Superman Through the Ages! Forum

OK So I'm  little post happy, but I've got a few questions. I dropped out of comics during the Doomsday stuff and It took the JLA cartoon to rekindle my interest so I missed a few things.
           In the JLA 1 million Superman is apparently immortal but in the present  Batman / Superman title a greying Superman ala Kingdom Come shows up. So what's the current view on Kal's lifespan. I must admit one of if not my all time favorite character was the greying but spry earth 2 Superman of the All-star squadron.
             In our worlds at War the Kents are killed but in recent stories theyr'e back . What gives? I guess we never saw the bodies in the war arc but I'm curious as to what happened.

I don't know. The writing in the  post-reboot Superman comics is very inconsistent.

In the classic Superman comics... well reading this story should answer your question, enjoy!

http://superman.nu/tales2/ghost

Kal-L remains a favorite character of mine, the original Superman, the model upon which the latter editions have all been based. Some great issues featuring the classic Supes can be found on this site.

 As to the current incarnation's lifepsan, he is technically immortal. The older he becomes, the slower he ages until eventually he may even become a godlike being on par with Rao. Superman can die; by kryptonite, magic, or accident, and should he die he won't come back again, but barring injury or the other factors above as long as he's got a steady supply of yellow solar radiation he's effectively immortal.

 -Def.

The graying Superman that showed up in Superman/Batman was a riff on the Kingdom Come version, I think.  I don't think either KC or DC 1M were supposed to be set in stone, they're each just two possible futures, written by guys with differing ideas on how time will affect Kal.  The fact that both of them have interacted with members of the official DCU is, I suppose, attributable to "Hypertime," Mark Waid's grand apologia for editorial incompetence which says, in essence, "No matter how bad we screw up continuity, it's all part of the master plan."  

Anyway, Superman's future ended in 1986, so none of them count!

Don't mince words wing, tell us how you really feel. ;)

 But yeah, the Older Supes from Superman/Batman was in fact the Supes of an alternate reality. Seems they're doing a lot to play with the fabric of the space/time continuum in that title, which heightens my suspicions about this upcoming 'crisis' Luthor mentioned in the issue #8. . .makes you wonder what's coming next, the next big revamp to 'fix' DC Continuity, or perhaps a return to basics a la All-Star Superman? We can only hope. . .and maybe dread a bit as well.  :?


 -Def.

I just started referring to them as imaginary stories  8)

SteamTeck, the Kents weren't killed in Our Worlds at War, though a dazed Pa Kent was missing for a while.  However, the Birthright origin shows the Kents much younger.  There are inconsistencies -- Identity Crisis shows older Kents, so apparently the word didn't reach the creative team in time.

It must have been in the regular title later that the Kents weren't killed. In the trade paperback that is  the impression you are given . Thanks for clearing that up.
  So Perez didn't come up with the super-convoluted at least as annoyng as the legion new "Troia" that existed afterwards. The wierd convolutions and timewarps were a later idea? Well even so it's just one character not the whole fututre I suppose  but I've never cared for the new character. The legion characters were at least left intact for all the good it does now.
    I think retroconning and rebooting must be like drug addiction once you start :roll:  you can't stop.

It must be noted in Kingdom Come that Superman referred to his lost loved ones as 'humans' and 'humans die when they get old' when talking to Diana.  The implication was that Superman would not die.

In DC One Million, the main series, the Linear Men were investigating the paradox of Gog killing Superman in the 21st century while he was also alive in the 853rd century.  At no point did they consider the difference in appearance or aging as a paradox and still considered him virtually immortal.

It must also be noted that Ross' renditions of the current Superman have the same face just minus the greying temples.  For all intents and purposes, Ross just tends to draw an older looking Superman even for the present day.

Yeah, he basically does that out of personal preference. He believes older faces have more character to them, which is a valid arguement. I think what he's trying to do is make the icons look more real but having look not Hollywood pretty. Atttractive, but not pretty.

While I understand what he's going for I think he makes Superman just a touch too older looking, even though I like his stuff. Still his Superman face doesn't bother me as much as the fact that he draws the \S/ so large it looks like something thats swallowing Supermans chest. I think he makes the cape too long as well.  I prefer just above the tops of his boots.

I like the idea that Superman's mortality is somewhere up in the air.  It makes him exactly as superhuman as I think he should be -- he doesn't know if he's subject to the same basic forces as the rest of humanity or not, even when it comes to death.  Maybe it applies to him, maybe it doesn't.  For something so fundamental to be in question strikes me as very Superman.

I actually have this vision in my head of a Superman who debuts in 1938 and grows into the modern age as a sort of Peter Pan, much like in Whom Gods Destroy.  But I would have his hair slowly turn white.  No lines in his face, no gravel in his voice.  Just his hair turning grey and then white, eventually.  I think that would be pretty cool.  He might gain the ability to change his appearance somewhat, and it might even operate on a subconscious level at times, so that basically he looks as old as he feels.

I get the feeling that Superman should be an evolving character.  There is a place for Superboy (I'm not sure what it is but I do feel that there's a place for it), and Kingdom Come has shown us that there's a place for a middle-aged Superman.  I'd be curious to see what the next step is for Superman -- probably becoming more of a cosmic hero, like he was in the Silver Age.

I actually like the logical progression of Superman's career as Byrne depicted it in Generations, where he took much the same path as you describe.