Would a Superman Returns type comic book event have worked better after COIE?

[Mister Mets]

I know this is asking why an approach used in a movie that came out this year wasn't used in a comic book that came out twenty years ago, but I'll still ask the question.

Would a Superman Returns type event have worked better after Crisis of Infinite Earths than the relaunch we got?

The problem with that relaunch was that we had a young inexperienced Superman meeting heroes who were more experienced (ie- The Teen Titans) which led to all sorts of continuity problems, took away the idea of Superman as one of the first superheroes, and prevented writers from focusing on the inexperienced Superman, as they were encouraged to get Superman to the confidence/ power level of the one everyone remembered.

Would it have been a better idea to have Superman return after a prolonged absence (maybe he was saving an alien universe or something)?

This way you'd have had a Superman who predates the Barry Allen Flash in the DCU. You'd still have an opportunity to start from Ground Zero with the new status quo, as the storyline would be the perfect opportunity for a new beginning. This would not have prevented John Byrne from doing his Man of Steel revamp. Those stories would just have been set earlier in the DCU (and there would be other opportunities to focus on Superman's first adventures.)

[Sean Whitmore]

The problem with that relaunch was that we had a young inexperienced Superman meeting heroes who were more experienced (ie- The Teen Titans) which led to all sorts of continuity problems, took away the idea of Superman as one of the first superheroes, and prevented writers from focusing on the inexperienced Superman, as they were encouraged to get Superman to the confidence/ power level of the one everyone remembered.

I'm actually not sure what you mean here. The only inexperienced Superman we saw was during the Man of Steel mini, and the only other hero he met during that time was Batman.

By the time Superman (vol 2) #1 arrived, Superman mentioned he'd been operating for about 10 years or so. He still predated the formation of the Justice League and all that.

You are right about him not being the first super hero anymore, but that'll always be the case as long as the Justice Society is canon. But he was still the first of the "modern" super heroes (possibly tied with Batman).


SEAN

[Mister Mets]

I'm actually not sure what you mean here. The only inexperienced Superman we saw was during the Man of Steel mini, and the only other hero he met during that time was Batman.

By the time Superman (vol 2) #1 arrived, Superman mentioned he'd been operating for about 10 years or so. He still predated the formation of the Justice League and all that.

You are right about him not being the first super hero anymore, but that'll always be the case as long as the Justice Society is canon. But he was still the first of the "modern" super heroes (possibly tied with Batman).


SEAN

I thought some events in Man of Steel were referenced as occurring eighteen months before Superman #1 (especially the plot involving the stolen spacecraft in Man of Steel #6.) I'll have to check the issue for reference. Don't have it on me at the moment.

If I'm right, you had a Superman with a few years (four years at most) experience (as Man of Steel covered roughly two years) but it would still be a Superman who can't really team up with Nightwing (as "Year One" established that Supes was operating in Metropolis during Batman's first year) and a Superman who just can't predate the Barry Allen Flash.

I was under the impression that most superheroes were inactive until the Silver Age heroes emerged, and that the Golden Age heroes mostly disappeared after World War 2. While Superman wouldn't be the first superhero in this case, he'd be the first new hero in decades, and would still have launched a new generation of heroes (and gotten the JSA types out of retirement).

[Ontir]

I think it'd have been better, if as Claremont suggested, Superman of Earth 1 had died in Crisis, with Superman of Earth 2 being lost to the others. Earth 1 Lois survives, while Earth 2 Lois dies. After Crisis, Superman returns, with his entire history from 1938 intact, except that Smallville and Lana Lang are now a part of Clark/Kal-el's past, and this new, young Lois is his present and future.

[PatrickG]

To make some sense out of that last post, my understanding IS that Claremont's idea was for Earth-2 Superman, at the end of Crisis, to simply wipe off some "old age" makeup and wipe the white streaks out of his hair... And pick up.

I presume that had this been the method chosen, we would have ultimately been presented with a post-Crisis continuity where Superman debuted in 1938 and simply didn't age.

Not entirely unlike how Carter Hall took Katar Hol's place in post-Hawkworld continuity.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

Alan Moore used this to great effect in Supreme.

I'm surprised DC didn't go for it.

You have Superman debut in 1938, working for the Daily Star with Lana Lang replacing the Golden Age Lois. Superman disappears in 1951 and returns sometime in the recent past to inspire the next heroic age, now working for the Daily Planet alongside the new love of his life, Lois Lane.

The only hitch with this is you'd lose Ma & Pa Kent, but considering the vast majority of Superman stories got along just fine without the Kents being alive, I don't see that being a big problem.

The upside is you have Superman back as the original and greatest hero of the DCU.

[marshal99]

Ugh , too many continuity problem with that. Where do you place a superman that works with the world War II JSA and the present day JLA ?
And the thought of golden age supes and present day lois would be ugh ! He would have been already been retired with the JSA when she was just born. Can you imagine E2 Clark working with Perry as a underling considering Clark was the boss of the daily star in the past and older and more experience than Perry . :D

[SKETCHSANCHEZ]

Damn that is a great idea, I wish they went that route.

[Lorendiac]

I'm actually not sure what you mean here. The only inexperienced Superman we saw was during the Man of Steel mini, and the only other hero he met during that time was Batman.

By the time Superman (vol 2) #1 arrived, Superman mentioned he'd been operating for about 10 years or so. He still predated the formation of the Justice League and all that.

