Superman always knowing Krypton, vs just discovering it

[JulianPerez]

Should Superman "always know" his origin as a survivor of Krypton, or should he "discover" it?

In the Silver and Bronze Ages, Superman knew his origin firstly because of his super-memory, and the fact he was relatively old when Krypton blew up, nearly a toddler. There was also the invention of the Memory Chair, which allowed him to recover past memories.

I strongly suspect the reason for the Memory Chair was to be a "frame story" for stuff like the Super-Baby tales, and later on, for the Julie Schwartz "World of Krypton" backups.

The argument FOR Superman always knowing of Krypton is that it gives Superman an explicitly Kryptonian identity early on. He doesn't think of himself as strange or different, and despite being alone, he thus gets a kind of very special pride in who he is; he's always known of it, so there's nothing strange or weird about Krypton to him. Thus, things like the Fortress of Solitude make more sense, because being Kryptonian would be important to him. This certainly makes sense; the most interesting part of Superman to many is the idea that he and Supergirl were always doing things like celebrating Kryptonian holidays only they knew about.

It may be possible to have a Superman that knows nothing of Krypton until late in the game, as he was in the movie. The reason the treatment in the movie worked was because Superman had his powers from day one: he was super from the get-go, quite clearly different and not normal, and this was made all the worse because he didn't understand why. In other words, he was a freak, and he stopped being a freak when Marlon Brando's floating head showed up to say that there was nothing wrong with him, that he was from a proud race, and that he could turn his difference around and use it to make contributions.

The reason Superman was able to really be sympathetic in the first part of the movie is that he didn't know what he was here FOR. He lacked a purpose and thus was very, very sympathetic: I mean, who isn't like that? Who isn't searching for meaning?

This is also why I've never been as crazy about Superboy as I am about other parts of the Super-Mythos, because if he's got the Superboy suit on from a very early period on and being useful and helpful to society, the whole period of Kal-El having vast powers that isolate him from others, but where he lacks a niche, is negligible.

[Permanus]

I like the idea of Superman as an immigrant who is aware of his roots, observing his cultural heritage. If nothing else, it's a tip of the hat to his Jewish forebears. One of the things that set my teeth on edge in the Byrn revamp was Superman's coldness towards his origins when he found out where he came from: "The important thing is that I think - and feel - like an American." You can probably imagine what a jarring thing that is to hear for a non-American; it's bizarre to think that it was written by a Canadian.

For dramatic purposes, though, there is a lot to be said for the Superman-discovers-his-origins scene. It was fairly well handled in Birthright, with Superman having some vague idea of Krypton, having seen images of it on a recording device that came with him on the rocketship, but then making a complete fool of himself in front of Luthor: "What's Krypton?"

Nevertheless, I still favour the Superman who knows full well what his origins are, and honours and respects them. (For the story to work, this also requires that Krypton should be a place one can have feeling for. In the Byrne version, Krypton was a fairly disagreeable place, so there was no particular reason to revere it; in Golden, Silver and Bronze age stories, on the other hand, it's a really great place with flying cars.)

[Gangbuster]

I can remember a few things from when I was a toddler, mostly involving pain or confusion. For example, I clearly remember hitting my head on the underside of my parents' dinner table and falling down. That hurt, but now I'm over twice as tall as the table.

Logically, "super-memory" should be a power that didn't come about until later, when Superman's brain was more developed. Since the comics state that flight was the last power that he was able to control (though he could do it uncontrolled as a baby) this would have happened some time in late childhood. Thus, you never saw Superbaby crying "Wah! I want mommy and daddy and Krypto!" but early in the Superboy days he would have started to remember images of Krypton: the confusion of being put into a rocket, for example. In fact, it is usually in Superboy stories that we see him using devices that aid his memory.

This doesn't mean that there isn't a difference between the first and second "Return to Krypton" stories. But consider the timeline: in 1947-48 Siegel was given ownership of Superboy by the courts. The next year or so that followed is John Byrne's favorite period of Superman history. Between the lawsuit and the publication of Superboy #1 in 1949, Superboy seems to have been excluded from any mention of Superman's origin, such as the origin in Superman #53 and the Return to Krypton story. But when Siegel got the chance to write his own "Return to Krypton" story 11 years later, Superman remembered his early life on Krypton.

That said, the methods of time travel from both stories have been preserved in the mythos. Superman can physically travel to the past by accidentally tripping through the "time barrier," but as late as 1985 he also was shown traveling back through time on purpose, appearing only as a phantom.