Superman Through the Ages! Forum

Plenty of sea changes have had a big impact on Superman...anything not work for you?  And I'm certainly not talking Iron Age stuff here...

Me?

Superbaby...

But, Super baby was fun! I liked the way he defeated those powerful and "smart" super villains without even trying, but just by being a baby. Super baby was not suppose to be a real superhero, he was just pretending. In a way it was like he was meant to be Superman all along, it was his destiny to be a hero, he never wanted to be anything else.

(http://bryankuntz.com/babyGlobe_a.jpg)

Darn!  You got me... :D

And lets face it, that super kid solved everything from Solomon's choice to how the Golden Fleece was aquired...

I started reading Superman family of comics in the early 60's.I always hated the Superbaby stories in Superboy Magazine, but in the Superman/Action comics was the  use/overuse of Red Kryptonite, Superman robots and the Argo City story that I disliked the most. I liked Supergirl, but the Argo City story was even seemed less than credible to me (at the time). I was also bothered by the over abundance of Kryptonian survivors. I liked Kandor and the Phantom Zone and Kara and Krypto, but even I have to draw the line somewhere. I didn't like the robots because they provided the writers an easy cop out whenever Superman had an identity crisis. I enjoyed the Red K at first , but at some point it seemed to  at least once a month in one of the Superman Family of comics would have a story invovling Red K.

What about Argo City particularly bummed you?

Supergirl herself was a fine and sweet addition to my mind...

And I wonder how many Krytonian survivors are "too much"...

Yeah, the robots may have kept you guessing, my favorite part about them was that many had a moral conscience...

My problem with Argo City began with the fact of it's survival intact because it had a plexiglass covering over it. It was my impression in the story about Krypton's end was to planet exploded into small bits. Look at any story about the death of Krypton before the Supergirl story and the destruction of the planet is total. But, let's put that aside for a moment, then when Argo City starts to become Radioactive, Kara's father has enough leading shielding to cover the ground surface of the entire city. Finally the whole business of the Survival Zone. I guess the El family is just good at finding zones. I wonder which one found Auto Zone or the Twilight Zone. I know the reason that Kara's parents couldn't go to the Phantom Zone was because of continunity problems it would have caused. But the Survival Zone was cop out. It would have been better to keep Kara's parents dead, I thought it gave Supergirl's story more emotional pull. But dead in comics are seldom left to stay dead (1e Lightening Lad, Alfred).

Pre-Crisis:
Multicolor Kryptonite. Red, Blue, Gold... Argh! For me, there is only Green K!
Superventriloquism and Superhypnosis (a bit stupid powers, in my opinion).


Post-Crisis:
The whole long haired Lex Luthor/deal with Neron storyline.
The long haired Superman.

It seems incredible that Argo City could have survived Krypton's explosion intact -- the acceleration should have turned the residents into strawberry jam.  And depictions of the ejected asteroid JUST large enough to accommodate the dome were even less believable.

But perhaps we shouldn't take this comic images at face value.  If the planetary chunk was originally as large as Australia (as seen in the first Superman/Batman arc), all that mass might have been blasted clear at a survivable velocity.  And if Argo City was located somewhere close to the center of this huge piece, then it might have been sufficiently shielded from the explosion.  To minimize radiation poisoning, the asteroid was soon reshaped down to the bare minimum needed to maintain structual integrity beneath the dome.  This could have been done with carefully-controlled explosives and industrial robots.  Also, the dome merely concentrated the air -- the asteroid was massive enough to retain some residual atmosphere.  Otherwise the meteor shower that pierced the dome would have immediately killed the Argo City residents via explosive decompresion.

As for superventriloquism, I always thought this was actually a form of telepathy.  Superman simply visualized communicating in space as "throwing his voice", and subconsciously triggered a psionic talent he never realized he possessed.

Heh!

SUPERMAN: Great Scott! I must retrieve the replacment super-carbeurator my uncle on Krypton, Ax-El, has placed in... the Auto Zone!

SUPERMAN: Great Krypton! I'm trapped here in the dimension my second cousin Ser-Ling discovered----the *Twilight Zone*---and what's worse, I've broken my only pair of glasses in this library! My secret identity may be in peril!

:-)

Seriously, Supergirl's background story (Survival Zone, etc.) never really bothered me much... besides, how many dimensions does the DC Universe (or Multiverse back then) have, anyway? Flash alone must've discovered more than the El family ever did...

But stuff I could do without pre-Crisis: Hmm.... not sure. Possibilities: the Kryptonian "teaching robot"; seeing Superboy/man shove the Earth out of its orbit with super-breath or something (or pull a group of planets along by a chain easily); that story with an insane Pete Ross pulling Superboy out of the past and into the present (and switching bodies with him)...

Perhaps some of you are taking those old stories a little too seriously, I mean once you start not liking a Superman element because it is too fake, then something is wrong. These stories are meant to be fun, no one cared if it actually made sense, since it rarely ever did. Whenever something really over the top and ridiculous happens in the old Superman comics, which is almost every story ever, it makes me laugh, it adds to the enjoyment. In fact, if Superman was not filled with surreal insanity then I think it would be boring and I wouldn't like it as much (see the Golden Age comics). The name for these types of stories was Science-Fantasy, they were never suppose to be science-fiction. Science-fiction actually tries to make sense, Science-fantasy is just pure fantasy using science-fiction elements instead of Lord of the Rings type stuff.

From Wikipedia:

Science fantasy is the merging of science fiction and fantasy, two popular genres of writing. The two are notoriously difficult to define, and possibly even more difficult to distinguish. One might claim that science fiction provides a scientific explanation for all phenomena, whereas fantasy mostly takes the supernatural for granted. However, the "science" behind these explanations is often no more than mumbo-jumbo, especially in the pulp magazines. Arthur C. Clarke claims that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic," and this is especially true for science fantasy. Hence, it might be said that the difference is more one of stage props: on the one hand we have spacecraft and phasers, on the other hand magic carpets and wands of smiting. Science fantasy, then, would be distinguished by the use of elements from both sets of props; classic examples would include the Dune universe or the Dying Earth stories. On the other hand, it is sometimes used to refer to a fantasy where the fantastic elements are presented as being (relatively) compatible with real-world science; by contrast, in general fantasy, the elements need only adhere to an internal logic.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_fantasy"

It gets worse, originally Argo City survived "under a bubble of air"...

Whenever you start looking at the science in comics, it falls apart, so you accept it as part of story or don't but pick and choose...

