Superman Through the Ages! Forum

Let me preface this by saying I mean no disrespect to President Kennedy, nor to make light of his tragic death.

But in the world of Silver Age Superman let me propose that JFK never died.

Now I know the sad event of Kennedy's death was acknowledged in an editorial note on one posthumous story, but if we ignore that, it's safe to assume that the President of the United States, who was a trusted ally of the Man of Steel, could well have survived the attempt on his life in the world of the comic book.

I don't believe LBJ ever appeared as president (only as vice president) in a Superman story (if I'm wrong on this, please correct me), so we can assume that the president for one or two terms was JFK. This would mean that the Kennedy era continued right up until 1968--when in keeping with the events of the real world Nixon was voted into office. Which would explain a lot--because the world of Superman between 1960 and 1968 retains that positive feeling that distinguished the early part of the decade--with little of the negativity that grew following the assassination.

How did JFK survive? Quite simply Superman prevented the death. With all of his resources at hand, the Man of Tomorrow would not have allowed such a misfortune to occur. If he wasn't in Dallas on that day, then one of his robots surely was.

LBJ did appear in Lois Lane #71, with a cover date of Jan. 1967 -- which would have put it on the stands in Sept or Oct 1966 -- and is addressed as "Mr President."

(http://supermanfan.nu/sharedfiles/lois_lbj.jpg)


I do agree, however, that the assassination represents a major disconnect between Superman's world and our own.  Having let Kennedy into that tight little circle of the "Superman Family," his death goes beyond merely "jarring" into flat-out irreconcilable.  Things like that don't happen to Superman's friends.

For what it's worth, in this scene Lois is withholding from LBJ -- per Superman's wishes -- the fact that Superman has been turned into a cat (don't ask).  So if nothing else, we've learned that the "if I can't trust the President, who can I trust?" rhetoric applied only to JFK, who in the world of Silver Age DC rises above his already lofty office to emerge as something of an honorary superhero in his own right.

So clearly JFK was a one-term president.  He must have chosen not to seek a second term, even though he was popular enough that his former V.P. won the 1964 election.

I have a vague memory that this was addressed somewhere, that Superman (or maybe Superboy in the early 80s series?) tragically failed to save JFK.

Possibly it was a response to a letter?  I'll have to see if I can jog my memory on this one.

I would go along with this. Which then leads me to wonder why Kennedy chose to step down. Maybe he was tasked with a much larger service to humanity than the presidency--perhaps he was asked to lead an interplanetary council and his family had to relocate to some far flung solar system.

Realizing the enormous importance of the Apollo program, JFK ensures its funding by resigning the presidency to lend his own personal star power to the cause.

(http://www.freakingnews.com/Pictures/4/JFK-Hoax.jpg)


In the (fairly) recent "lost" Teen Titans annual, Bob Haney has JFK turn up on another planet, where he is indeed saving
some race or other.  Turns out he was replaced by an alien impostor who caught that bullet in Dallas.  The Titans want to bring JFK back to Earth, but he figures it'd be too much of a shock for folks, so he stays where he is.

Trust me, it sounds a lot better in my synopsis than it read in the book.  Even by Bob Haney standards, that thing was a train wreck.

 ;D

One-term president? Maybe he simply got found out. He was highly corrupt, but people see what they want to see. If the American public decide to have a fairy tale view of someone and his family, they will.

Bite through the polished veneer and you gag on something pretty rotten.

It's not that everyone knew what he really was (and what his family was like) and loved him anyway. They had no idea, and were given a carefully controlled image.

But then, having said that, the image was incredibly important for morale, which is really rather sad. There are still plenty of people who will defend the image (not the reality) to the death. Brings to mind more recent incumbents.

Im gonna say that the lost teen titans issue is the explanation of what happened to JFK.
Superman would know about JFK being in space the whole time anyways (because he's superman)

I agree JFK was no prize here on Earth-Prime, but we're talking about the idealized version of JFK from Earth-One, the president Superman took into his confidence like none before or after and made a personal friend and member of the "Superman family," appearing in Action, Superman, Supergirl and Bizarro stories (and probably more) and treated as a celebrity on par with Mickey Mantle, Marilyn Monroe and arguably the most revered celebrity in all of Silver Age DC, Jerry Lewis.

