JulianPerez
Council of Wisdom
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« on: October 14, 2006, 07:57:51 AM » |
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Should Superman "always know" his origin as a survivor of Krypton, or should he "discover" it?
In the Silver and Bronze Ages, Superman knew his origin firstly because of his super-memory, and the fact he was relatively old when Krypton blew up, nearly a toddler. There was also the invention of the Memory Chair, which allowed him to recover past memories.
I strongly suspect the reason for the Memory Chair was to be a "frame story" for stuff like the Super-Baby tales, and later on, for the Julie Schwartz "World of Krypton" backups.
The argument FOR Superman always knowing of Krypton is that it gives Superman an explicitly Kryptonian identity early on. He doesn't think of himself as strange or different, and despite being alone, he thus gets a kind of very special pride in who he is; he's always known of it, so there's nothing strange or weird about Krypton to him. Thus, things like the Fortress of Solitude make more sense, because being Kryptonian would be important to him. This certainly makes sense; the most interesting part of Superman to many is the idea that he and Supergirl were always doing things like celebrating Kryptonian holidays only they knew about.
It may be possible to have a Superman that knows nothing of Krypton until late in the game, as he was in the movie. The reason the treatment in the movie worked was because Superman had his powers from day one: he was super from the get-go, quite clearly different and not normal, and this was made all the worse because he didn't understand why. In other words, he was a freak, and he stopped being a freak when Marlon Brando's floating head showed up to say that there was nothing wrong with him, that he was from a proud race, and that he could turn his difference around and use it to make contributions.
The reason Superman was able to really be sympathetic in the first part of the movie is that he didn't know what he was here FOR. He lacked a purpose and thus was very, very sympathetic: I mean, who isn't like that? Who isn't searching for meaning?
This is also why I've never been as crazy about Superboy as I am about other parts of the Super-Mythos, because if he's got the Superboy suit on from a very early period on and being useful and helpful to society, the whole period of Kal-El having vast powers that isolate him from others, but where he lacks a niche, is negligible.
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"Wait, folks...in a startling new development, Black Goliath has ripped Stilt-Man's leg off, and appears to be beating him with it!" - Reporter, Champions #15 (1978)
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