Evertime Superman picked up an ocean liner and held it one spot, gravity would have caused it to break apart...the time travel that Superman employs means that he could have traveled to times just before any act of crime or villiany even occured...

For me, I can agree that a fun and mysterious puzzle might just mean the a Superman robot was used...that seems more like lazy story telling and bothered me more than a fun but improbable science fiction...

IMHO a very poor way of defining Science Fantasy. The best definition that has been provided is that Science Fiction makes the implausable possible while Science Fantasy makes the impossible plausable.  These definitions deal with changes in the way it is believed the world works because sometimes what is Science Fantasy under one cosmology becomes Science Fiction under another.

For example when Verne wrote 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea the mode of power for the Nautilus was straight Science Fantsy per Newton but with Einstein it became Science Fiction and eventually science fact. Of course comics play so lose with the physics of their worlds that one wonders if 'science' is even there.

Things that I would reject:

- Superbaby

- All the super-pets except Kryoto.

- Super-hypnotism.

- Superman moving planets without help.

That's pretty much it.

I don't really reject any of it. Superbaby is not readable for me, but for a small child those stories are. Moving planets is a little too much....but I have a soft spot for the Legion of Super-Pets and have decorated my entire classroom with them.

Superpets rule! Superman only had one, the doggie. The cat and Horse were Supergirl's. The Monkey was solo, he was no one's pet, he answered to no one. Well, except maybe the Great Rao ;)

(http://www.comicskins.com/csnnews/comfychair/10_27_2003/AdventureComics364.jpg)



He did that a lot more on Superfriends than in the comics.
Sure it made no sense, but nothing ever did, I think it is one of those super stunts that really captures the imagination.

I just never liked any of the super-pets nesides Krypto. I mean, a pet super-dog is cool, but when you have a farm of super-animals it's a bit much. It's weird that I like Krypto the best when I actually own two cats.  :)

As for Superman moving planets without help, I realize that he rarely did that in the comics--it was all a little too much, though (and I'm not one of those guys who wants to severly depower Superman either). He should be able to lift almost everything on Earth, just not move the Earth itself.

I think you have the Superpets all wrong. The Streaky the cat wasn't from Krypton, so it was just a normal cat most of the time. Comet the horse, was really a man, Supergirl even dated him and married him once! Keep the jokes to yourselves, human aren't pets, and he was not from Krypton. Beppo spent most of his time in Space and was rarely ever in any comics. He was from Krypton. It actually makes sense to test a rocket with a monkey or ape rather than a dog, since that's what we humans did in real life!

Lots of Iron Age fans try to make it seem that these types of stories happen all the time, but truth is they were very rare, and you can collect them all with little problem, except for Krypto who appeared in a lot of tales, that's why people actually know and like him. You hardly ever got to see Streaky or Comet unless you read Supergirl. Beppo was just in Superboy for the most part. These animals hardly appear in the actual Superman comics at all.

They only appeared together a handful of times and that was in The Legion of Super-heroes Comic!

I know the entire history of the super-pets already, but thank you for restating it for those not familiar with it. Anyway, whether they were from Krypton or not wasn't really a factor to me. Frankly, I like Kryptonian survivors--it allows for much more stories. Krypto was obviously a cool character (especially in Maggin's Starwinds Howl), but the other pets never really did it for me.

Comet would've been more interesting if he were actually a centaur (wasn't there a story where he was?) and as for Beppo, well, let's just say that I prefer Titano to him. But I do agree with you that it makes much more sense to send a primate into space rather than a dog. I suppose Streaky was okay since he didn't have his powers all the time. Still, I prefer only one super-pet--Krypto.


The reason that those fans say that is because they're promoting an agenda. They want to turn people away from the past in a Brave New World-esque way. In short, they look down on the past and don't want anyone to enjoy it.

Yeah, Comet WAS a centaur (named Byron?) who wanted to be a man, but whom Circe unwittingly changed to a horse...because of all this, I always had a hard time seeing him as a "pet" or "belonging" to Supergirl...

That sounds pretty cool. I LOVE Greek mythology. Plus, this also indirectly ties Comet into Wonder Woman's sphere of influence.

Speaking of the super-pets, I actually have wallpaper on my computer featuring all of them (the wallpaper features Alex Ross' Superman art).

I kind of like the mythology woven in too...

I had the issue growing up (Action # 293), I think Byron fell in love with Circe, but some evil wizard didn't like it and monkeyed with a potion she gave him to turn him into a man and instead turned him into a horse, and that she couldn't figure out how to reverse it...I never knew if Wonder Woman's mythos ever crossed paths though...I guess that later, it was expanded, a comet passing by could change him to a human, who was Supergirl's boyfriend and could go by Bronco Billy for a while (? I've read, didn't have the issues)...

Krypto was a smart dog all right, but I never saw him with such a human backstory, so Comet was never really a pet to me...I also liked how he was a stop gap emergency vehicle because he was unaffected by things that led to loss of powers in Krytonians...I'm glad Comet had a stable mentality, a rogue and evil Comet the Superhorse would have been a darn powerful enemy... :D

Rejecting things is the province of the fan, not the professional. If it's a part of a character's venerable history it isn't yours to detract or eliminate. That's something I'm just saying in case there are any future comics writers on this board that think fun, idle speculation among fans like this gives them the right to monkey around with storied past. (Hey, you never know...)

That said, as this is just a fun question and answer thing about what about the SuperMythos didn't work:

Captain Strong. The fact that the guy was an obvious Popeye clone always bugged me, because it was an act of intellectual theft. True, he was an "homage" to a character that was part of the inspiration for Superman, but you can't build a recurring character around an homage.

The Prankster. Sure, he's a longtime member of the Superman Rogues Gallery, but he's not different enough from the various prank and practical joke wielding villians of the period to really justify his existence.

The Superman of 2965. They kind of already have a 30th Century with the Legion of Superheroes, which had a much more interesting future world. Saying either one or the other is the true future means the other didn't happen, and if I had to pick one, it would be Legion's.

Different colored Kryptonite was unusual, but it was interesting and odd. Red Kryptonite was less like a radioactive rock and more like LSD. I love how in Alan Moore's Supreme, the only variety of the Kryptonite-like metal that existed was the kind that created unpredictable transformations.

