# Superman Question? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 28, 2002, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superman-question/134270 "2002-10-28T17:23:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Some\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@Some\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Some_Guy)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2002, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superman-question/134270/21 "2002-10-29T16:54:42Z")
> [@](#): > > _Originally posted by Ross_ > > Any chance of a basic explanation of the difference between pre-crisis and post, and what on earth “crisis” is anyway, and how all that relates to the superman I thought I already knew all about from watching Superman II? Note: Long, geeky, and probably boring, plus I undoubtedly screwed something up.] Back in th 1950’s, DC stopped publishing most of its superhero line -IIRC, only the Superman and Batman titles were published continuously. When DC got back into the superhero line, several of their characters were different versions of an earlier concept. In particular, the original Flash, Jay Garrick (written for most of the original comic’s run by Gardner Fox, was replaced by a different character, Barry Allen. One of the throwaway parts of Barry Allen’s origin was the explanation for his choosing the name “Flash”: he had read a comic book series as a kid, written by a man named Gardner Fox, about a man named Jay Garrick who could run really fast and called himself “the Flash”. Now. later on, Gardner Fox wanted to write a story that teamed up bothe the Allen and Garrick Flashes. His original idea was simply to have them meet, but this was turned down by editor Julius Schwartz because, he argued, they couldn’t possibly both exist in the same continuity - Barry Allen had read about a _fictional_ Garrick, which wasn’t possible if they were both alive at the same time. Schwartz’s solution, as written by Fox, was to have Allen and Garrick both exist, but in entirely separate universes; in the story in question (Flash of Two Worlds), Barry Allen accidentally crossed between the two Earths by vibrating really fast. “Flash of Two Worlds” turned out to be really popular, and in consequence a bunch of stories got written on the same premise. In particular, it became a tradition for the JLA to do multi-universe crossover stories with titles like “Crisis on Earth-2” - the latter being a shorthand notation for one of the several Earths that stories could take place on. Earth-1 was Barry Allen’s home, and the JLA’s; Earth-2 had Garrick and the JSA; Earth-3 had the Crime Syndicate (evil versions of the JLA opposed by a heroic Lex Luthor, and there were a bunch of others as well. Okay, so now move forward to the late 1970’s -early 1980’s. Because of all the different Earths, DC continuity was extremely screwed up - Superman and Batman had been published continuously, so there was no simple explanation of their Earth-1 versus Earth-2 continuity; plenty of comics simply didn’t indicate which continuity they were a part of; and in general, it wasn’t possible for a new reader to understand all of the various facets of the multiple character versions. Consequently, It was decided to completely revamp the continuity of every DC comics property. This resulted in a long miniseries - named _Crisis on Infinite Earths_, written by Marv Wolfman, and edited by that same Julius Schwartz, which detailed the destruction of the multiverse and the eventual collapse of the remaining universes into a single, consistent continuity. DC also used the oppurtunity to introduce into regular continuity several characters that they owned as a result of buying Charlton and Fawcett Comics some years earlier. Unfortunately, there were almost immediate problems. The continuity presented in the final issues of_Crisis_ contradicted the “official” continuity later published as “The History of the DC Universe”, and the _Who’s Who_ series published after that, detailing individual character biographies, didn’t necessarily agree with either. In addition, both Batman and Superman got a retreatment in Post-Crisis continuity by means of a miniseries “recap” of their current origins. In Superman’s case, John Byrne wrote _The Man of Steel_, mentioned above, as a way of clarifying exactly what Superman’s character was, now. In general, even though there were Superman comics published after the Crisis, it’s generally agreed that Superman’s Post-Crisis continuity didn’t start until the first issue of _The Man of Steel_. In fact, the last few Superman comics published before Byrne’s takeover were a story by Alan Moore, explicitly finishing the story of the Pre-Crisis Superman. For characters other than Superman, Post-Crisis continuity is defined by a combination of editorial fiat (DC sez this is how it happened), published origin stories, and _Who’s Who_ references, most of which are way out of date. The earlier _History of the DC Universe_ is generally only