Superman #146 (1961)
“The Story of Superman’s Life!”
by Otto Binder & Al Plastino
cover by Curt Swan
Superman had been around for 23 years at this point, accumulating many contradictions in his history; this issue is the Silver Age’s attempt to put everything in order.
I’m not going through the ENTIRE story, since most of the beats do align with what had been published.
There are some oddities that will either be left out or explained away in future retellings.
Like the fact that the reason why Krypton exploded was that its core was made of uranium.
I don’t know how Krypton could have missed that when they have the Cosmic Clock(patent expired).
The Golden Age origin had Superman being rescued as a baby from the rocked by “a passing motorist” with the Kents adopting him later at the orphanage.
This version skips the motorist and has the Kents find the baby, but they still bring him to the orphanage. Future retellings and adaptations will go back and forth on whether the Kents dropped the baby at the orphanage or if they pretended Clark was their biological son.
I’m fine with keeping the orphanage in the origin, but only with continuities where Clark is not super-strong as an infant. He’s already living in the same town where Superboy operates, having the orphanage aware of a super-strong infant is stretching the secret identity too thin.
The Kents are also the ones who create the basis for Superman’s costume, thanks to the blankets from the rocket which have become indestructible on Earth.
I never liked the idea of Superman’s costume being invulnerable like him, but I vastly prefer any incarnation where the costume comes from his adoptive parents and it has nothing to do with Krypton besides the material.
Superman originally owed his powers to Krypton having a higher gravity than Earth, with mentions of the difference in the planet’s atmosphere showing up multiple times.
Earth’s yellow sun being the source of his powers was established a year before this story in Action Comics #262, and that will the definitive explanation across all incarnations.
This issue is a weird mix, with different powers having a different origin.
I guess that super-strength deriving from the lower gravity makes more sense, but having a single source for all powers really streamlines things so no wonder this version does not stick.
We have Pa Kent’s death scene, three years before Superman #161.
That will be definitive version. Ma Kent still dies first, but very shortly before her husband instead of months earlier. However you can see that Pa Kent’s last words are quite similar to the 1960 version.
This is more of a Superboy than a Superman story; it narrates one version of Superboy’s farewell to Smallville (there’s like five versions of this).
What did he put in that cake’s recipe for the slices to be around twenty-ish years later?
Also Superman is a citizen of all countries on the planet, presumably including those that don’t allow dual citizenship.
Sounds legit.
“Superman’s Greatest Feats!”
by Jerry Siegel & Al Plastino
I’m guessing that since the first story was mostly about Superboy, Superman deserves the second story.
After Superman saves Atlantis from being accidentally destroyed, he wonders if he can change history.
Superman is certain that history can’t be changed, but tries anyway.
Unfortunately he can’t meet the Legion there, because Adventure Comics #333 is a 1965 story.
But he does save Atlantis from sinking.
Since nothing stopped him from changing history, Superman decides to try his luck again and prevent a Roman Emperor from executing some Christians.
No specific Emperor or year is mentioned, for some reason, but the Colosseum was inaugurated in 80 AD.
Incidentally, there is no solid historical evidence that Christians were executed in the Colosseum.
They were certainly persecuted, but probably not killed there specifically.
Next he tries to save Nathan Hale, because I’m guessing there’s no other historical tragedy between 80 AD and 1776 AD that he can think of.
Superman is directly referring to Superboy #85 from the previous year (although here’s no footnote), where he tried to prevent the assassination of Lincoln and learned that you can’t change history.
But that was LAST year.
Next up is, uhm…
Let’s just skip this one, okay?
Since that worked, why not save Lincoln’s life for real this time?
AND IT WORKS.
Not content with that, Superman decides to COMPLETELY break history.
So Superman helps save the ENTIRE population of Krypton, including Supergirl’s parents and Lyla Lerrol from Superman #141.
And including his OWN parents, meaning Superman could never have existed.
Shouldn’t you have thought about this BEFORE trying to save Krypton???
However, once Superman returns to the present, he discovers that NONE of his changes to history stuck.
