Alan Kistler's History of Superman - Part 3

This essay is part of my Superman Files and covers Superman's history from 1986 to just before the events of Infinite Crisis. This is continued from Part 2,

POST-CRISIS: "THE MAN OF STEEL"

John Byrne had become widely known for his work on Uncanny X-Men and the Fantastic Four, wherein he’d done small revisions to the characters and their origins in order to keep them updated. He displayed a great knowledge of history and continuity and DC decided he'd be their guy to reboot Superman's history following the reality-altering events of the Crisis.

Before we talk about what Byrne did, let's discuss what he was not allowed to do. Superman’s origin had always been that his parents had sent him as a baby alone in the rocket ship. Some interpretations of the story had shown that Jor-El wanted to send his wife Lara as well, but that she said "no" since the tiny rocket might not have made the entire trip with her added weight and because she wanted to stay with her husband.

In Byrne's proposal, it was a pregnant Lara who would leave Krypton. She would land on Earth and open the rocket’s door, only to immediately succumb to a small chunk of kryptonite that had embedded itself into the rocket’s hull. The stress would induce labor and the Kents (drawn by the sight of the crashed rocketship) would find her in her last moments. Lara would indicate to the Kents that they had to look after her son Kal-El, after which she'd immediately die. The Kents would then take young Kal, an alien born on Earth, and raise him as their own just as they’d promised his mother. Thus, Byrne intended to immediately show how deadly kryptonite was and would make the Kents chosen care-takers rather than a couple who happened upon the boy by chance.

DC looked at this proposal and said "no." It was okay to change details, but every comic, radio show, TV show, movie serial and had all agreed on one thing: Superman had been sent to Earth alone, with both of his biological parents dying on Krypton. Byrne would have to rethink that part of his re-write at least.

So Byrne altered that detail and then wrote and illustrated a mini-series called Man of Steel which was to tell the new origin of Superman and to give readers an overview of the first five or so years of his career. Each issue of the five issue mini-series had several months or over a couple of years pass between each other, so that when the main Superman comics restarted afterwards, readers would already have an experienced hero in the stories rather than a rookie. Likewise, Byrne would do several other mini-series such as The World of Krypton, The World of Smallville and The World of Metropolis, all of which went on to fill in gaps of history and provide more depth to the new continuity.

Byrne felt the best way to gain new interest in the books was not to simply update some of the stories but to completely change some characters and concepts, ensuring readers wouldn't necessarily know what was coming next. As comic book writer and Superman historian Mark Waid puts it, "Did you have to throw out the baby with the bath water? Well, in a way, yes. There was no audience, they had to get peoples' attention."

The new Krypton was a cold sterile world. If you're a Star Trek fan, the average Post-Crisis Kryptonian could give any Vulcan a run for his money in the contest of "emotionless jerk." Kryptonians were human-like beings who lived in life-support suits, had almost no direct contact with each other (communicating via video-phones was so much more preferable), and were almost completely removed from emotions, save perhaps for occasional horror they felt towards people who were emotional. Jor-El was a scientist and a bit of a freak on this planet. He actually experienced the emotion known as "love", both for his genetic mate Lara (chosen to be his by Kryptonian practices of pairing up the most genetically compatible couples) and for his son Kal-El, who at the time was still just a fetus growing inside an artificial womb known as a "birthing matrix" (Kryptonians did not give birth directly nor enjoy each other’s physical touch).

This Krypton was intensely xenophobic and set in the beliefs that their planet was too pure to ever leave. When he learned that the planet would soon die due to internal stresses that would cause an eruption of its core, Jor-El knew that very likely none would listen to him nor would he be able to make a ship to leave himself. But his son could survive at least. Studying the stars, Jor-El found about Earth and concluded that this would be a suitable place to send his son because not only did the inhabitants look just like Kryptonians (ensuring Kal wouldn't be seen as a freak), but years of exposure to Earth's yellow sun would allow Kal to develop super-human abilities, protecting him against any possible danger.

Despite Lara’s protests (she believed Earthmen to be savages), Jor-El sent Kal to Earth as Krypton began to erupt. As the rocket left, Jor-El hoped that his son would be safe and enjoy a life of exploration and emotions that he himself could never know. His last words were to tell Lara what should have been impossible in such a society, that he loved her and always had.

Different, huh? Before, Superman had seemed like an angel sent down from a heavenly planet, a world that Earth could hopefully be like in the future. But, perhaps inspired by the movie’s cold, science-worshipping depiction of the world, Krypton now seemed a sort of emotionless Hell that Kal escaped.

Also, Kal now technically left Krypton before he was even born, still housed within his birthing matrix which Jor-El had equipped with a star-drive engine.

Kal-El landed outside of Smallville, Kansas and was found by Jonathan and Martha Kent. The Kents were not senior citizens as they'd been depicted before, here they were just in their mid to late 30s. After a few miscarriages, the couple had become saddened that they would likely never have a child. On finding the rocket, the birthing matrix at last opened and gave birth to Kal-El. Thus, technically, Superman was actually born on Earth (Byrne's way of fully making him an American citizen).

Although Jonathan Kent immediately wondered if this baby were an alien, Martha told him he had read too many sci-fi magazines and concluded that this baby had been the unwilling victim of some "horrible experiment" in which someone (perhaps the U.S., perhaps Russia) had placed a child in a rocket ship and sent him into the sky. The Kents didn’t understand alien technology and didn’t realize that Kal had only just been born. They assumed he was the passenger of a ship that had crashed.

Fate stepped in when a blizzard occurred and stranded the Kents in their farm for nearly four months. By the time the blizzard was over and the Kents were able to travel into town again, they simply told their friends that "Clark" was their own son. Unlike Pre-Crisis, there was no legal adoption here.

Clark grew up in Smallville. Lex Luthor did not live there, but Lana Lang and Pete Ross still did. Clark's powers did not emerge immediately. In this new revised reality, it would take years before his cells began producing any kind of super-power.

So if Earth's weaker gravity was not a major factor in Clark's powers anymore, where'd his invulnerability come from, you ask? Byrne said that by the time Clark was about 8-years-old, his cells had begun redirecting some of the solar energy they'd absorbed into a skin-tight force field. This force-field would gain in strength and resistance over the years, just as Clark's body would begin developing other abilities as his body matured and got better at processing more and more radiation.

In high school, this new version of Clark used these abilities to become a star athlete, impressing everyone, especially his high school sweetheart Lana Lang. When he was 18, he found out he could even fly. A couple of years later, he'd finally develop heat-vision, thus finally reaching the full extent of his abilities.

Unlike the Pre-Crisis Superman, whose hair didn't grow past a certain length and didn't gain stubble while he was under a yellow sun, Post-Crisis Clark's hair follicles grew like anyone else's. He just had to shave regularly using a mirror and his heat-vision (which took some practice, since he originally kept making himself look sunburned).

Pre-Crisis, Clark’s X-ray vision included actual X-rays emitted from his eyes and his heat-vision were just focused blasts of X-rays. Byrne changed this, saying that Kal's "X-ray vision" was just a heightened form of sight that allowed him to peer in-between the layers of most surfaces (except for lead and certain other substances). It was called "X-ray vision" because he could see through walls and such, but it didn't actually involve radiation being emitted from his eyes. His heat-vision likewise no longer involved X-rays. Instead, it was said that the heat-vision was just a direct release of the solar energy Kal had stored in his cells. This was a great idea, in that it now made sense why Kal would want to hold off on using his heat-vision all the time in battle, since over-use over an extended period of time could potentially weaken him and if he was in a battle with an enemy who matched his power, that would be very dangerous.

The explanation for Kal's flight was also altered. It was not just solar energy propelling him, he was actually altering his own field of gravity. In quantum physics, there is a theoretical particle called the "graviton" which transmits the force of gravity. Superman could create “anti-gravitons" around his body. It also had the side-effect of making things feel like they weighed less when he carried them in the air than if he carried them while just standing on the ground.

It’s very important to note how noticeably less powerful this new interpretation of Superman was compared to his Pre-Crisis self. Gone was the ability to time-travel, gone was super-ventriloquism, gone was the guy who could travel between solar systems with ease. He was not as strong or as fast as he had been in the past. He could hold his breath for few hours, sure, but if he wanted to travel long-range through space and into another solar system, he needed to bring a few oxygen tanks with him too. And while his memory was nearly perfect and he was able to calculate math and react hundred of times faster than a normal human brain could, this did not make him more intelligent. Could he read a library at super-speed and learn how to build a car engine? Yes. But he did not have the creative drive/imagination to allow him to invent a whole new engine that worked better. He was still a smarter-than-average guy, obviously, but gone was the Superman who we'd occasionally find in a lab, creating new technology and constantly fiddling with experiments.

And while he was invulnerable to conventional weapons like tanks and guns, this was not the same Superman who could shake off a couple of atomic explosions like they were fists. In one comic, he was on the outskirts of a single atomic blast (specifically a low-yield nuke) and was knocked unconscious for hours. When he woke up, he felt awful and dazed and it took him some time to recover his full strength.