a last resort, and the continuity from the last issue of _Crisis_ is definitely ignored. There was a later attempt to “re-fix” some parts of continuity, via the _Zero Hour_ miniseries, but it didn’t really work, and it was furthermore undermined by the introduction of the “Hypertime” concept, which was basically Multiple Earths in disguise. Luckily, Hypertime itself is also currently generally ignored. As far as the movies go, that’s considered separate continuity. Superman as presented in the first two movies is based on Pre-Crisis contiuity, because they were made long before _Crisis_ happened, however, the movie Superman isn’t necessarily presented the same as the comic Superman, and the events of the movies aren’t supposed to have happened to the Superman of the comics, though _Superman II_ was based on an earlier comic story. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Some\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ad7895/32.png) [@Just\_Some\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Some_Guy)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2002, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superman-question/134270/22 "2002-10-29T16:59:19Z")
Okay, there we go then. Glad that this world shattering issue could be resolved. 🙂 Ross, Crisis to keep things as short as they can be is comic book nerd shorthand for the series Crisis On Infinite Earths. In 1985 DC Comics decided that fifty years of stories that were all supposedly “true” was too much and too confusing for most kids picking up comic books. Crisis On Infinite Earths was a twelve issue story that was designed to take the entire DC universe, reset it to nothing, and then allow the writers to start over from scratch. Major characters died, histories were reorganized, stories were started over. Because there were major differences often in the basic nature of the characters before and after Crisis we speak of them as pre-Crisis or post-Crisis. Following up Crisis DC wanted to restart certain major characters. The Batman didn’t need much tweaking (I can’t think of any really major changes at that point but his history was played with down the line). Wonder Woman was started over from square one, leaving Paradise Island for the first time with the first issue of her new series. As for Superman DC had him earmarked for a rather massive reduction in power and hired then hot comic writer and artist John Byrne to do it. He created a new backstory for Superman that was told in the Man of Steel miniseries we’ve been going on about here. Some of the major changes included Superman being the only survivor of Krypton, he developed his powers slowly (rather similar to the current Smallville which meant that he wasn’t Superboy), Lex Luthor was now a businessman/mobster instead of a mad scientist, and there was only one peice of kryptonite in the entire world and it was brought to earth with the rocket. That’s the short form of things. The story is a lot more complicated than that but you should have the idea. ---
**Author:** ![Some\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@Some\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Some_Guy)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2002, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superman-question/134270/23 "2002-10-29T17:00:56Z")
Or, to answer you question as literally asked - no, there’s no chance of a _short_ explanation. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![photopat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e95f7d/32.png) [@photopat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/photopat)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2002, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superman-question/134270/24 "2002-10-29T17:26:08Z")
Well, there is one short answer: Continuity? What continuity? I didn’t see any continuity around here. You must be mistaken. ---
**Author:** ![Fenris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fenris/32/498_2.png) [@Fenris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fenris)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2002, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superman-question/134270/25 "2002-10-29T20:04:46Z")
Heh, and here I was all prepared to answer! Great explainations, **Some Guy** and **Just Some Guy** but several very minor quibbles: Superman and Batman weren’t the only characters that continued from the Golden Age. Wonder Woman kept her own book and Green Arrow and Aquaman had continuing series as backups in…um…Adventure? In any case, they were continuously published. I strongly disagree with the opinion that “DC continuity was extremely screwed up” and that it was hard for the new reader to understand. Remember, there were only three worlds that appeared with any sort of regularity (One, Two, S) and there were three more worlds (3, X, Prime) that showed up on rare occasion. It wasn’t all that tricky, and while fantypes like us might enjoy the debate about when the