he was Superman. And Superboy had even met a younger Bruce Wayne and known through his clever Kryptonian future-seeing machines that Bruce would become Batman later on.

Another major sci-fi element came in the form of Superboy meeting a group of time-traveling heroes. This group, the Legion of Super-Heroes, were teenage super-humans who defended a vast network of planets (Earth included) in the 30th century and had been inspired by Superman's teenage exploits. At last, the Boy of Steel didn't feel alone. Whenever he felt isolated in Smallville or knew he couldn't truly unwind and vent to the human teenagers who didn't know his secret, he could always meet up with the Legionnaires and have great adventures with them to boot.

Since all these stories and revelations all went against some previously established continuity from years back, it was uniformly decided that Superman’s continuity had now been rebooted and that none of his stories published before 1958 should be given much credence (unless they were represented/re-written in later published comics).

One major step in making Kal-El a more sci-fi kinda guy was to start answering certain fan questions. The devil is in the details, after all. Questions constantly abounded such as "Superman’s skin is bulletproof, okay, but why doesn’t his costume rip when bullets bounce off him?” or “Why does his cape never catch fire when he’s walking through flames?” or “How is it Superman always has cut hair and is clean shaven if no blade on Earth could possibly cut him?” or “Where do Clark Kent’s clothes go when he changes into his Superman outfit?” or even the simple matter of “Lesser gravity can make Superman leap higher, sure, but how does it let him actually fly?”

So in 1960, we were told for the first time ever that Earth’s sun had something to do with Superman’s abilities. In 1961, this was further clarified. Superman had great strength, speed and leaping ability due to gravity. Likewise, a large part of his invulnerability was because of Earth’s weaker gravity. His super-senses, heat-vision and flight were all due to his body being charged up by solar energy, yellow solar energy as opposed to the red sun Rao that Krypton had orbited. This made a bit more sense to readers, since it had been difficult for some of them to understand how a weaker gravity field allowed Superman to actually fly or hover rather than simply leap incredibly far.

This gave writers a brand-new weakness to play with. If a great portion of Superman’s powers derived from Earth’s yellow sun, then he wouldn’t be super on any planet that didn't have a yellow sun. For a hero like Spider-Man or the Flash, this wouldn’t matter, but this was Superman who had occasionally traveled into the stars and now did that far more frequently in the 60’s since writer realized they had a new way to make him vulnerable for certain stories. By the same token, being exposed to red solar radiation immediately depleted him of powers. Years later, Batman would clarify that red solar rays actually just caused Superman's cells to lock-up temporarily, preventing him from using the yellow solar energy stored within and not literally removing his powers.

With this new info, guys like Lex Luthor started building weapons and guns that fired red solar rays, making the Man of Steel quite vulnerable to any attack that followed. Writers were grateful for this, since now they didn’t have to rely on kryptonite or magic all the time to provide believable obstacles for Krypton’s Last Son.

It was also explained that Superman’s costume had been made out of Kryptonian fabrics (blankets and such) that had been placed in the rocket. Since the fibers were Kryptonian, they absorbed solar rays just like Superman’s body did and thus were also indestructible (hey, it's science, don't try to make sense of it). Hence, bullets bounced off them as much as Superman’s skin. It was also said that a pouch existed within the cape, large enough to hold Clark Kent’s clothes when folded up and even his glasses. Writers stated that Superman’s hair stopped growing at a certain point because of the way the solar energy charged his body, hence no need for a haircut or a shave. Thus, in some stories where he was on another planet, you’d know he was weaker there because his hair would grow out a bit and he’d get a beard (which he’d conveniently lose before returning to Earth).

Superman also began acting a bit more alien. Before, it had been said that he was a baby when he was sent to Earth, but new re-tellings had it that he’d been three years old and already fluent in Kryptonese before the explosion (isn’t it wonderful how alien planets always decide to have one uniform language?). This was not the Golden Age Superman who had spent most of his life wondering where he came from. He clearly remembered Krypton and his parents.

Part of this wave of sci-fi oriented writing involved Superman getting artificially intelligent robots in the Fortress of Solitude who were identical to him and could take care of things if he was away or if he, say, needed someone to put up a cabinet while he was busy trying to make an antidote to kryptonite.