Ok, so I still have to snicker about Supergirl dating a horse. I can't help it. :lol:

>>The Superman of 2965. They kind of already have a 30th Century with the Legion of Superheroes, which had a much more interesting future world. Saying either one or the other is the true future means the other didn't happen, and if I had to pick one, it would be Legion's.
<<

Which is why they soon retconned his time-era into being *2465*.

Granted, I don't ever recall Professor Zoom, the "Reverse-Flash", mentioning there was a version of Superman running around in his era, seeing as how Zoom was *from* 2465 (or thereabouts; see that "Flash" cover with Barry punching Zoom back to 2465)... ;-)

Is that right? Huh!

However, there are so many problems outlined above with "2465" that even THIS retcon is not truly acceptable. The first is, of course, the Professor Zoom problem that you bring up. The second is that there is no real sense of scientific progress from "2465" to the Legion Future, a gap of 500 years. Perhaps this can be explained by rebuilding and recovering knowledge lost after atomic wars. This is supported by the Legion future to a limited, indirect extent; remember Chemical King, who died preventing World War VII?

The third is this: if there was a lineage of demonstratably real Supermen continuing in a lineage, why would "historical records of our era be scant, " as the Legionnaires are always so quick to point out?

All this raises one question, though: why is it generally assumed that Superman only lives a single human lifetime? It would be true if the events of Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? are true, which I sincerely hope they are; that was a tearful, beautiful story. But why is it that writers previously have assumed that an invulnerable Superman won't STILL be around, still eternally youthful or perhaps with a gray hair there or here, by most distant future dates?

There's a question I don't think anybody's asked yet, which is astonishing: is Superman ALIVE in some form come the Legion future?

>>>

Is that right? Huh!
<<

Well:
http://www.comics.org/graphics/covers/1428/400/1428_4_153.jpg

>>However, there are so many problems outlined above with "2465" that even THIS retcon is not truly acceptable. The first is, of course, the Professor Zoom problem that you bring up.  The second is that there is no real sense of scientific progress from "2465" to the Legion Future, a gap of 500 years. Perhaps this can be explained by rebuilding and recovering knowledge lost after atomic wars. This is supported by the Legion future to a limited, indirect extent; remember Chemical King, who died preventing World War VII?

The third is this: if there was a lineage of demonstratably real Supermen continuing in a lineage, why would "historical records of our era be scant, " as the Legionnaires are always so quick to point out?

All this raises one question, though: why is it generally assumed that Superman only lives a single human lifetime? It would be true if the events of Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? are true, which I sincerely hope they are; that was a tearful, beautiful story. But why is it that writers previously have assumed that an invulnerable Superman won't STILL be around, still eternally youthful or perhaps with a gray hair there or here, by most distant future dates?

There's a question I don't think anybody's asked yet, which is astonishing: is Superman ALIVE in some form come the Legion future?<<

Hmm... there's the possibility that the Superman of 2465/2965/whatever exists in some alternate future timeline that doesn't lead to the Legion's future (a la Kamandi's future). Which'd take care of all of the contradictory points about him...

But if I were trying to make him fit into the "one, true future":

1. Maybe Zoom was too focused on Flash to bother mentioning or thinking about the Superman of 2465?

2. Scientific progress... hmm... well, guess that's always varied in how DC's shown its futures. 100 years in the future often seemed as advanced as the Legion's future 1000 years hence...

3. Maybe the Legion didn't want to reveal to Superboy/Superman stuff about his future? (OK, no real answer to this one...)

4. Is superman still alive? A descendant of Supes apparently was still alive (Laurel Kent, yes?). But Supes himself, I kind of doubt it... else we'd be seeing Superboy wondering why he kept turning invisible when he went to the future (per that "can't exist in two places in the same time-era" rule of pre-Crisis time travel)... unless there's a *really* good explanation for Supes dodging *that* scenario (and not being around in the Legion time-era to help the United Planets out)...

For my money those stories were the most imaginative and complex ever told in 8 pages.  Id like to see Frank Miller and his ilk do that.

Id rather spend $3-$5 on aratty Superman family comic from the 60s then todays modern crap which is badly drawn and poorly written.

Ive been reading a collection of Edmond Hamilton's short stories from the 30s-50s and it's amazing it's scope but also how much of the greatest
Superman-Batman stories fo the 50s and 60s were written by him.

Fun. Imaginative and brilliant in their mythology.

That chunk of rock is the size of Mars.  :)  Krypton was a big planet.  You could bury Earth under the polar ice caps of Krypton.  The city only covered part of it.

The lead sheilding for Argo is a problem, but  I've always thought that lead shielding was supposed to be used to complete the space ship that was being built in Kandor.  Maybe Argo is just where they stored all the lead sheilding for the fleet of spaceships that Jor-El was intending to build.

I've always ignored the temporal problems with the Legion.  Kamandi the Last Boy on Earth, Kristen Wells, Lydia-7, Legion, Superman Jr, the grandson of Superman.  There were many possible futures for Earth-1 and I miss them.

Back to the topic at hand:
I've had a problem with the Chronicles of Krypton.  Gee, can someone other than an El family member achieve greatness on Krypton?

Good points, Jonny Nevada, and all of them seem solid. I had forgotten about the translucent effect from time travel. I always thought it was interesting because it offered a solution to one very obvious, gigantic logic hole in the Superman mythos: if Superman can crack the time barrier, if he ever makes a mistake in any story, he can just go back in time and fix it. If you REALLY give some thought to this, it would make a monkey out of just about any Superman story! This isn't to say that Superman isn't alive in SOME form come to the Legion future...maybe he's something like Tom Strong, who in his old age became the bearded wizard guardian of the Tower at the End of Time. Perhaps Superman's in suspended animation, prepared for a battle at the end of time? His mind has been placed into the benevolent Supercomputer that runs Rokyn?

Here's a possibility concerning the Superman of 2965 - or 2465, or alternate 2465, or whatever the hell: maybe he's the future of the Superman of Earth-2? Batman and the Joker were two descendants that appeared in the 2465 stories, and there are Batmans and Jokers on Earth-2. One point of divergence between Earth-1 and Earth-2 is that Earth-2 has no Legion of Superheroes. Perhaps because the future of Earth-2 is protected by the descendants of Superman, so there was no niche the Legion could be created to fill?

As for the point about Laurel Kent (LLs in the first name - cute), I seriously think the Superman lineage and Superman legacy that the Legion was a spin-off of, deserved better future representation than a throwaway Legion Academy member. If you're GOING to have a future descendant of Superman in the mix, he or she should be less easy to ignore.