I can’t really play the usual “Guess the stupid ending” game since this ending, while truly bizarre, isn’t something I would classify as stupid.
So instead let’s play our first game of “Guess the confusing ending”: why didn’t history change?
A) Superman hallucinated the entire story thanks to Lori Lemaris
B) Superman hallucinated the entire story thanks to Red Kryptonite
C) Superman accidentally traveled to another Earth
D) Superman accidentally created a new parallel timeline
E) Time itself intervened to reverse all the changes
And the answer is…
C) Superman accidentally traveled to another Earth… where time travel works differently than on HIS Earth.
That WOULD be an interesting Earth to visit, but I don’t think we ever see it again.
Historical significance
First story: 8/10
Second story: 0/10
Most of the cleanup established by the first story sticks. The second one doesn’t exactly follow the usual Silver Age time travel rules.
Silver Age-ness: 10/10
Both stories could only be done in the Silver Age.
Does it stand the test of time?
First story: 8/10
Second story: 5/10
The first one isn’t that much of a story, but it does manage to make a rather compelling recap of Superman’s early life.
The second one raises SO many questions, from why Superman chooses these specific points to change history without even checking if the FIRST attempt worked, to Superman not considering the effects of saving Krypton, to how these “parallel time-barrier” even works.
Interesting letters: they were SO close to establishing Kryptonite is unhealthy for humans too, even if it’s very slow!
What I find fascinating is that evidently the fact that Kryptonite is from another planet was the only explanation deemed necessary.
I remember reading about “Superman’s Greatest Feats” in “The Science of Superheroes” (specifically the chapter on parallel universe theory). The author found the “surely the history books are truthful” scene rather amusing (following up the quote with an ‘ahem’)
Crisis on Infinite Earths: Absolute Edition identifies “Superman’s Greatest Feats” as the first and only appearance of Earth-146.
Issue 81 of Superboy Volume 1 also goes for the idea that some powers come from the yellow sun while others come from the lower gravity. The story has Superboy end up stranded in a red sun planet that is as massive as Krypton was, so he loses all his powers. But the people who inhabit the planet have all of his muscular powers, and none of his yellow sun ones. The reason given for the people having his muscular powers is because their planet used to be bigger than Krypton, but “cosmic forces” shrunk it to Krypton’s size, so those people have super muscles in comparison to him, just as he has super-muscles in comparison to the people of Earth (and just as the people of Earth would be super in tiny planets). Since the planet has no interstellar travel, he is forced to stay and has to hide the fact he’s weak and has no powers, a role reversal.
Of course, Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin…who the heck cares for these unconsequential buffoons!!
What do you think about the unique lore of My Adventures With Superman? While nothing has been said explicitly yet, the dots are there to be connected: kryptonians don’t have powers under a red sun, but Krypton’s sun was yellow, so they had powers in Krypton! Also, each generation is engineered to be stronger than the previous one, according to Brainiac. Another thing, shown in the second episode in the show, is that some device somehow changed Krypton’s sun from yellow to red before its destruction. Supposedly a technology from whatever eenemy Krypton couldn’t defeat, and the speculation is that it’s Apokolips.
I haven’t had the chance to see the show yet, but at some point I definitely will because everything I’ve heard about it makes me think it REALLY nails what makes Superman… Superman.
This specific change to the lore sounds interesting; it’s not the first adaptation to make Kryptonians evil, and on the surface it does resemble Invincible’s Viltrumites a bit much, but something cool can be made from it.
When it comes to the kryptonians being evil, nearly all we hear about this is from Brainiac, who isn’t exactly a reliable source. That said, he affirms that he destroyed Krypton because of the planet’s peace talks to stop a war with their enemy, if I remember correctly. Anyway, the point is that Brainiac was afraid of being decommissioned due to lacking a purpose. It wouldn’t be unsurprising if he is a far more extreme and evil version of what Krypton’s imperialism actually was.
I won’t say anything more, I’ve said too much already. And again, Krypton is still largely a mystery in the show, so much about it is unclear, and I wonder if Season 3 will give definitive answers.