Superman Through the Ages! Forum

Superman comics, especially SUPERMAN FAMILY, have had some terrific backup stories over the years: "Tales of the Bizarro World," "The Private Life of Clark Kent," and even "Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes."

By far my favorite of all time was the Martin Pasko backup that featured Morgan Edge, and had him discover a cleaning lady at the UBS building is his mother. It was the first to mention that Morgan Edge is Jewish but in fact, does not practice.

During the Weisenger years, there were the Superbaby backups, which featured Superman using a memory device to recover memories he's lost due to Kryptonite exposure over the years. The greatest one ever had Superbaby kidnapped by his "Uncle Brainiac," who finds Superbaby too much to handle.

Strangely enough, the Superbaby stories remind me the most of a lot of Joe Haldeman short stories. In science fiction, the person that saves the day is the only person that thinks outside the box and really sees the nature of the problem. On the other hand, Haldeman wrote stories about cranky and eccentric older people that didn't have to figure out the nature of problems: they solved them just by being themselves. That's Superbaby for you, right there: he fixes everything not by brains but by just being a baby.

There are a couple that I only vaguely remember:

Wasn't there also something of a backup starring "Mr. and Mrs. Superman," featuring Superman and Lois's identical twins being married inside the Bottled City of Kandor with their offspring?

What was that one backup story about Superman's son in 2020, who killed off Clark Kent (faking his own death) and started using several different secret identities?

The "Jimmy Olsen, Mr. Action" backups in SUPERMAN FAMILY had a lot of great art by Kurt Schaffenberger. Jimmy ditched his bow tie in favor of a turtleneck and golf hat. With that golf hat of his, it looks a lot like "Jimmy Olsen Goes to Dublin." The idea of Jimmy Olsen as being a young truth-buster and gang reporter that tends to get in over his head all the time with smugglers and so on, a cross between the Hardy Boys and Jonny Quest...was a really interesting way to take the character. Leo Dorfman was principally responsible for a lot of these, and the heyday ended when he died in the late seventies.

Thus far, 2006 has been "The Year of Jimmy." SUPERMAN RETURNS has him steal the movie and get all the best lines. There was also Jimmy's treatment in ALL-STAR SUPERMAN #4, the release of the SUPERMAN FAMILY ARCHIVES reprinting his adventures, and the center stage that Jimmy took in the Busiek/Johns "Up, Up, and Away" story...

Why not end the Year of Jimmy off maybe with a return of the "Mr. Action" backup? All I'm saying is all.

There was also the Schwartz-era "World of Krypton" stories. I am almost 100% positive this was inspired by the "Tales of Asgard" backup in JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY. Here's the thing about backup flashback stories involving weird fantasy worlds that a hero is tangentally connected to: it's pretty much an excuse for tons of monsters. For this reason alone, "Tales of Asgard" was almost always more fun than the MIGHTY THOR story that it came with.

The thing I liked best about "World of Krypton" by far was that it had Jor-El as a hero in his own right, a two-fisted scientist in his own way as interesting as his son, yet at the same time a very, very different character from his son: he was more a sort of "Doctor Who" type (particularly as played by Pertwee) who was a vigorous person with a lot of elbow grease, in a planet that on the one hand, was conservative, uptight, and civilized, on the other hand surrounded by exotic natural wonders and monsters. Superman has always been brainy, but his braininess was more a kind of savvy; Superman was always experienced and a man of the world, whereas Jor-El in "World of Krypton" was more explicitly studious, and perhaps a bit more eccentric.

It wasn't a Superman backup, but it was still interesting to mention: the EXTREMELY short-lived "Tales of the Amazons" backup in WONDER WOMAN.

It was a backup with a very interesting concept: the stories of the Amazon women before Wonder Woman's birth that ran for three issues between WONDER WOMAN #247-249 (1978).

The tagline on the cover of 247 was worth reading in and of itself just for the cheesy sexploitation: "NAKED Steel in a Sorcerous Realm at the DAWN of history!"

The backup was interesting, like "Tales of Asgard" and "World of Krypton," because it was a creature-feature; here it was the equal of "Tales of Asgard." It featured giant squids and sea creatures. In one story, the Amazons are attacked by a colossal tarantula, only to be saved by a Griffin, who rules a realm of sky beings that worship "the Nameless God."

"Tales of the Amazons" also showed us more details of the Amazon rebellion and Hippopolyta recapturing her girdle, as well as the Amazons' detour into another dimension.

The backup's most enduring contribution was the villainess Astarte, who first appeared in "Tales of the Amazons" as Diana, an Amazon killed by Hercules during the Great Escape (who was the person that Wonder Woman was named after).

A sword and sorcery backup with good looking women might be interesting to read in a contemporary Wonder Woman book, now that with Rucka and so forth there's much of an emphasis on her Amazonian supporting cast.

Well, those were the adventures of the Superman and Lois of Earth-Two, set back in the '50's, shortly after they got married.  I remember reading a couple of them and recall the art was by Schaffenberger, which was cool....