Kryptonite changed too. Originally, there was just green kryptonite (or “green-K”) and later the afore-mentioned mutagenic red-K. But as the Silver Age rolled on, it was revealed that there were many different kinds. White kryptonite affected plants on any planet, blue kryptonite only affected Bizarro (Superman's imperfect duplicate), jewel kryptonite enhanced the mental abilities of Phantom Zone prisoners (I'll explain who they are in just a bit), gold kryptonite permanently robbed a Kryptonian of his powers and had an effective radius of two yards (and later a temporary cure was created), and anti-kryptonite affected non-powered Kryptonians.

There were also a couple of versions of kryptonite that only appeared once or twice and weren't considered as one of the standards. Jimmy Olsen revealed the discovery of a mysterious "silver kryptonite", but this later turned out to be a prank to celebrate Superman's silver anniversary. There was also X-kryptonite years later, a version accidentally created in a lab that could temporarily grant Kryptonian powers to Earth life forms. Likewise, "Bizarro red kryptonite" could affect human beings the same way red-K affected Kryptonians. Decades later, writer Peter David did a scene in a Supergirl comic that parodied the atmosphere of the Silver Age of Superman comics by having our hero exposed to "pink kryptonite", which made him temporarily gay, as evidenced by his complimenting Jimmy Olsen on his fashion sense and decoration style.

To explain just how it was possible that so many versions of kryptonite had fallen to Earth and not elsewhere in the galaxy, it was said that the remains of Krypton had followed baby Kal-El through the space-warp his rocket ship had passed through on its journey to Earth, after which they were caught in Earth's gravity and eventually descended.

Multi-colored kryptonite and Superman robots seem too silly to some readers, I know, but it was the times, man. Remember, the majority of readers were still kids and there weren't that many fans who were going over their comics with critical minds (not at all like us and our oh-so-sophisticated arguments over oh-such-important things like continuity errors, eh?). If the story was fun, they were satisfied. And if you think about it, that's actually a pretty good attitude.

During this period, Superman also met a guy who'd become one of his most persistent recurring foes, second only to Luthor. What Superman's obsession was with fighting bald villains, I don't know, but we'll leave that for another discussion.

Brainiac was a living computer intelligence who went around shrinking cities from different planets he visited and keeping the captured inhabitants in bottle-like containers on his ship, allowing him millions of people from different planets to learn from and perform experiments on. It was revealed that Brainiac had also stolen and miniaturized the Kryptonian capitol city of Kandor sometime before the planet's destruction.

During his first fight with Brainiac, Superman stole back the bottle city and kept it in his Fortress afterwards, determined that he would one day find a way to restore his fellow Kryptonians to their full size and release them from their prison. At times, Superman would shrink and go into the bottle city, only to find his powers didn't work while he was there.

During one adventure, Kal and Jimmy Olsen decided to become a crime-fighting duo in Kandor, modeling themselves after Batman and Robin. But since there are no bats or robins on Krypton (never mind that Dick Grayson was named after Robin Hood and not the bird robin), the two dubbed themselves after native Kryptonian birds known as the Nightwing and the Flamebird. Many years later, when Dick Grayson gave up his career as Robin, the young hero took on the name Nightwing as a nod to Superman, a name he still uses to this day.

Brainiac would fight Superman again and again over the years, either trying to outsmart him with his own computer "twelfth-level intelligence" or trying to physically over power the Krytonian with his own android-enhanced abilities and advanced weaponry. On several occasions, Luthor and Brainiac would team-up together, combining their vast intelligences to make an effective duo before one of them inevitably tried to betray the other and only wound up helping in their own defeat.

Another robotic like menace was Metallo. In 1942, the Golden Age Superman had fought a scientist named George Grant who wore armor and called himself "Metallo." He later modified the armor to fire a beam that drained Superman of his power and also took a serum to give himself super-strength. In the new Silver Age, Metallo was John Corben, a cyborg whose power source was a kryptonite heart. Metallo had enough strength to give Superman a fair fight. And if things were getting hairy, he could just open his chest unit, exposing Kal to the radioactive rays of kryptonite. Later on, he even developed "kryptonite vision", allowing him to fire beams of k-radiation from his robotic eyes.

Another guy that was able to make Superman sweat without the benefit of kryptonite or magic was the Parasite. After being exposed to toxic substances, the Parasite was mutated into a creature who needed to feed off of the life energies of other people in order to survive. Naturally, Superman was an incredibly enticing meal, especially when he found he could then mimic some of Superman's abilities once he leeched off enough energy. Superman was hard-pressed to fight a guy who he couldn't risk touching.