I totally disagree with this statement.

I'm also astonished to see it on a board with respect for the past like Superman through the Ages; after all, what IS continuity at its most fundamental, basic level than the fact characters are able to remember their past?

Continuity, at least to me, is vital because a character's history, and what they have done, is more interesting to me than their powers or their code name. History is a tool for characterization, a tool for creating new stories by digging into what has happened previously. And it makes the world more true and grounded; isn't Luthor's characterization more true and more honest because he remembers all the other times Superman has placed him into prison, fueling that cueball-headed crook's rage and resentment? The fact that Starro the Conqueror remembers his previous battles with the Justice League and adopts new strategies to fight them every time gives credit to Starro's alien intelligence.

Why is it the worst writers (Byrne, Giffen, Grell) are the ones that play the most fast and loose with continuity? Because skill with world-building and making a place feel more "real" are qualities possessed by good writers, just like plotting, characterization, and imagination are. Characters should behave consistently with how we know them to behave and how they have been established as behaving. You can try to separate "continuity" from "telling good stories," but the fact of the matter is, the things that define "continuity" are what make stories good: namely, consistent, accurate characters taking actions that are appropriate and believable (however that is defined for each character and the setting).

And it should be noted also that even errors in continuity can become the basis for future stories. Kurt Busiek's AVENGERS FOREVER used lapses in characterization and headache-inducing errors in continuity to create a wonderful story that explained them off. But this works only as long as characters exist in a "real" world and a "real" framework where mistakes can exist, because there is a right way to do something, a "true" history and canon that divergences can be made from. If there is no continuity, no mistakes can exist.

Simply, total continuity is impossible, sometimes it can be repaired, often with disastrous results and it still isn't repaired, i.e, crisis, zero hour...

I love history, I like it when it is respected, but its the product of who tells it in real life, and its not consistent...

A good story, however, stands the test of time...

Yes, when Superman first time traveled and learned of his origin, he remained outside of it and translucent...a neat concept...it just didn't last, the temptation to have real interaction in time travel stories was too great...

Changes like this are interesting, and what we all like to talk about and debate, but I can wish it to never change but it has to, eras change...

Getting back on topic, more things about Superman that weren't successful that I could live without:

The "Hey, that Kryptonian looks just like me!" Stories. All 13.7 billion of them. Seriously, I really think everybody in the world has a twin either in the Phantom Zone, or the Bottled City of Kandor. There's Dru-Zod and his identical appearance to Luthor (yeesh, poor guy - Luthor's an evil genius, but he's a bald, pudgy-faced dog of a man), Van-Zee and Sylvia Plath being identical doubles of Lois Lane and Kal-El, that one girl or series of girls that looked identical to Supergirl...really, this plot is so very tired now.

Luthor's original origin. C'mon, the guy can build a forcefield to block out the sun, but he can't synthesize a cure for male pattern baldness? The reason Luthor's original origin always bothered me is because, as it was an accident that led to Luthor not having his hair, Superman has no moral responsibility for Luthor's creation, and consequently, no guilt or sense of failure or desire to make amends. Because there is no guilt or responsibility, there is no sense of tragedy. It was all just a misunderstanding that Luthor for whatever reason, took way too seriously. It would be emotionally wrenching and poignant if Superman had, instead of charging in (admittedly thoughtlessly, but blamelessly), made a CHOICE, fully aware of the consequences of his actions.

I understand that the "it was all an accident" scenario is created to preserve Superman's incorruptible decency, and while I am all in favor of this, there are ways to preserve this without having the scenario made irrelevant and emotionally empty. As Alan Moore wrote in "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow," it is always the most moral people that are pained by conscience. Perhaps Luthor's deadly experiment threatened the entire town of Smallville. Superboy chose to extinguish it, *knowing* Luthor would take offense and possibly be injured: choosing the lesser of two evils.

Even the guy that "got" best of all what Superman was supposed to be all about, Elliot S! Maggin, understood how unsatisfying this all was, and he placed Luthor's hair loss in the more comprehensible framework of a lifetime pattern of a misanthropic Luthor being permanently misunderstood and shunned, with Superboy becoming the most visible target of his rage and frustration.

You are absolutely right, Matter-Eater Lad. Total continuity is impossible, simply because people make mistakes. That doesn't mean, however, that the attempt to make things fit together and make sense with the past is destined to failure forever. The trick to building good continuity is to look at all the pieces, fit them together, find patterns, and build on that. Even mistakes can be a strength when building continuity; look at the wonderful job Busiek did with AVENGERS FOREVER, reconciling mistakes and flaws, so that not only are they NOT mistakes and flaws, they're explanations that can be built on to create a story.

And sure, times change, but let's face it: the Silver Age was, well, BETTER than other periods - not because of nostalgia or sentimental reasons - but for the very concrete, real, and simple reason that there was a giant glut of talented people.

In any given year of the 1960s, we had Stan Lee writing just about any Marvel title of consequence; Jim Shooter and Curt Swan on LEGION, Mort Weisenger watching over the Superman titles, with John Broome, Gardner Fox, and Edmund Hamilton on most other DC titles. In any given year in the 1970s, we had Steve Englehart writing AVENGERS and DOCTOR STRANGE; we had Jim Aparo doing BRAVE AND THE BOLD; we had Elliot S. Maggin writing SUPERMAN and Cary Bates doing LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES, there was Steve Gerber writing DEFENDERS; there was Jack Kirby doing his Fourth World comics and KAMANDI; even the worst stuff of the Silver Age, the lowest stuff on the spinner rack, like Gerry Conway's run on FANTASTIC FOUR or Marv Wolfman's TOMB OF DRACULA, stand much higher than even the average comic of today. I'm not quick to blame it on gimmicry like our moderator Super Monkey is; Comics are founded on good-natured hucksterism. One can blame the rising cost of comics, but that's not the answer either - it isn't that comics cost a lot, it's that very seldom do you ever feel like your money is well spent. Rather, I point the finger at "decompressed" storytelling, and just plain old failing upwards, with peopled assigned to comics who just can't write (yes, I am looking at you, Chuck Austen, Keith Giffen, John Byrne, Brian Michael Bendis, Dan Jurgens, Mike Grell, and Warren Ellis).

The only people working in the Modern Age I would say are equivalent in writing ability to people like Bates, Maggin, Englehart, and Gerber would be Alan Moore, Kurt Busiek, Dan Slott, and Christopher Priest.