I never even knew about the Morgan Edge stories... if you have the issue, can you scan it and maybe have it posted in the comics section here? I would love to read it!!!

Mother of Morgan Edge:

http://superman.nu/wiki/index.php/Sophie_Edelstein

Superman's Kandorian double married to a Lois double, with children (the story is on this site):

http://superman.nu/wiki/index.php/Van-Zee

There is a thread around here somewhere about the Superman of 2020, I think it was a 1980 story...

The issue with the backup story where Morgan Edge revealed he was Jewish and changed his name to hide his heritage, was ACTION COMICS #468 (1977).

The story was very touching, and also made a Grade A jerk like Morgan Edge a human being.

darn! I promised Great Rao I'd scan for him the "Adult Legion" story in ADVENTURE COMICS #354-355 a few months ago, and it's slipped my mind.

It's effectively the Morgan Edge origin story and also a favourite of mine. In fact, I remember talking to India Ink and others about that story a while back. India mentioned it on the old DC boards:

India Ink (August 2002):
I remember describing more of the story as well, maybe on the STTA Superman in the 70s thread, but I suppose that great old thread, with the clean-up and new forum, has been deleted.  :(

I haven't time to dig out the mag, but I recall that when young Edge has the fight with some tough guys over a card game, he escapes with his winnings which include the ownership title to a small TV station, and he explains that this formed the beginnings of his media empire.

It wasn't just the one story, there were a few; Superman 2020 was Superman's grandson (not son) and obviously didn't care how it affected his father and grandfather that he faked his death, thereby condemning them to a life of having to pretend to grieve for him. As I recall, it wasn't particularly popular and I can't clearly remember any of the stories, just the premise. For some reason, I also remember that his girlfriend in one story was called Melodee Sellers. I shall probably still remember this about thirty or forty years down the line, when I will be under the impression that I am having breakfast every twenty minutes and won't be able to recall where I live.

My favourite backup stories, hands down, were The Private Life of Clark Kent. They were wonderfully cosy somehow, and not a little silly. In fact, I'd be grateful if someone could tell me where two of my favourites appeared (or better yet, put them up on the site):

In the first story, Clark has to go and interview an informant in a seedy bar and gets picked on by a rowdy drunk who doesn't like his face and wants him to take his glasses off so they can fight. (Of course Clark has ordered a glass of milk in this dive, which doesn't make the situation any better.) Finally, the drunk recognises him as Kent, the guy who does the news on TV, and proves to be a big fan. Phew!

In the second, Clark's neighbours, the twins called April and Maye Something, entrust him with their parrot for the weekend, and to his dismay, he wakes up the next morning to hear it saying: "Clark Kent is Superman! Clark Kent is Superman!" Thinking that the parrot is mimicking something he said in his sleep, Clark then spends a frantic day trying to make the it say something else, only to find that it was a practical joke pulled on him by the twins. Which means, of course, that he has to teach the parrot to say it again.

I really liked this kind of story, that built on the continuity and served to introduce new characters; I'm not sure, but I imagine that another neighbour of Clark's, Mrs. Moskowitz, no doubt inspired by the Hyman Kaplan stories, must have been introduced in one of these. Often, though, they were sort of Elseworlds premises, like the Bruce (Superman) Wayne backups, which were a bit dull.

I remember the premise for another series of backups, Superman's Diary (written in Kryptonese and heat vision), but I can't really bring any particular story to mind. Anyone?

I didn't read Bronze Age comics, but I did laugh at April and May Marigold when I was looking into some things for Supermanica entries...

I'd forgotten they were telepathic! Of course they were: they were twins, and in comics that only means one thing...

LOL, and May thinks Clark is cute and April doesn't... 8)

I would say that my favorite backups from the Bronze age were World of Krypton and the Private Life of Clark Kent.  One Kent story in particular "I can't go home again" detailed the old Kent family home being put up for sale and Clark's reactions to this was excellent.  The most effective Kent stories were those where he never appeared at all in his Superman costume.

That's "Clark Kent's Mynah Dilemma."

(http://www.comics.org/graphics/covers/2154/400/2154_4_197.jpg)

From SUPERMAN FAMILY #197.  One of my all-time favorite Superman stories.  I own a page of original art from it.

I'm also a big fan of "Mr. and Mrs. Superman," by Bates, Bridwell, Swan, Schaffenberger, Novick and others.  So it's kinda fun that that's what I'm writing in SUPERMAN these days!

I liked the idea of "Superman 2020" more than the execution on most of it -- it's a series I always wanted to write.

But another one I enjoyed a lot was "Superman: The In-Between Years," about Clark's college days.

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And that's "I Don't Like Your Face!" from SUPERMAN #292.  One of the very few times Curt Swan was inked by Al Milgrom, and a nice combination it made, too.

kdb

Yes, and it just goes to show what a brilliant character Clark is in his own right. A very early one I owned, which I haven't dug out of my comic boxes for years and years, involved Clark being railroaded into babysitting, then he lost the baby (or, rather, it lost him). The art was by Neal Adams if I remember correctly, and I always liked that story.