“LAST” SON OF KRYPTON?

No one else had been able to rocket away from Krypton, but that didn't mean there weren't other survivors it turned out. Along with the bottle-city of Kandor, there were also various Kryptonian criminals who had survived the destruction of their planet because they'd been imprisoned in the Phantom Zone. The Zone was described as a "twilight dimension" where time did not pass and where you had no physical form. Jor-El had discovered this dimension and had helped implement its use as a prison for Krypton's worst criminals, such as the maniac Jax-Ur and the would-be conqueror General Zod.

Whenever a Phantom Zone villain escaped, you knew it was trouble because here were people who could match Superman's abilities and had none of his morality. A device known as the Phantom Zone Projector was able to imprison or release people from the Phantom Zone.

On the topic of Kryptonian survivors, let’s talk about animals. In a Superboy story, young Clark found a rocket with a dog in it, a dog who (thanks to Earth's yellow sun) developed human intelligence and could fly and had super-powers. He could fire heat-vision and rip apart steel in his powerful jaws. Named Krypto, this dog had evidently been sent to Earth in a proto-type rocket by Jor-El, a test subject before he risked putting his child in a secondary rocket. Putting a cape on the pup, Superboy made Krypto his sidekick. When Kal was being Clark Kent, Krypto took of his cape and Clark painted a spot on him so no one knew it was the same dog. Eventually, there would also be Beppo the Super-Monkey, Comet the Super-Horse (a were-horse actually), and Streaky the Super-Cat, who all joined forces to become the Legion of Super-Pets.

There was also a brotherly figure in the form of Mon-El. Superboy found a dark-haired teen in a rocket who had amnesia but also seemed to have the same powers he did. Believing they could be related somehow, Superboy named him “Mon-El” since he was found on a Monday. Not the most creative of names, but it worked.

In the same story, Mon-El soon proved he was invulnerable to Kryptonite but highly vulnerable to lead. Being exposed to lead caused suck trauma on his body that it brought back his memories and he realized he was actually Lar Gand, a Daxamite explorer. Daximites were an alien race whose people developed nearly identical powers in Earth’s environment. To save his adopted "big brother", Superboy sent Mon-El into the Phantom Zone, knowing he wouldn't age or feel pain there, until a cure could be found to restore him to health. Mon-El would eventually be released 1,000 years later and join the Legion of Super-Heroes.

Don’t like the brother angle? Then you’ll love the cousin angle.

In one story, Jimmy Olsen had the power to have a wish granted based on a “what if” scenario. His idea was, what if Superman had a young chick version of himself to hang around with? A blond Supergirl was created, but didn’t survive the story. Still, writers and readers dug the idea. Later, Superman met a genuine Supergirl. She was Kara Zor-El, Kal's cousin and yet another survivor who wound up joining him in the fight for good.

Kara's father Zor-El had placed a great dome over the Kryptonian town of Argo City and when the planet exploded the whole city had simply floated away intact and on an asteroid. The dome kept air in and they'd been happy to live among themselves in peace. Zor-El, along with his wife Allura and his daughter Kara, even watched Kal-El's adventures as Superman thanks to a powerful telescope they had trained on Earth. But eventually, a meteor shower began breaking through the dome and exposing the citizens of Argo to "anti-kryptonite", toxic to them. Kara, now a teenager, escaped on a rocket to join her cousin, dressed in a uniform she modeled after his own.

For years he'd been the "Last Son of Krypton." Now he had his cousin, his dog, a city full of tiny survivors, and an inter-dimensional prison worth of psychotic criminals to keep him company.

CROSSING LEAGUES, GALAXIES AND DIMENSIONS

But Superman didn't have to fight alone much these days. In the late 1950's, DC had decided to bring back super-heroes, using familiar names but otherwise changing the characters entirely. It was the beginning of the Silver Age of comics. For instance, during the Golden Age, Flash had been Jay Garrick, a college student who got super-speed from a mishap during an experiment. Now, the new Flash was Barry Allen, a crime lab scientist who gained super-speed from a freak accident. A new Green Lantern, new Hawkman and new Atom followed suit. Just as Superman comics ignored stories published before 1958, these new heroes were not meant to be successors to older ones. It was assumed by both writers and readers that this was all a new continuity, a re-imagined universe and as far as they were considered none of the Golden Age stuff was considered canon anymore.

