I recall reading somewhere that grandpa Superman was much more powerful than post-crisis Superman. Is this true?
Categorically not true, according to canon. He’s stronger than he was in '38, but… that’s Pre-Crisis Superman who could move planets around. Earth-1 Superman. Not Earth-2.
Oh, wait. Did Superman toss War World into a black hole or the sun, whichever?
He did.
He’s not quite equal to pre-crisis… but he’s close.
This one, the Earth-2 one, Kal-L? Should be an order of magnitude weaker than the current version.
Spoilers for the DCU and bad filking within. Beware.
“We Didn’t Start the Crisis” with apologies to Billy Joel
Sue Dibney, Dr. Light, Mind-Wipe, That ain’t right.
Jean Loring in Sue’s head, Riverdances, now she’s dead.
Black King kills Ted Kord, turns out he is Maxwell Lord.
Stop if you haven’t read, far more spoilers lie ahead.
Captain Atom, dead again, Luthor was the President.
Kyle Rayner, crashed to Earth, Hal Jordan had a rebirth.
Digger Harkness, Jack Drake, the new Supergirl is not a Fake.
Very bleak, no more mirth, you’ll prob’ly get your money’s worth.
CHORUS
We didn’t start the Crisis
It was first incited
when the worlds collided
We didn’t start the Crisis
No we didn’t write it
But we’ll prob’ly buy it
Hawkman and Adam Strange, Rann becomes a firing range.
Then Synn escaped, and Thanagar’s insanely hot.
Zeta beamers, total war, here comes the GL Corps.
Shayera’s dead, and Captain Comet does a guest shot.
Black Diamond, Eclipso Jean, quickly ditch the Arkham scene.
Spectre caught without a host, how do you seduce a ghost?
Shadowpact, Detective Chimp, Black Alice as a temp.
Captain Marvel, Magic War, Shazam dead or almost…
CHORUS
Batman going paranoid, satellites up in the void.
OMAC and Brother Eye, Checkmate controls the ‘S’ guy.
Diana versus Superman, Batman has no backup plan.
Wonder Woman, homicide, Sasha tries to override.
All the villains in the mix, Mockingbird, Secret Six.
Mindwipe plan, standing by, Pariah knows it’s all a lie.
Secret Six, run to ground, betrayals happen all around.
Double Lex, big surprise (and not the one from Cadmus, guys)
CHORUS
New Cronus, Donna Troy, Titans have a new ploy.
Wonder Girl? What can I say? No one likes her anyway.
Secrecy has go to go, League attacked by Despero.
Batman, his mind his own, Red Tornado’s fuses blown.
The Justice League is split. Batman and Zatanna quit.
JLA, blown away, what else do I have to say?
CHORUS
Little crises piling on, enough already Geoff Johns.
Lots of heroes about to die, and I have too many books to buy.
Earth One is getting rough, Kal-L has had enough.
It’s time to come and take a stand, “This looks like a job for Superman.”
Yes, I have too much time on my hands.
Heh. Not bad, Gamera. Not bad at all. Mind if I pass that some places?
So, what do you think of my point above?
-10 for lack of Power Girl. Still awesome.
That occurred to me this morning. I could add a verse or two, since technically I clipped the ending.
E-Sab, feel free to share, just give me an attribution. 
As for the Superman point - the continuity is touchy on this point. I’ve heard the Metropolis locale, I’ve heard a remote mountain peak in the neighborhood of Tibet, IIRC … the first reference to an Arctic Fortress is 1949 - http://theages.superman.ws/Encyclopaedia/Fortress/history.php#history
- Which should still be Earth Two.
Here, have an extra verse, to be inserted before the last couplet.
Flash looks like he’s going to hurl, Psycho-Pirate, Power Girl
Kara’s brain about to fry, the Spectre in the Gotham sky.
It is touchy, but as of Mr. And Mrs. Superman, it’s established, and easy to find, even being in the fact file.
Something bothers me here. I mean, Superboy-Prime being hysterical about Superman bleeding? Earth-2 Superman is a bit of a bare-knuckle fighter, anyhow. And Lois aging like the Parasite hit her?
Something’s desperately wrong.
We do know who took out the Watchtower, though. Did J’onn recognize him?
My point is that Earth-Two Superman’s Fortress is not consistently in one location, and in fact he may have had a few incarnations. I wouldn’t read too much into the statement.
Lois was already pretty old, and that pocket dimension they were in may have done funky things with time.
Superboy-Prime appears to be in deep fanboy mode. Let’s face it - trapped in a tiny pocket world, which, apart from the wrinkled prune that belongs to your older, tougher counterpart, is a total sausagefest - not the best for sanity.
J’onn seemed to recognize the visitor at first, but then realized it wasn’t Superman - it’s unclear if he realized exactly who it was, but I’m not convinced the visitor destroyed the watchtower.
Rough estimate:
Assumptions:
Lois and Clark are about the same age.
At the time of Crisis, the Earth-2 characters were aproximately 30 years older than their Earth-1 counterparts.
Knowledge:
The ‘contemporary’ Superman (be he Earth-1 or Post-Crisis) is perpetually on the cusp turning 30.
By the ‘ten-year timeline’, Crisis happened five years ago.
Conclusions:
Superman-2 and Lois-2 were around 60 at the time of Crisis.
Lois-2 and Kal-L are now ~65 years old.
So, by this estimate, while Lois is by no means ancient, she’s far from a young woman, and the rigors of the last 5 years - including bursting into a universe which she was supposed to have been wiped out of several years previous- could easily take their toll on her.
Also, adjusting the assumptions without, IMO, breaking reasonableness* can still push the upper bounds of Kal-L and Lois’s ages into the early 80s. They can also be reasonably pushed down to 60.
- Changing the Earth-2 characters ages to what their real-world ages should have been at Crisis, rather than relative to the Earth-1 versions, for instance.
We all agree that the most probable visitor was Kal-L, though?
He’s the most likely suspect at this point, sure. J’onn thought he was someone he was looking for a moment, and the Watchtower computer was displaying an “S” logo. The only problem is that Kal-L was in the pocket dimension at the time.
But alibis don’t work so well in a universe where time travel is common.
Therefore, there must be… another. There are two Luthors…
Ok ok, where can I find a website that attempts to explain the various Earth-1, -2, -prime, etc., with some kind of timeline. Was there a point in the past when Superman stories stopped being about the “original”, or was it just some big retcon and you kinda have to guess which stories are Earth-1 and Earth-2.
Forgive me, I’m a Marvel Zombie.
HEY!! The link to the mp3 doesn’t work!! :mad:
http://www.dcindexes.com/planet/weeklyplanet.php?issue=25
Just change the number to advance through the articles - the author does a decent job of reasoning out which stories are Earth-One and which are Earth-Two. After about 1960, you could assume it was Earth-One unless otherwise labelled.