Earth 1 Superman started appearing (Circa Superman #123, IMO), it didn’t affect the vast, VAST majority of casual readers. The “It was too confusing” was Gerry Conway’s comment, and given the \< cough \> quality level of stuff that Conway wrote for DC, it’s clear that he didn’t get it. Batman was subject to a number of subtle, stupid revisions following the Crisis. Jason Todd changed from a good kid into a street punk, Batman had never caught his parent’s murderer, Catwoman became a hooker (or an ex-hooker). Something about Barbara Gordon not being Commissioner Gordon’s daughter but his neice (I’ve NEVER understood that one) and about a half-dozen others. What’s weird is that while Jason Todd, Street Punk was being featured in Batman, Jason Todd, circus acrobat was appearing in Teen Titans. One of the huge problems that happened after Crisis is that since Byrne was allowed to go back and rewrite anything he wanted (thus screwing up the Legion of Super-Heroes for 15 years or so), other writers figured that they could do exactly the same thing later. Byrne had Hawkman take Superman back to Krypton, but when Tim Truman rewrote Hawkman’s history that story _couldn’t_ have happened. Captain Marvel has had at least three post-Crisis origins. (Remember the horrible “Sivanna is Billy’s Uncle” version?) and so on. Things have mostly settled down now, but for a long period DC’s continuity was changing from day to day. Fenris ---
**Author:** ![Some\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@Some\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Some_Guy)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2002, 2:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superman-question/134270/26 "2002-10-30T02:14:17Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Fenris \* > \*\*Heh, and here I was all prepared to answer! Great explainations, **Some Guy** and **Just Some Guy** but several very minor quibbles: > > Superman and Batman weren’t the only characters that continued from the Golden Age. Wonder Woman kept her own book and Green Arrow and Aquaman had continuing series as backups in…um…Adventure? In any case, they were continuously published.\*\* See, I knew I screwed something up. > [@](#): > > \*\* > I strongly disagree with the opinion that “DC continuity was extremely screwed up” and that it was hard for the new reader to understand. Remember, there were only three worlds that appeared with any sort of regularity (One, Two, S) and there were three more worlds (3, X, Prime) that showed up on rare occasion. It wasn’t all that tricky, and while fantypes like us might enjoy the debate about when the Earth 1 Superman started appearing (Circa Superman #123, IMO), it didn’t affect the vast, VAST majority of casual readers. > \*\* Well, I think we obviously disagree there - but that’s a whole different thread in and of itself, so I’ll leave it at that. > [@](#): > > \*\* > Hawkman > \*\* Lets have some respect for everyone’s sanity and not touch this one :). > [@](#): > > \*\* > Things have mostly settled down now, but for a long period DC’s continuity was changing from day to day. > \*\* Operative word here is _mostly_, unless you think Hypertime was nothing. …and just to get it out of the way, I’ll point out that I’m the **Just Some Guy** of Earth-2 - my first appearance was earlier. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2002, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superman-question/134270/27 "2002-10-30T03:03:25Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Fenris \* > **Bryan Larry Niven(?) IIRC had a nifty article (NOT “Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex”) where he theorized that Krypton wasn’t a planet, it was a cooled brown dwarf and everything on Krypton was made of degenerate matter, which is why it was invulnerable,** Acutally, Niven **did** make this assertion in “Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex.” I believe it appeared as a footnote or parenthetical comment, where he was bemused by the enormous amount of Kryptonite that had made its way to Earth over the years. (An exploding normal planet would not have anywhere near enough mass to scatter that many meteorites across interstellar distances – but an exploding “black dwarf,” a white dwarf star that had cooled below the point where it glowed, might in fact have enough mass to pull off such a stunt.) Which is not to say that Niven didn’t expound upon that theory in other writings, of course. