Superman Through the Ages! Forum

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What happens when PETE ROSS learns Superboy's SECRET IDENTITY?

Find out in "PETE ROSS' SUPER SECRET!" (http://superman.nu/tales4/ross/)

Special thanks to Mark Alfred for tracking down, scanning, and sending in this story!

:s:

Thanks, this was a story I missed as a kid and always wondered about it.

A beautiful classic story that scratched my Pete Ross itch.

Speaking of scratching itches, I never noticed it when I first read the story in a Superman annual, but the innocent relationship between Pete and Clark has so many layers to it when viewed with my modern cynical eye.  I'm filled with an intense nostalgia for a (non-existent?) simpler time for adolescent friendships and camping trips --although it is very interesting the circumstances of Pete's "discovery" of Clark's secret.

I'm especially fond of the roller-skating "date", when Pete is tempted by the devil (oy!) but chooses Clark, offering him a very phallic hotdog as a token of his loyalty and thinking, "I'd rather spend one minute with Clark than a whole night with characters like him".  An especially nice touch is the addition of an earringed Pirate boy in that scene.

Paging Dr. Wertham...  :?

Whatcha gonaa do if ol Doc W answers that page, Telle? :shock:

My puzzlement is for Superman/boy's propensity for freckle faced pals?! :roll:

Awww...!  :D Nice story Rao, wonder did Clark ever find out about Pete's 'super secret'? Speaking of Pete, I seem to remember this strange story from Superman In The Seventies! where Superman is forced to battle Pete, whose mind is possessing Superboy's body. (Brought forward to the present, where Superboy is stuck in adult Pete's body). I don't have the story nearby, but I believe Pete blamed Superman for giving up his son to an alien race where he would become a great leader in the future. I believe there were more parts to that story then presented in the graphic novel - anyhoo, just thought it was an intriguing storyline. :wink:

I'd like to have a conversation with Wertham.  An early comics scholar (or at least, a scholar with an interest in and wide reading of comics and zines).  Parts of SOTI are wrong-headed and bizarre, sure, but he doesn't desrve the weight the traditional comics historians have put on him.

I always loved this story.  Pete Ross was symbolic of the many good-hearted folks in the old mythos.  Starting with Jor-El and Lara and going on through the stages of Kal's life, there were so many great, decent people who did nice, even heroic and self-sacrificing things for him.  You got the feeling he kept doing great works because he lived in a world full of people who deserved it.

As for Wertham, it's hard to have much respect for anyone who practiced such bad science.  He started with a premise and assembled the facts to support it, rather than studying the facts and reaching a conclusion.   He interviewed juvenile delinquents and asked them if they read comics.  Of course it was the 50's so they all said "yes"!  Well, then, he reasoned, there you have it, juvenile delinquents are created by comics!  What a wanker!

Of course with that kind of "science" you could "prove" the same "fact" about any number of things.  How many of the boys had been alter boys?  How many chewed gum? How many watched Howdy Doody?  Maybe church, gum and puppets cause crime too!  :roll:

No, what we saw in "Seduction" was one of the first manifestations of a phenomenon that continues to this day, in the banning of "explicit lyric" records, fears of video games, and assertions that Tinkie-Winkie is making pre-schoolers gay.  Basically you've got a bunch of dime-store psychologists with a sure-fire way to sell books: tell the parents of America that the culture is what's ruining their kids.  Of course the parents love it, because if TV, comics and music are to blame then it can't be their poor parenting skills at the root of it all.  It's a whole lot easier to burn a stack of Beatle records or EC comics than it is to truly be involved in your kids' lives and live a good example.

Anyway, I read in Wertham's obit that he eventually disavowed the book and said he was wrong about comics.

Plus those EC comics were great, I just wished that modern Superhero comics weren't trying so hard to outdo them.

You mean, like, the EC Mad parodies of Superman and Wonder Woman? :D

The Pete story was very apropos for this week's Smallville. See...no spoilers. :wink:

No Telle - SHOCK SUSPENSE STORIES and bloody horror in TALES FROM THE CRYPT, VUALT OF HORROR ETC. :shock:  :lol:

At the risk of straying too far off topic, the fuss over EC comics as the "corruptors of children" back in the 50s really didn't understand them. All the EC horror stories were about instilling moral values. The lesson in every one of them is "those who commit evil acts end up suffering". Treat others kindly, marry for love not money, don't think you can get away with a crime for long, etc.  or some zombie might come and eat you.

They used gross-out methods to tell the story and that was what got them in trouble. They were no more grisly or disgusting than many of the classic fairytales (think of Little Red Riding Hood's Grandma being eaten by the Big Bad Wolf, who then gets chopped with an ax). For that matter, they were no more upsetting than many parts of the Bible that are filled with gore and violence. But nobody objected to fairytales or the Bible since they only used words. Comic books, by their nature, have to use pictures to tell the story, and hypocritical adult minds couldn't handle SEEING  that kind of stuff illustrated on the page for children.

"You got the feeling he kept doing great works because he lived in a world full of people who deserved it".

That's one of the real hallmarks of the classic Superman stories. Superman is here because good people just need a champion to show them the way. Sure, there are many examples of people acting in selfish or petty ways (even Superman in, for example,  his mind-games with Lois), but Weisinger also CONSTANTLY has other people offering to sacrifice their happiness for some cause, or even sacrificing their own lives to save others. How many times did the Silver Age stories use the idea of a machine that could "transfer life-force" from one person to another, at the cost of the Ultimate Sacrifice...their own life? The messianic aspect of the Superman mythos is reinforced by this constant use of "sacrifice", "giving life-force", etc.

My favorite example is in "The Last Days of Superman", where our hero chooses as his last words the idea that if you do good for others, everyone can be a Superman. Kinda chokes me up every time I read it. Even Luthor was "tempted" into doing good deeds once in a while.

There is another old Superboy comic that I remember. I read it a long time ago, so I may be a bit fuzzy on the details. Clark Kent decides to fake his own death. This story is told through Pete's eyes via a series of flashbacks about how he knew Clark was Superboy and that he knew Clark wasnt really dead. I'd love to see that one again. I love the old Superboy comics, and I remember quite a few of them from this site. :)

It's " Superboy's Greatest Hoax"  where he feigns death and appoints Pete as his successor--just in case he ever does die and doesnt grow up to be Superman.