Superman Through the Ages! Forum

Because back issues can be hard to find and people talk about Superman quite a bit, a lot of misconceptions have developed about Superman over the years.

A few I can think of off the top of my head:

The idea that every single U.S. President has been privy to Superman's Secret Identity

Actually, this was dispelled in a lettercolumn in ACTION COMICS #387 (1970) where a reader wrote in to ask why it is that Superman in that tale concealed his secret identity from President Nixon. The response was that Superman had told President Kennedy (as a result of specific events in ACTION COMICS #309), however, no other President since has been in on the secret.

Also, it should be noted that ACTION COMICS #371 (1969) had an amnesiac Superman believe his secret identity was President of the United States, only to have the "real" President show up, only to tell Superman that he doesn't know who he really is!


Earth-2 Superman is the Golden Age Superman

In many ways, Earth-2 Superman is a seperate character from Superman's Golden Age history, with elements that were present (and discarded) deliberately emphasized to make him different from the Earth-1 version of the character. Perry White, for instance, was a Golden Age character introduced by the Radio Show, however, he has no role on Earth-2 save for being someone that Clark Kent beat out for being the publisher of the Daily Star.


Smallville is in the Midwest

The movies did a lot to emphasize this image of Smallville as a bucolic town somewhere in Iowa or Indiana or Nebraska or Kansas or something.

However, Smallville is clearly on the East Coast (possibly even New England or New Jersey), at least in the comics. For one thing, during the first appearance of the Legion of Super-Heroes, it was explained that Smallville is now a "neighborhood" or district of Metropolis; this implies that it is close enough to be a part of Metropolis's 30th Century expanded boundaries. It should be noted that lots of cities are now a part of Metropolis: "Old Boston," for instance, is a Metropolis neighborhood in the Legion Future.

If, however, Smallville was in the Midwest, if it was a neighborhood of anywhere, it would be a neighborhood of Lakopolis, which includes the area covered by Chicago, Toronto, Cleveland, and Milwaukee.

That's very true, Julian.  Especially about Smallville.  If Gotham were to be New York where did that place Metropolis anyway?

Misconceptions?

So where does the Golden Age Superman live?  Is he fiction?  Is there a pre-Crisis Earth Golden?

According to Jim Hughes work and re-printed here, Action #2 shows that Clark worked for the Cleveland Evening News, in Superman #4, Clark works for the Daily Planet with editor George Taylor, and by Superman #7, Perry White has taken over as editor...all these stories take place in a time that is defined by Earth 1 as belonging to Superboy's boyhood...it seems easy to say that the Golden Age Superman is not the Earth 2 Superman because writers in the 70s wanted to make a new world and retconned one thing without explaining the other.  OK, Earth 2 Superman is different, not the same dude...so who is the Golden Age Superman other than "not the Earth 2 Superman"?

Smallville's location is perfectly acceptable as close to Metropolis, and midwestern by the first Legion tale, because Metropolis wasn't stated to be an eastern city (heck, it could as easily be Cleveland) and it wasn't clear what the world looked like to the writers or they didn't want to specify it...the time period of the Legion is oddly weird in that story as well.

If later writers want to retcon these things, then they can do a more thorough job of it, or else I won't think that the earlier version's implications are misconceptions.

As far as I know, it was the 1st Superman film that made it seem like Metropolis was just another name for New York. However, this was never the case in the comics.

The real life version is in Illinois:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolis%2C_IL

I vaguely recall a map of the DC world where Gotham is essentially NYC and Metropolis is close by, can't remember where they put Central City etc. or if it was a pre Crisis or post Crisis map...Laughably, Keystone City is often refered to as in Pennsylvania (which is probably the implication) or out in the midwest as a Twin City to Central City...I thought all the New Boston/Metropolis stuff was from the "Who's Who in the Legion of Super Heroes", from the later 80s...generally my motto is "don't trust a comic that sold for more than 15 cents on the newstand"...LOL...

The early stories are smarter, they don't try to mix exact details of these cities so much...I liked the idea of Superman and Batman going to fictional central American countries at the same time that Jimmy Olsen going to Hollywood was fine too...there was a nice mix of not taking these things too seriously... 8) Personally, as a kid, I could see a world where Metropolis was a giant city with a harbor and even be close to a major ocean and Smallville being a rural community close by because I knew that comics weren't real even when I was just a little guy... :wink:

These are great misconceptions --many never proven one way or the other.

Just to add to the confusion:

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

LOL, but how can they be misconceptions when there isn't a right or wrong answer? :lol:

Examples of continuity glitches, sure...

stupid Superboy-Prime punches ;)

Re: Earth-2 vs. Golden Age Supes: Some sources theorized/designate the name of the Golden Age (vs. Earth-2) Superman's world as the never-depicted-in-the-Silver/Bronze Age-comics parallel world of "Earth-2A", a world where the Daily Planet existed in the 40's and Luthor was bald, Perry was editor, etc., all as originally published in the 40's comics...