I don't mean to slight the Golden Age either, but the fact is, while there were very many talented people that worked in those times, it simply wasn't as good as the Silver Age was; there were talented people, but not AS many talented people. To be totally fair, there were bright spots: Moulton Marston's acid-trip brilliant though creepily sexually deviant WONDER WOMAN, Kirby's CAPTAIN AMERICA, C.C. Beck's cute MARVEL FAMILY. and Eisner's SPIRIT. For the most part, Golden Age plots were centered on rote; all ending with a knockout punch to the bad guy's (glass) jaw that clocks him. Further, while the Silver Age was centered on innovation, the Golden Age had heroes that came in basically two flavors: Superman clones and Batman clones.  For the Love of God, count the Batman clones of the Golden Age: the Black Terror, Catman and Kitten, the Grim Reaper, even Green Arrow, whose archery gimmick cannot not hide the fact he was based on Batman's blueprint. To be fair, their is plenty of ugly plagiarism and derivativeness in many Silver Age characters and concepts, but the point is, it was not institutionalized to the extent it was in the so-called Golden Age. It should even be noted that even people that worked during the Golden Age, like Jack Kirby and Gardner Fox, do their best work in the Silver Age.

Just about every imaginative concept that exists today in the DC Universe was created in the Silver Age. The Flash, for example, was exclusively a product of the Silver Age; Gorilla City, the Cosmic Treadmill, even the dimensional travel that let the Golden Age continue in some form in "Flash of Two Worlds" was a Silver Age innovation. Superman's uniqueness is almost entirely the product of his Silver Age stable of (genius) writers and his (genius) god-editor, Weisenger, and while the E.E. Smith Lensman-concept (let's be generous and say it was "borrowed") was hardly original, applying it to superheroes WAS; thus we get Green Lantern and more innovatively, the Green Lantern Corps.

Roy Thomas, that sentimental genius, got a lot of mileage out of Earth-2, but the fact is, the Ultra-Humanite is no Luthor. The few villians that the Golden Age produced required research to unearth. Even then, it should be noted Thomas drew out so many concepts not from DC's history, but from novels like GLADIATOR and movies like METROPOLIS and KING KONG. And no matter how you slice it, the villian-impoverished Earth-2 has no Darkseid, no Weather Wizard, no Star Sapphire, no Brainiac, no Sinestro, and an Injustice Gang made of the same faces over and over: the Wizard, the Huntress, Sportsmaster, and that violinist with his magical violin.

I'd hardly tout the Silver Age stories as examples of good writing. True, they do show tremendous imagination, and that is their strength. But they lacked in other aspects.

For example, I recently bought the trade paperbacks featuring the Silver Age JLA/JSA team-up stories. Many of these are (rightfully) hailed as classics. But there's no way the stories would hold up by today's standards. The characterizations are mostly bland, the premises often shaky, the plots full of arbitrary deus ex machinae.

As for continuity, yes, there were fewer continuity problems back then, but that was mainly because most of the time they didn't try to have continuity. The Weisenger Superman stories were almost completely episodic. Characters rarely remembered what happened in the last issue. Kryptonian artifacts or alien races would show up in one story and then be forgotten in the next.

I'm not trying to bash the Silver Age here. I've greatly enjoyed reading those stories. But to suggest that comic writing has all gone downhill since then is just wrong. I think if you took even a mediocre modern-day writer like Byrne and sent him back fifty years in a time machine, he'd have a lot he could teach the writers of the era.

(Remembers "Superman vs. The Earth Stealers")

Okay, well, maybe not Byrne....  :wink:

Personally, I think that comics writing has gotten better. But Superman hasn't, and that's the problem. Superman writing is generally crappy, except when they bring in guest writers. (Birthright and Bizarro Comics are examples of this.)

Superman just isn't super anymore. He's a pretty boring character, who just gets in punch-out fights with people. Yet the slugfests that happen in every new comic still aren't nearly as interesting as Popeye's were. Give Superman his spinach back!

I understand what you're saying about the Silver Age, but there were some really well-written stories during that time. The Last Days of Superman, the Death of Superman...and I challenge you to read "The Bizarro who goofed up history" without laughing! I dare you!

New Superman comics can't make me laugh. They don't make me feel sorry for Superman, they don't make me gasp, and they don't leave me guessing. So the three stories I mentioned are at least much better writing than the new stories.

I do agree with you (if this is what you were saying) that Bronze Age stories were even more well-written, though. You can't beat the Alan Moore or Elliot Maggin stories, no matter how hard you try.

Heh. Got a link to it?  It's a good point, one thing you can definitely say is that comics were a lot better at being fun back then. I remember some of the old Bizarro and Mxyzptlk stories. There hasn't been much like that since -- Phil Foglio's work is about the only comparable thing I can think of.



I agree about Moore -- he just about single-handedly raised the bar for comics writing. He came in at the very tail end of the Bronze Age, though. Personally, I'm not a big Maggin fan; I generally like his stuff but wouldn't put him in a class with greats like Moore or Starlin.

When I read this, I laughed very, very bitterly.

The Modern Age (screw Bronze and Iron; after the Silver Age, it's all Modern Age to me, and definable only by individual writers, not by geologic ages) is defined by writer-artist non-talents and artists that just can't write. Did I say the Modern Age was intellectually bankrupt? No; the Modern Age has a handful (I can count them on one hand) of great writers whose work is perhaps the equal of even the highlights of the Silver Age writers: Englehart, Fox, Kirby, Bates, and Maggin.

I was saying that the AVERAGE comic was better in the Silver Age. Thanks to decompressed storytelling and page killing subplots that go nowhere, there is more story in one ISSUE of even a lousy Silver Age comic like KA-ZAR or Claremont's IRON FIST or SON OF SATAN. Compare it to the bottom of the barrel crap of today: WILDCATS, Warren Ellis's "work," and anything produced by the cold concrete of the Top Cow basement. There is no comparison.

Even the average, technically adept though uninspired writers of the Silver Age were better than even the so-called "good" writers of today. Example: Grant Morrison vs. Bill Mantlo.

Bill Mantlo's correct characterizations and uninspired plotting put him well above fanboy-favorite Grant Morrison, who has wildly incorrect characterizations from noble, tormented Orion as a mindless, hulk-like berserker, to Batman as a one-note, boring weirdo whose sole expression is "growl."