Another thing that was emphasized now was that Superman was like any organism who could strain himself and get tired. For a human being, if we’re on our feet for a full day from start to finish, jogging for an hour every couple of hours, with little time for rest, we will be absolutely exhausted by the end of the day. We feel light-headed, our balance is a bit off, our movements are sluggish. Likewise, if Superman was involved in a life or death battle against a powerful opponent for a few hours and then had to fight another battle the same day or had to do something that taxed his strength like drilling a tunnel through a mountain or some such thing with no time for rest, the solar energy stored in his body would begin to get used up faster than it could be replaced. As a result, all of his powers would begin to weaken in their levels, including his force-field. This helped to explain why Kal didn't always rely on his heat-vision as much as certain fans thought he should. Since they were a direct release of solar energy from his body, over-use over an extended period of time would actually hasten his over-all powers weakening.

All of this made Superman more vulnerable and more human, making it easier for writers to give him battles in which there seemed to be a chance he wouldn’t win. It was also easier to relate to him when he found himself strained and tired at times, yet forced to push onward in order to beat his enemy or protect someone.

Back to the character. Clark grew up thinking he was the natural son of Jonathan and Martha Kent. His abilities were, he believed, some sort of mutation. In Clark's senior year of high school, Jonathan at last told him the truth. Clark was overwhelmed by this knowledge, suddenly wondering who he was and why he'd been given such power.

As Clark approached the rocket, he felt weak. This was because a 2 lbs. chunk of Kryptonite had imbedded itself into the rocket as Krypton had exploded. This was apparently the only piece of Kryptonite to ever reach Earth. Byrne was making it clear that later writers could not fall into the trap of having practically every enemy of Superman’s armed with Kryptonite.

Clark realized he'd been wrong in how he was using his powers. Needing to talk to someone, he told Lana his secret. Pre-Crisis, Superboy had revealed to Pete Ross who he was. Here, Pete was the one left in the dark and poor Lana realized her dreams of marrying Clark were not to be, because a man of his power belonged to the world and not one woman.

Clark left Smallville. He roamed the world for a while, looking for a place to call home while also secretly helping people when he could. By encountering different cultures, he became a citizen of the world, perfect for a future protector of Earth. Later on, it would be revealed that he attended Metropolis University and graduated in just two years because he only needed an hour or so of sleep.

THE DEBUT

When he was in his early or mid-twenties, Clark was once again in Metropolis, which he was beginning to consider his home base. An experimental space-plane called the Constitution was scheduled to land at the Metropolis airport. Among the crew was reporter Lois Lane of the Daily Planet.

A small commercial plane somehow wound up crossing paths with the space-plane and damaged its wing. The space-plane was going to crash to the Earth and nothing could be done about it. Clark was in the crowd and saw no choice. He was just dressed in jeans and a leather jacket, no time to find a mask. Deciding he just had to move too quickly for anyone to photograph his face clearly, he launched into the air and the crowd froze as they saw him catch the space-plane and gently carry it to the ground. Lois ran out and grabbed a hold of him, demanding answers. A moment later, they were assaulted on all sides by people demanding an interview or telling Clark they could use him to sell something or demanding that he heal their child. Clark panicked and flew away.

A moment to reflect. This new story of how Clark debuted to the public struck a chord home for readers at the time. Originally, Clark was going to save a landing space-shuttle, but then the Challenger explosion happened and at the last minute it was changed to "an experimental space-plane." Nonetheless, the story seemed a sad "what if" possibility of how tragedies such as the Challenger explosion could have been averted if we had guardians like Superman in reality.

Clark went back to Smallville, mere minutes after his parents read the news article by Lois Lane that started with the headline "Space-Plane Saved By Mysterious Superman." Clark wanted to continue helping people, but now didn’t see how he could do that without folks demanding his attention 24 hours a day or constantly hounding him for one reason or another. Jonathan Kent, remembering the masked heroes of the Golden Age, believed that the only way for Clark to continue helping people was to follow suit. Martha made a costume (it had to be skin-tight so that it would fit under Clark’s force-field), while Jonathan and Clark designed a logo for him. Although Clark found the name a bit embarrassing, Jonathan saw no reason not to use the title Lois had given him in the headline. "Superman" was to be his cover identity. After several designs, they came up with the famous S-shield.

This skin-tight force-field that made Clark invulnerable became the new explanation as to how Superman’s costume never ripped when he was shot at. The costumes were made of simple Earth fabrics. This meant artists could play with the fact that the cape (not protected by the force-field) could indeed rip and tear and catch on fire at times, which made for some great visuals during battles. Also, if ever Superman was in a fight with an opponent strong enough to stress his force-field, his costume could be torn as the field weakened, indicating just how strong the enemy was.

Now, the disguise angle. Since Lois and others had seen his face, there was no point using a mask, but he could disguise Clark Kent. Besides his parents, no one had really seen Clark Kent for about 7 or 8 years now and a man could change a lot in that time. As Clark, he would wear looser clothing, assume a more relaxed posture and body language, alter his voice a bit, slick back his hair, and wear glasses. Clark felt that this would be enough because, since Superman wore no mask, people simply wouldn’t be looking to find out who he really was. They'd just assume he was a hero 24-7. As an added measure later, Clark would vibrate his face slightly when he was in public as Superman. Not enough that the human eye would pick it up, but enough that anyone who tried to photograph him would get a fuzzy picture. Soon after Byrne left, this idea was barely ever mentioned.

The disguise stopped there, however. Unlike previous comics, Clark would not be a nervous, mealy-mouthed man who outwardly second-guessed himself all the time and seemed to suffer from chronic queasiness. "Clark" was mild-mannered and easy-going, but he wasn't a coward or a stiff-necked guy. He'd crack a joke with co-workers, give Lois a litle guff when she was acting high and mighty, and would let his anger show when he was confronted with acts of violence and criminal operations. He'd go to sporting events, he liked hot dogs and pretzels, he was occasionally clumsy and seemed to be absent-minded. And when he was relaxing he'd wear his old letterman's jacket from high school. In other words, he seemed like a down-to-Earth, generally nice guy that you wouldn't mind having as your friend.

This interpretation was Byrne's attempt to make the readers care as much about Kent as they did about Superman. Some readers dug it, some believed it was a betrayal of the decades long tradition that "Clark Kent" was supposed to be the disguise. This tradition though was certainly not always the case, since in both the first few years of the comic and in the radio series starring Bud Collyer, Clark had behaved and acted very much as Byrne portrayed him.

It's also important to note that for the first time ever, Clark's adopted parents do not die before he leaves Smallville. Both stay alive and remain a constant presence in Clark's life for years to come, acting as both mentors and confidants and making him more relateable to the many readers who were not isolated orphans from other planets. I mean, how great is it to see a man of Superman's power go home for a weekend and have his mother asking if he's eating right and has he found a nice girlfriend yet? This was a great change for the character and enhanced his appeal.

After perfecting his disguise, Clark got a job at the Daily Planet by literally walking in with the first exclusive interview with Superman (I wonder how ethical that is as a journalist). Lois Lane would spend a couple of years hating Clark for beating her to what she considered to be one of the stories of the decade.

After operating as Superman for several years, Clark returned to Smallville at the end of the Man of Steel mini-series for a small vacation. While there, he accidentally activated a hologram of Jor-El that, through alien technology, literally downloaded tons of information into Clark's brain, instantly educating him on Krypton, its history, its language, its culture and why he had been sent to Earth. After years of being a hero to the public, Clark was faced with the revelation that he was an alien, the last survivor of a whole planet. He was stunned, finally knowing where he came from and that his true name was Kal-El. But in the end, he considered the information worthless. As far as he was concerned, he had been raised an Earthman all his life and Earth was his home. It was nice to know his genetic heritage and why he was different, but this was inconsequential. In every way that mattered, he was human.

This was a huge difference from the Pre-Crisis Superman who kept a journal in Kryptonese and whose fortress had several tributes to Krypton on display. Some fans found this interesting, while others felt that it took away the theme of tragedy that he was the sole survivor of a dead world and that he was, first and foremost, an alien living among us.

TOGETHER AGAIN ... FOR THE FIRST TIME!

As it was a new universe now, this meant that some of Superman’s relationships with people, both friend and foe, underwent serious revision.

Just like before, Superman's career inspired a new wave of super-heroes. The first hero he met was The Batman. Pre-Crisis, the two had not actually teamed-up in the comics until the 1950s, although they'd shared many comic book covers together for many years beforehand and they'd worked together in the Superman radio show. In their first Pre-Crisis team-up story, the two learned each other's identities and had become fast friends, despite their differing methods and occasional philosophical arguments.

But just before Byrne jumped onto Superman, writer Frank Miller had produced a mini-series called The Dark Knight Returns. The mini-series depicted a possible dystopian future in which an elder versions of Batman and Superman, although they respected each other, did not get along at all and were later forced to fight. Miller said he did this because in his mind it made no sense that they would be friends, not when Batman was a person who, in his mind, clearly believed that people were prone to criminal behavior and that law-breakers needed to be hunted on a nightly basis, whereas Superman was an optimist who only really stepped in when there was a situation police either weren’t around to handle or simply couldn’t handle themselves.