In 1960, DC created their new premier super-hero team the Justice League of America (instead of Justice Society). Superman and Batman were just honorary members at first, but eventually they joined full-time, protecting the planet alongside such heroes as Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, the Flash, Aquaman and the Martian Manhunter.

After a couple of years, it was revealed that the JSA and all those Golden Age heroes actually did exist. It's just that they lived in a parallel universe, independent of the continuity of modern-day DC Comics. So the Justice League and the current version of Superman (Kal-El) and all the other modern-day heroes lived on what was now labeled "Earth-1" and the Justice Society and the Golden Age version of Superman (Kal-L) all lived on "Earth-2."

Our modern-day Earth-1 Superman was quite surprised when he met his Earth-2 counterpart, a version who was somewhat less powerful, had fought during World War II, was middle-aged now, had not learned about Krypton or kryptonite until several years into his career, worked at The Daily Star rather than The Daily Planet, had not met Luthor until he was an adult and had never had a career as Superboy. DC used the return of the Golden Age Superman as an excuse to do things they could never do with the contemporary version. It was revealed that the Earth-2 Superman had become editor of The Daily Star and had married his Earth's version of Lois Lane. And just as Superman's cousin occasionally helped him out under the name Supergirl, Kal-L now had his own cousin who operated with him and the JSA under the name Power Girl.

 

There were also two people who were called "Superwoman." The first Superwoman only really showed up in one issue. Supergirl decided that her cousin Superman was too lonely, unable to date a human being like Lois Lane lest her life be endangered by enemies she couldn't defend herself against. So Supergirl went off to try and find him another love. Helen of Troy and an adult-version of Saturn Girl (of the Legion of Super-Heroes) didn't work out.

Supergirl then went into space and found that on a distant world called Staryl there lived a "Superwoman" named Luma Lynai. Luma was just as powerful as Superman and was therefore the perfect mate. Luma and Kal-El fell in love quite quickly and our boy decided he was gonna marry this gal with the L.L. initials. But alas, tragedy struck. Staryl orbited an orange sun which gave Luma her powers. If she went to Earth, the rays of the yellow sun would be as deadly to her as kryptonite was to a Kryptonian. Unable to abandon his adopted planet that he'd sworn to protect, Superman said good-bye to Luma Lynai and headed home.

  

In the early 1980's, another Superwoman showed up. This was Kristin Wells, a descendant of Jimmy Olsen from the 28th century. A historian, Kristin journeyed back to the 20th century (bringing a lot of future tech with her) to discover the identity of a masked adventurer named Superwoman (the only hero with a "super" in her name who wore a mask). She soon found herself fighting crime with the aid of her advanced technology, which gave the illusion that she had super-powers, and realized that she herself was Superwoman. Originally created by Superman writer Elliot S! Maggin in the novel Miracle Monday, Kristin was later introduced in the comics in an issue of DC Presents. She was barely seen though before being written out of continuity.

The only other people to use the name of "Superwoman" back then was Lois on the rare occasion when she got super-powers and the Crime Syndicate member who was an evil version of Wonder Woman. 

Then the 1970's came. Readers were getting older. The censorship of the Comics Code Authority was easing up. Stories were getting more socially topical. And readers wanted to relate to their heroes more. You can imagine how hard it is to relate to a nearly indestructible alien who spouts phrases like “Great Rao!” instead of simply saying “Oh, man!” like you and your friends would (you and your friends might use more colorful language, but this is a family site). Also, as the world of DC Comics became the DC Universe (or DCU), people wondered about how heroes fit with each other. Readers discovered that Kal-El had been prophesied to become the most powerful Green Lantern of all, before Krypton exploded. Also, it turned out Tomar Re, good buddy of Earth’s Green Lantern Hal Jordan, had tried to protect Krypton but couldn’t accomplish his task in time before the whole place went boom.

As stories progressed, Superman became not just a champion of Earth but a hero recognized across galaxies (except on this one planet called Lexor where the people worshiped Lex Luthor and thought that Superman was the Devil). There were stories showing that Krypton had held a special place in the grand scheme of the universe. The House of El had been, in fact, the most important family in the entire planet’s history and their family line was manipulated by god-like beings named Kryp and Tonn so that one day they would produce a genetically perfect being, Kal-El.