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Some\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ad7895/32.png) [@Just\_Some\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Some_Guy)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2002, 4:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superman-question/134270/28 "2002-10-30T04:24:43Z")
> [@](#): > > …and just to get it out of the way, I’ll point out that I’m the Just Some Guy of Earth-2 - my first appearance was earlier. I thought that post-Crisis you were myself who went back in time in order to post earlier. then after Zero Hour you were my long lost cousin. And let’s not get into that miniseries ret-con that everyone forgot about immediately after it was published… When Crisis came out I thought it was a great idea and great opportunity, myself. While I wasn’t one of those who thought that the continuity was too confusing (I was apt to just ignore the crap I didn’t like and Roy Thomas was doing some fun stuff with Earth-2) I liked the opportunity to put some fresh spins on characters and clean up a bit of the dead weight. I enjoyed the miniseries a great deal especially since part of it was that no character was safe. It was the editorial chaos afterward that killed it for me. With the hindsight of history I wish Crisis hadn’t happened, the jumble of random restarts and an unwillingness to just let some issue drop made a real mess of things. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2002, 5:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superman-question/134270/29 "2002-10-30T05:16:51Z")
The big irony, of course, is that DC was never able to satisfy all the fans and elements of the pre-Crisis storylines are starting to sneak back in. The seventh issue of the CRISI ON INFINITE EARTHS rewritten Superman was supposed to be the only survivor of Krpyton and ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2002, 5:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superman-question/134270/30 "2002-10-30T05:26:45Z")
(previous post was accidentally submitted before completion, Mod: please delete) The big irony, of course, is that DC was never able to satisfy all the fans and elements of the pre-Crisis storylines are starting to sneak back in. The seventh issue of CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS has a famous cover of a tearful Superman holding the corpse of his cousin, Supergirl. When the series ended and everything was supposed to restart, Superman was rewritten to be the only survivor of Krpyton and his cousin, Kara Zor-El, never existed. There is a new “Supergirl” with different powers and background as the original (though with the same “Linda Danvers” secret identity), but in the upcoming [issue #75](http://www.dccomics.com/news/newsarc/082302.html): > [@](#): > > Mike [McAvennie, SUPERGIRL editor] leans back in his chair, smiled his enigmatic smile and says, “As SUPERGIRL #75 opens, Linda Danvers has finished her quests, fought her demons and won. As the sole holder of the Supergirl name, she’s ready to head on home to Leesburg and resume her life. But, somewhere along the way, she comes across a crash-landed rocket from another planet.” > > Mike pauses here, obviously for dramatic effect. “A rocket,” he continues, under prodding from us, “carrying the one and only…Supergirl!” > > Even guessing that was what was coming next, we’re floored—and confused!—by this announcement. But, of course, it’s got to be some kind of hoax. An hallucination. There can be only one, right? > > “You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” Mike chuckles. "But you’d be wrong. This is not a hoax. Not a dream. Not an imaginary story. This is the original Supergirl. Fifteen year old Kara Zor-El of Argo City, a surviving remnant of the destroyed planet Krypton. And she’s come to Earth to meet her cousin, Superman. So much for continuity. ---
**Author:** ![Fenris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fenris/32/498_2.png) [@Fenris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fenris)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2002, 11:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superman-question/134270/31 "2002-10-30T11:46:21Z")
Couplea points: **Bryan** : DC won’t admit it, but this is the _second_ post-Crisis appearance of Kara Zor-El in mainstream DC Continuity. There was a Christmas special about 8 years back where Kara’s ghost helped Deadman get over some Christmas blues. (Mark Waid wrote it, sneaking in the Supergirl references…apparently whoever the editor was didn’t catch the fairly obvious references…because of that, Waid was turned down to be the Superman author and he pretty much left DC. Which is a shame as I can’t think of a current author I’d rather see write Superman) **Tracer** : Huh…I’d have sworn it was in some other essay. FTR, the reason there’s so much Kryptonite on Earth is that Kal-El’s rocket used an experimental warp-drive which ripped open a wormhole between Earth and Krypton. **Some Guy** : Until they explain what Hypertime _is_, I don’t know if it’s gonna screw with continuity or not. When it first appeared (in The Kingdom) the idea was that it was an “in story” reason for retcons. So the fact that Batman caught Joe Chill in “Legends of the Dark Knight” and never caught Joe Chill in “Batman” was 'cause of Hypertime. Then in Superboy and Flash it became a less organized “infinite earths” type deal. So who knows? Fenris [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superman-question/134270.md?page=1)