Miller's attitude made sense to Byrne and so, in the new reality, Superman and Batman were at odds when they first met. Early in Batman's career, he was wanted as a vigilante by the Gotham City P.D. and so Byrne wrote that Superman had originally decided to bring him in during this time. Batman had been prepared for the Man of Steel, however, and had a plan ready and waiting. The Dark Knight forced Superman through manipulation and blackmail into helping him capture a mass murderer named Magpie.

At the end of it, Superman realized that although he did not like Batman's nature or methods, Gotham City was very different from Metropolis and that perhaps it benefited from the Dark Knight’s tougher brand of justice. He warned Batman though that if he ever crossed a line, he would be stopped. Batman respected Superman's abilities but believed him to be a bit naïve, operating from a boy scout's perspective. This was a far cry from how things used to be, when Batman and Superman had been collectively known as "the World’s Finest Team."

Many years later, following Zero Hour, this first meeting was re-written again. While similar to Byrne's story, it was now said that Superman had initially sought out Batman not becuase he heard there as an illegal and ruthless vigilante stalking Gotham but because he'd heard of a supernatural creature hunting criminals and he'd been curious to see if Batman was a metahuman with abilities similar to his own. It wasn't until the very end of the story that the Last Son of Krypton learned that the Batman was actually a normal human being who relied on ninjitsu, sleight of hand, theatricality and psychological tricks to convince others he was a demonic creature.

A couple of years into his career as Superman, our boy finally met Lex Luthor. This was the first time they had met and Lex was about 15 or so years older (in fact, it was now said that Lex had been a childhood friend of Daily Planet Editor Perry White). Lex was not the mad scientist he’d been before. Taking his cue from the Richard Donner movie, Byrne made Lex a corrupt businessman. In the 80's, many folks in America felt that the biggest evil was the corporate shark who got away with things that you knew he did but didn't have proof for. Luthor followed this model, engaging in various criminal operations such as selling high-tech arms to terrorists, but always making sure the public saw him in a positive light. He was an overweight man who walked around in suits that cost a few thousand dollars and constantly smoked cigars. He had had several wives and maintained regular mistresses. When we first met him, he had thining red hair, but he quickly became bald due to low-level radiation from his kryptonite ring.

Some readers dug the new take on Luthor because it meant that he was a very crafty strategist, constantly pitting his criminal operations against Superman but always avoiding jail time, as opposed to the Pre-Crisis Luthor who wound up in jail constantly. Some readers felt it was a bit of a betrayal of the character. He was still an excellent manipulator and tactician, yes, understood a good deal about science and had access to greatly advanced technology, yes, but he was no longer as much of a scientific genius as he always had been in all previous incarnations, preferring to let employees handle that end of things.

In an early story, Byrne had one of Luthor's scientists enter all information concerning Superman into a computer. The computer concluded that Clark Kent and Superman were the same person. Luthor was apparently so offended that he'd be able to miss something like that that he instead chose to believe the computer was completely wrong. A soulless machine could not understand, he explained, what Luthor as a fellow man of power understood: that no one with Superman's abilities would ever choose to hide himself as something weaker half the time, not when he also made such a display of himself in his bright costume and public appearances. He ordered the computer wiped and the lead scientist of the project fired and never again would he even consider that Superman had a "secret identity" as a mortal man.

This issue disturbed many who felt that it painted Luthor as so self-obsessed and narrow-minded that it made him rather thick, not at all like the clever and intuitive Pre-Crisis mad scientist. Some also pointed out that having Luthor as an overweight, untouchable crime lord made him far too much like Marvel's Kingpin of Crime. And some felt that having Luthor continually circumvent the law actually made Superman appear ineffectual.

It's also important to note that following his first battle with Luthor, Superman was given official status as an deputy of the Metropolis Police. This again emphasized that he was not a vigilante in the same vein as Batman or certain other heroes. He was a volunteer of sorts, who respected the law and operated to keep the public’s trust.

Another change was the dynamic between Lois and Clark. n the old comics, our boy had gone out of his way to be uninteresting as Clark Kent because that identity was a disguise. Here, Superman politely ignored Lois's advances while Clark actively pursued her, hoping that she'd fall for the human/flawed person he really was, rather than just be wowed by the image of the powerful alien like so many others.

And it worked. Originally, Lois only had eyes for Superman. Clark was a nice guy who she knew had a crush on her but whom she wasn't interested in. But as the years went on, she realized the fantasy of snaggint he Man of Steel simply wasn't going to happen. And after working alongside him for some time, her hatred for Clark softened to a friendly rivalry until eventually she came to be charmed by this well-meaning, well-mannered man who spoke his mind openly and honestly, who wasn't self-conscious about people thinking he was an old-fashioned dork, and who never seemed to give up on asking her out on a date. Superman was a nice idea, but Clark was the real man she eventually fell for. More on that later.

Various villains got new treatments from Byrne as well. Some were met with approval, others were not. Fans loved the new Metallo, who looked more threatening now that he was redesigned to resemble the terrifying cyborg of the Terminator movies. The villains Parasite, Toyman and the Prankster were very much the same, as was the magical imp Mr. Mxyzptlk (although minor details were altered here and there). Some villains seemed to have lost their magic. In the past, Brainiac had been an android life-form with a ship that could nuke a small country and a psychopathic need to conquer all living things. In Byrne's re-write, he was an alien who transplanted his mind into the body of a circus mentalist and attacked Superman with telepathic abilities. Just not the same and it wasn't until Byrne left the book that later writers started bringing Brainiac back to his roots.

New characters and allies were brought into the mix. There was the absent minded Professor Emil Hamilton, a genius engineer who became Superman's tech support. There was Gangbuster, a human vigilante who guarded Metropolis' Suicide Slum. There was fellow reporter Cat Grant, who had her eye on Clark Kent, and later newbie journalist Ron Troupe. There was Bibbo Bibbowski, a roughnecked guy who lived in Suicide Slum and bought his own bar, the Ace of Clubs, after winning the lottery. Bibbo considered Superman a guy worthy of respect becuase of his toughness and often referred to the Kryptonian as his "fav'rit" person in the whole world.

Along with these ordinary citizens, there was also tough Police Commissioner Henderson and the tough-as-nails Jack Kirby creation Detective Dan "Terrible" Turpin. Turpin was part of the newly created Special Crimes Unit, which dealt with metahuman menaces. In charge of the SCU was Captain Maggie Sawyer, a hard-edged woman who threatened to deck you if you looked at her funny. Along with being a tough cop who was good at her job, Sawyer was a single mother who surprised several readers when it came out that she was also gay. All of these new additions made Superman's supporting cast quite interesting and they would all have their own sub-plots so that issues were not just simple "Clark sees danger, turns into Superman, fixes everything" stories. The comic now felt like an ensemble piece and would for many years.

As time went on, there was also a growing consensus that things of the past were missed. Where was the Fortress of Solitude? Where was Supergirl? What about the bottle city of Kandor? Yeah, they were kind of hokey, but they were fun and part of the character.

DC had decided that part of Superman’s revamping would include the new edict that he was indeed the LAST Son of Krypton not just in name. Krypto was not seen. Supergirl had been wiped from existence. And, as of yet, there was no Fortress.

OLD FRIENDS

A little while later, a blonde girl in a female version of Superman's costume showed up. Her name was Matrix, but she was calling herself Supergirl and was from a "pocket universe" Superman had visited not too long ago (you can read more about that in my upcoming essays on Supergirl and Superboy). In her universe (which had no Clark Kent anymore cuz their version of him died), her Earth's version of Lex Luthor had accidentally released three Kryptonian terrorists, the worst being their leader General Zod. This Supergirl was an artificial being who'd been created to fight the aliens, but they were too much for her. So she'd traversed universes to recruit Superman for help.

Zod had been a big villain in Pre-Crisis history and had gained fame by being the main villain in the movie Superman II. This story was Byrne’s way of bringing back at least a version of him without actually breaking DC’s rule that Superman was to be the sole survivor of Krypton. Since Zod was from a parallel universe and thus a different version of Krypton, it didn’t count.

Superman tried his best, but each of these three alternate Kryptonians were much more powerful than he. Superman failed and in the end he and Supergirl were the only living beings on that version of Earth. Literally everyone else had been killed.

Superman was horrified by the death everywhere and finally used that universe's Gold Kryptonite to permanently rob the three terrorists of their powers. But Zod threatened that he would not remain a prisoner on a dead world, that he would find a way to regain his powers and somehow figure out how to travel to Superman's universe, at which point he would destroy that Earth as well.

What came next was a turning point in Superman's life. He felt that the risk Zod could live up to his threats was too great after he’d seen what had happened to this Earth. Feeling he had no choice, and feeling that he had the authority of being the only one still alive on the planet to fight the three, Superman used green kryptonite of that universe to execute them (he himself was in no danger since that universe's kryptonite gave off different radiation than his own reality's). He held the rock out in front of him as the terrorists begged for their lives and then perished.

This was huge. Superman hadn't just killed an enemy in battle, he had executed three of them after making sure they had no way to defend themselves. Yet did he have a choice?

Superman brought Matrix back to Earth, leaving her with the Kents who agreed to help look after the naive young girl who'd been traumatized by her injuries and by the knowledge that she was now the last survivor of her world. It would be a while before Matrix reassumed her Supergirl identity and got her confidence back.

