In old B&W Superman TV series he could split in two. Was this power in comics also?

Cafe Society
21

My turn.

DC Comics built up a huge stable of characters starting in the late thirties, but a lot of them faded in popularity after the war. High-popularity characters like Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman reamined in constant publication but in the eary sixties, DC dusted off some other characters and greatly revamped them, changing their origins, costumes, secret identities, etc:
[ul][li]Flash: was Jay Garrick, now Barry Allen[/li][li]Green Lantern: was Alan Scott, now Hal Jordan[/li][li]The Atom: was Al Pratt, now Ray Palmer[/li][li]Hawkman: was Carter Hall, now Katar Hol (alien).[/li][/ul]

In the new Flash’s early stories, they established that Barry Allen had read comic books as a youth showing the adventures of a fictional Flash, named Jay Garrick. Then, later on, the Flash accidently breached some kind of dimensional barrier and found a “real” alternate dimension where Jay Garrick actually existed.

DC used this story to explain the dicontinuity between its 1940s and 1960s stories by claiming that parallel dimensions existed with slightly different histories. Arbitary names were given, with the “current” continuity being designated as Earth-1 and the 1940s continuity being Earth-2. A number of crossover stories followed, with members of Earth-1’s Justice League of Americaa interacting with Earth-2’s Justice Society of America. The first large-scale crossover between the JLA and JSA was a two-parter in Justice Leage of America #21-22 (1964) titled “Crisis on Earth-1” and “Crisis on Earth-2”.

This break is used to distinguish DC’s “Golden Age” (pre-update) from DC’s “Silver Age” (post update).

Since the Earth-2 continuity wasn’t critical, stories were written in which the golden-age Superman married Lois Lane (hence the “Mr. and Mrs. Superman” stories that appeared in Superman Family through the early eighties) and the golden-age Batman married Catwoman, producing a daughter (the Huntress).

DC had also acquired the rights to the various SHAZAM characters (Captain Marvel, Mary Marvel etc) and tucked them away on another alternate dimension, Earth-S. There was also an Earth-3 (all super-characters are villians) and Earth-C (all characters are sentient animals, including Captain Carrot and the Zoo Crew) etc.

The “Crisis” title was reused a few times, including “Crisis on Earth-Prime” and “Crisis on Earth-C+” etc. All of these stories involved characters hopping from one dimension to another. It became normal for a writer to just make up a parallel dimension whenever he wanted to satisfy a particular story.

In the early eighties, DC produced a series set on Earth-2 called All-Star Squadron. The series started in December, 1941 and featured just about every character they had at the time, including many that hadn’t been published since 1949 or so. The characters interacted with FDR and Winston Churchill, with WW2 as a backdrop. It was a highly-underrated series, I thought, though the later issues were just plain silly.

By the mid-eighties, the continuity had became so complicated that DC said, “screw it!” and decided to launch a 12-issue miniseries Crisis on Infinite Earths, the net effect would be squish all the parallel dimensions into one. This represented a huge amount of rewriting and retroactive continuity changes (hence “Pre-” and “Post-Crisis” and “retcon”). In the new history, for example, Superman had never been “Superboy” and was the sole survivor of Krypton (no Krypto, Supergirl, Phantom Zone, etc).

Even now, though, DC is producing stories that match the old continuity (calling some of them “Hypertime” stories, or simliar technobabble) because fans still wanted to read about Krypto and Red Kryptonite etc. It was never going to be possible to come up with a single realistic continuity, so DC continues to limp along and shrug when fans get excessively nitpicky.

22

Pull up a chair and grab a sandwich Mahaloth, it’s gonna be a loooong post.

Well, maybe not. In a nutshell:

When DC comics resurrected charactes like The Flash and Green Lantern in the 50’s, having shelved them in the late 40’s, they essentially recreated them and used the same names. Ultimately an idea was hatched in which the original (henceforth known as “Golden Age”) heroes all lived on one Earth, called Earth-2, and the later (“Silver Age”) heroes lived on Earth-1. The Earths were in parallel dimensions, and many of the heroes had counterparts. There were 2 Supermen, Batmen and Robins, Flashes, Green Lanterns, etc. There were some heroes who were specific to one Earth or the other, such as Dr. Fate and Dr. Midnite (Earth-2) and the Doom Patrol (Earth-1).

Boy, big nutshell.

Okay, over time more parallel Earths were introduced such as Earth-3 on which the heroes had villain counterparts called the Crime Syndicate; Earth-X, home of characters from the old Quality comics group that had been purchased by DC-on Earth-3 Germany won the second world war, and the Freedom Fighters were acting as Guerilla fighters trying to free the U.S.;
Earth-S, wherein lived Captain Marvel and the Marvel family; Earth-Prime where there were no heroes and all the others were characters in comic books-Earth-Prime was the “real” Earth as we know it; Earth-C, home of Captain Carrot and the Amazing Zoo Crew (a funny animal world) and Earth-C minus,home of the Justa Lot of Animals (JLA).

