Superman Through the Ages! Forum

http://superman.nu/tales3/last/?page=36

Some of you may remember a Superboy tv show that ran from 1988 to 1992. (I met the Luthor of that show recently.) Anyway, when Warner Bros. sued the producers so they could get the Kryptonian tv rights back, they had a close out written by "Stan Berkowitz" which served as an epilogue one supposes.

Anyway, much of the story in that special represents a reverie or imagining of CK, but the end of the story has him in the diagetically real*
part of the story revealing something to Lana Lang. In the link I posted above, you can see that it mirrors Man of Steel#6 (a pin-up acknowledges the inspiration).

So, do the other diagetically real parts of the story represent an appearance by the mainstream Earth Kent?

*as opposed to historically real

http://www.amazon.imdb.com/name/nm0075487/

One of the many reasons that I really like this story (http://superman.nu/tales3/last/?page=0) is that it explains that the Superboy TV series (and the tie-in comic book) were in reality all short stories written by the Post-Crisis, Earth-DC Clark Kent. Even though there was never an in-costume Superboy in the DCU, Clark still created the character and used his private Superboy stories as a forum in which to play out his own thought processes.

So before he revealed his powers to Lana in Byrne's Man of Steel and in Loeb/Sale's Superman For All Seasons, he had come to the realization, through his Superboy stories, that he had to do it.

In short, to answer your question, yes, I believe that the other diagetically real parts of the story do show the "mainstream" Earth Clark.

One thing in that special did not fit Post-Crisis. That Clark was wearing Glasses when he revealed his powers to Lana and before he was Superman. So its place in continuity was always a little dubious to me.

But interestingly due to recent revelations of Kurt Busiek that Special fits much more smoothly into the current continuity than it did before. That due to sightings of a "mysterious super-boy of Smallville"  Clark did need to wear glasses before he was Superman.

I have been wondering recently of versions of the Superman mythos that feature Clark wearing Glasses before he had a costumed identity. Suggesting a proto-secret identity due to the need to disguise his physical perfection. Glasses suggest a phyiscal flaw.

The examples I am aware of are

Adv Superboy Special#1
The Pilot episode of Lois & Clark
The flashback scene in Superman Returns
The current "New Earth" continuity, first revealed in Superman #656
The Pilot episode of Legion of Super Heroes

Are there any others?

Ah, do you mean the diagetically real Luthor or the historically real Luthor?  Earth Prime Luthor?

You kill me sometimes, you know that?

Diagetically real means real in th context of the story. So if someone asks "Did the Ultra-Humanite really transfer his brain into a woman?", they mean diagetically real.

Historically real means it happened in the real world.

I don't quite get all this... I just figure the Superboy comic and Series it was based off of was a parallel universe, like the Ultra Humanite reference.  Just because a plane of existence multiverse was merged in the Crisis doesn't mean they all were, IMHO

Holy crap on a stick, I had no idea that this book even existed.

The hunt begins!

I always wondered about that; if there is an infinite number of alternate universes, there's got to be at least one where the Crisis never happened, right?