Re: Various cities' locations:

As I wrote for Wikipedia (before I got annoyed with various hijinks in the Superman-related entries I was working on and stopped writing for it), Metropolis doesn't have an exact location, but usually is treated as a NYC-style east coast city (too many stories involving Metropolis' harbor IMO to be anywhere else), along with Gotham City (ditto re: harbor-based stories), with some comics of the 70's and 80's treating Metropolis and Gotham as twin cities on opposite sides of a very large bay, with Smallville somewhere within a day's driving distance to Metropolis. A map in an 80's Superboy comic I have (*somewhere*---if anyone's interested, will find it and scan it in/upload it) depicts the area Smallville's in, as being nearby Metropolis and Gotham City.

Central City pre-Crisis was usually treated as being in the midwest, with one story showing it as in Ohio; its Earth-2 counterpart, Keystone City, was cited IIRC by Roy Thomas as being in Pennsylvania (since Pennsylvania's the "Keystone State"---get it?). Rather it were Pennsylvania over its current post-Crisis/Zero Hour/etc. location of Kansas (?!), as a twin city to Central City (and both cities' formerly seperate identities pre-Crisis lost to some goofy Minneapolis/St. Paul imitation)...

Were there comic sources that talked about Earth-2A?

Apparently (per this site: http://www.io.com/~woodward/chroma/atminor.html#aEarth-2), it was only so labelled by E. Nelson Bridwell in a "Superman Family" letter column, and thus is in the same hypothetical category as Earth-B...

For all you Elliot Maggin fans:

Maggin was quite clear on where it was that Green Arrow and Black Canary's Star City is: it's a substitute Boston. During the Elliot Maggin/Cary Bates JUSTICE LEAGUE story where Superman arrives on Earth-Prime, he notes that "New York is where Gotham City is, Boston where Star City is, and...I can't find Metropolis anywhere!" The S!-man also gave Star City a phenomenally futile baseball team, the Star City Colts, that hadn't won a championship in nearly a hundred years (the similarities to the Boston Red Sox suggest themselves).

I have no idea where people get the idea that Star City is supposed to be a fictionalized Seattle; possibly because of confusion over the Mike Grell miniseries, where Green Arrow went to the ACTUAL Seattle...

Wasn't it John Byrne who started the whole business about Smallville being in Kansas?

Now, I know some people regard anything by Byrne on Superman as akin to the tablets Moses was handed on Mt. Sinai, but I thought in the Silver and Bronze Age it was clearly established that Metropolis was on the east coast, and Smallville a few hours drive away, at most, certainly vastly closer than the Midwest.

As far as east coast, I suspect it was more Bronze Age than Silver...

Smallville is in New Jersey :) I like that idea.


Central Jersey used to be quite rural, it still has farms, but not as much as before, South Jersey is still very rural for the most part.


http://www.visitsouthjersey.com/new-jersey-parks-farms.asp

It was more the first Superman movie, actually...they had beautiful cinematography, giving Superman a sort of bucolic farm country look. It should also be noted that Superman in the comics did not really grow up on a farm. His parents sold it early on to buy a General Store.

Perhaps a moment can be taken here to point out something about the comics that are important: they're what every other version is based on and what they say ought to be given priority over television or film or radio versions as the definitive version.

At some level, there is some intuitive understanding of this. Let me give an example:

A woman in the library noticed my Captain America coffee mug, and asked if I was a comics lover. I said I was. She then asked this: "I really like the X-Men movies. About Wolverine and his past, though...how did it all REALLY happen?"

See the implication there?

Sure, movies and television can do good things, and understandable allowances can be made for them because you can't cram in 40+ years of history into 2 hours, but ultimately the comics are how it "really" happened, and the rest are "dramatizations," the story equivalent of the "re-enactments" on AMERICA'S MOST WANTED or UNSOLVED MYSTERIES.

So, if the comics strongly implied that Smallville was East Coast and very near Metropolis and did so for DECADES...well, that's it, then.

This was why Ostrander's HAWKWORLD pisses me off to no end, but the "Starcrossed" movie doesn't: in "Starcrossed," it wasn't "really" Hawkman (actually, go back and see they don't actually call that character "Hawkman"), however, HAWKWORLD is supposed to now be how it all "really" happened...but the thing is, it wasn't, was it? Where's the Absorbascon and the Gentleman Ghost?



Not holy enough, apparently, if MAN OF STEEL was recently retconned away in favor of the Waid version

Does anybody STILL think this?

My impression of Byrne's current reputation is that he is viewed as the comics industry's Michael Jackson: a  has-been that did several good things in the seventies and eighties before he was totally taken over by eccentric and unsavory personal behavior and some really awful work in the 1990s, a reputation he escapes from by insane surroundings that border on alternate universe; Wacko Jacko had his Neverland Ranch, Byrne has his sycophantic Robotics Forums.

Yes, I know that SUPERMAN THROUGH THE AGES's whole raison d'etre and fabricated group identity is as David in front of the Byrne/Carlin/Helfer unconquerable Goliath, but with MOS gone, Byrne's version is dead as a doornail and even mainstream comics fandom has turned against him.