Grant Morrison did not do a single story in his Justice League run that a million other writers did not do better (seriously - when you have ANGELS - angels from GOD, and it feels like just another alien invasion seen in a million other comics, you're doing something wrong), and he was tainted by his terminal lack of characterization. Tomorrow Woman rebelled against her creators. WHY? Why did she do that? We don't get an answer. She has no personality, no motivation. Her decision to sacrifice itself is so unprecidented that it comes off as an insane whim.

Bill Mantlo on the other hand, gave characters motivations, whether it be the Sub-Mariner's honor and legitimate grievances against the surface world, Magneto's haughtiness, and Doctor Doom's monstrous arrogance and power in his SUPER-VILLAIN TEAM-UP, to the happy go lucky but conflicted Warren Worthington III and Iceman in CHAMPIONS.

I don't mean to sound like I'm picking on Grant Morrison or upholding Bill Mantlo; I'm just pointing out that even an average scribe of the Silver Age is far more talented than the so-called geniuses of today.

Silver-age Luthor could have easily cured his baldness if he wanted to.  The whole "i hate Superman only because he made me go bald" thing seemed to start in the late 60s or early 70s.  I wonder how many people have actually read Jerry Siegel's story from 1960.  A lot of people credit Elliott S Maggin for Lex's experiment in creating life.  That was in Siegel's story.  In that story Lex started hating superboy for ruining his greatest experiment.  He believed Supes did it deliberately out of jealousy of Lex's superior intellect.  The baldness was treated as a side issue.  At first Lex's intention was to use his super-intelligence to make himself more famous than Superboy.  Lex's first attempt to kill Superboy was after several more of his experiments backfired.  Lex believed Superboy was actively sabotaging his work.  Basically Lex hated Superman, because he saw him as an obstacle/impediment to Lex's greatness.

As far as the Golden Age goes, it just seems to me that super heroes battled the enemies that were the enemies of the time...maybe it was two bit crooks, maybe Nazis, maybe it was the Ultra Humanite, maybe it was Luthor's first appearance as a p-r-e-t-t-y formidable enemy for the time...

Of course, you always have to up the ante, and the nuclear age and the age of fantastic science fiction were just added in...

Actually, I kind of agree that there was a big change in the "bronze" age, that was a beginning of self doubt that struck me very much, in some ways, as much as post-Crisis stuff that I frankly don't pay much attention to except a mild interest in reading about it as an abstract concept...

As far as Superman eras go, here is how I rank them, please note this is only based on my personal taste:

1st Sliver Age  - IMHO the greatest run of any Superhero mythos ever, period. For my money this is the ultimate Superman. The greatest Superhero comics of all time.

2nd Atomic Age aka the late 40's to late 50's  - IMHO the most underrated era of Superman, and one of my personal favorites. I tend to enjoy stories from this era more than any other, besides of course the Sliver Age stories.

3rd Bronze Age late 60's to late 70's - The comics became more serious, the relevant Age of DC had begun. The format changed from the power pack stories of old to full issue tales. The Artwork became more modern looking and dramatic. Still fun, lots of great tales but overall not as fun as the above two, IMHO.

4th Early 80's - 1986 - The comics went back to being a bit wackier, it was the 80's after all, but still some of the all time classic tales were made during this time, Superman comes to an end. Short run, when it was good it was really good and when it was bad, yikes was it ever bad, most people tag this to the Bronze Age, BTW.

5th Golden Age - 38 to 48 - The most historic decade but also the most boring, sorry but having the ever more powerful Superman "fight" normal crooks doesn't really do it for me. Most of the stories were very repetitive and non-suspenseful There were still some great stories made here, but IMHO, Superman didn't become really Super until the late 40's.

:s:

All good points, all good points. I have had the opportunity to read Jerry Siegel's original story, and Luthor's motivation seems pretty concrete. Maggin's "expansion" of it made everything much clearer, and made Luthor a much more sympathetic and pitiable character, by making Lex a misfit rather than just antisocial and eeeeeeevil. Maggin does, however, deserve applause for his "humanization" of Luthor; nowhere is this better seen in stories like MIRACLE MONDAY where Lex actually saves Superman from Saturn. In Superman's Maggin-written battles with Luthor, Superman is twinged with a sense of loss: he regrets Luthor is his foe. In Maggin's stories, it's taken as a granted that eventually, Lex Luthor will be redeemed and join the side of the Angels.

I always, always liked this idea that every being has a soul and can be redeemed; it feels like much more of a "total" victory. I always hate "future stories" that end with macho idiocy like the hero and his archvillain staring down at one another and battling to the death. One of my favorite aspects of the Avengers is, so many of the members are former supervillains. The Swordsman, Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, Living Lightning, Sandman, Hawkeye...all reformed beings that first appeared as supercriminals.

One of the best, and head-clockingly obvious and simple, extensions of the Luthor origin was made by Alan Moore in SUPREME. Darius Dax "always resented Supreme because his genius was ignored."

Perhaps my point was muddied a bit because I went for easy bald guy jokes. My point is this: even in the very good Siegel origin of Luthor, Superman is a peripheral figure in Lex's beginnings. Lex dislikes Superboy not because of what he does but because of the fact he just happens to be there. I stated that Luthor might be a more compelling villain if Superman had a degree of moral responsibility, created by his choices where he was aware of the consequences (not a "wrong" choice, but one I wouldn't envy and that would weigh on the conscience of the moral Superman - save Luthor or save the town), in the creation of his greatest enemy.



People always make a big deal out of GREEN LANTERN/GREEN ARROW. I really have never understood it; especially when people talk about how "moving" it is. Well, it sure did "move" me - move me to burst out laughing! Anybody that finds Silver Age Superman covers unintentionally funny ought to get a load of the hilariously pompous, utterly irony-free self-righteousness this series palmed off. Worst of all, Marvel comics had been doing stories about social topics since the company's inception; GL/GA wasn't doing anything new; in fact, it was almost a decade too late. If it had come out at Marvel instead of DC, no one would have cared. At that late in the game, 1972 - it has all the "relevance" of your fat, balding Dad squeezing into a $15 polyester suit because he just figured out what "Disco" is.

Though Neal Adams was a pretty great artist - that is, before he lapsed into schizophrenia and "Amateur Geology," Howard Hughes-style.

No doubt GL/GA left me cold, there just is nothing that comic book heroes can do to solve over simplified societal ills...

I was just as bummed by Galaxy Broadcasting, totally broad brush "hippies' and the so-called relevant but STILL stilted dialogue, and making Superboy's parents young...

