In the DCU what do people know about Superman? Do they know he’s from Krypton? (I assume so.) Do they know he has a secret identity? If not, do they know he grew up on Earth, or do they think he arrived as an adult? (In current continuity Superman was never Superboy, right?) Where do they think he lives, since he obviously works out of Metropolis, but his Fortress of Solitude is … Where is his Fortress of Solitude these days? Does he even have one? If so, do people know about it?
BTW, was Superman still born on Earth (via a “birthing matrix”, i.e. artificial womb, on his ship) in current continuity? This came up in the thread about him renouncing his US citizenship, but there wasn’t a definite answer there.
Yes. In fact, it’s a lot of Lex Luthor’s argument with him. (Or, nominally so…it’s clearly all Lex’s ego, and it goes back and forth whether Lex actually believes his own hype.)
Unclear. Generally seems ‘no’.
He’s quite open about having been raised on Earth. In Kansas. In Smallville. But he never mentions the Kents, of course.
Nyeeeh…he was never Superboy, but he was ‘the super boy’.
This, more than the rest, is subject to change, come the relaunch. (The Super-family is getting more changes than most of the rest of the line.)
Presumably, Metropolis, since he’s there most of the time. His Fortress is currently in the…arctic or antarctic, I can’t remember. But it’s cold and white.
No, that was thrown out years ago - back to Birthright (2003), at least. Kryptonians in current continuity are conceived and born naturally, taking the birthing matrix out of the equation entirely.
Well that makes it kind of a given that he has some other identity, doesn’t it? Either he refuses to tell who he was raised as, which makes it a secret, or no one’s asked him which, well, come on!
And really, he even mentions Smallville? How hard would it be for someone to track down the Kents? I mean, if he said Metropolis, that would be believable, but doesn’t Smallville have some characteristic that would make it easy to figure out who everyone is…you know, something that sets it appart from Metropolis and other BIG places…something…it’s on the tip of my tongue…?
I’ve always found it totally plausible that no one thinks anything about the fact that Clark, yeah, I guess now that you mention it, he kinda does look like Superman. You know, I saw a guy at the bus stop last week that looked just like Richard Gere.
But once you narrow it down to Smallville, a quick look through a few high school yearbooks should give you a pretty short list of suspects.
He acted as a hero, but didn’t do so publicly like he does as Superman. He showed up, saved the day, and left. No costume, no talking to reporters, no heroic name. He was just a rumour about a ‘super boy’.
Have they addressed this in the comic book at all? Why is he willing to identify Smallville? Even if someone doesn’t figure out who he is, doesn’t it put his family and friends in danger for Luther, et al., to know that a nuclear bomb aimed at Smallville, KS, will get more of a reaction from Superman than one aimed at, say, Rooster Poot, AR?
And if people know he lives in Metropolis, don’t they want to know where? How can he be any kind of a public figure at all without people asking these questions?
And how can anyone write a Superman comic without mining this rich source of plots? Back in the Silver Age they got three or four stories a week out of this stuff! Today they don’t even address it?
Have they ever done a Memento or other type storyline with Lois?
“Lois. It’s me, Lois. If you’re watching this it means he’s gotten to you again. I don’t know how. I don’t know when. But your brain has been wiped. We’ve all lost track of how often it’s happened, but best guess is a dozen times and counting. It’ll happen again when I give you this information so you’ve got to find some way to pass it along to your future self…”
I haven’t read the comics for decades, but when I was a kid, they not only didn’t recognize Superman if he had glasses on, but Clark Kent was always referred to as “namby-pamby,” or some other term of contempt for his manliness. The guy was like 250 pounds of solid muscle, judging from the drawings of him in uniform, but everybody in the office bullied him around.
Does the whole world know this? From what I remember of the story line, Lois started to suspect Clark was Superman, and then the Kents stepped in and told her a story about having raised Clark and Kal-El together such that they were adoptive brothers. She believes them but thinks obviously this is a huge story and writes an article, but Perry White shuts her down saying the Kents have a right to their privacy, and doesn’t publish.
I thought Christopher Reeve did a great job of portraying Clark as The Guy Least Likely To Be Super.
And there was a scene in the most recent movie where someone looked over at Clark suspiciously, just as he bungled something convincingly. They shook their head and went back to what they were doing.
And don’t forget the scene in the comics where Luthor’s computer whiz tech lady deduces that Superman is Clark Kent, and Luthor fires her: “There’s no way Superman would consent to being weak like that!”
I’m not sure if you mean that Birthright was never in continuity - in which case, that was the original plan, but they changed their mind before releasing it - or that it’s been retconned since - in which case, yes, Superman’s origin has been subject to near-constant retcons, but the post-Birthright retcons have generally been about moving him closer to the pre-Crisis version, so the birthing matrix never came back.
I guess we’ll find out soon with the re-launch of Action Comics (along with every other DC book) in September. It’s being written by Grant Morrison, so it should be good. It looks like it will deal specifically with Superman’s relationship with the public and how he managed to create his public image. I think I might actually get these monthly instead of waiting for the TPBs. it sounds pretty good.