Fave Super-Backups:

1. Mr and Mrs Superman, my favourite 70s back-up.  The whole thing is totally charming, imagining a Super-past that was too good to be true.  A neat aspect of the premise: only characters from before the Silver Age/1950s.

2. Tales of the Bizarro World.  Another charming strip and the aspect of Silver-Age Superman that many fans bring up first (and can still share as adults).

3. Private Life of Clark K.  I could read whole comics of this strip.  What stopped DC from just doing a "Daily Planet" strip?  The Lois and Jimmy books were approximations of this but I always felt the entire non-super Superman family was strong enough to run their own feature.  An ensemble comedy-melodrama like today's tv hits (and not like Lois and Clark).  First fell in love with this feature when I found the aforementioned "Mynah Dilema" in a DC Blue Ribbon Digest.  Still my fave story.

4. Supergirl. She appeared as a backup in many issues before she became a lead.  I love Silver Age Supergirl!

5. Legion of Super-Heroes. (see Supergirl)

6. Krypto, especially the Space Canine Patrol stories.

7. Whatever happened to.. in DC Comics Presents.  Great history lessons of obscure characters thta tied up equally obscure continuity.

8. The Mxy back-up by Elliot S! Maggin

9. World of Krypton --more Maggin world-building!

10. The Secret Life of Lex Luthor.  Wait, that wasn't a series, was it?  I guess I dreamed it...

Thanks for finding those references for me, Kurt! DC should reprint all of those old backups in trades, since they are obviously very fondly remembered. You got any clout in that department?

As Telle says, I too would have liked to see a "Daily Planet" strip in which Superman did not appear; as I've said before, I loved the bits in the old comics with the cast just standing around the office chatting, going to lunch, that sort of thing.

And The Secret Life of Lex Luthor is an inspired idea for a backup strip: one imagines all kinds of intricate crime schemes, prison escapes and mad inventions. Quite a good premise for comedy, no?

I loved those Dollar Comics, like Superman Family and Batman Family... and those 100 pagers in the '70's for 60 cents!!!

But the "Whatever Happened To? series Telle mentioned was awesome... I like the updated Air Wave stories in Action as well!

Kurt... PLEASE... if you ever become a big old suit at DC... BRING BACK THE MULTIVERSE!!!  (please?)

the Daily Planet back-ups were collected into a TPB with some iron age crap throw in for padding.

the Bizarro back ups were also collected

Nope.  And I don't think they're as fondly remembered among the general comics-buying populace as they are here, for obvious reasons.  For my part, I think the bulk of the Superman backup strips were bad -- there were a few good episodes of "Private Life of Clark Kent," but most of them are nothing to write home about.  And there were wretched wonders like "Bruce (Superman) Wayne," to boot.

Plus, if I had the clout to get 70s stuff reprinted (well, aside from the DCCP issues I just got reprinted in the upcoming BACK IN ACTION TPB), I wouldn't start with backups -- I'd go right to THE COMPLETE CARY BATES SUPERMAN, THE COMPLETE ELLIOT MAGGIN SUPERMAN and suchlike.


The closest you're likely to get to that is the Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane strips in SUPERMAN FAMILY after #200, when they were less about flashy adventure and more about newspaper reportage.  The Lois stories by Tamsyn O'Flynn and Bob Oksner are particularly enjoyable -- and even after SUPFAM ends, they continued in the back of THE DARING NEW ADVENTURES OF SUPERGIRL.

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I can confidently report that I will never be a big old suit at DC.

I'd be happy to see the multiverse again, mind you.  I just will never be in any position of power at DC.

kdb

As far as those involving Superman I recently read an adventure of Bruce "Superman" Wayne that I rather liked because of the relationship between him and Barbara Gordon. 

As far as the back-ups that I didn't like, well, in all honesty I cannot STAND the adventures of Superbaby.  They bother me on a deep and emotional level not because of the cutesy nature to the stories but because of how "Superbaby" talks.

God, even in the freaking eighties he began each sentence with, "Me do this," or "Me do that."

Annoying.

Funny thing is, I have heard many little 2 year olds talk the same exact way.   

I was thinking that you could make a collection of "Private Life of Lex Luthor" using already existing Luthor stories but realized that there is already a Superman vs Lex Luthor collection (including the obligatory Iron Age stories --doesn't DC know that there is a contradiction in that policy, not least because the Crisis was supposed to make those stories non-existent).

Anyway, there are some great stories in there: The Einstein Connection, "How Luthor Lost his Hair", the Lexor saga, and one of 2 others.  I would also add the Luthor's Lair Story and the Lena Thorul stories.  Any others?

Really.  Wow.  That is odd.  I guess this is one of those cases where two people have two completely different life experiences.

Oh well.  Live and learn.