Allow me to dramatize:

COMICS FANDOM: BOOOOOO!
BYRNE: What's this? They're booing me!
ROBOTICS FORUM: No, no sir, they're shouting...Boooo-yrne!
BYRNE (to fandom): Are you shouting Boo, or Booo-yrne?
COMICS FANDOM: BOOOOOOOO!
UNCLE MXY:  ...I was shouting Booo-yrne.  :wink: [/list]

Julian, you think I liked the Byrne rendition?!  I had suspected you were off your rocker when you were making anagrams of authors' names, but now I am sure...  SURE!!!!!  <laughs maniacally>

The few Byrne ideas that I did appreciate -- Krypton as this sterile place, not having his adopted family all die off -- were extensions of ideas from the movie.  The "Let's make Supergirl a protoplasmic blob, have him kill, be in a porn movie with Big Barda, be constantly plagued with self doubt because he really is inadequate" Superman was NEVER my idea of what Superman ought to be about.

The DECADES is fine for emphasis of your point, however, the only pre Bronze Age reference you cited in your construction of a misconception was the original Legion story that stated Smallville was close to Metropolis, not where either was...so if Maggin was the first to state the east coast in his seaboard travelogue, we are talking about 10 years before Crisis here...

That leaves about 30 some years where these locations were unspecified, probably deliberately.

Admittedly, they have given the impression that Metropolis and Gotham were in New York at different points in time.  DC's been obscure about where Metropolis is on purpose.

I also like the idea of Smallville being in New Jersey.

Aw, relax, I'm just busting your chops.

Actually, it's more frustration turned to muderous rage that I can't find an anagram for UNCLE MXY (no seriously, try it).



You keep on saying that, but there have been many occasions in the Silver Age (I can't speak with authority on the Golden Age) where Metropolis has been shown to be coastal: Metropolis is shown to have harbors and to be occasionally menaced by a tidal wave. Some of the early Superman/Aquaman team-ups take this for granted, for instance. There was one early Supergirl story where Kara was trapped underwater by Red Kryptonite, and was able to battle crime from the sea.

Metropolis on several occasions, is also shown to have sharp winters that get snow, and hot summers; if it was, for instance, a city in the Southwest, this would not be AS true, and the Summers in places like the the Dakotas and Canadian border are not as pronounced, ruling them out, too.

And cities in the South, even sophisticated, cosmopolitan cties like Atlanta, have a fundamentally different character that would be noticed, and wasn't present in Metrpolis.

Even discouting the Bronze Age details like Metropolis having landmarks that correlate to New York (WGBS building instead of Rockefeller Center) would the location of the Northeast not be a shrewd guess?

Hey, its a shrewd guess when you try to pin down the location based on individual stories that show plunges into the sea, etc...but these are generic oceans without names...my main argument is that after some aborted attempts at Cleveland in the Golden Age, there was a long period of time where Metropolis was left as an ambiguous location on purpose, because that's where  DC comics editors seemed to want to leave their world at the time.  Honestly, I think it was  the "real world" attempts of the Bronze Age that made the more direct correlations more apparent, because that's where the writers wanted to go...

Just as an aside, the extremes of hot and cold in the Dakotas are actually pretty incredible...

Actually, I don't think its a big deal as far as an argument, more a change in what the specifics of the DC mythos meant from the 50s/60s to the 70s...but then I am just coming back from the Comics Books Resources Forum thread on the speed of Superman vs The Flash, and that depresses me a lot more... 8)

Didn't they claim in the DC/Marvel team up of Justice League and Avengers that the DC earth is "bigger" than the Marvel one, because they have more cities on it, i.e. cities that don't exist on the real earth (Metropolis, Gotham, Central, Keystone, Coast and Star)?

I've toyed with the idea in my own mind that Gotham is in New York (too many obvious referrences for it to be anywhere else) and that Metropolis is in New Jersey (taking the place of Newark, perhaps).  That would place Smallville in Jersey or Pennsylvania (If it's in PA it could be on the Jersey border).

That also explains how all the home cities of one-time Earth-2, Earth-4, Earth-S heroes were relocated onto former Earth-1 during the Crisis (I don't believe Earth-X had any unique locations).

Do you mean this story?  Because it only states that Smallville is large in the future.  Maybe you are referring to another one?

http://superman.nu/tales2/lsh/?page=0

I always thought Smallville was in Ohio, since the Golden Age Superman worked in the city of Clevland, Ohio with its Lake Erie harbors

Yep -- good point.  Actually in the first issues there is no Smalville.  Though he is found in a rural area, it is pretty clear he's raised in Cleveland (as a child he is hurtling skyscrapers, etc.)

The GA Supes leaves Cleveland soon enough though (or does the name just change?)  Call it a version of brain drain.

Brad

www.lastson.greendoorfilms.com

The name just changes from Cleveland to a great metropolis to Metropolis.  After it gets the Metropolis name, the city started migrating to one of the coasts.

Sticking with Metropolis=Cleveland, I can guess where Midvale is.

Marion, Ohio.  It has been nicknamed the Heart of Ohio and is a mid-sized city/town.  Maybe Deleware, Ohio.  Another mid-sized town

Ohio does have farmlands and small towns that could pass for Smallville and with things like Olentangy Indian caverns, there are cave networks