If you could change ONE thing about each Superman era....

[sunofdarkchild]

My main changes would be to not replace the human characters with Kryptonian characters in the mid-to-late 2000s and not to mess with the post-crisis origin. The Linda Danvers Supergirl and that era's Superboy and Steel would have been kept as they were and the consistency and character-work of the triangle era would have been kept.

[thanatoskun]

Rebirth: marriage and son.

[Jon Clark]

Siegel & Shuster Era

I'd have The K-Metal from Krypton published, which hopefully would lead to Superman being a character based on change rather than the illusion of change.

Weisinger Era

Not sure if it counts as a single change but preventing the idea of Superman as a sit-com. No string of stories based on Lois trying to prove that Clark and Superman are the same person resulting in hi-jinks ensuing.

Schwartz Era

Have the Superman line under Schwartz from day one. No, not 1938, I get the rules here . But rather that Superman, Action, Superboy, Jimmy Olsen, Lois Lane ... all pass from Weisinger to Schwartz and are never split between editors.

Byrne era

If we are going to reboot, we reboot. Getting the whole DCU on one page is probably beyond a "single" change, but hopefully having Superman on one is not. So either Byrne gets his neophyte Superman who I slearning as he goes or he knows that upfront and handles the Superboy idea accordingly.

Triangle Era

Since ABC passes on the idea of a Lois & Clark TV show the original plans for a wedding in the comics are never postponed. No Doomsday. No speculator boom/bust. ...

[Carabas]

Byrne era: no Big Barda porn

[Sacred Knight]

Triangle Era:
Not ending up going overboard with the supporting cast late in the era, taking an amazingly well-fleshed out supporting cast but pushing it to the point where it started overshadowing Superman himself.

IC-Era:
Didn't implement so many Donnerisms.

New 52:
Didn't sideline Lois instead of establishing a strong, new friend/rival dynamic.

Rebirth:
Didn't introduce Jon.

[Jim Kelly]

How do you think the K-Metal story would have ultimately worked out?

K-Metal doesn't roll off the tongue like Kryptonite. And I imagine the radio show would still have introduced that word to the English language and the comic books would have followed suit.

It seems to me that there were lots of comics in the early days--1930s/very early 1940s--where there was a developing continuity and you'd see events having consequences, characters changing. But then, maybe because of the war, things settled down and comic book characters fell into routines and seemed to forget what happened from one story to the next.

In Quality's Doll Man, Martha Roberts knows that Darrel Dane is Doll Man. They seem to have an intimate relationship, while her father has his mind on science stuff. Darrel is always at their house--rarely ever seen in his own flat--and he could be sleeping with Martha. But then, without any explanation, Martha doesn't know that Darrel is Doll Man--even though they look exactly the same (not even glasses or a moustache as a disguise). And after that, for several years she's a lot like Lois nagging Darrel and trying to find out Doll Man's secret identity.

In the 1940s comic strips, Lois did marry Clark and for quite awhile. At some point someone must have realized what was going on in the funny papers and they put a stop to it, because the strips went back to the normalcy of the comic books.

[SiegePerilous02]

Sigel and Shuster: they never sold the rights

Byrne Era: Don't reboot . Make the changes like advancing the romance between Clark and Lois, having Lex being a corrupt businessman, less Kryptonians (already was in the process of happening anyway), and less appearances of the Legion in the canon they had. Would have been easier to reverse these changes when they wore out their welcome.

Triangle Era: Don't do Death of Superman. Or at least provide a better method of killing him than Doomsday.

New 52: Post-shirt and jeans look, give him either the classic costume or the DCEU costume.

If the first Crisis never happened, the problems would not have compounded the way they did and we may not have had need for a reboot in 2011 anyway.

Rebirth: Have him and Diana break up and still remain very close friends, and get him back together with Lois. No marriage and no kid, though they would obviously be possibilities.

[Last Son]

I agree with the idea of Byrne era Superman/COIE being a soft reboot that keeps most of the pre-crisis era stories in continuity. I believe there was no need to ever start rebooting the DC universe with huge cosmic happenings to modernize it, there were better ways. Think of how to introduce all those post crisis characters and ideas while working within the boundaries of existing continuity. Like you could introduce the character of Matrix without her having to be Supergirl, you could still have a Coluan villain whose consciousness survives execution and finds its way to earth to possess Milton Fine, you could maybe even work out a way to have pre-crisis Lex become a billionaire businessman who figured out a way to clear his name. And if one retconny thing happened, it could be the resurrection of the Kents by way of Superman taking the opportunity to go back in time and prevent the illness that killed them.

[Kuwagaton]

, you could still have a Coluan villain whose consciousness survives execution and finds its way to earth to possess Milton Fine

Why couldn't it be Vril Dox?

I like the idea of changing one thing. But I think some of the previous suggestions are about changing more than one thing and also a bit of social engineering that goes to the wider reality of the time.

I'd rather impose a limit on myself to change one small thing about the comic books. And it can't be too major, because I realize that you have to take the bad with the good and too much change to eliminate some bad stuff would also take away all the comics I love. But it can't be too minor, because then it doesn't really change anything.

Good point about the can of worms major changes would open up, and i have to agree about spreading Secret Origin since 6 issues in modern storytelling is a little too brief for supporting stories that have already happened.