Superman tried to move on with his life. Byrne left and later writers dealt with how Superman would deal with this tragedy. Though some folks may have had a problem with his run, one must respect that he had gotten people to look at Superman as a contemporary super-hero again rather than one who belonged in the past. What's more, in his two years on the books, he'd piled up about six years worth of storylines.

Superman began having dreams in which he relived the execution and would wake up wracked with guilt. The villain Brainiac later attacked him telepathically and this, added with his own guilt, caused Superman to have a break from his identity. Because he subconsciously believed himself to be a brutal avenger now, he started disguising himself as Gangbuster and hospitalized nearly everu criminal he came across. It was a while before Clark realized the truth, that he'd essentially suffered a break from reality. Deciding a mentally unstable Superman was too dangerous for Earth, our hero exiled himself into space.

Again, some readers found it interesting to see how deeply hurt Superman was by the fact that he’d had to take a life, while other readers felt that the Superman comics had lost all sense of fun and become replaced with overly introspective, tragic tales. Many of them blamed it on Byrne, who they said had made it his last act to force Superman to execute three villains who had already been rendered powerless and ineffective in a story that had a few plot holes and very little depth (for instance, many questioned what Zod and his partners had to gain ensuring they would be rulers over a world of corpses).

Superman's self-imposed exile led to the reintroduction of a Pre-Crisis villain who was able to match him physically. Winding up as a slave on the mobile fortress War World, Superman was forced to fight as a gladiator for the amusement of Mongul. This was a lot more dangerous than it would've been normally, since being away from Earth's sun for so long had caused Superman to lose a few levels of power (as well as grow a happening beard).

Superman made it through several matches. But when he refused to kill his opponents, Mongul grew impatient with this champion who was becoming perhaps too popular. He challenged Superman directly and after an intense battle he lost. Superman then returned to Earth and Mongul was left on his own, now without the respect of his former slaves and swearing vengeance on the Last Son of Krypton.

When Superman returned to Earth, he found out that Matrix had been masquerading as Clark Kent during his absence (this was due to the girl being still somewhat confused following her trauma in the pocket universe). Helping to convince the world they were two distinct people, the two were seen together by Jimmy Olsen who then photographed them standing side-by-side. Anyone who might have had suspicions before now had photographic proof that Superman and Clark Kent were just pals who shared a similar appearance.

Still seeking her own identity, Matrix left Earth for a short time. It would be a while before she returned.

ERADICATION, SOLITUDE AND THE FASTEST MAN ALIVE

When Superman returned to Earth, he brought with him a Kryptonian artificial intelligence unit that he'd found called The Eradicator. An ancient cleric on War World had given the hand-held device to Clark and explained its great power, that it was able to alter the structure of things around it. Communing with the machine, Superman found out that long ago a group of Kryptonians had wished to leave their planet and settle out in the stars. To protect the purity of their people, the Science Council had Kal's ancestor Kem-El program the Eradicator to kill the deserters and to make all Kryptonians now biologically incapable of leaving their planet's environment without dying.

This was writer Roger Stern's explanation of why the Post-Crisis Jor-El had not seemingly tried to escape Krypton's destruction himself. He simply couldn't go. When he'd found out that his world was dying, Jor-El had then subjected the still growing fetus of Kal-El to chemical engineering that allowed him to be free of this deadly bond, ensuring the child would be born with the capability of traveling to other planets.

In comics written many years later, it was said that the Eradicator was originally a device designed by a different race than the Kryptonians and that it had been one of several. Kem-L then did not create the Eradicator but merely reprogrammed it to fulfill its xenophobic purpose. 

For years, it had been known in DC Comics that the people of the planet Daxam experienced super-powers identical to Kryptonians when exposed to a yellow sun. But where Kryptonians would be killed by kryptonite, Daxamites were deathly allergic to simple lead. It was revealed that the original Daxamites had been colonists from Krypton and that the Eradicator had given them this lethal allergy as a way of making them afraid of spreading out any further into space.

Despite the fact that it was potentially dangerous (and was called the "Eradicator" of all things), Superman brought the device home with him. When it started doing weird stuff such as giving Jimmy Olsen elastic abilities (a nod to his Pre-Crisis adventures as the would-be hero Elastic Lad), Clark then discarded the machine in the Antarctic. But the Eradicator took control of nearby research scientists and used them to create a portal to the Phantom Zone, where readers found out much Kryptonian technology and artifacts had been sent to as a way of preserving them. With these resources and its new human slaves, the Eradicator had an underground fortress built which Superman later decided to use as a private lair of sorts (once he'd freed the humans from their enslavement).

Thus, Post-Crisis fans finally had a new version of the Fortress of Solitude (though it would still be years before the stories actually called it that), a place that even had Kryptonian service robots wandering around. Many fans were cool with this, but criticized the idea that the Phantom Zone was now seen as a storage area rather than a prison.

One of these Kryptonian service robots would eventually gain artificial intelligence and become a trusted ally of Superman. His name was Kelex, named after Jor-El's own assistant droid. Many years later, he'd also become a source of comic relief. 

Clark was making some changes in life. He left being a reporter at The Daily Planet to become an editor at Newstime Magazine, a publication run by Colin Thornton (who was secretly the demon lord Satanus, an enemy of Superman's). His departure hurt Lois very much, more so than she expected, and the hard-edged reporter finally realized she'd fallen for the Kansas farm boy. When Clark later left Newstime and rejoined the Planet, the two began dating very seriously.

Around this time, a race happened. In the Pre-Crisis days, Superman and the old Flash (named Barry Allen) often raced for charity or because someone forced them too and the races usually wound up in a tie or with no clear winner. In this new story, things were different. That magical imp Mr. Mxyzptlk was back from the fifth dimension and was curious to see who was faster, Superman or the new Flash, young Wally West (who had originally been the teen hero Kid Flash and had taken over his mentor's role after Barry died during The Crisis On Infinite Earths).

This was an interesting race in that it once again emphasized how de-powered the Post-Crisis Superman was in comparison to his earlier incarnation. Mxyzptlk said that using his flight was illegal, stating that Superman could actually fly much faster than he could run. The race was that both contestants had to run one lap around the planet, following a pre-determined course. Barry Allen would've been able to do this easily, but following the events of the Crisis Wally had suffered a reduction in his powers and was often hard-pressed to surpass the speed of sound. Thus, readers saw an intense race that pushed both men to the limits of their stamina (and some action happened along the way) and finally the winner was ... Flash! In the Post-Crisis universe, there was no doubt. Superman may have had a wider range of abilities, but the Flash was definitely the one person who could rightfully be called "the fastest man alive."

Back to that evil machine from Krypton. Having failed to make Earth more like Krypton, the Eradicator now opted to make Superman more like a "true Kryptonian." Affecting his mind, the machine made Clark more and more dispassionate, so much so that he began calling himself simply Kal-El and ditched his costume for Kryptonian threads.

Clark later regained his senses and threw the machine into the sun, destroying it. But the artificial intelligence used the last of its energies to create a body for itself. It was now much less powerful than before, but at last the Eradicator could fight Superman head-on. They battled and at last the Eradicator's essence was dispersed, seemingly for good (yeah, right).

Time passed. Other new enemies showed up, as did new versions of old enemies. Batman and Superman later reached an understanding at last and began to see each other as comrades-in-arms and finally as kindred spirits, even brothers. Clark had some time travel stories, some space travel stories. Clark and Lois were now seriously dating.

The two made a great odd couple, since Lois was openly brash, loud-mouthed and aggressive and Clark was of a different cut. For instance, in a story done many years later, the two would go to a monster truck rally (something Lois had done ever since she was a little girl). There was Lois, screaming and jumping up and down in her Army T-shirt, as Clark waited patiently, reading his book and thinking about how amazing it was to hear so many different ways of yelling "Hey, cool crushed car!"

As the 1990's began, many comic books were still reflecting a "grim and gritty" trend that had begun in the late 80's. A wave of new anti-heroes were being introduced in other comics, vigilantes who were often armed with various firearms or blades and who didn't care about killing their enemies.

The Superman writers didn't want to jump onto this bandwagon by turning Superman into a dark and disturbed warrior, but neither did they want to ignore what readers were responding to. Many tales began to reflect on the more human nature of Superman, the things and events that made him doubt himself and question his effectiveness and his place in the world despite his seemingly invincible power. Readers found out that one of his co-workers was actually homeless. Cat Grant, who he'd gone on a few dates with, had a drinking problem. A neighbor of Clark's had an abusive husband but wouldn't leave him.

Two stories that got a lot of attention were one where Clark recalled an incident in high school where he and other Smallville pals were at a party where there was beer and later all got into a car together. Unaffected by the alcohol and unfamiliar with how to distinguish drunken behavior, teenage Clark hadn't realized one of his friends was too drunk to drive and a car crash resulted. Though Clark, Pete Ross and Lana Lang were all right, their friend was left in a coma and remained there to this day. Clark held himself responsible for the tragedy and visited his friend in the hospital every year.