You are right about him not being the first super hero anymore, but that'll always be the case as long as the Justice Society is canon. But he was still the first of the "modern" super heroes (possibly tied with Batman).


SEAN


I looked at this thread yesterday, but I didn't say anything right away. I went home and pulled out my copies of Byrne's "Man of Steel" miniseries to double-check my memory of some of his references to the passing of time as he laid the foundation for Superman's "modern" Post-Crisis adventures that would supposedly be happening "right now, in the present-day DCU" in three ongoing titles in the late 1980s. I thought I remembered what Superman's chronology was supposed to be in those days, and how it was quietly retconned later, but I didn't want to commit myself to anything until I had confirmed a couple of points.

Now that I've glanced at some key references again, here's how I think it happened! Brace yourselves; this is going to take a little time to explain! :)

In the last sequence of "Man of Steel #1" we are told that it's been 7 years since Clark left Smallville and starting spending a lot of his time trying to "inconspicuously" help people out with his powers. Then he gets caught on camera and panics, but Ma and Pa help him come up with a new "Superman" costume and identity. If he left Smallville at age 18, after graduating from high school, then he is 25 as he first becomes Superman.

In "Man of Steel #3" we see Byrne's version of "the very first" Superman/Batman teamup. I didn't look it up last night, but I seem to recall that it specifically mentioned somewhere in dialogue that Superman had been getting regular mentions in the media for about six months at this point. And we got the distinct impression that Batman, too, was still in the early days of his own costumed career and just starting to attract some media attention (although, unlike Supes, he apparently did not give out official interviews). They apparently started wearing costumes at about the same time, give or take a month, maybe. (Some dialogue in Frank Miller's "Year One" also supported the idea that the "Man of Steel" in Metropolis and the Batman in Gotham both started their costumed careers in the same timeframe.)

In "Man of Steel #6" Lana mentions it's been 10 years since he broke up with her (revealing his powers in the process). That would make him 28 at the time of this story. This is confirmed later in that same issue when Clark specifically reflects that it was 28 years ago that Ma and Pa found him as a baby in that rocket out in the field. In this same issue, Clark gets a ton of information about old Krypton downloaded into his brain and starts to come to terms with the realization that he isn't from Earth at all! (He mentions that prior to this time, he and his foster parents had long thought he might have been the subject of a top secret Russian experiment, back in the early days of the space race).

In "Superman #1" (the start of the Post-Crisis series of that title, of course) Superman has his first battle with Metallo, and discovers just how painful green kryptonite can be when a villain uses it against him. At the very end of this issue, Superman tells Lois that he is, in fact, an alien from a planet called Krypton. She asks, reasonably enough, why he never mentioned this before. He explains that it's simple: he only found out a few weeks ago himself!

So it's pretty clear that in Byrne's personal chronology for his Superman Reboot, we were initially supposed to believe that Clark had only been Superman for about "the last three years, from age 25 to age 28" as the Post-Crisis DCU got up and running. Cyberman is absolutely right in pointing out that this didn't make much sense if you took it at face value, because most of DC's heroes from the old Silver Age/Bronze Age continuity (including Batman and most of the other veteran JLA members, and Nightwing and the rest of his fellow Titans) weren't getting Rebooted and most of their old stories were supposedly still in continuity. At that point, Dick Grayson (for instance) was supposed to be 20, I believe. If he became Robin around the age of 13 (as has been suggested more than once, Post-Crisis) then he had seven years' worth of costumed heroics to his credit at the time of "Superman #1" and thus a four-year head start on Superman (who had only been wearing the costume for three years at the time of "Superman #1" according to the "Man of Steel" miniseries!).

And when you factored Batman into the mix, it made even less sense. According to "Man of Steel #3," Superman and Batman must have started their careers almost simultaneously, and met six months after Superman's debut. So by the time of "Superman #1" which was supposed to be all caught up with the DCU and happening "simultaneously" with other DCU titles of the Post-Crisis era, Batman had (by Byrne's logic) only been Batman for roughly 3 years, just like Supes. Once his "Year One" story was over -- which was basically one big flashback to a time "several years ago" -- did he come across like a guy who had only been wearing the costume and fighting crime for "the last three years"? Absolutely not!

By the time of Zero Hour, DC had obviously figured out those numbers for Superman didn't work. The Timeline that they published at the end of the miniseries included references to "modern superhero continuity" in terms of how many years it had been (at the time of Zero Hour, in 1994) since something happened. The debuts of Superman and Batman as costumed crimefighters had both happened "Ten Years Ago" according to that timeline, which made a heck of a lot more sense than "three or four years ago" would have. They were retconning the question of just how long Superman had implictly "already been a well-known superhero" at the time of the other DCU titles that were published in the early "Post-Crisis" era. Other than that, they were pretty much leaving his last eight years or so (1986-1994) of published continuity alone; presumably it had all happened within, say, the last couple of years of DCU time!

I bought the Zero Hour mini when it first came out, so for the last 12 years I've always taken it for granted in my thoughts that Superman and Batman both made their costumed debuts "simultaneously" (or as near as makes no difference), at the very beginning of the "modern era" of DCU superheroes, following a long dry spell in which there were very few superpowered heroes popping up in the media. And today I tend to assume that Clark and Bruce have both been doing their thing (on and off) for at least 13 years or more. I no longer worry much about any typographical errors Byrne may have made in his early statements about just how long Clark had been Superman, in stories published 20 years ago now!

Was all that reasonably clear? Or is my audience already snoring in the background?