Superman Through the Ages! Forum

I got this issue (my first!) and it was kind of fun, even if I know next to nothing about Linda, etc.  Here's a few things I was wondering about:

1.) I've heard a lot of mention of the wedding and pink K, but another line got my attention, and I was wondering what folks here thought of it.

When Superman reveals his feelings to Linda, she says (in essence), "what about Lois?" and Superman answers, "I don't love Lois!"

Now, it's been a pet theory of mine for years that the Silver Age Superman did not really love Lois Lane.  This seems obvious in stories like the Lori Lemaris origin and other tales where he falls head over heels for various women in a way he never did for LL.  But I was wondering if people thought the above line means PAD agrees with me, or if Superman merely doesn't love her in this particular case because Linda's around to muck up "the way things should be"?

2.) Similarly, I'm wondering if this is supposed to be the old pre-Crisis Earth 1 we remember (only all screwed up) or if it's a Hypertime variant?  Didn't Hal-Spectre say that Supergirl needed to go back and live her pre-Crisis life in order to save the DCU?  If so, wouldn't there have been major problems pretty much from the first day Linda revealed herself to the world (already a major break from established history)?  Certainly it seems like Hal would have showed up long before eight years had passed. I'm betting that by this point, continuity was totally screwed up, so why not show up after say, a week, to say, "Linda, this is not working out!"

3) Anyone know who that guy is in the Superman suit at the wedding?  The one hovering above the happy couple?  There sure weren't any extra Supermen or Superboys zipping around in the early 80s as I recall (it's too early for the Superboy of Earth Prime to have arrived...the Crisis doesn't come until Ariella's about 4, it seems).

Well I think one of the reasons it didn't work is because Linda screwed up Lois's chance with Superman the way it should be.

I don't have the issue, but I do plan on getting the trade paperback of this storyline when it's released. Logically speaking (typing :P ) I would guess a Superman Robot.

I was wondering about that too.  To my eye, whoever it is looks just a tad bit too young to be a Superman and too happy to be a robot.  My guess is that it's Superboy from the past who was visiting the Legion of Superheroes in the 30th century, when the entire LSH came back in time to all be guests at Superman's wedding.  You'll notice that there is one other Legionnaire present in that panel.

It's probably just his past self.

I have to agree with nightwing on this. For all that I like Lois and am glad that she and Clark/Kal are now married, it was shown time and again pre-Crisis that Kal-El loved other women, most notably Lyla Lerrol the Kryptonian actress, and Lois would have been at most a substitute. I think Alan Moore nailed that point in his famous birthday story (the name of which escapes me) where Superman is captured in the Fortress by Mongul, who uses a plant that gives the victim an illusion of their perfect existence. Kal's perfect universe had him living on Krypton and married to Lyla. Sorry, Lois... and Earth, for that matter! :D

Having said that, this did vary a lot as writers changed, and what I describe above was the situation in the Weisinger years and for some time thereafter. But, in both the early years and the immediate pre-Crisis 1980s, there was more of an attempt to have Clark (in either identity) and Lois in some form of relationship. Elliot Maggin and Cary Bates were the champions of this in the later period, doing some excellent stories -- and, ironically, it was Alan Moore who wrote the story "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow", which could be considered as the final SA/pre-Crisis Superman story, and our hero ends up married to Lois!

FWIW, I think the Earth Linda goes to is meant to be a homage to the Silver Age. It has that same "clean" and, to later, jaundiced, eyes, slightly unreal feeling -- and the Superman resembles both the SA Supes and his recent reappearance in the first Dominus story that followed on from "Superman Forever." As for who the "extra" Superman/boy is, I wonder if this is yet another case of putting a Superboy into an era where, if he was Superman as a boy, he wouldn't exist. These days, we have Kon-El as well as Kal-El, but DC seem to forget on occasion that Superboy was originally Kal, too; they've done it at least once, and this could be a repeat. Or it could be a result of the (teenage?) Legion coming to the wedding -- why, deponent knoweth not.

Superman Annual # 11 in 1985.. "for the man who has everything" IMO

is there anywhere I can get updated quick on the evolution of Supergirl
 especiay with kara and linda being discussed as two different persons and not alter egos of Supergirl also never even heard of Cir_el Who is she?