Another story was "Metropolis General Delivery" where we found out that every year on Christmas, Superman went to the post office and read many of the letters that were sent to him every year. Some were people thanking him, some had money-making offers, some asked him to heal an illness and some were children requesting a friend or an alien artifact. Superman tried his best to honor and respond to as many of these as possible, wanting people to know that small problems were as big for him as alien invasions and the like and that he wasn't too big or busy to help people in genuine need.

Along with this, stories over the past few years had also focused on how Clark Kent fought crime in his own way. Thanks to various exposes and crime stories he published, Clark found himself the target of criminal syndicates such as Metropolis' Intergang. A few times, it was Clark and not Superman who was the target of a superhuman mercenary. And things became more dangerous for both of his identities when Mr. Mxyzptlk gave Luthor a magical red rock that temporarily removed Superman's powers, forcing him to wear an exo-skeleton and use tools like a grappling hook to compensate.

This isn't to say it was all angst and grounded stories for Superman. Along with Intergang and the like, he was also clashing swords with Maxima, a telepathic warrior queen who demanded that Superman be her life mate, and the demon lords Satanus and Blaze who both took several innocent people hostage, forcing the Man of Steel to literally fight through Hell for the lives of those he'd sworn to protect.

And if Superman ever did find himself weighed down by the pressure of life, he now had Lois to lean on. As their relationship grew, readers saw them develop a mature relationship where they challenged each other and made each other laugh at their own occasional self-centeredness and vulnerability. They seemed like a real couple and that made the future seem bright (even if Superman did have to cancel a date now and then because the Parasite or the Atomic Skull were wreaking havoc again).

NEW BODY. NEW RING.

Some major changes happened in Superman's world around this time and they all involved folks with the initials L.L.

First off, Lana Lang (having finally apparently gotten over her life-long crush on Clark) went and married Pete Ross. Pete became a politician in D.C. and later got involved in a scandal when he was coerced into taking part in a nearly successful assassination plot (fortunately his name was cleared). Although he knew Lana loved him, Pete did feel a tension whenever it was obvious to him that Lana and Clark had a secret between each other that they weren't sharing with him.

Another change that happened in Superman's life involved Luthor. For years, Lex had been wearing a kryptonite ring, only to later discover it had given him cancer. He removed the ring from his presence, but it was too late. He was dying. Rather than admitting defeat, he saw a way to restored health and a clean slate for his reputation. Luthor secretly had a new, younger version of his body cloned for him and then went on to fake his own death. As the world was shocked to learn that Lex Luthor was dead, Lex had his brain transplanted into the clone body and then masqueraded as his own illegitimate son Lex Luthor II. This new Luthor promised Superman and the people of Metropolis that he was not the criminal his absent father had been and that he would do his best to run LexCorp effectively and to make up for his father's crimes.

Soon after his debut, Matrix returned to Earth and was found by Luthor. Seeing that this young, red-haired man was the spitting image of the Luthor who had created her in the pocket universe, the naive Supergirl fell in love and joined him as a girlfriend and an employee. It would be a few years before she and the rest of the world learned the truth about Luthor's "son."

And what about that kryptonite ring? Superman got a hold of it and gave it to Batman. Having worked with Batman enough now, Superman saw him as a dedicated man who simply wanted to bring order to a world that he saw was too often insane. Superman gave Batman the ring, trusting that Batman was a hero who would not abuse this trust but was also the kind of person who would actually use it if he ever needed to, in the event that Superman ever went out of control again such as when he was influenced by the Eradicator or driven mad by Brainiac. This symbol of trust cemented the two as unlikely friends forever afterwards.

Speaking of bonds, Lois and Clark had now been dating for quite a while and readers had been loving it. So finally the moment came that everyone had been waiting for. Clark proposed. This was a huge event in comics. After over five decades, Superman was engaged to Lois Lane! But the big changes didn't stop there. Once she'd accepted, Clark decided there could be no secrets if Lois was going to make such a serious decision, told Lois who he was. Lois said she’d always suspected as much and after considering the matter very seriously, she stuck with her answer of "yes" to his proposal. Despite the risks and the fact her husband was constantly in danger, she still loved him wanted to marry him.

Some of you are no doubt saying "Wait a second! Lois can't know who Superman is! That's one of the things everybody knows about Superman, that Lois doesn't know her co-worker and her hero as the same person! This ruins things."

Well, at the time, fan reaction wasn't that negative, actually. People sort of expected it after seeing them dating for a while and after having a few years of Lois and Clark slowly growing closer and Lois realizing that the grounded human being was who she wanted more than the super-hero fantasy. So it wasn't as if this came out of nowhere.

From the writer's perspective, writer/artist Dan Jurgens (who was working on Superman at the time) explained "By virtue of having Clark keep his identity as Superman from Lois, it kind of made him the biggest liar in the world. We decided that was out of character. So as we started moving forward, the idea was to have him reveal his identity, propose to Lois and then we would eventually have them get married."

Now by this time the Superman writers had things down to a formula. The writers of all the Superman titles would meet together and have a long meeting in which they figured out the rough plan of Kal-El's stories for the next year, after which there would be several meetings planning out who would write what chapter and aspect of this tapestry. With multiple titles coming out in different weeks, Superman really had one on-going storyline that came out with a new chapter ever week rather than different monthly storylines running parallel to each other.

So this year, the plan was simple. It would be an event to be talked about by the entire world: the wedding of Superman and Lois Lane! It would be huge. Newspapers would speak of it, TV and radio news anchors would talk about this strange event involving two characters that had been around for over five decades. Issues would sell out! There would be drama, romance, action, guest-stars galore! One could only imagine who would show up at the wedding and what villains may try to crash it for one reason or another. No one would be more excited than the writers themselves.

And then Warner Bros. basically told them "Sorry, no. Think of something else."

"Great Rao!" the Superman writers proclaimed (okay, so I wasn't there, yeah, but this is how I like to imagine how things went). Shocked, they looked at each other and asked, "How could our parent company make such a demand of us? What could they be thinking?"

Well, it's all about marketing, folks. See, Warner Bros. had begun airing the new live-action TV show Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, starring Terri Hatcher and Dean Cain. The show was a tongue-in-cheek look at Superman's life, downplaying the sci-fi action and emphasizing the comedic romantic triangle of Lois, Clark and Superman, a triangle that the audience and the hero knew actually involved only two people.

The show was doing pretty well on ratings and Warner Bros. was concerned that no one would watch the show and enjoy its romantic tension, wondering "will they get together or won't they?", if they could just go to the comic book store and see that the "real" versions of Superman and Lois were indeed married. Therefore, the comic book incarnations could not be married until the TV versions did so or the show was cancelled. Since it didn't look like either of those things were happening soon, DC needed a completely new big event to focus around that year.

Frustrated by having a year's worth of storylines completely shelved by the Man, the writers all looked around the table at each other, wondering what they could now have their hero go through that would possibly be as cool as a wedding and also wondering how they heck they could come up with a reasonable explanation of why the wedding would have to be postponed for at least a couple of years (depending on how long the show ran).

It has been said that whenever the writers were stuck during a meeting, Jerry Ordway would jokingly say, "Let's just kill 'im."

And so it was that at this new meeting, with the writers all looking at each other with blank stares and no real ideas to replace the wedding storyline, the famous Superman artist once again, remarked "Let's just kill 'im."

And this time ... it didn't seem like such a bad idea after all.

THE DEATH AND RETURN OF SUPERMAN

Every network news station, various radio stations and CNN all had the same story. “DC Comics has decided to kill Superman.”

Everyone talked about it. I remember seeing a montage on one of the news stations in which they showed a clip from Superman II where it looked like (for a moment) that Superman had been killed. News media showed the cover of the issue where he would die and many folks talked about how people felt about the loss of an icon. At a comic shop, I even saw a couple of folks wearing black arm bands with Superman’s S-shield on them.

Ironically, the ones least worried about Superman’s death were people who actually read his comics. Any Superman reader worth his salt knew full well there was no way DC would actually kill their flagship character, especially when there were no plans to cancel any of his regular titles. But the rest of the world didn’t understand the nature of comics and the fact that very few characters truly stayed dead.

Before anyone starts crying out that the Death storyline and what followed were cheap marketing gimmicks, I want to point out that the gimmicks worked. Before, I wasn't a big Superman reader. My curiosity about the death pulled me into his comics, along with several friends of mine, and we haven’t left since. Likewise, I know many others who got into it via the death story arc. Was it the best written story ever? No. But it brought us in and gave us the opportunity to get curious enough that we looked back and found the truly great stories from before and we stuck around to find the great stories yet to come.

DC man Mike Carlin had a good point too. He said, “We had to show how cruddy it would be if he wasn’t alive — that you don’t know what you have until it’s gone.”

DC president Paul Levitz added that they were deliberately challenging the expectations of readers in order to up the ante of the comics. "The fundamental writer's challenge for a character like Superman is that the reader has a certain assumption that everything will be fine. Lois Lane isn't going to die, Superman isn't going to die, Metropolis isn't going to be destroyed. What's at stake?" DC's Jenette Khan also added, "We had to make The Death of Superman totally real. It had to have real weight, real consequence, real heartbreak. And we had to sustain it for enough time with enough complexity that people would believe it. And if they believed it that they would experience what ultimately all of us on that journey experienced, what a world without Superman could be like."