And the famous S-Shield on Kal’s chest? Before, it had simply been an “S” to stand for Superboy (and later Superman, natch). But now, in a retelling of the origin, it was revealed that when the Kents were designing young Clark’s first costume, Jonathan Kent had seen the S-shield in a dream, like some divine revelation. And it turned out "Kal-El" meant "Star-Child" in old Kryptonese. Decades before, he’d been a parallel to Moses. Now, Clark was becoming an almost Christ-like force in the DC Universe.

Superman also began to be used in stories that were more philosophical in nature. In a story by Elliot S. Maggin entitled “Must There Be A Superman?” (Superman #247), he met up with the Guardians of the Universe (a bunch of blue-skinned monk-like aliens who created the Green Lantern Corps) and was given the question of whether or not his constant care-taking of humanity was actually stifling their growth as a race.

Of course, Superman was only good in our universe. The multiverse is a big place and not every version of the same person is gonna be a hero. When the Justice League discovered the parallel reality of Earth-3, a world where the Leaguers were all evil, readers found out how bad we could have been off if the Man of Steel had been of a different disposition. Earth-3's greatest menace was Ultraman, a twisted version of Superman who gained a new ability each time he was exposed to a new piece of kryptonite. This meant he wasn't a direct analogue of Superman but had some abilities that were uniquely his own. For instance, one exposure to kryptonite led him to possess the ability to peer into parallel universes, which is how he became aware of Earth-1, a dimension he realized was ripe for conquering.

As if having a psychotic Superman with a lust for power weren't bad enough, Ultraman was joined by his team the Crime Syndicate and also occasionally teamed up with Earth-1's Lex Luthor and Earth-2's Alexei Luthor to try and kill the Supermen of both Earths 1 and 2. Naturally, the greatest hero of Earth-3 was Alexander Luthor, who used his scientific know-how to make himself a suit of armor and weapons that let him fight off the Crime Syndicate from time to time. The Justice League fought the Crime Syndicate on a number of occasions.

THE SANDMAN SUPERMAN SAGA

The 1970s had a number of interesting changes for Clark Kent. For one thing, his origin was slightly altered again. In the previous accounts, when Kal’s rocketship arrived it immediately caught fire and destroyed itself right after the Kents picked him up. Also, when Clark Kent’s adopted parents later died, it had been shown repeatedly that they were buried in the town cemetery. But in the 1973 retelling, the rocket remained intact and the Kents were buried in the backyard of their house rather than with the townsfolk.

Why were these changes made? In 1973, the town of Metropolis, Illinois was starting to build their Superman theme park. Park planners intended there to be both a model of the rocket the brought Superman to Earth on display and situated the Kents’ mock gravestones in the backyard of their mock house rather than build an entire fake cemetery. Therefore, the details were changed in the origin story so that the park could be as authentic as possible.

Funny, huh? And we complain about marketing today. But two years earlier in 1971, Denny O’Neil jumped on board as writer for Superman and decided to really shake up the Man of Steel. And it was stated very clearly when the cover of his first issue proclaimed "Kryptonite Nevermore!"

Preferring heroes such as Batman and Green Arrow who were more grounded in reality, O'Neil wanted to make Superman less powerful and thus easier for both writers and enemies to deal with. He wanted to make it impossible to fall into the cliche of "don't worry, everyone and their dad has kryptonite these days" and he also wanted to make Clark Kent interesting as himself and not just the guy we saw in-between Superman action sequences. The story spanned over eight issues and is loosely referred to as the "Sandman Superman saga.”

As O'Neil began his tale, readers were shocked to see a scientific accident cause all kryptonite on Earth to be turned into lead. Hey, now Kal had nothing to worry about, right? Other than magic and red solar rays, he was safe now. But it seemed that he was also slowly losing his powers. Readers saw that a creature seemingly composed of sand had been born during the scientific accident and as it grew in strength and in its resemblance to Superman, the real Man of Tomorrow grew steadily weaker and weaker. The creature was somehow feeding on Superman's life-force, becoming a fully realized duplicate.

The image of a villain who looks like Superman but is composed of sand and dirt and barely speaks was very creepy and certainly memorable. We had the makings of a pretty cool villain here, especially when his motive was so unique. He wasn't after power or domination or money. He just wanted to exist. And if Superman had to die for that existence to happen ... well, that was just too bad.