What specifically do you consider the Lost Decade?

[Bored at 3:00AM]

have you heard the accounts of Julie's behavior toward women?

Yeah, I was planning on mentioning that when I substituted Julie for Mort, but forgot. While Julie was likely a skeezy creep towards a lot of women, he was also well-regarded and loved by his writers and artists because he was a great editor, whereas everything I've heard about Weisinger sounds like he was an absolute nightmare to work for.

[Powerboy]

Golden Age: I would have actually changed things rather than rewriting them as if they had always been that way. Instead of George Taylor morphing into Perry White as if it had always been Perry White and the Daily Star becoming the Daily Planet as if it had always been the Daily Planet, I would have had a story detailing why Clark and Lois chose to leave the Star and work for the Planet. Likewise, instead of pretending Superman always had super hearing, super vision, flight, etc., I would have portrayed his own joy and wonder as these powers developed.

Or, if I can only choose one specific thing, I'll go with Jerry Siegel wanting to do the story where Clark reveals to Lois that he is Superman and the series goes in a new direction because of that.

Silver Age: If I wracked my brain, I could probably think of something but I was a child then and loved it all. In retrospect, I'd do away with the stories about women that make me wince now such as Lois trying to "trick" Superman into marriage or the one where a woman got super powers but couldn't investigate a warehouse because, despite all her powers, no woman can overcome her fear of mice.

Bronze Age: Only thing I can think of here regarding Superman is that when he had his powers reduced, he then got them back to full power with no explanation for it. I'd at least explain how it happened.

George Reeves show: He landed on earth and the rocket immediately exploded with his never having any idea where he came from except it was from somewhere "out there". Then, in the second season, he and everyone on Earth suddenly seems to know he's from a planet called Krypton. It's as if there's a great untold story that the writers of the show forgot to tell. I'd tell that story of how he found his heritage.

Crisis on Infinite Earths: Just wouldn't happen or would happen but in a very different way. Definitely, the Silver/ Bronze Age earth, the Golden Age Earth and all of then would have either triumphed or been brought back when the Anti-Monitor was destroyed. But better just to not do it at all.

Post-Crisis: Well, it wouldn't have been called Post-Crisis but it would have just been a soft reboot, mostly an update to happening more recently. Clark would definitely not have been a high school jock because that really undermines the whole loneliness of his early life and his identification with the kids that are not the jocks and the stars.

[Deathscythe]

I'd change the outcome of COIE. The Multiverse isn't destroyed entirely and a new Earth is created. This Earth is cut off from the rest of the Multiverse, with no one on this Earth knowing there is a Multiverse and the rest of the Multiverse having no idea this Earth exists.

On this New Earth, all DC continuity is reset to zero. Every book is renumbered to #1 and each book starts with the origin of the character. Certain characters don't yet have books or even exist; the same applies to teams. There's no Robin yet, no JLA, and thus, no Titans. Core characters and concepts get books (the Big 7, Legion) and new books arrive at the end of the first year.

Meanwhile, the Earth-1 heroes continue on in their legacy books, with the fallout from COIE affecting the characters and their lives. This creates as sort of soft reboot and new direction. For example, Clark begins to seriously consider revealing his identity to Lois and events on Earth-1 take a track more in line with what eventually happened on post-COIE New Earth.

Also, this new Superman is Superboy, but he operates secretly like in Secret Origin.

[Last Son]

Why couldn't it be Vril Dox?



Good point about the can of worms major changes would open up, and i have to agree about spreading Secret Origin since 6 issues in modern storytelling is a little too brief for supporting stories that have already happened.

What specifically do you consider the Lost Decade?

I suppose it could be, but I don't want to step on the toes of past continuity. Like if the original pre-crisis Vril Dox/Brainiac 2 was a heroic character and not a villainous madman like the post crisis Brainiac.

[Kuwagaton]

Vril Dox II, Brainiac 2, was also the hero of a long running series called LEGION (re-titled REBELS in subsequent volumes). The Vril Dox who went into Milton Fine was his jerk dad, the original Brainiac. So it was basically the same thing pre and post, only it was his "real" son.

[Jim Kelly]

What specifically do you consider the Lost Decade?

By Lost Decade I mean the ten year gap between when Siegel & Shuster leave--last Siegel Superman story is WORLD'S FINEST COMICS 32 on sale November 26, 1947--and the beginning of what we call the "Weisinger Era" (or others call "Silver Age" Superman) with ACTION COMICS 241 on sale April 29, 1958.

During this gap period, we get a new origin story for Superman and the first published appearance of Kryptonite in the same story where Superman learns he's from Krypton. Whitney Ellsworth is the editor of record, but he becomes involved with Superman's Hollywood fortunes, while Mort Weisinger and Jack Schiff do most of the actual comic book editing. We get new titles for Superboy and Jimmy Olsen. Superman and Batman team up in WFC. More survivors of Krypton show up. And several prototype stories are published that will be rehashed later as official Weisnger Era Superman mythology (e.g. "Superman's Big Brother" serves as the model for "Superboy's Big Brother").

But because the mythology is in a state of flux, this decade is never really given much attention by fans. And not as much material from the period has been reprinted--all of the Jimmy Olsen stories and all of the Superman and Batman team-ups have, but not so much of the solo Superman stories or the Superboy stories.