If Clark was Superboy, why would he ever leave Smallville?

[Alpha]

I haven't read much of the Silver Age Superboy stories. There are many reasons why I dislike the idea of Clark being the public figure of Superboy, but the main problem comes down to this. If there were enough supervillains and problems in Smallvile for Clark to defeat as a teenager, why in the world would he leave that town, since he knew it would suddenly lose the reliable savior it seemed to relly on.

[Jim Kelly]

Arguably, it doesn't matter where Clark resides. As Superman, he can patrol the entire planet every day and discover those situations that call for his special set of skills. Smallville or Metropolis should not get more attention that any other place. He ought to go to the place where he's most needed.

In classic continuity, Clark left Smallville after his parents died. He then went to college to study journalism. He then came to Metropolis to work at a big city newspaper, because that was his career ambition. And he probably stayed in Metropolis because he fell in love with Lois Lane.

The classic Superboy stories had Superboy acting as a global and galactic champion--so he wasn't just Smallville's local hero. Nevertheless, for such a small town, it did seem to attract a lot of bad guys. You would think most crooks would swerve the town where Superboy was most often seen. But there were a lot of aliens who came to Smallville expressly to find the Boy of Steel.

[kryptonian]

I find the idea of superboy appealing because it really empathizes how wholesome Clark is


This idea that he isn’t Superman because of any kind of trauma in his later life.

[bat39]

I suppose Pre-Crisis, the loss of his adoptive parents was a factor in him no longer wanting to stick around Smallville as well.

Honestly, my bigger problem with Superboy as a public figure is the coincidence of Clark Kent and Superman both being from Smallville.

I mean, think about it. Superboy was the most powerful being on earth and he was from Smallville. Then he moves to Metropolis and becomes Superman. Around the same time, Clark Kent moves from Smallville to Metropolis as well.

The Daily Planet staff at least should have put two-and-two together before long.

No one suspects Clark Kent of being Superman because there's no reason to associate a guy from some town in Kansas with the Man of Steel.

But if the guy happens to be from the same town in Kansas where Superman comes from, then you might start looking at the other coincidences a bit more closely - like the similarity in their builds and their faces. Hell, maybe you'd just start looking past those glasses...

[Thor-Ul]

Those are valid arguments. We can excuse the silver age stories for bein more candid and less inclined to an excesive serious mentallity, and the characteristic absurdity of some of the silver age Superman tales.
That said, I must I liked the solution given by Johns, that of make Superboy an rural legend , like the bigfoot and give most of the cosmic adventures of SUperboy as training with the Legion.

[The World]

I think the question is the other way around because there's no reason to believe all the weirdness and danger of Superman's life would start until adulthood. Frankly the reason we keep getting origin story after origin for Superman is because people keep looking for something that could make him into Superman but nothing anyone comes up with really fits. Best origin story he has IS Superboy which shows he had a lot of the traits that defined him as Superman even back when he was a young boy. Nothing really forced him to become Superman, a lot of the elements were always there with the Kents, Smallville, The Legion, etc drawing those qualities out. Besides Superboy dates back to the mid 40's, meaning it's rooted in the golden age and as far as I know was an original aspect of Siegel's pitch to National for Superman.

I'm not big on Superboy being a public figure though, I'd change it to be Superman's private boyhood adventures that naturally shift to his public and private adult life.

Superboy is probably the best origin story Superman is going to get.

[Powerboy]

I suppose Pre-Crisis, the loss of his adoptive parents was a factor in him no longer wanting to stick around Smallville as well.

Honestly, my bigger problem with Superboy as a public figure is the coincidence of Clark Kent and Superman both being from Smallville.

I mean, think about it. Superboy was the most powerful being on earth and he was from Smallville. Then he moves to Metropolis and becomes Superman. Around the same time, Clark Kent moves from Smallville to Metropolis as well.

The Daily Planet staff at least should have put two-and-two together before long.

No one suspects Clark Kent of being Superman because there's no reason to associate a guy from some town in Kansas with the Man of Steel.