O’Neil not only reduced Superman’s power levels, he changed his career. He went from newspaper journalist to live television reporter and now had a much more difficult time balancing his double-life. Before, he could turn in stories whenever he wanted and didn’t need to account for his whereabouts that much. Now, if there was a flood in New York while he was reporting live in Metropolis, he couldn’t just leave without everyone seeing him and losing his job in the process.

Clark Kent also didn’t quite seem like just a disguise anymore. O’Neil portrayed him and Superman as two sides of the same coin, rather than the cowardly alter ego and the hero behind him.  Clark did not act as bravely as Superman, sure, but neither was he a sniveling coward with no real personality. To help him seem less bland, he was also drawn with slightly longer, wavier hair and started wearing jazzier suits instead of the blue one he'd seemed to use non-stop for years.

Sadly, the story didn't have a lasting effect. Readers said that Superman losing a third of his power shouldn’t affect him that much. His power before had been described as near infinite, after all, and infinity minus 1/3 is still infinity. Later writers, searching for an easy way to hurt our boy, soon wrote-in that new chunks of kryptonite had landed on Earth since that fantastic accident that had occurred in O'Neil's run and so most of the status quo was restored. And the villainous "Sandman Superman" never returned, despite his unique nature and the fact that he was one of the few guys who could really make Superman fear for his health. I keep hoping one day he'll pop up again, possibly with a new name.

Let’s clarify a bit what that status quo was. This was not Superman of today who may get a bloody lip from a couple rounds with Wonder Woman. This guy was invulnerable. Atomic bomb? Whatever. Unless you were an alien of equal might, had powers that were magical in nature, or had red solar radiation or kryptonite at your disposal, you weren't going to hurt this him. Think he’s fast now? Back in this time, Superman could fly fast enough to actually shatter the "time barrier" and travel through time (fortunately for him, the dimension that exists beyond the time barrier had very convenient floating numbers marking the years and allowing him to navigate). He could even create a miniature planet.

Personality-wise, he was a true hero in every sense of the word. This was not the guy who would kill a gunman in 1939. Even when Dennis O’Neil had started bringing Batman back to a darker atmosphere and darker personality in the 70s, Superman was still so good he was one of the few people the Dark Knight truly called friend. He had Krypto and Supergirl at his side when he needed them. He could call on the Justice League or Batman and Wonder Woman if things got too hectic. He was even occasionally aided by a new hero called Superwoman, who wasn't a relative but a human from the far future who used future tech to simulate powers (she was also the only person with a “Super” in her name who actually wore a mask).

And the villains who could give him a fight were guys with enough fire-power to threaten entire worlds. People like the alien warlord Mongul, Brainiac, and Luthor (who later acquired a high-tech warsuit that let him go toe-to-toe with Kal). But despite their abilities, we knew Superman could take them and so did he. He was the man and he knew it.

Of course he made mistakes sometimes. Sometimes he didn’t realize an enemy was using magic or sometimes he was cocky enough to rush into things without planning it out better first. But we forgave him. He was Superman. So if you’re a guy who didn’t get into Superman until the late 80’s or later and wonder why Kal is so bloody powerful and such an honest, humble boy scout in the 1978 movie, please understand that it was this version of the character they were basing it on.

Of course, this attitude caused some trouble when he and his long-time friend Batman had an argument about ethics. For years, Superman and Batman had been sharing adventures together as partners in the latest comic to be called World's Finest. Fans began referring to the duo as "the world's finest team." But in Batman and the Outsiders #1, things changed. The terrorist Baron Bedlam had taken the country Markovia hostage and was keeping Bruce Wayne's friend Lucius Fox a prisoner. Batman wanted his fellow Justice Leaguers to help him in taking the villain down, but Superman told him they couldn't since the United Nations had asked that they allow for diplomatic channels to handle it and not create a war or an international incident.

Deciding he believed in justice rather than politics and the law, Batman quit the League and formed his own team of heroes to handle the matter. He and Superman were at odds about it for a bit, each arguing that they had followed a code of ethics they had believed in for years and that the other was being inflexible. But finally, they agreed that each other did have a point and that it was necessary sometimes for friends to have different, even opposite points of view. They became friends again and Batman even kept up a consulting position with the League just in case they needed his strategic mind again.

