So which Superman is it now

[DayWing]

1. Is it the one where Superman is the real personality and Clark is the disguise or the other way around?

2. Is it the one that with the Birthright origin or the MoS origin?

3. Is it the one that considers Batman his best friend or just a person he trusts but not too much?

4. Is he the one that knew an alien girl named Matrix or is that totally something that never happened?

5. Is he the one who was the original Nightwing or just someone who heard stories of an hero from Krypton called Nightwing?

6. Is he the one who was a football star or the one who was never allowed to plan?

7. Is he the one who had a friend named Bippo who in turn had an ordinary dog named Krypto or was Superdog the only Krypto he knew?

8. Is he the one who met his greatest rival in Smallville or the one who met him in Metropolis as an adult?

9. Is he the Chris Reeve's type or the one that inspired Dean Cain's version or has Tom Welling planted himself in there somewhere?

[Mon-el]

the glitch.................

[Mon-el]

1. Is it the one where Superman is the real personality and Clark is the disguise or the other way around?

Superman is the real personality, Clark is the disguise.

2. Is it the one that with the Birthright origin or the MoS origin?

Neither.

3. Is it the one that considers Batman his best friend or just a person he trusts but not too much?

Best Friend

4. Is he the one that knew an alien girl named Matrix or is that totally something that never happened?

Never Happened

5. Is he the one who was the original Nightwing or just someone who heard stories of an hero from Krypton called Nightwing?

Orignial Nightwing

6. Is he the one who was a football star or the one who was never allowed to plan?

Never allowed to play.

7. Is he the one who had a friend named Bippo who in turn had an ordinary dog named Krypto or was Superdog the only Krypto he knew?

Superdog the only Krypto he knew.


8. Is he the one who met his greatest rival in Smallville or the one who met him in Metropolis as an adult?

greatest rival in Smallville

9. Is he the Chris Reeve's type or the one that inspired Dean Cain's version or has Tom Welling planted himself in there somewhere?

Movie/Tv show's are a hard thing to judge compared to the comics.

[Sean Whitmore]

Superman is the real personality, Clark is the disguise.

Never allowed to play.

Orignial Nightwing

Superdog the only Krypto he knew.


Have any of these been stated somewhere? I don't think that's necessarily the case.


SEAN

[Iroquois]

Have any of these been stated somewhere? I don't think that's necessarily the case.


SEAN

The first two, yes. The others (including Batman being his best friend), no.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

Have any of these been stated somewhere? I don't think that's necessarily the case.

SEAN

Up, Up & Away kinda established that Clark with Lois and Ma & Pa Kent AKA Smallville Clark is the genuine article while Metropolis Clark and Superman are largely personas he puts on to protect his loved ones.

Both the Action Comics Annual and the current LSH storyline have established that Clark wasn't able to play any sports as a kid because he might of hurt someone again like he did when Pete Ross broke a bone running into him.

Chuck Nixon's Nightwing did re-establish that Dick Grayson got his new code-name from a Kandorian legend he heard about from Superman and Supergirl & Powergirl operated as a new Nightwing & Flamebird in Kandor after Infinite Crisis.

Bibbo's Krypto hasn't been referenced yet and I doubt he will be, but anything's possible.

[Shyft]

i thought in the recent Superman/Batman run where all the aliens get taken over by a wierd rock thing, that Batman still was wary of Supes? That doesnt seem best friendly to me. BUt i havent read it much since then so maybe its grown.

[lazlo_toth]

1. Is it the one where Superman is the real personality and Clark is the disguise or the other way around?

2. Is it the one that with the Birthright origin or the MoS origin?

3. Is it the one that considers Batman his best friend or just a person he trusts but not too much?

4. Is he the one that knew an alien girl named Matrix or is that totally something that never happened?

5. Is he the one who was the original Nightwing or just someone who heard stories of an hero from Krypton called Nightwing?

6. Is he the one who was a football star or the one who was never allowed to plan?

7. Is he the one who had a friend named Bippo who in turn had an ordinary dog named Krypto or was Superdog the only Krypto he knew?

8. Is he the one who met his greatest rival in Smallville or the one who met him in Metropolis as an adult?

9. Is he the Chris Reeve's type or the one that inspired Dean Cain's version or has Tom Welling planted himself in there somewhere?


The fact that we are asking these questions at all is troubling to me.
When John Byrne revamped Superman and cleared out all of the Weisinger-era mythology, there was an awful lot of great stuff that got trashed. It was definitely a case of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. But there were things he did that made perfect sense, like updating Clark Kent's personality so that, while he was still in many ways an "overgrown boy scout," he had much more human motivations. I liked the fact that he played sports in high school and quit when he realized he had an unfair advantage. I liked that there was a strong implication that he and Lana Lang may have been more than friends as teenagers (but not ever confirmed, so if you had a problem with the idea of Clark and Lana being that close, you didn't have that waved in your face, you could believe what you wanted). I liked the fact that he wrote novels because it was the one field where he was playing on a level field with everybody else, and that anything he accomplished there was earned on merit and not from the benefit of earth's yellow sun. And I liked that he finally married Lois, and that she fell in love with Clark Kent without knowing he was really Superman.

That being said, the mythology was cool. The bottle city of Kandor. The Fortress of Solitude. Superman robots. Kara Zor-el. The entire history and culture of Krypton, and the fact that the only two people who actually seemed to have died when the planet blew up were Jor-el and Lara (Byrne's vision of Krypton was actually kinda cool, but not as cool as what was already there). There was a clumsy attempt to kinda-sorta "re-weisingerize" the Superman mythos in the 90s by bringing back Kandor (sort of) and Supergirl (sort of, although that WAS a good title, and it's a shame that that whole run appears to have been retconned out of existence), but it wasn't the same. So with all of the retconning that's going on in the midst of this 52-countdown-final crisis wave, I'm pleased to see that some of that mythology is coming back. But they also seem to be reverting Clark Kent back to being a complete wuss, and I wouldn't be surprised to pick up an issue of Superman in the next year or so and see that Clark and Lois are all of a sudden not married. Does Clark Kent HAVE to be a total shlemiel for the character of Superman to work? The downside of the Weisinger Era was that for twenty years Superman was a completely static character. Nothing ever changed him or impacted him, and the stories that showed him feeling any kind of real emotion or complexity (the first Lori Lemaris story, for instance) stand out because they're very rare and are usually imaginary stories. I don't want that. I can't sympathize with a character that doesn't have believable emotions or motivations. Clark Kent doesn't have to be a jock, but he doesn't have to be a milquetoast, either. And he's been married for ten years now and, just like Spider-Man, his being married has had absolute sod all to do with whether or not the stories are any good.

Somebody help me here. Am I completely off-base here?

[gwor]

Superman is whoever each individual reader chooses him to be.

For me, he'll always be the smiling and powerful Curt Swan Superman, because my first comics with Supes were drawn by him.

Toss all of the convoluted continuity and inconsistencies out the window; just enjoy the story in front of you. If told well, none of the 'baggage' really matters...