In the 1980’s the decision was made to rehab the whole DC “Multiverse” concept, and so was born “The Crisis on Infinite Earths” or just “The Crisis” for short. During the Crisis, most of the parallel Earths were destroyed (including some that were created specifically for the Crisis, such as Earth-4, home of the Charleton comics characters, which had recently been bought by DC. This way those characters could be introduced and then incorporated after the Crisis.

Earth-1, Earth-2, Earth-X, Earth-S and Earth-4 were merged into one single world/universe, and time was re-written so that characters such as the Golden Age Superman and Batman hadn’t existed; they didn’t come around until the contemporary period.

So, any comics from before 1984-85 are refered to as “Pre-Crisis”, and any from after are “Post-Crisis.”

The Crisis is something of a galvanizing point for DC fans, who either love or hate what was done with the heroes, though the story itself is generally regarded as one of the most significant series in comics history.

Good enough?

23

Damn! Holy simulposts Bryan!

24

It means “before Crisis.”

25

Using MrAtoz’s clues I found it. The episide is “Divide and Conquer” and here is a pic of the two Superman side by side talking to each other.

Seeing double? Two George’s are better than one!! ~ from 1957’s “Divide and Conquer”; one of my favorite episodes from the ‘color’ years.

Look about 1/3 of the way down the page after the pics load.

26

I read the Crisis trade paperback, and I don’t recall the Golden Age Batman being there. Was he older, like the older Superman, who I assume was Golden Age?

27

The Golden Age Batman was murdered before this here Crisis thingie you young’uns keep going on about.

28

In the late 90s, Superman was briefly changed into an energy-based bing (The blue-and-white costume, famously described by Norm MacDonald as “incredibly gay”). For a couple of issues, he was split into two bodies, “Superman Blue” and “Superman Red.” This was a reference to an “imaginary story” from the sixties, but likely not to a TV episode.

29

“The Amazing Story of Superman-Red and Superman-Blue”, Superman #162, 1963.

30

Incidentally, I looked it up: the first appearance of the magical 5th-dimensional prankster Mr. Mxyztplk (spelling later modified to Mxyzptlk) was in Superman #30, 1944, written by Jerry Siegel.

31

Whoops, that last post actually belongs in this thread.

32

Regarding splitting, I never saw Superman do this in the comics. There was a member of the Legion of Superheroes who could split herself into three beings at will. She was called Triplicate Girl. Later, one of her selves was killed in combat and she was renamed Duo Damsel.

Regarding kryptonite, all I can remember from the comics was green, red, gold, blue, white, and jewel. Some of the others in the TV Acres link provided may not have been based in the comic but I could well be wrong.

33

Ah, thanks. Who killed him? It wasn’t a Golden-Age Joker, was it?

34

From this page:

35

I seem to recall from the dim recesses of my brain, a comic book episode where some nutcase dressed up as Superman in a tattered, homemade costume and went around inspiring his countrymen to revolt (in some pre-PC bananna republic setting).

For some obscure reason, Superman had to come in and stand in for the fake Superman, wearing the homemade costume and performing real superhuman stunts.

One of which involve taking a page out of the Flash’s playbook, and moving at superhuman speeds between five different locations, so as to appear to have split into five people. The natives were impressed: “Not even the real Superman can do that, but Super-Pancho can!”.

36

Now that I see the episode “Divide and Conquer,” I do remember it. One nitpick, though, is I don’t think the two Supes never actually spoke to one another–just exchanged knowing glances like Joe Friday and Bill Gannon.

37

Thanks Bryan! Interesting page.

38

…are still alive? I know that John Hamilton (Perry White) is long dead. Jack Larson (Jimmy Olsen) is alive and well-is Noel Neil (Lois Lane) still with us?
Who owns the rights to the TV series? Have the B&W episodes been colorized?
I’d love to see them again…it wouldremind meof my youth!
Oh…adid George reeves REALLY shoot himself? I heard that somebody was re-opening the case-any updates?

39

Robert Shayne, who played Inspector Henderson, died not long after playing a blind (as he was IRL by that time) person on the short-lived TV series “The Flash.”

TVLand had been showing the series since last year until recently. If they haven’t dropped it yet, they are scheduled to soon.

And no, the B/W episodes were not colorized.

40

It turns out the next episode after “Divide and Conquer” is “The Mysterious Cube”. In that one we see another strange power: a scientist tells Superman he might be able to “alter his molecular structure” (IIRC) to penetrate the walls of this cube like a ghost. For some reason Superman simply wasn’t strong enough to smash the cube.

Since the series ended 10 episodes later, it looks like they were completely out of ideas and just invented stuff inconsistent with Supey’s previous abilities, like RealityChuck said.

And if anyone is interested, zap2it.com says that “Divide and Conquer” will be on TVLand this coming Tuesday at 2:30 AM Chicago time. Check your local listings, not responsible for errors or last-minute schedule changes, etc.