India's saying that for *that* guy to get killed would be as impossible as Jimmy Olsen or Perry White getting killed.  More than that, it would represent a tear in fabric of Silver Age reality, a leg without which the table cannot stand.

Not that I agree, necessarily, but that seems to be where he's going.  Certainly they stuck their necks out making JFK so prominent in the books, and I notice it's not a mistake they were quick to repeat.  Curiously, after we suffered through the Crisis, ostensibly (at least in part) to remove some of the confusion generated by 5 decades of too-easily dated stories (the JSA meeting FDR and yet still looking young-ish in the 70s, etc), the first thing DC did right out of the gate was put Ronald Reagan in "Legends."  Huh?!?!

Interestingly, after Reagan, we got a "President Forrest" (bigger version of "Bush"?) and then...well, after that I kind of dropped out.  But anyway DC has a very spotty record when it comes to presidents, inventing some and sticking to "reality" for others.  In JFK's case, it was a little of both.

Yes exactly. That's precisely what I would have said. We're talking here about the comic book version of JFK.

He might have lived, but his animated counterpart was killed by a magic bullet, forged by Illuminati mystics to prevent the public from learning the truth.

I'd forgotten all about that story, I'll have to dig mine out for a re-read (along with my old jerry lewis comics...)

Oddly enough Stephen Kings newest novel deals with time travel and the JFK assassination...

http://www.popeater.com/2011/03/03/stephen-king-JFK-assassination/

On another note, I didn't know this site had come back to life. I stumbled on the link over at the CBR boards.

Its great to be here!

how may presidents has the DCU really had?
washington
Lincoln (superman has met both of them)
then FDR
JFK
and Lex luthor

thats about it

also the president who was always in shadows seems to have been president for a long time. Mr.Shadowy was very popular

Yes Mr. Shadowy was the one who asked Superman not to travel through time under his own power, setting up the events for "The Immortal Superman."

Is it too late to impeach him?

Don't Blame Me I Voted for Prez Rickard

There was an All-Star Squadron Annual (#3?) that featured a slew of presidents; the JSA was assigned to save them from assassination to prevent the disruption of the timeline.  Since it was the 40s, this meant saving not only FDR and Truman but also JFK and Nixon as young Navy officers, Eisenhower when he was still Commander of Allied Forces and Ronald Reagan while he was making movies for the Army.  Not sure where Carter or Ford were, but they were in there.  (For the record, the heroes didn't know these were future presidents, just that they would be somehow crucial to history.)

Green Lantern suffers a major career failure when he's unable to save a kid from a falling tree (because...duh...it's made of wood!).  The kid is never identified, but it's implied he would've followed Reagan in the office (the story was written when Reagan was still serving).

Depending on your politics, this can be either a confirmation that America's been off the track since Reagan stepped down, or perhaps proof that Clinton, Bush I and/or II or Obama were never "meant" to get the job (take your pick based on your bias).  But from a DC comics perspective, it suggests that the comic book world did indeed get the same set of 20th century presidents we did, despite evidence to the contrary (eg: "The President of Steel": http://supermanfan.nu/main/?p=2463 (http://supermanfan.nu/main/?p=2463))

Of course, considering it's the JSA, maybe it just means that Earth-2 got all "our" presidents, even if Earth-1 didn't.

Hmm...

"Superboy's Mission for President Kennedy" appeared in the early 80s "New Adventures of Superboy" run, in a storyline that also explored/explained how Superboy learned he'd turn invisible when time-traveling to a point in the past or future when he was alive. It also served to update the Superman's Mission for JFK story for the 80s (with Superboy's time-era having moved up to the 60s by that point, per DC's sliding timeline); in this version, JFK summons the Boy of Steel to help stop Russian spies from sabotaging a Project Mercury space flight (Superboy of the story's "present" had gone back in time a few years to watch said space flight for a school report, and found out about the turning-invisible bit)...

I'd assume that JFK of Earth-One also perished, especially in the Superboy setting above. Earth-One's Martin Luther King also was deceased (I always liked to think Superman or Superboy would've met the civil rights leader at least once), as was its Robert F. Kennedy (judging from a remark Superman made once when sent to Earth-Prime).

