"Superman: the Secret Years": Rozakis' 1985 miniseries telling (his version of) how Superboy became Superman (and willingly ignoring the "professor and his lie detector"/"social worker" versions).
Can you tell me something about this story, please?
I know two different versions of this event...
1) An university professor wants to know if Clark is really Superboy, so he use a machine to find out the truth. Clark says that he is not Superboy and the machine detects that he is telling the truth, because now he is Superman!
2) Into an early '70s issue there is a story which features Superboy's early days at Metropolis University. He use his powers to "play" with his friends, and a woman says to him that he must be a man, not a boy. When she dies, he for respect change his name in Superboy.
Those are the first two versions, yep...
"The Secret Years" was a four-issue 1985 miniseries written by Bob Rozakis, and tells of Superboy's junior year in college, covering his college roommates (the same guys from the other 80's "In-Between Years" flashbacks), dating Lori Lemaris, a new friend Clark's made, and of Luthor's latest scheme. Events stemming from what befalls Clark's roommates, his battle with Luthor, and several other events leads Clark to finally decide to change his name to "Superman" out of maturity/no longer feeling like a boy (which, since he's mentioned as being 21 in this miniseries, I'd hope wasn't the case! :-) ).
I never got to read the early 70's "social worker" story, but did read the professor/lie detector one. Rozakis, in the first issue, mentions/summarizes the previous stories telling of Clark's college-age adventures, and mentions how his series ignores the "lie detector" and "social worker" versions (there's a picture of a few panels from each of those issues shown) of how he changed his name.
Since it came so late in the game, though (there's house ads for "Crisis" in the book), not surprised not many fans seem to remember this series (even despite the Frank Miller covers on all of the issues), vs. the "lie detector" bit (which, as Rozakis noted, felt a bit too much like just another "secret identity-dodging" tale to me for such an important event...though I do think Rozakis could've still fit it into the miniseries somehow...).