Oh there's just so many you could drive yourself crazy trying to account for 'em all.
Like Earth 2/"golden age" Superboy (unofficial--but Superman was a boy in More Fun and Adventure during the forties).
Wouldn't that just be the Silver Age Superman as a boy?
Whilst the Golden Age Superman was in Action Comics,Superman,his younger Earth 1 Counterpart was in More Fun.
remember there was No Earth 2 Superboy except in a story where Superboy of Earth 1 meets the young Earth2 Clark Kent.
I had hoped that I would get support from Mike's Amazing World of DC Comics (
www.dcindexes.com), but his site not only supports Will's view, it develops it into a rigid scheme that reinterprets those 1940s stories as if they were set on Earth 1--overlaying the continuity of a later date onto these stories and ignoring contrary continuity as anomalies.
This tortures logic. Of course these stories were published in the 40s and are therefore "golden age" in the true sense that we usually intend that term. And of course these stories weren't set on Earth 1. Because the concept of Earth 1 didn't exist until the sixties.
Anyone can force a retroactive continuity onto these stories if they want, but we have to be honest and admit that's what we're doing. So I can say these stories occurred on Earth 1, or Earth 2, or Earth B--but in doing so I'm making retroactive judgements based on later stories, and not based in fact.
There was only one Superman in the minds of the readers at the time, and the stories (on the covers of Adventure Comics) were advertised as stories of SUPERMAN when he was a boy. Therefore the boy presented to the reader is intended as the junior version of Superman (in the "golden age"--who we now identify with the Earth 2 Superman). And he's wearing the current costume of that Superman (with the differently styled red 'S').
Will is right, being as his assertions are based on later fan judgements about retroactive continuity (ie. this must be Earth 1 Clark Kent as a boy, because Earth 2 Clark Kent was never supposed to have been Superboy). But I'm also right as I'm using entirely different criteria.
My main point stands as this version of Superboy looks different from the usual George Papp/Curt Swan styled version--he's younger (about eight or ten, I'd say) and therefore shorter, and he has a different style 'S' emblem--so that should be enough to qualify him for treatment by TriSaber if he so chooses. Which was what I meant.
Given anomalies of continuity have been used to retroactively establish alternate Earth versions of characters, there are enough anomalies between this Superboy and the later Earth 1 Superboy to suggest at least that this could be another alternate version of Superboy.
The other day I was reading an early sixties Legion story where Chameleon Boy was shown meeting with an alternate universe version of himself, so if that existed in Legion continuity even back then, then it's possible Superboy had alternate versions of himself, as well.