And it isn't possible for Jerry Siegel to have a bad idea in his career, right?
Generally I judge works by a very simple standard: never trust any story you've already seen on an episode of THE BIONIC WOMAN.
Okay, okay, I can see why people would like this story: my heart nearly CRACKED when Super-Menace heard Wolf Derek call him a "freak" and revealed that S-M wasn't really loved at all by his folks. Jerry Siegel was capable of incredible character-centered stories with tragedy and powerful emotions: "Return to Krypton," more than any other story, brought home the tragedy of Krypton's destruction, and it was astonishing to see a cowering Superman bargaining for his life pitifully to Luthor, Brainiac, and the Legion of Super-Villains.
(Strangely, the one Siegel strip one would imagine would have very powerful emotions, Robotman, about a human whose brain is placed inside an inhuman robot, is actually the most upbeat and energetic of all Siegel's creations. For the Love of God, he even had a robot dog sidekick! And who could forget Robotman vs. Rubberman!)
I also dig the idea Super-Menace was in fact an energy duplicate instead of a true clone, which is a rather intriguing idea, though it was woefully unexplored: the only sign he's noncorporeal is that he's immune to Kryptonite, when really he ought to have weirder powers, a la Cary Bates's ERG-1.
Intriguingly, bringing Super-Menace back may actually be the easiest thing in the world if a writer forgets to take their medication that day and decides to do it: Super-Menace at the end disincorporated his energy body. Now, energy can neither be created nor destroyed. This was how they brought back ERG-1 (as Wildfire) and how, in the pages of IRON MAN, they resurrected the original Sunturion. Drake Burroughs reformed himself gradually, whereas Roxxon Oil went to the middle of the Pacific Ocean and re-energized Sunturion.
The Super-Menace story had the deck stacked so thoroughly against it that I can hardly see why anyone ever thought it was ever a good idea at any point, even Siegel himself.
1) "Evil twin" stories are the absolute nadir of the entire Silver Age - the most lazy, overused technique ever. Lex Luthor had his evil twin (Dru-Zod), Supergirl had several (including Lesla Lar, whose best story was as an insane, disembodied energy being in SUPERMAN FAMILY), and Jimmy Olsen had a lookalike double that was a Phantom Zoner, Ak-Var. Going beyond Superman, we have Barry Allen, who has the record of not one but THREE evil lookalikes: a crime lord in a 1970s story, the Reverse Flash, and the whole Mark Waid "Cobalt Blue" business. Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu, has a twin brother, and there were two Hank Pyms running around after Busiek/Pacheco's AVENGERS FOREVER.
2)
It isn't just that Super-Menace was an evil twin; it's the idea that Super-Menace "always had been" present from "Day One." The idea of a criminal/evil version of a being as powerful as Superman existing in secret for decades and decades, thoroughly tries suspension of disbelief...especially the idea S-M was unknown to Superman, from whom it is not really possible to keep from any secrets.
Elliot Maggin devoted so much effort in his Superman novels to show what a colossal, unprecidented impact on global pop culture Superman had, how thousands of people went into service jobs because of Superman's inspiration, and so on.
Siegel just didn't explore the terrifying and staggering implications of what it would be like to have a Superman dedicated to crime on the loose for years and years - and one that is immune to Kryptonite, no less! This is why I enjoyed SUPERMAN II and the Gerber PHANTOM ZONE miniseries: they didn't pull punches and explored what malignant beings with Superman's powers rampaging over earth would be LIKE, and didn't wuss out of the implications.
In a nutshell: at this late point in the game, asking us to accept something as
important as a Superman duplicate that has existed since Superman arrived on earth, yet has remained unknown...is really insulting the intelligence of the reader.
And the "Lone Ranger" mask looked pretty lousy, too. Give me Mummy bandages anyday - at least then there'd be a PRISONER-esque "reveal" moment.
Ah, there are so many great Superman stories we could discuss. The Dr. Kearns one is a very good comic. I like the atmospheric scene where Superman, at Dr. Kearns' insistence, begins to cast his mind back, digging into the recesses of his memory to find something that may have happened to him en route to Earth from Krypton. This is also one of the best examples I know of those "feel-good" stories the writers of the time did so well -- in this case Edmond Hamilton I believe (?).
I always found the idea of the Kryptonian Memory Chair intriguing, both as a gadget itself and as a frame story for telling Superbaby and World of Krypton tales. Besides the obvious jokes about Superman remembering breastfeeding (which would warp
anybody) the Chair has potential use in present-day stories: Superman reconstructs memories of something that happens, but the details are incomplete...creating a mystery story where he has to piece together the facts.
Many of the Bronze Age writers - including Martin Pasko - did not like the Memory Chair because they felt that it would be more tragic to have Superman not remember Krypton all that well: he felt the tragedy all the more because he can barely remember his mother and father, and so on.
That's right. The story isn't Imaginary, if that's the suggestion.
What I meant was, there's a specific category of Superman stories that put such a profound, deep twist on the straightforward origin of Superman, that everyone decides to have collective amnesia and never mention the story again. This is what is done with stories like (for instance) Black Zero destroying Krypton or that story that had Jor-El and Lara survive. A nickname for this kind of story is a "Mopee," and you know it when you see it: for instance, a magical elf gave the Flash his superspeed.
Is the Super-Menace story a "Mopee?" I suspect it is, because it fits two the two major qualifications for Mopee-hood: a shocking origin-recontextualizing revelation about something that was there "all along," and which was quietly dropped and never mentioned afterward (though not entirely, as the map indicates).