Thanks for the references...
Ditto! I wasn't aware of any "red sun doesn't weaken him completely" pre-Crisis stories. I love the ones where his powers were by only half. "Great Krypton! I can only juggle a half-dozen planets at once!" I'm surprised that got past Schwartz.
I'm glad I stopped reading comics in the early 70s, it gets convoluted unnecessarily in my mind, to me, ALMOST as big a sin as forgetting the mythos is taking it WAY too seriously...one overinvolved explanation opens larger and larger questions...lets face it, if Krypton was huge and had high gravity there would be zero chance of a biped hominid ever evolving or having a chance to survive if transplanted...
They'd definitely have to be modified for the environment before being plopped on the planet, and things would get really complex if humanoid aesthetics were a priority. Of course, without a solid frame of reference, a young kid isn't likely to "get" a story involving some inhuman alien, and that's nontrivial in a comic book context.
As for the "science" of Superman and speculative fiction in general, it's helpful to have a firm sense of what the rules are and to solve problems within the context of said rules. Ideally, the rules should make for good and diverse kinds of story telling, especially for a world you're expecting the reader to live in for awhile. Even with comics that aren't really about speculative fiction, the humor is often against a backdrop of consistency and archetype.
Ok, enough ranting for one post.
Thanks again for those references.