Post-JFK, presidents tended to be shadowed yes, but ones I recall seeing:

- Reagan (vaguely recall seeing him in a few 80s stories)
- Clinton appears alongside Hillary as the speaker at Superman's funeral.
- Lex Luthor got elected president in DC's 2000 election, presumably over Bush or Gore. He's eventually tossed from office and his veep Pete Ross takes over.
- No idea who president currently is (Obama? Still Pete Ross?).

That sparks a memory.  Of course in that infamous scene at the end of the first O'Neill/Adams Green Lantern/Green Arrow, Ollie references the deaths of RFK and MLK.  The implication is they met their deaths in the same way and on the same schedule as they did on Earth-Prime. 

If so, then RFK met his death during his bid for the Democratic party nomination in 1968, which is hard to imagine happening in any way other than the one we saw; he didn't seem the type who'd have gone after the job if it hadn't been for the "unfinished" nature of his brother's term, and, if you ask me, he likely wouldn't have been seriously considered by voters without that back story, either.  Which means JFK was assassinated on Earth-One.

I grant you, that requires a couple leaps, and a willingness to accept evidence outside the super-titles.  And it does leave open the argument that Silver Age Superman and Bronze Age Superman are two different beasts altogether.

Of course, all of these events were shown after the Weisinger Era and after Action Comics 387--in which the events began by the order of the Shadowy President resulted in Superman going to the very end of time, cycling back to the beginning of time with his soul ending up in the body of his recreated self and progressing through time to the very moment after his other self supposedly went forward in time in that defective time bubble.

What was the status of the Vietnam War in Superman comics during the 1960s? It occurs to me that if JFK lived, then the escalation that occurred during the Johnson administration may not have happened. There may have been a war but not one that caused so much suffering and upset.

It happened. Superman went there.

http://supermanfan.nu/main/?p=343

I'm not at all convinced Vietnam wouldn't have been just as messy and tragic with JFK in office.  After all, he put us there in the first place.  No president wanted to go down in history as the first to admit failure and defeat in a high-profile contest against Communism, and JFK already had the humiliation of the Bay of Pigs to live down.  I'm confident he'd have been as hamstrung by the "too deep in to give up now" mentality as anyone in the office.

I'm reminded of the old SNL skit from 1981 where a round table of political pundits discusses how different the world might have been if Ronald Reagan hadn't been killed by John Hinckley, making George H.W. Bush Commander-In-Chief.  One by one they list all the things that are going wrong in the country and the world and conclude, "Reagan would never have let this happen" or "Reagan would never have been crazy enough to..."  And of course, watching it in the real world where he *wasn't* killed, we know every one of those things happened just the same.  I thought it was one of the more intelligent skits SNL ever staged.  Without exactly being funny, you understand...that would be asking the impossible.

You'll note in the review DBN links to, the Vietnam conflict isn't treated any differently than any other war.  If not for the year in the indicia (1969), the story could have taken place in Korea or Japan just as easily.  That we're still in it in '69, and in apparently large numbers, shows there was an "escalation," but there's no suggestion of "suffering and upset" stateside.  Indeed, the war seems pretty much "out of sight, out of mind" for our cast of characters until Clark gets some letters from servicemen this one time, unlike WWII which drove all manner of comic-world references to spies, saboteurs, fifth columnists, quislings, shortages, paper drives, war bonds, etc.  In 40s comics, you never forgot there was a war on, but in 60s superhero comics, you could easily miss the fact that the US was in 'Nam at all.  But then there is this story, and the JLA tale spotlighting a returning Marine, and so on, so we know it did happen, just presumably in a tidier and less controversial fashion.  The Marvelverse got Oliver Stone's "Platoon" version of 'Nam, and DC got John Wayne's "Green Berets" version.

Kennedy escalated our involvement, but Ike had around 900 advisors on the ground in the South after the French turned tail and ran.


Were the War comics DC published in the same era considered to be part of the DC Universe at large? Our Fighting Forces featured US Army Captain Phil Hunter on the ground in Viet Nam trying to save his brother from a Viet Cong P.O.W. camp. This comic was published in 1966.

