The importance of Superboy?

[DoctorZero]

I only liked Superboy when he was in the Legion.  Other than that, his stories always bothered me.
For one thing, Superman concepts kept being backdated to Superboy.  For another, it stretched credibility too much that both Clark Kent and Superboy came from Smallville and moved to Metropolis.  It was just too much coincidence for the legend.

[TELLE]

How ironic that the 2 best examples of "having our cake": the concept of Earth 2 and the concept of a Legion with Superboy as a member, were both done away with Crisis.

The love of a primal, WWII-era Superman with no Superboy past had its material form in the Earth-2 JSA and Mr/Mrs Superman stories.

The love of Superboy could easily be manifested solely in the Legion stories, with or without some sort of "pocket universe" crutch.

And I too feel that the Smallville characters are more empathic than the Metropolis characters.

[MatterEaterLad]

Maybe you just had to be there, I loved the small town exploits of Superboy, not that I bought that many Silver Age tales, some, but a lot of funny ones from the late 40s and 50s were reprinted in the back of Adventure, and they were "period" automatically...

[TELLE]

Actually, Superboy kept operating after moving to Metropolis for college, changing his name to Superman sometime in his junior year (with three conflicting accounts of how this happened...

Johnny, I just realized that we had already discussd this over at the Superboy thread:

http://superman.nu/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=82&start=16

[DoctorZero]

It's true that a lot of the Superboy stories were well written and very entertaining. It's just that I'm not certain they were necessary to the legend.  It always seemed more like DC wanting to squeeze one more Superman book out.

[Anonymous]

It's true that a lot of the Superboy stories were well written and very entertaining. It's just that I'm not certain they were necessary to the legend.  It always seemed more like DC wanting to squeeze one more Superman book out.

i'm waiting for post infinite crisis when we have many many many superman family books agian.

the further adventures of e-2 superman
superman
action comics
supergirl
supergirl and the LSH
powergirl
superboy of earth-prime (actually a cool idea.. and rumored)
and hopefully we get a kon-el last clone of superman comic.

[forgottenhero]

There were two good options for the '86 reboot:

1) reboot the Legion from scratch (unlikely, as it was DC's 2nd-best selling title at the time)

2) keep the Superboy background, but change the details to make it more credible (examples: no one but the Kents knows that Superboy lives in Smallville; he's seen saving people around the country but is never seen in Smallville, hence no "Welcome to Smallville, Home of Superboy" signs; he has to use a Legion Time Bubble to travel through time; I could think of other things if I tried...)

DC did neither of these, hence the continuity mess.

[Johnny Nevada]

Guess if I could have Superboy back again, I'd want Clark with a fully open career, vs. the "Smallville"-style "operating in secret" bit, which I never cared much for (granted, I never cared for "Smallville" *period*, but that's another topic ;-) )...

TELLE: Yeah, guess we did discuss this already. Still fun topic, though. :-)

Re: Superboy disappearing before Superman appears: Rozakis "Superman: The Secret Years" does have Superboy vanishing from public for three months, then re-emerging for a battle with Luthor (that's televised via satellites of Luthor's around the world), after which he publically announces to the world (judging from a "Daily Planet" headline) of his new name, "Superman".