Aside from the Lois Lane story, there’s one interesting “imaginary tale” from this issue… what if Superman’s mom was the one to reach Earth?
SUPERMAN FAMILY #193 (1979)
by Gerry Conway & Kurt Schaffenberger
Okay it’s not TECHNICALLY and imaginary tale in the traditional sense: this doesn’t take place on a parallel Earth, but it’s a simulation on Superman’s computer.
Less “What If…?” and more Matrix.
And the simulation shows her mom taking the identity of Supergirl, instead of his father.
There’s a lot to unpack there.
First of all: it’s explicitly told to be set in the 1930s. In the 60s, that used to be the time where Superboy was active; since his parents are teenagers in this story, Superboy’s era has obviously been pushed forward.
Second: Superman considers his mother “the more direct” of his parents. Considering we haven’t seen all that much about her mother, while his father seemed to be the focal point of everything meaningful happening on Krypton, I really wonder what we missed about her life.
Third, good for Superman for realizing he was wrong in assuming his father would be the one to become a hero. He’s slowly growing out of being The Worst.
To make things a little confused: in this simulation, both Jor-El and Lara arrived on Earth as infants.
Jor-El was adopted by the Kent family and is Pa Kent’s brother…
…while Lara has been adopted in the Clark family, meaning she’s the sister of Clark Kent’s mother.
(in case you don’t know: the maiden name of Clark Kent’s mother is Martha Clark).
The only bit of information we get about HOW the two Kryptonians ended up on Earth is that they both landed together and were discovered by the Clarks.
NOT the Kents, that’s going to come up later.
The fact that Martha’s mother looks EXACTLY like Ma Kent will look later in life is a little distracting, with all those multiple names to keep track of.
Surprise, the premise story is actually “What if Superman’s parents were committing incest?”. (!!!!!)
When “Supergirl” is told about the plot, she reacts as you would expect.
You might wonder why Jor-El didn’t even try to be a superhero, since logically he should have powers by now. Apparently he’s trying to be Lex Luthor instead.
Well at least this time he’s not inventing capes to enslave the planet this time.
The scene where “Supergirl” asks if there’s any way to prove if two people are related might sound silly TODAY, but remember: this scene is set in the 30s and we didn’t even learn about DNA until the 50s.
She tells him about his own origin story, and we discover that Jor-El never bothered to do ANYTHING with his Superman-level powers.
So I guess that settles which parent’s genes made Supes into The. Worst.
And so we end with Jor-El can bang the only remaining person from his planet.
You know Superman is definitely watching his own conception after this story is over, right?
Trivia: good thing that we didn’t go deep into how exactly Jor-El and Lara found themselves on Earth as babies, because it probably involved Jor-El’s father sending them on a rocket.
Why would that be bad? Well in case you didn’t know, Jor-El’s father was ALSO called Jor-El. There’s enough confusion about names as it is in this comic!!!
Historical significance: 0/10
It’s not even a “real” imaginary tale, whatever that even means.
Silver Age-ness: 10/10
Down to the very idea of Superman building the Matrix.
Does it stand the test of time? 0/10
Yeah sure, do a story about Superman’s parents being afraid of secretly being siblings. That’ll work out great.
At some point pre-Crisis, one of the Superman chroniclers, (probably Bridwell) established that before meeting Jor-El, Lara was an astronaut – so definitely a more hands-on, action oriented career than Jor-El’s.
Lara’s pre-marrage career as an astronaut (“astronette”?) was established in “Jor-El’s Golden Folly”, from Superman # 233 (Jan., 1971). And your instincts are spot-on; it was written by Nelson Bridwell.