DECLINE OF A HERO 

Sadly, despite his status among the other heroes of the DCU, DC Comics itself didn't seem to understand the value of Superman as a character. As the 80's began, it was decided that Superman would now be written as a kid's comic, something that young readers could use as an introduction before they got involved in "more sophisticated" titles. Superman's comics now usually had two short stories per issue (since these were easier to reprint overseas) and were very episodic. At one point, he had his powers taken away and had to rely on a Supermobile and other devices just because that way Warner Bros. could sell toys of those same gadgets.

Adding to the sense of being's a children's book, Superman wound sharing the comic series Action Comics with DC's new comedy-relief character Ambush Bug, a guy who suffered from mental problems and who had stumbled onto a weird alien costume that gave him the ability to teleport. After a few skirmishes with Superman, Ambush Bug decided it would be better to be a hero and he got a regular back-up feature in Action Comics that displayed his many inane attempts to be just like Superman, attempts that often led to him annoying the Man of Steel and any other hero he encountered.

As we entered the mid-80's, some of the Superman writers decided they would try to fight the silliness and bring their boy back to being a hero who faced threats no one else could handle alone. To kick things off, Luthor and Brainiac both got serious revamps. Luthor armed himself with a warsuit that allowed him to finally match Superman physically. And Brainiac adopted a new fully robotic appearance and a new psychotic personality with almost no trace of emotion save for an obsessive hatred of Superman.

The Coluan android had come under the delusion that the universe had been forged by a force he dubbed the "Master Programmer" and that this intelligence had literally created Superman to be its angel of death. Brainiac now believed it was necessary to destroy Superman in order for him to be able to conquer the universe afterwards. He built himself a new giant "head-ship", a space-craft that creepily looked like his own skull-like face and had metal tendrils and incredible weaponry. After capturing Superman, Brainiac then attacked Earth itself, unleashing an army of alien soldiers he had conquered. For years, Brainiac had usually been a guy Superman could tackle alone. Now the Man of Tomorrow needed to recruit the entire Justice Leage and the Teen Titans in order to fight off the villain's forces and fire-power.

It's very simple, folks. Evil living robot = scary. Evil psychotic living robot who thinks it's his destiny to kill you and become ruler of the universe and makes a space-ship that can nuke a country and has his face on it = friggin' terrifying!

   

These new takes on Luthor and Brainiac were reminders of just how incredible Superman could be and what kind of stakes he could play for. Alan Moore, one of the greats in comic book writing who would later do the series Watchmen and V for Vendetta, did a Superman story in which our hero was attacked by Mongul on his birthday. Entitled "For the Man Who Has Everything", the story began when Batman, Robin and Wonder Woman arrived at the Fortress of Solitude to celebrate Clark's birthday, only to discover that Mongul had attacked their friend in a very creative way. Ensnaring the hero with a telepathic alien plant called the Black Mercy, the alien warlord had imprisoned Superman in a mental simulation based on his inner desires.

Superman found himself living on Krypton with a wife and family, for the planet had never exploded. But things weren't quite what Kal wished them to be. The longer the dream went on, the darker it became (due to Superman's subconscious mind fighting against the plant). Kal saw his father become bitter and angry towards the people of Krypton, who had mocked him when his predictions of the planet's destruction turned out to be false. Eventually, Jor-El led an insurrection against the government and Kal was horrified by the violence that ensued.

In the real world, Batman, Wonder Woman and Robin fought desperately against Mongul and tried to tear the Black Mercy away from their friend, but it didn't seem to work. Finally, Superman's mind recognized the truth. Speaking to his son, Kal wept as he realized that this child in front of him was not real and that as wonderful as it could be, he simply couldn't continue living in a world that was only a dream. He forced himself to wake up. And readers saw exactly why you should never tick off Superman. The Man of Steel attacked Mongul with incredible fury. When Mongul got the advantage for a moment, he gloated over the Kryptonian, believing the hero emotionally defeated. His teeth clenched in rage, Superman simply whispered "Burn," and unleashed his heat-vision. Mongul was finally defeated, but Superman was still shaken by the dream reality he'd experienced and would never forget this particular birthday of his. 

 

Of course, not all was doom and gloom. Superman finally freed the Kandorians and they went off to colonize a new planet that they dubbed New Krypton. And yet another Superman movie was in production, again ensuring that the public would not forget about our colorfully-clad champion. And yet the comic itself was still not doing that well. And when the Justice League disbanded and reformed so they would only have members who could dedicate their full time and priorities to the team, Superman was forced to decline.