The Death of Superman featured a new character called Doomsday who appeared almost literally from nowhere and began a rampage across America, killing indiscriminately, causing destruction for its own sake, and shrugging off all attempts to stop him. Dan Jurgens created the character, saying that he wanted the death of Superman not to be a complex plot involving sacrifice but a giant slug-fest where Superman was simply pushed to the limits of his power and strength. He conceived of a vicious "Hulk-like" character who existed simply as an engine of death, the perfect anti-thesis to Superman who was a symbol of life and hope. On the planning board for the comics, the storyline was nicknamed "Doomsday for Superman." The writers later decided that "Doomsday" was a perfect name for this new character.

The battle went through several issues, with both opponents wearing each other down. Their fight raged across several state-lines until they reached Metropolis. Stopping in front of the Daily Planet building, Superman and Doomsday were punching each other so hard that the shock waves were shattering glass windows nearby. Finally, they both put all their efforts into one last simultaneous attack and seemingly killed each other. Lois ran to Superman, cradling him, saying he’d done it, that they were safe and the monster was dead, only to have the Man of Steel fall limp in her arms.

It was the end. The news cameras broadcasted the image all around the world. Ma and Pa Ken held each other as they cried. Lois wailed as her lover lay dead in her arms. And the narration told us "... it's too late. For this is the day ... that a Superman died!"

Superman inker Brett Breeding commented afterwards, "I think a lot of people still have this notion that we just had this big abomination smash-pound him into the ground and he died. The idea was that Superman gets to a point where the only way can stop this creature is to basically sacrifice himself. He's gonna have to go to the point where he loses in order to defeat it."

"By doing that," Dan Jurgens added, "it really, I think, heightened the drama ... I think there was a lot of powerful imagery there."

It was a sad, if noble, ending. What made the heart break more was in a scene issues later when Lois stood next to the coffin in Superman's tomb, imagined the wedding they were supposed to have, and whispered to herself "I do." But her dreams didn't seem to matter anymore. Her love and her hero was gone.

Or was he?

After the death, we had the story-arc "World Without A Superman" (originally titled "Funeral For a Friend"). It told of the funeral and how the world was coping with the loss of its greatest hero. Through the eyes of average citizens, Lois, the Kents, Lana, Jimmy Olsen, and many super-heroes, readers saw just how much Superman had meant to everyone and why he'd been so important. But a curious thing was happening. Some characters realized that the wounds on Superman's body from his battle with Doomsday had healed. But how was that possible? Bodies don’t heal after death.

At the end of the "Funeral For A Friend", Jonathan Kent had a heart attack and was rushed to the hospital. As doctors tried to revive him, Jonathan had a dream (or was it a vision?) of Clark’s spirit being trapped, hovering between life and death. Jonathan reached out to his adopted son and asked him not to think of himself as a mortal man, as a human being, but to think of himself as the powerful alien champion others saw him as and to fight for his life. Jonathan then saw both himself and Clark flying away from the light at the end of the tunnel and moments later the elder Kent woke up in the hospital, whispering that his son was back.

Lois was disturbed by this and dismissed it as nothing but delirium. But she soon realized it may have been more than that. People started reporting Superman sightings. Criminals in Metropolis were found captured (sometimes even killed) and witnesses claimed a flying man in a red cape was responsible. Finally, Lois checked out Superman's tomb... only to find that Clark's body was missing.

Thus, the final part of the trilogy began, with a title that paid homage to the first Superman story ever written: "Reign of the Supermen." Where once there had been one Metropolis Marvel, now there were four. Readers were introduced to two people claiming to be Superman (one of whom was a cyborg, the other of whom was a remorseless vigilante wearing a visor), a man named John Henry Irons who created a suit of techno-armor to honor Superman's life by carrying on his fight (he would later be known as the armored hero "Steel"), and a super-powered teenager who was the result of an attempt to clone Superman by manipulating human DNA to mimic Kryptonian genetics. The teenager was called SuperBOY due to his age and was very much a smart-mouth, headstrong kid, not at all like the Pre-Crisis Superboy who'd just been a young Clark Kent. Since he didn't have copies of Superman's memories, he didn't act like any kid the Kents would've raised.

The Cyborg-Superman turned out to be an old foe out to ruin Kal's reputation and the visor-wearing Superman was revealed to be the Eradicator in a new body. As a machine that had been tasked with preserving all things Kryptonian, the Eradicator had been re-activated when the last survivor of Krypton had been bought to death's door.

Interestingly, the Eradicator wound up being the key to the true Superman's return from the grave. It was revealed during this story that Superman had not been truly killed, but taken as near to death as he'd ever been. His body was locked in a near-death state due to the trauma it had suffered, but he could still be revived, just as human beings can be clinically dead but revived with defibrillator pads if they are reached in time. Earth technology was unable to detect such weak life signs, but Superman had still been somewhat alive this whole time and that's why his wounds had healed following the fight with Doomsday. Radiation he had been exposed to in the Cadmus labs had kept up the preservation somewhat and then he had been saved just in time by the Eradicator, who took him to the Fortress and placed him in a regeneration chamber that bathed him in concentrated solar energy.

After two weeks of this, Superman emerged, just about powerless but at least alive and healed. He also now sported long hair (cuz it was the 90's, man). On top of that, he now had three new allies. The other Superman pretender turned out to be the Eradicator, remodeled and with a different outlook on life (though he was still dangerous if you ticked him off). Steel stuck around and got his own comic for a while. He also had a movie made about him starring Shaq, but the less said of that the better. The teenage clone stuck around under the name Superboy and has since become a hero in his own right, becoming great friends with Tim Drake (the third boy to be called "Robin") with him he formed the team Young Justice. Later on, Superboy would join a new version of the Teen Titans.

Now, you're asking "Wait! How did Clark come back to work at the Planet? Didn't people find it suspicious that he was missing during the whole time folks thought Superman was dead and only showed up when the big guy was resurrected?"

Good question. Clark himself wasn't sure how to solve this problem either. Every solution he came up with, Lois saw holes in it. Clark Kent had been missing for roughly two months (comic book time, not real world time) and was presumed to be one of the many missing/dead resulting from Doomsday's initial rampage. How did he explain this absence? Fortunately, the answer came a day later. While out in the city, Superman detected life hiddin among the rubble of the one of the buildings that had been destroyed during Doomsday's rampage. He found two emaciated children hiding in a cellar. The rubble had buried them from sight and muffled the sound of their cries, but they'd been able to survive all this time via the water pipes and some small food they had. Jimmy Olsen, who never gave up hope, suddenly had a thought and excitedly told Superman that not only was there a possibility of finding other survivors in similar situations, but there was even a slim chance one of those survivors was Clark Kent. Superman then looked at Lois and said, "Now, why didn't I think of that?"

So the next day, Kal called up Matrix and had her shape-shift into Clark Kent and bury herself in some of the rubble. As Superman made his way through the ruined parts of the city that hadn't been cleared yet, he suddenly cried out as he said he detected yet another living person who was buried alive. Television crews and newspaper photographers had been following the Man of Steel during his efforts and so the entire world was an eye-witness to the event of Superman freeing Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Clark Kent from the debris. Lois was there as well and thanked Superman publicly for finding her fiancée. The plan went off without a hitch.

On a side note, these post "Reign of the Superman" issues also had Bibbo find a small white dog who he wound up naming Krypto. Later on, Superboy wound up being in constant company of the dog and the two had a love-hate relationship between them. This dog had no super powers and was later dropped as a character.

The Eradicator remained a shady character and could be an enemy or an ally depending on his state of mind and what was going on. At times, Kal would call on help from Steel, Supergirl and Superboy and the three became known to fans as "Team Superman" or "Strike Force Superman." Once, when Steel couldn't make it to the party, Kal's fortress robot Kelex filled in instead, operating the armor from within. So although he was technically still the only surviving Kryptonian, Superman had once again gained a family of sorts in the Post-Crisis universe.

DARKNESS BUT WITH A BIT OF HOPE

Superman went through a lot in the next few years. Along with sporting new longer hair (which means Clark now wore a pony-tail), he had to deal with a childhood friend becoming an enemy. We learned that young Clark had grown up with a boy named Kenny Braverman, a kid who'd always felt he was in Clark's shadow since in all sporting events and competitions he came in second and Clark came in first. He became bitter, believing that he would have had a better life had Clark never been born. In the present day, he came after Clark as the cyborg villain Conduit. And when he discovered that Clark was also Superman, he became even more obsessed, attacking our hero with kryptonite coils and gauntlets and trying to kill the Kents. Clark actually went into hiding for a while in the storyline "The Death of Clark Kent", but Conduit forced him into a duel

Sadly, instead of keeping this villain and enhancing Superman's rogues gallery, Kenny wound up accidentally bringing about his own death during a major battle against our hero. Clark mourned his misguided friend and berated Kenny's own father for not being more supportive and for directly causing his son to become consumed by bitterness and hatred.

