Superman:Time travel

[Soubhagya]

Superman used to time travel. He still does now but apparently needs Flash's treadmill to fine tune it.

My questions are regarding the 'physics' of his time travel. Was it a random power back then or was it the relativity thing where faster then light travel somehow makes one a time traveller. Was it explained? Speed may explain moving forward in time. But how on earth can one go back in time by speed? Perception of time slows down for the faster then light time traveller. So the only possible diirection is forward.

Next question is about the effects of time travel. I think it applies to the whole DC universe as well. Was it even explained how time travel is strange in that by doing so you essentially change something which shouldn't have happened.

And are there any fun stories with Superman's time travel? The obvious answers must be LoSH.

And finally do you want Superman's time travelling powers used more often? I find it quite incredible that you don't even need a time machine when you are Superman. Not only space but even time can be one's playground.

[Yoda]

Time and Time Again is one of my favorites. It's from the early triangle era. He doesn't time travel under his own power but it's a fun bouncing around time story. The Legion and the Time Masters factor into it.

[Kuwagaton]

The post crisis Time and Time Again was fun. So was the pre crisis story of the same name, written by Marv Wolfman. In that period (late 70s early 80s) things were still pretty fantastic, but there was a little more writing to the feats. There they explain ed that going counter clockwise to the rotation of the earth beyond lightspeed is how he does it. Wrong, sure, but that's just how it was.

Around that same time there was a story dealing with his responsibility as a time traveler, the lead story of Superman #372. Superman has a ton of time travel stories but I guess a lot of these stories are hard to track down.

But "Autograph, Please!" From Superman #48 and "The Impossible Mission!" From Superboy #85 are two of the most significant and easiest to find

[Jon Clark]

Superman used to time travel. He still does now but apparently needs Flash's treadmill to fine tune it.

My questions are regarding the 'physics' of his time travel. Was it a random power back then or was it the relativity thing where faster then light travel somehow makes one a time traveller. Was it explained? Speed may explain moving forward in time. But how on earth can one go back in time by speed? Perception of time slows down for the faster then light time traveller. So the only possible diirection is forward.

Next question is about the effects of time travel. I think it applies to the whole DC universe as well. Was it even explained how time travel is strange in that by doing so you essentially change something which shouldn't have happened.

And are there any fun stories with Superman's time travel? The obvious answers must be LoSH.

And finally do you want Superman's time travelling powers used more often? I find it quite incredible that you don't even need a time machine when you are Superman. Not only space but even time can be one's playground.

Pre-Crisis Superman's ability to travel in time was connected to moving faster than light. It was never gone into with much depth as he used the same ability (moving FTL) for going forward or backward in time and for travelling interstellar distances. There must have been some special procedures he used to determine whether he just wanted to travel a distance or through time but as I said it was never spelled out.

I may be wrong but I think the theory of relativity has it that time slows as you approach the speed of light and supposedly actually stops if you actually move at the speed of light. If I have that right the logical idea is that if approaching it is slowing and reaching it is stopping then exceeding would be going in reverse. But since I'm no physicist and far as I know nothing has ever been proved to exceed the speed of light it's all based on theoretical layman's understanding.

The Superman books largely held that two rules applied to going backward in time.
1) If you already physically existed at a given point in time you couldn't physically enter that time again. So Superman couldn't (in the comics) go back and prevent Lois dying in that earthquake since there was already a version of him somewhere else on Earth during her death.
2)History was a constant and the universe did real weird shit to keep it that way. So if you went back to Lincoln's assassination you either were unable to prevent it due to a string of improbabl events or worse yet whatever action you took actually made it more likely he was assassinated.

Going forward in time was a bit more interesting because nothing there was set in stone. Superman could travel a few decades forward and meet his kid with Lois one issue and travel to the same year the next issue to find he never had kids with Lois. Of course that was dependent on Superman not getting Lois pregnant between issues, since once it was established in the "present" that something occurred it was now irrevocably part of the future. This was why Superboy could visit the Legion in the 30th century, but Superman or the Flash could still visit a 30th century where no Legion existed.

Some fun Superman time travel stories were a few returns to Krypton.

The first was the Golden Age tale where Superman first discovered his origin by travelling faster than light and following the path of the first piece of kryptonite back to it's creation. This was one of those since baby Kal-El existed physically adult Superman was non-corporeal and could observe the events leading up to the planet's death.

A later tale had Superman "accidentally" breaking the time barrier and winding up on Krypton just prior to his birth/conception. He hung out with Jor-El and Lara (without telling them who he really was) and fell for the Marilyn Munroe of Krypton before circumstances resulted in his getting back to the "present".

One of his earliest time travel stories had Superman going through history getting autographs from historical figures to help some kid win an autograph contest. Others had Superboy meeting Samson and Goliath (both having secret IDs in their own times), Krypto starting the Great Chicago Fire, Superboy creating self-fulfilling time loops by investigating historical evidence of earlier Superboys (who turned out to be him).

The Lincoln assassination story was used as Superboy learning that history couldn't be changed. Young Clark went back trying to prevent the assassination only to encounter adult Lex Luthor who was hiding from adult Superman by travelling to the past. Lex assumed Superboy was there to capture him and inadvertently battled Superboy long enough that the assassination occurred. Apparently Lex had no idea that the date he chose to hide on was Lincoln's assassination. And since Superboy was present physically he could never return to that date a second time to get another chance at stopping the assassination.

The stories were fun, but I'm not sure if their wacky logic would work today.

[Kuwagaton]

It used to be that Superman hitting the right speed would be all that was needed bring him into the ethereal space outside time where he could go where he wanted. Anything else was just thinking about it too hard. He broke the time barrier is all. I think readers would be able to take it if the stories weren't always trying to be so serious. I mean like 99% of the DBZ cast is named directly after food and that's hotter than ever.

One cool thing is seeing the evolution of Superman's light speed. He could get up to light speed in movement at first, then he would start using the momentum of flying in an arcane pattern to have the speed take him through time (the first story had him go backwards in time) and for the most part he began just hitting faster than light flight instantly. When he reached light speed in post crisis it was the same as those earlier years.

[Soubhagya]

Thanks!

That was all i needed. So its FTL travel. If you think deeply some elements barely make sense. But its solid enough. They really put much thought into it. There can't be two Supermen at the same time. Past is fixed but future is not. When you think about it, this is quite solid.

I have heard about Lyla Lerrol. But i didn't know that she was Marilyn Monroe of Krypton. That's quite a compliment.

[Jon Clark]

Thanks!

That was all i needed. So its FTL travel. If you think deeply some elements barely make sense. But its solid enough. They really put much thought into it. There can't be two Supermen at the same time. Past is fixed but future is not. When you think about it, this is quite solid.

I have heard about Lyla Lerrol. But i didn't know that she was Marilyn Monroe of Krypton. That's quite a compliment.

If you look at the art from the issue, It's pretty apparent Wayne Boring was drawing Marilyn's face

[Jim Kelly]

When Superman first started time travelling in the late 1940s, it requred him to twist his body the right way to get through the time barrier. Later on in the early 1980s, Elliot Maggin had him do the same sort of thing.

For most of the pre-Crisis period, we saw Superman flying through rings of time with dates. This was just a visual way of showing the power, but if he was just going super-fast, he wouldn't have control over where he ended up. Let's suppose he has to approach the speed of light to travel through time and when he does that all of time-space is laid out before him and he sees where to go and pushes his body through select holes in the continuum.

Something I like about the pre-Crisis time travel is that he becomes a phantom when he time travels within his own lifetime. This is pretty cool--like Scrooge travelling through time and witnessing his life but not being visible to anyone.