Nope, did not like the Bronze Age, sam I am...

I ought to point out at this point that being a liberal/progressive, I did not dislike GL/GA because I disagree with it, but rather because it was (ironically) dated, ludicrously self-righteous, and cheesy. In fact I think I dislike GL/GA more than say, a conservative Ayn Randroid monologue like Steve Ditko's QUESTION or MR. A, because GL/GA's shallow treatment of complicated problems reduced robust arguments and talking points to poorly thought out simplifications that came out of Green Arrow's mouth. Denny, if you're reading this, you're not helping.

How right you are about the dialogue. Comics dialogue is never more stilted when it's old guys trying to write hip teenagers. Jim Shooter and Stan Lee's dialogue was great because it had a poetry to it that stands the test of time.

BRANIAC 5: "Chuck the chatter! Listen to that guy's spiel!"

Or:

HAWKEYE: "That's the fifth jet we've crashed! Gosh, I hope ol' moneybags Tony Stark don't pull his clams from our superhero combo!"

CAPTAIN AMERICA: "The Avengers will fight no matter what the cost, Hawkeye!"

HAWKEYE: "Yeah, but we sure would look nutty riding into battle on roller skates!"

See what I mean? It just rolls off the tongue. On the other hand, the insulting to normal intelligence excesses achieved in series like PREZ or the original Silver Age TEEN TITANS just make you want to hit your head with a tack hammer. Thank GOD  they kept the sweet Supergirl from talking "jive" or listening to "twist" records.

Though I can see Linda Danvers with a black boyfriend. She seems like the type.  :D

I loved DC's Bronze Age myself. It was easily the best era, IMO.

What I liked most about it were the fact that the motivations of heroes and villains were deeply explored, but there were also the great ideas of the Silver Age. To me, it felt a lot like true, living breathing mythology.

And yes, I liked the socially relevant GL/GA series too--they're acclaimed for a good reason. For its time, it was very counter-culture and examined issues that hadn't yet been explored in the DCU. It reminded me of one of my favorite movies, Easy Rider. There's likely some influence from that film in the stories.

(Emphasis Mine)

Yeah, I liked Easy Rider too - but that's because it didn't have fershlugginer superheroes in it.

Perhaps I ought to be clearer about the terminology I use because there's some confusion...this site lists things in terms of Golden/Silver/Iron/Bronze Ages, which is a scheme I don't quite agree with, because ages ought to be catageorized according to the talent that exists in them, and the shuffling of said talent. When the Silver Age ended depends on the character and company in question.

I would argue that Superman's Silver Age, for example, continued until 1986, for the simple reason that Superman was being written by talented people (Maggin, Cary Bates) right up to the last possible minute, and for pete's sake, he still had his "good" Silver Age artist (Curt Swan)!

Marvel's Silver Age can be said to have ended in 1974. Marvel's Silver Age was defined by two talented geniuses: Steve Gerber and Steve Englehart. When Gerry Conway became EiC, both of them quit and left to go to DC, where Steve Englehart delivered one of the best runs Batman received, and then went on to do one of the best runs Green Lantern ever received. This isn't entirely a clear-cut distinction; the Marvel Silver Age limped along for several more years after this, because it still had talents like Roy Thomas, and produced great 70s titles like MASTER OF KUNG FU, SPIDER-WOMAN, BLACK PANTHER, DEVIL DINOSAUR, CHAMPIONS, CONAN, IRON FIST, (and that guilty pleasure) UNCANNY X-MEN.

Obviously CRISIS was the capstone to the DC Silver Age; it's officially over and until then DC still had their Silver Age history and continuity in play right up until that point. After Crisis, untalented writer/artists were placed into positions to "write" (Mike Grell, John Byrne, and Keith Giffen being the most outrageous offenders).

After that, it's all "Modern Age" to me. Yes, there was a lurch in style around the time the two Steves and Denny O'Neil and Maggin and Roy Thomas showed up. I suppose there wasn't a "Bronze Age" if you go by PEOPLE instead of STYLE.

If I may add one more thing: the age previous to 1938 or so, which focused mostly on comic strips and artists like Milton Caniff and Alex Raymond, is occasionally called the "Platinum Age."

I wouldn't call them "untalented." The problem with Byrne's Man of Steel was that it made Superman too much like a Marvel character, specifically a mutant (he developed his powers during puberty). Superman didn't need to be moving planets, but he was de-powered way too much post-Crisis. But I did like the Marvel stuff I've read that Byrne was a part of (though he's a better artist than writer). I disagree with a lot of the things that he says, but I do think that he has talent.

The only real problems I had with Byrne's work were Superman killing and how Krypton was de-emphasized.

I've never read anything Giffen wrote that could be considered "bad." I didn't care for his JLA (it lost all of its mythic nature), but that's pretty much it. I haven't really read much of his stuff, to be honest. I doubt that I would have any degree of outright hatred for it, though.

As for Grell, I didn't like the fact that he wanted to completely change Green Arrow and Black Canary with NO explanation. For instance, in his version, he said that Black Canary never posessed a "sonic scream." My complaint with him is that he didn't want to work in continuity.

A fun comic for long-term teen and adult fans (I read some issues I bought at a garage sale), but basically points to what is wrong with the last 30-odd years of superhero/adventure comics writing: insularity, continuity obsessions, nerdish nostalgia.  Could someone who had never read Avengers appreciate it at all?



Not to get overly nerdish myself, but I lump the classic EC and various horror/crime/sci-fi comics of the 40s-early-50s into the Golden Age (Atomic Age by some).  Krigstein, Kurtzman, Elder.  Mad Magazine.  Jack Cole and Plastic Man.  Crime Does Not Pay.  Boy Comics.  Romance comics.  Early Dan Decarlo.  A great period for newspaper strips as well.  But as with any period, 90% of the output was crap.

Most days I thank RAO that, for all but the tiny ghetto of North American superhero comics and their current fans, comics have today escaped the descending spiral of these so-called Ages and the death-grip of the Direct Market/comic book shop and entered a new Golden Age of adult graphic novels, manga, translated Euro-comics, classic reprints and new inventive kids' comics, all to be found at your local book store.