Some of the writers still did their best to do serious Superman stories that focused on his passion and the tragedy of beign a sole survivor. One of his last Pre-Crisis stories involved two gamblers from the planet Ventura actually tricked him into thinking his parents had survived the destruction of Krypton, something that threw our boy into a rage and that led him to realize just how lonely he really was even after all this time. But despite such touching work and the revamping of his two-arch enemies, sales weren't really picking up.

FOR ALL GOOD THINGS ...

In 1985, DC decided to mark their 50th anniversary with a story called The Crisis On Infinite Earths. The DC gods decided they wanted this to be a huge event, something that commemorated the event by involving just about every character they owned in one major crossover. A villain known as the Anti-Monitor was destroying the multiverse, one reality at a time and soon he came to ours.

In the ensuing war, Kara Zor-El sacrificed herself to save her cousin from the Anti-Monitor. Superman was horrified by the death of his cousin and wept as he cradled her body. He took her to be buried on New Krypton before he then rejoined the war himself, joined not only by his fellow super-heroes but also by Kal-L of Earth-2 and his cousin Power Girl (AKA Kara Zor-L). The heroes were also aided by Alexander Luthor, Jr. of Earth-3, the son of that reality's Alexander Luthor and the only survivor since the Anti-Monitor had destroyed that whole universe.

The chaos of so many universes dying was causing reality distortions left and right and Superman found himself once again journeying to a parallel world he'd once visited and called "Earth-Prime", where he and his fellow super-heroes were merely fictional characters featured in comic books. Upon arriving on Earth-Prime again, Superman was surprised to stumble across a young teenager who was flying around and dressed in an identical costume. Evidently, Earth-Prime had its own version of Clark Kent, one who had just realized he had super-powers several minutes ago.

As another distortion occurred, Superboy Prime was transported to Earth-1 along with Superman, only to have his home universe be destroyed moments after his departure. Now the sole survivor of a dead universe, Superboy Prime decided to join Superman and the other heroes in fighting the Anti-Monitor, even though the boy had never been in a fight in his life.

In stopping the Anti-Monitor, the few remaining universes were all merged into one, with Earth-1's reality serving as the main template. Time and space were rebooted from scratch, with one unified reality. Thus, Kal-L lost his whole universe, with the exception of his Earth's version of Lois, and as far as history was concerned he had never even existed in the first place.

In the final issue of The Crisis, Kal-L landed the killing blow against the Anti-Monitor, ending the war at last. But he, his Lois and Superboy Prime were still without a home. But Alexander Luthor, Jr. was gifted great power of positive and anti-matter energies and used this ability to access a portal to enter what he dubbed was a dimensional "paradise", a place where he, Kal-L, Lois and Superboy Prime could all live in peace rather than be strangers in a reality that had no place for them.

Readers assumed these four would never be seen again and this seemed to be confirmed when later published issues of DC's Who's Who stated that if the group ever returned to our universe, the result would be the complete destruction of reality.

Laying it on a bit thick, but okay. Years later, writer Geoff Johns would make those words quite prophetic in the story Infinite Crisis.

One of the major reasons behind The Crisis was to streamline the DC Universe. DC had decided that having multiple realities such as Earth-1 and Earth-2 and Earth-S, etc., was too confusing for new readers. What's more, some characters had a lot of baggage that management was thinking was outdated or just downright silly. Thanks to The Crisis restarting space and time from scratch, they could now eliminate huge chunks of continuity they didn't want and relaunch or redefine certain characters from the ground up. 

Superman was one of the folks to get a major overhaul. Right before he did though, Alan Moore wrote the last two issues featuring the Pre-Crisis Superman of Earth-1. It was an "imaginary story" meaning that if readers didn't think it as a suitable ending for the Man of Steel, they could feel free to ignore it.

The two issues have been collected into the story "Whatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow?" and if you don't own it, stop reading right now and place your  order on eBay or Amazon or Half.com. Even if you never knew the Pre-Crisis Superman, it is a wonderful story and truly one of the best that has been written under the concept of being “the last story” for a character. It shows the final battles between the Pre-Crisis Superman and many of his foes and is a fitting final chapter to an incarnation of the character that had been around for roughly 28 years.

With the good-byes made, it was now time to say hello to the new incarnation of the Last Son of Krypton.

Go on and check out PART 3.