My inclination would be to say "no," not just for Vietnam but all war comics.  It greatly undermines the adventures of Sgt Rock, the Unknown Soldier and all the many one-timers in DC war comics to imagine them in the same world where the JSA or JLA ran around in tights and capes, and could have bailed them out any time they wanted.  I know Rock teamed with Batman numerous times, but those stories don't even make sense when linked to each other (because of various time paradoxes).  Anyway with Bob Haney writing, all bets are off; I don't consider *any* Brave and Bold team-up "canon," even the ones between Batman and other superheroes.

Of course that's just my personal preference, not official DC policy.  But I always enjoyed the war comics -- and indeed the horror and SF comics (and yes, I'll admit it, the occasional romance) -- better when I viewed them as separate from the world of superheroes.  Rock, Enemy Ace and the like lived with us on Earth-Prime (even if they later were revealed to have dopplegangers on Earth-1). 

The Creature Commandos were another matter, of course.

I agree. Aside from crossover stories--and even those are a strange animal--each editor had command over his own turf. You don't see Weisinger doing Earth-Two stories for example--although alternate Earths were a part of his Superman mythology, just not any that belonged to Schwartz.

I think most readers understood this and accepted that the world of one comic wasn't necessarily the world of another comic. In fact, I think it was a surprise to me every time I did see one hero appearing in another's book.

well the war comic guys could have existed on Earth 1 right? superman wouldn't have landed pre-ww2 (well he would have but it had a sliding time scale by the bronze age)

either way they should make a Unknown Solider Movie, that guy rocked (i guess sgt.rock rocked too!!! ha)

The problem with Unknown Soldier is that he was always either disguised or in bandages, and no movie star would go for that.  Look at the "Human Target" series...not a disguise in sight.  (I really liked it anyway, though).

Bob Haney and editor Murray Boltinoff often threw logic and continuity out the window with their Brave and the Bold teamups.

There was that notorious Batman/Sgt. Rock teamup during WWII, with Batman wearing the yellow oval on his chest, yet he could not have been the Earth-1 Batman, as he would would not be around for many years to come!

I seriously doubt that any other editors or writers at DC took much notice, or referred to what happened in the Brave and the Bold Haney-verse.

The funny thing is, although the story was (apparently) never published, his creator, Bob Kanigher maintained that Rock was actually killed at the end of WWII! So who was the Sgt. Rock running around with Batman?!?

By the way, I am actually a fan of many of the Brave and the Bold comics, especially the ones with Jim Aparo art.

Oh, I love a lot of those B&B books, but you have to accept that they are not and cannot be part of official continuity. 

You'd have to work to find a longer run of amazing Batman art than what Jim Aparo turned in, and when he was on his game Haney was terrific, too.  But there were other times -- and not a few -- where he just phoned it in and nothing made any sense.  I have no big problem divorcing the stories from "continuity," but Batman ought to at least act like Batman, and often he does not, for instance falling for Roxie Whatsername and being duped into doing her duty work because she's such a gorgeous "dame."  (I don't know who still said "dame" in the 70s, but it wouldn't have been Batman!).  Also I hated that Haney had such animus towards Plastic Man, who's consistently portrayed as a sad sack "freak" unable to do anything right and consumed with depression and low self-esteemed.  And yet Metamorpho -- a very similar character only much uglier -- is perfectly well-adjusted!


What was more jarring was that Batman could fight alongside Rock in WWII and then have a follow-up adventure with him later, when Rock is old and white-haired, but Bruce Wayne is totally unchanged! 


Again, the only way it works for me is if the "real" Rock is on Earth-Prime and the "Haney" Rock is on Earth-1.

Yes, in fact, I think Roy Thomas made more work for himself than he needed to, when he came over to DC in the early 80s and wrote the All-Star Squadron book. Because then he was trying to make sense of things that didn't have to make sense before. So he was moving characters around from one Earth to another.

It would have been a lot easier to assume there was a Captain Marvel on Earth-Two as well as Earth-S. That Plastic Man existed on Earths-One, Two, X, B. Same with Blackhawk. That the Freedom Fighters were on both Earth-Two and Earth-X. And so on.

Yes, poor Roy.  He did so much work to make "sense" of stories done by creators who cared not a fig for "continuity," and was rewarded with the Crisis, which undid all his work (while he was still doing it!) and ushered in another 25+ years of creators who have cared not a fig for "continuity."

He's like the Don Quixote of comics, or something.  The last man alive who's convinced somehow, with effort, it can all add up.