For me, the Bronze Age is my favorite era as well. While the Silver Age comics are enjoyable, I guess I liked the writing tone of the Bronze Age stories, and the various runs (Maggin/Bates on Superman, Engelhart's Batman, the GL/GA series, and if we go with the tail end of the era, "Captain Carrot", Schaffenberger's art on "New Adventures of Superboy", etc.). Liked the way Lois was treated in this era more than in the 60's as well, I suppose; and being able to see African-American characters show up more and more in 70's stories also probably helps from my perspective (speaking of "Though I can see Linda Danvers with a black boyfriend. She seems like the type.", I'd imagine Linda wouldn't care about her boyfriend's ethnicity; just as long as he's "dreamy"... :-) ).

Re: Eras: I consider "Bronze Age" for DC stretching from c. 1970 (Weisinger retiring, Kirby joining DC, the makeover Supes got) to 1986 (the end of "Crisis"). 1986 onwards is the "Modern Age" for me...

*I've always had one major problem with Green Lantern<>Green Arrow.  Why are you using a interstellar space cop to tell street level stories?  

After I heard that Supegirl had been killed in Crisis, I left DC in disgust.  The only super-hero I was reading was gone.  The start of Crisis was the end of the Silver Age.  But, it ended before that for me.  The last issue of Supergirl and the lie they told by saying that Supergirl and Superboy will be combined into one title.  Then I heard about her 'Secret Marriage' and then that she never existed in the first place.   :evil:

Yupper, that was my problem, I was not really indifferent to the issues of society when I was 10, I just could not reckon a Green Lantern being an idiot about it...

But they both have green costumes and the word Green in their name  :P  

Seriously, that was the reason  :?

That can work for me... :wink:

Heh! I was being facetious there about Supergirl, but it does bring up one interesting aspect about Superman (and Supergirl's) heroism: he is an alien, he is not from the earth.  As a result of this, he does not see the differences that human beings make amongst ourselves to be truly meaningful. Anybody that says Superman's heroism is cookie-cutter doesn't get the character.

As for the black characters of the 1970s, I would consider them more an embarassment than a sign of social progress. Black superheroes in the 1970s came in two varieties:

1) the sidekick of a white superhero (Black Goliath to Giant-Man, the Falcon to Captain America),

2) A street-level guy with a gigantic afro who fights crime in discos (Luke Cage: Power Man, Black Lightning)

The obvious, and perhaps only exception, was the Black Panther, who broke nearly every stereotype: he didn't talk jive, he didn't have an afro, and he prefered Mozart and Bizet over KC and the Sunshine Band. What is it about the Black Panther that his solo efforts always get the best writers? His 1970s Silver Age JUNGLE ACTION series by Don MacGregor was one of the highlights of that decade, and his BLACK PANTHER series by Christopher Priest is one of the few diamonds in the coal of the creative desert that was the 1990s.

There also was the confident, assertive, and devoted to family Monica Rambeau Captain Marvel, but she was created by Roger Stern at the beginning of the 1980s, not the 1970s.




Well, as much as I wish that my comics collection could help me score with chicks, alas! There is something inherently nerdy about science fiction and superheroes and that isn't  likely to change no matter how they're written.

And I don't see what you're talking about as a drawback at all. It's a PLUS, not a minus that this story, and many like it, exist in an engrossing, detailed, rich world. Yes, a "new reader" would not know who everyone is at least right away, but the fact that there is so much there to know, the fact there is so much there there is enough to arouse curiosity and fascination: the Forever Crystal, the Immortus/Kang/Rama-Tut dynamic, the android Human Torch, Rick Jones and the Destiny force. It's the greatest hypocrisy that  the same fans that praise Tolkien's LORD OF THE RINGS for his detailed worldbuilding (even down to creating languages!) and rich backdrop of historical events and personalities, excoriate and flay Kurt Busiek and others like him for DOING THE EXACT SAME THING: using well-defined world bursting at the seams with history and depth (except it's one the creators work with and contribute to instead of creating whole cloth like Tolkien did).

One of my ex-girlfriends, when I mentioned how convoluted Avengers history is, only laughed. "Boy, you only think it's complicated because you don't watch soap operas." Seriously, nothing irks me more than the bleating, goggle-vision whining of illiterate anti-history fanboys nodding like bobbleheads when some hack creator like Morrison or Ellis complain that they shouldn't have to have a character behave as they have been shown as behaving.

And if "continuity" is killing comics, then MELROSE PLACE, THE O.C., BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, SMALLVILLE, and DAYS OF OUR LIVES ought to be the least successful shows ever.

Most of my friends that are atheists deny not the fact that God exists, but the various stupid ways of thinking about God: God as a ruthless, nationalistic General that is on the side of one nation or race over another; God as a "Little Mary Sunshine" that never condemns, and so forth. In the same way, the people that honestly don't like what is termed as "continuity" only dislike its incorrect applications at the hand of bad writers. Continuity, at its heart, is a tool for characterization and a history that can be used to create and tell new stories.

Except that as Superboy Superman had visited the 50th century (Adventure #279, Dec 1960) and they were just above 30th century tech levels. They even believed that Superboy along with the other heroes of the 20th century were myths on par with Santa Claus, Mercury, and Peter Pan. What happened to the LSH and their technology (like time travel) was never explained. In fact given that by this time Superman had a Fortress  (Action Comics #241 ,1958) which should have had something survive into the 50th century so there were many problems with trips into the future.

By the Bronze age the seperate timelines became accepted canon. In one story a scientist trie dto to tot he LSH 30th century and instead tranformed Metropolis into that of a 30th century where a great war had happened putting animals into control of mankind.

All of this is why I think that time travel and continuity have inherently huge problems of co-existing, and why I can cut it some slack...that fact that any individual can time travel introduces that they will, and any LSH member that travels back to see Superboy on a particular timeline (if there is just ONE, and I guess this is true, Superboy/Superman is always aging at the same rate, Braniac 5 didn't travel back to a pre LSH contact time to warn Superboy that SOMEDAY Mr. Mxyptlyk would go psycho), would still use that same technology to travel forward  to any one time where they could gain even more advanced technology or back to a moment where they could have prevented any problem from even occuring...

Maybe I have a premise that time travel cancels continuity, or certainly has that potential!

I'm always interested in threads like this, mostly because I'd like to write a version of Superman's origin myself one of these days.

I've recently written a short story that was partially based on Krypton, but there are no names or dialogue, and it's written in such a way that it could be seen as being either another planet or Earth in the distant future. The way I portrayed these people was to make them very alien, but also to make their culture very beautiful and thriving. That being said, it might be a bit much for some people, so I may go with another of my origin ideas (I have quite a few).