Conduit wasn't the only dark episode in Superman's life. DC decided to change the villain Toyman from a silly guy with large toys and robots into a sinister figure. Toyman was suddenly portrayed as schizophrenic, believing he was taking orders from his dead mother, and took children hostage, including the son of Clark's co-worker Cat Grant. When the boy tried to escape, Toyman killed him and Superman was haunted by the fact that he hadn't been able to save the child. Many fans cried out that this story was a betrayal, that the Toyman of all villains would never have acted to hurt a child.

As if that wasn't bad enough, Superman wound up having issues of his heritage slap him in the face. He was forced to fight Doomsday again (who hadn't died either) and discovered that the creature was a biological weapon that had been engineered on Krypton millennia ago. In fact, the monster's creation was responsible for inspiring many Kryptonians to pursue genetic sciences in the following years.

Following the events of Zero Hour, Superman had to content with Alpha Centurion, a soldier from ancient Rome who'd been whisked away by aliens and brought back in the modern-day. Unaged and armed with high-tech weapons, he sought to be the new hero of Metropolis and Lois Lane's new love. Months before, Superman had actually met another version of the Alpha Centurion from an alternate timeline, but he didn't care for his own timeline's Centurion especially when the hero became temporary leader of the Team Luthor security force.

Later on, Superman was arrested by aliens and put on trial for the destruction of Krypton (cuz you've gotta blame someone, right?). During that fiasco, he met a new enemy, a sorcerer named Tolos who possessed a tiny city in a bottle he called Kandor. This city was filled with a variety of different alien life-forms, not Kryptonians. Superman later took the bottle city to his fortress so they would be safe rather than at the mercy of a parasite, though he had no idea how to even begin trying to free the folks trapped inside.

In this new version, the city was Kandor was not just shrunken. Kandor was actually locked in a field that put it out of phase with reality and the bottle was just a machine that stabilized the field.

When Lex Luthor II was revealed to be Lex Luthor the original, the criminal mastermind unleashed a contingency plan that left much of Metropolis in rubble, despite Superman's best efforts. This could have been a storyline with some serious consequences, but then DC took an issue to have the sorceress Zatanna rebuild much of the city with her magic (a shame she couldn't do that for Gotham City when it later had a similar catastrophe).

During all this, the show Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman was doing well on television. Because the comics still couldn't have Clark and Lois get married until it happened in the TV show, they decided it was necessary to come up with a tangible reason why they weren't planning the wedding already. So, they brought in the Joker, who poisoned Lois. When Superman confronted the psychopathic killer in Arkham Asylum, the Joker revealed that injecting the same poison into his own bloodstream would create antibodies that would save Lois' life but would kill him in the process. Superman could not in good conscience sentence a criminal in custody to death in cold blood, especially knowing how his mind had unraveled after he'd killed those three criminals from the Pocket Universe.

But to everyone's surprise, Lois didn't die. She got better. The poison was never fatal but had only appeared that way. It was a joke. The Joker either got to scare Superman or he'd force the Man of Tomorrow to kill for no reason. Superman was glad Lois was still alive, but she was disturbed that he had essentially chosen a criminal's life over her own. Eventually, this and other tensions led to Lois thinking that perhaps they had not made the right decision and she became a foreign correspondent, returning Clark's ring and leaving him and Metropolis.

After that, Superman had to deal with a severe loss of powers and the return of Lex Luthor, who was able to convince the public that an "evil clone" had impersonated him and committed crimes such as trying to destroy Metropolis (which is not entirely untrue, really).

Finally, the television writers of Lois and Clark decided it was time for the characters to get hitched. To coincide with the airing of this event, DC brought out a one-shot special called SUPERMAN: The Wedding Album in which the couple quickly re-united, realized they were silly to wait any longer, announced that they were engaged again, got an apartment as a wedding present from Batman, and finally got hitched (just as soon as Clark finally got a haircut, something that both Lois and readers highly approved of). If you look, you can see various Superman writers and artists in the wedding ceremony.

In the comics, Superman and Lois are still married and have impressed many by being one of the few comic book super-hero couples who don't seem to be in danger of getting divorced or having one of them killed off. After the wedding, Alpha Centurion finally giving up on the girl and leaving Metropolis to operate as a hero in Washington D.C.

The wedding also led to great stories such as Lois getting jealous when Wonder Woman visits and stories in which Superman and Lois talk seriously over the pros and cons of trying to have a child in the future (they later figure that they probably can't since Kryptonian DNA and human DNA are too different). The TV series, however, fell greatly when audience members were no longer teased about romantic tension and was cancelled soon afterwards, just in time for a new animated program to arrive.

Superman The Animated Series premiered on the WB network and showed version of the character who seemed to be a mesh of the Post-Crisis and some Pre-Crisis concepts. The cartoon did very well and began to open up readers and writers to the notion that perhaps not everything Pre-Crisis should've been retooled or discarded.

Grant Morrison started a new Justice League of America title (called simply JLA) and defied what many had said was impossible: that someone could write a monthly series with a team composed of DC's biggest guns, Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, etc., and not only make it interesting month after month but continually put them against menaces that were threatening enough none of the team members could've handled them on their own. It was a fantastic run that went on for a few year and once again put the Last Son of Krypton in the spotlight as a guy who inspired and led Earth's greatest heroes.

ELECTRIC BOOGALOO

DC needed another shake-up. Sales on Superman were still respectable but not as high as they could've been. Why wasn't the Man of Steel as popular as Gotham's Dark Knight? Perhaps, DC thought, because everyone is so used to Superman and what he can do and a man that confident in his abilities may be too boring.

They'd already done a few storylines where Clark's powers were taken away. But what if they did a new twist? What if instead of becoming human, he traded his abilities for an entirely new set of powers, powers he would have to experiment with and get used to? It'd be like watching a man learn how to walk all over again.

The sorcerer Tolos, trapped in the bottle reality of Kandor, still wanted Superman's body for himself. He tried casting spells to pull the Kryptonian out of his reality and in phase with Kandor, trapping him there. Things didn't work out, though, and Tolos' spell only worked half-way. With his body now somewhat out of phase with the physical world, Superman became an energy-based life form. With a suit made by Prof. Hamilton and LexCorp tech, his condition was stabilized but he was now an all-together different hero.

In his new energy form, Superman flew by basically becoming a lightning bolt and zapping across the sky at speeds that now rivaled the Flash's. He was mostly intangible, so bullets passed through him, meaning he had to be more careful in battles and couldn't carry people during flight. He could release bolts of energy, which he sometimes did from his eyes because he was so used to heat-vision. As an energy being, he could sense energy fields around him and also absorb energy, light and radiation without harm to himself (which conveniently made him invulnerable to kryptonite). And to his surprise, water seemed to have no real affect on his abilities.

Eventually, Kal learned how to achieve other tricks with his new abilities. If he focused, he could absorb the kinetic energy of things passing through his body and send it back as a force blast, a skill he called "violent absorption." He could also telepathically link-up with computer systems and/or disrupt electrical devices by phasing his hand through the machine.

Of course, our hero still needed a secret identity. Superman found that if he focused all his energies, he could make himself completely tangible again. Only one problem. Now when he transformed into Clark Kent, he was completely human. When he was Superman, he was still a super-powered being, but as Clark he now had to deal with typing stories at normal speed, having to eat and sleep a lot more often, and being more vulnerable to the dangers that threaten a crusading reporter who often confronts criminals and mobsters.

This storyline lasted for several months but fans didn't respond too kindly to it, many saying this was a pathetic marketing ploy. Others waited patiently, knowing that (despite the editor's claims to the contrary) this change would be temporary.

In his JLA issues, Grant Morrison seemed the most effective in showing that whatever powers or costume he wore, Superman was still the same confident, inspirational hero underneath. The best example for this was when an attack on Earth by renegade angels and cunning demons caused a lot of chaos and also involved the moon being moved closer to the Earth. Not about to watch his adopted world get thrown off its axis, Superman set up two giant towers on the moon's surface and with his new abilities he gave the satellite its own natural magnetic pole, causing it to repel form Earth. With his new powers, Superman had done something no one had seen him do since the Pre-Crisis days. He moved a damn moon.

And as if that weren't enough, the same story showed the electric Superman getting into an arm wrestling match with a renegade angel named Asmodel. At one point, Asmodel attacked Superman with a blast that was supposed to drive any but the purest souls insane from the trauma. Kal-El took it and hammered back at the angel. The JLA watched in awe and the Flash whispered, "This is a guy who said he couldn't live up to his myth ... He's wrestling an angel."

If only the Superman titles themselves had shown the same kind of magic Morrison's JLA did. Maybe the Electric Superman story would've been perceived differently.

After several months, Superman was captured by two of his enemies who decided to have a team-up: Hank Henshaw and the Toyman. The villains attempted to split Superman apart and scatter his energies, but instead they caused him to split into two beings: Superman Red and Superman Blue (hey, those guys sound familiar!) Before fans could finish groaning, S-Red and S-Blue got involved in a war with god-like beings called the "Millenium Giants" and saved the world. In the final moments, the two electric Supermen seemed to merge and in the one-shot Superman Forever we learned that Clark was not only unified again, but he was back to normal, his original body and powers restored. Exactly how this happened was pretty vague. Clark said it was a "reward" for his efforts and willingness to sacrifice himself for the world. In a later JLA issue, he said it was simply a result of the battle taxing all of his energy reserves, forcing his body to revert to its default state. No one really cared, though. They were just glad their caped wonder was back.

SUPERMAN REX 

The next year, we met a new organization known as the "Supermen of American", young heroes who tried to live by Superman's example. They were taken in by Luthor, who funded their activities and used them to sponsor various charities around the world. Superman was a bit annoyed that Luthor was making good PR off of his own name, but before he could do anything about it he had to deal with the new villain Dominus, whose powers relied on illusions and mental realities.

This led to a long storyline where Superman had his mind warped for a time. He was haunted by mad dreams that the world would fall to chaos if he didn't do more to defend it. He increased the facilities of his fortress, allowing himself to watch over most of the planet. He began directly interfering in international conflicts and wars whereas before he'd always been respectful of U.N. protocols and not enforcing his will on others. As his mind became more corrupted, he created an army of robots that could mimic his range of abilities (though to a lesser degree, obviously). Thus, the Pre-Crisis idea of the funny Superman robots who used to hang around the Fortress had been brought back in a sinister new way.

 

Eventually, the other super-heroes stepped in and Superman and his robot army fought them and many others. Eventually, Superman was able to defeat Dominus, thanks to his own cunning, the efforts of Lois, a Phantom Zone projector, and a single robot that had been reprogrammed to protect Lois and fight for good. After the battle was over, Superman had to rebuild his Fortress (which had been seriously damaged during this affair). With Steel's help, he remade it into a tesseract structure (meaning that, like the TARDIS on Doctor Who, it was bigger inside than out). The interior of the new Fortress was much more majestic and now involved the use of Kryptonian "data crystals", similar to what had been seen in the Christopher Reeve movie. The good Superman robot who had been re-programmed was appointed the new guardian of this Fortress, along with Kelex, and he was named "Ned" (after Lois's protective uncle). Kelex also got an upgrade when Steel's neice Natasha reprogrammed him to constantly speak in Earth slang, making him a great source of comic relief.

So now, Superman was beginning to more closely resemble his Pre-Crisis self in a few ways. DC had begun relaxing about keeping him different from his roots after shows like Superman The Animated Series and comic book homages such as Alan Moore's run on Supreme (which is basically a big love-letter to Pre-Crisis Superman and you should all read it) proved that the concepts themselves could still be a lot of fun with just a little tweaking instead of tossing them out entirely.

To further this, Ultraman was reintroduced, now said to be a villain from the anti-matter universe where he ruled that reality's version of Earth alongside his Crime Syndicate of Amerika. And Brainiac regained his android form after an attempt to take over the body of Clark Ross (the newly-born son of Pete Ross and Lana) went awry.

But that still wasn't quite enough. Writer Jeph Loeb jumped on board and started bringing back more Pre-Crisis ideas. When the Joker stole a huge amount of magical energy, he recreated Bizarro. But unlike Luthor's Post-Crisis attempts to clone Superman, this new Bizarro spoke backwards and had reversed powers such fire breath and ice-vision. And during a trip to the Phantom Zone, Superman found an alternate version of Krypton that closely resembeld the Silver Age vesion. When he left this other Krypton, he was followed by a white dog named Krypto who quickly developed super-powers.

But this wasn't just same old, same old. Unlike Pre-Crisis Krypto, this version had no human intelligence. He was simply a dog through and through and this led to lots of comedy when Lois had to deal with a canine who could rip down the door by pawing at it or would blast a nearby cat with heat-vision.

Metropolis then got a totally new look when Brainiac 13, a successor to Superman's enemy from many centuries in the future, infected the city with his future tech in an attempt to use it as a foothold for taking over Earth. Metropolis was now "the City of Tomorrow" in a whole new way and Luthor was able to take advantage of the new technologies to increase LexCorp's power and then make a successful bid for the presidency. Luthor had been powerful before, but now he had the government and military at his beck and call.

Wildstorm (now owned by DC) had been producing some very successful anti-hero comics, the most popular of which was The Authority. This book featured a group of heroes (some of whom were direct analogies to Justice League members) who were very proactive in helping the world how they saw fit, taking out military dictators as readily as they would alien conquerors. Joe Kelly, one of Superman's writers at this time, decided to see how these guys would operate in Superman's world. Superman met Manchester Black, a borderline psychopathic telepath who had recruited several violent metahumans known as the Elite. Manchester Black argued that Superman was too much of a boy scout and couldn't get the job properly done in this increasingly dark world.

Superman not only stuck by his principles, but he deliberately misled Manchester Black into thinking he'd gone insane and killed the rest of the Elite. When Black tried to use his telepathy on Superman, our boy in blue used a combination of micro-scopic vision and heat-vision to adjust the villain's brain and temporarily repress his powers. Superman had done this to show just how terrible it would be if he did operate by Black's rules.

There were problems with Luthor, of course. He made some of Clark's life quite hard and it became worse when he discovered Clark's secret identity. On top of that, he recovered Doomsday and decided to keep him as a weapon to use if necessary. But Clark had help against some of Luthor's schemes. One great thing was that Lois had made a deal with Luthor that he could ask her to drop one story of hers in the future, no matter what, if he sold The Daily Planet to Perry White for the sum of one dollar. Luthor agreed. To finance the Planet, Perry brought in a new chief investor ... Bruce Wayne, who took a keen interest in making sure the Planet could do everything in its power to expose the corrupt President of the U.S. 

After some set-up, Loeb then produced a huge crossover event known as "Our Worlds At War." Superman had to fight off what seemed to be a new version of Zod while also protecting the planet from attacks by Brainiac 13 and the god-like force known as Imperiex. It was a massive war and Superman was at the front of it, fighting as hard as he could while rallying the heroes behind him. During the climatic battle, our hero actually flew through the sun in an effort to increase his powers. It nearly killed him in the process, but it worked and Imperiex and Brainiac 13 were both defeated.

"Our Worlds At War" came at a bizarrely appropriate time. The storyline really kicekd off when Imperiex destoyed much of Topeka, Kansas in an unprovoked attack. Just as the tale ended, the terrorist attacks of September 11th happened in the real world. For about a year afterwards, Superman changed his S-shield to red and black, mourning and remembering all those who'd died in the attack on Topeka in the DCU and in the attacks on Virginia and New York in the real world.

Loeb left and some of the storylines changed after that. Where Loeb had clearly intended to bring back Zod, we found out that this new "Zod" was actually just a man who'd been mutated by kryptonite that had fallen to Earth years ago and had someone made contact with the spirit of the pocket universe villain Superman had killed. Where we'd found out that an alternate version of Krypton existed in the Phantom Zone, we later discovered that this was actually a false world set-up by Brainiac 13 as part of an elaborate trap. Krypto and the other Kryptonians there were originally other alien life forms that the villain had engineered to resembled Superman's people.

It wasn't all disappointing though. Joe Kelly wrote a story called "The Ending Battle" which featured Superman face off against a huge collection of his most dangerous rogues, including several "new" enemies who were actually reintroduced Pre-Crisis villains. Nuetron and the Master Jailer were back and more powerful and vicious than before (thank God too, cuz the Master Jailer was just silly Pre-Crisis). The story ended with Manchester Black, his powers returned, convincing Superman that he'd murdered Lois Lane. But Superman still wouldn't resort of murdering the man and Manchester Black was shocked to see that Superman was "the real thing", a noble hero who believed what he fought for. As a reward, Black released Superman from the illusion of Lois's death and then telepathically erased the knowledge of his secret ID from Luthor's mind.

Luthor was still trouble though. Lois had discovered evidence that Luthor had known the Imperiex War was coming and had done nothing to prevent it. As per their arrangement, Lois was asked to kill the story and did so. But nothing about their agreement had said that Clark couldn't print the story himself, under his own byline. Unfortunately, some of the evidence was altered and Clark was forced to leave the Planet (at least in the public eye) for bringing up allegations that couldn't be backed. Still, many began to wonder now about their golden President. 

A few stories came and went. Supergirl went away and a new one showed up for a few issues who wasn't that impressive. And then came a story called Birthright. And Superman's origins and atmosphere wound up changing again.

And we'll talk about that (and the events of Infinite Crisis and beyond) in Part 4.

Comments

[Riccardo]

Great Article Alan, you're a fabulous writer.
It's a pity that Superman is very different from one version to another.

[Alan Kistler]

Why is that a pity?

[Riccardo]

Well Alan, I'd like Superman to have always the sa

[Riccardo]

Excuse me Alan, I didn't finished the sentence; however, I was going to say that I'd like Superman to have always the same personality.
That's just my opinion.

[Alan Kistler]

Well, on one hand I certainly understand that. On the other hand, such a character may have fallen out of the public eye and discontinued having regular adventures long, long ago like Tom Swift, Sherlock Holmes, the Shadow and others if they were not open to be re-interpreted and re-defined for new audiences every fifteen years or so.

[Riccardo]

Maybe you're right Alan, the fact that Superman has been re-interpreted and re-defined every fifteen years has allowed him to last so long.
I'd like ta ask you something though: Which is your NO 1 version of Superman?