But if the guy happens to be from the same town in Kansas where Superman comes from, then you might start looking at the other coincidences a bit more closely - like the similarity in their builds and their faces. Hell, maybe you'd just start looking past those glasses...

I think the problem there is that it IS a valid criticism in the real world. But, in the world of comics, most secret identities are so unrealistic that it's a moot point.

[Johnny Thunders!]

I like the idea that Superman is always moving on. When he was a baby he left Krypton, as a teen he leaves Smallville, as an adult, someday I imagine he leaves Metropolis and Earth. Thats probably because I love the Elliot S. Maggin take on Superman!

As far as secret identity goes, I think its just suspension of belief the best you can. No one ever wondered how Bruce Wayne adopts Dick Grayson former Boy Wonder Acrobat at the same time Batman teams up with Robin, the boy wonder wearing Dick Grayson's circus outfit.

[Soubhagya]

I suppose Pre-Crisis, the loss of his adoptive parents was a factor in him no longer wanting to stick around Smallville as well.

Honestly, my bigger problem with Superboy as a public figure is the coincidence of Clark Kent and Superman both being from Smallville.

I mean, think about it. Superboy was the most powerful being on earth and he was from Smallville. Then he moves to Metropolis and becomes Superman. Around the same time, Clark Kent moves from Smallville to Metropolis as well.

The Daily Planet staff at least should have put two-and-two together before long.

No one suspects Clark Kent of being Superman because there's no reason to associate a guy from some town in Kansas with the Man of Steel.

But if the guy happens to be from the same town in Kansas where Superman comes from, then you might start looking at the other coincidences a bit more closely - like the similarity in their builds and their faces. Hell, maybe you'd just start looking past those glasses...

I think they had a better alibi back then. And if they reworked it a bit, it could still work really well. The Superman robots. As Superboy he built the Superboy robots who looked like him. So, Clark and Superman look alike? People aren't suspicious? But how could they be the same person if both of them are seen together?

I think that makes more sense then Post Crisis where Lois finds out that apparently Superman was adopted by the Kents. And Clark and Superman grew up together. I don't know if they ever retconned it, but i find that aspect more sillier then anything before that. The one problem with the robots is people knew about them.

The glasses never bother me Its only in lazier attempts like Snyder's films where it feels unreal. In most of the good adaptations there's the subtle tics like slouching, changing voices, hairstyle among others which compliment the glasses so people don't look twice when they see Clark Kent. The classic Superman is a chameleon like actor. Someone like say Gary Oldman. I was blown away on learning that Sirius Black and Commissioner Gordon are played by the same actor. Clark Kent is like when a method actor takes it too far.

In my opinion, they should keep that. And compliment that with a few robots standing in for him. He should acknowledge that some people think he looks a bit like Superman without the glasses. But how could he be him, if both have been seen together in public? Nowadays, neither Batman nor Hal Jordan are helpful enough to stand in for him when necessary. No problem. Superman robots.


I think the Superboy stories are perfectly acceptable. If you want to look closer there are issues with everyone's alibi. Batman seems to have a great no of gadgets and tech. And he appeared just a bit after Bruce Wayne returned to Gotham. The explanations has to be reasonably solid. Mask, voice, and the act of being an uncaring playboy is good enough. Same is with Superboy. Most people don't suspect as he's a really good actor. And those who could, have seen both of them together in public. Like say a town meeting or when Superboy saved Clark Kent.

[Jim Kelly]

I have to admit to an inconsistency in my thinking.

While I liked BATMAN: THE LEGENDS OF THE DARK KNIGHT as an anthology of apocryphal stories about the Batman--I didn't like it when it became a vehicle for retconning Batman's timeline. I guess this is because I'd been reading Batman for a very long time by then and I preferred the old timeline.

Through LEGENDS and other books associated with it (like THE LONG HALLOWEEN), characters that were originally introduced later in the timeline were now all backdated to Year One--and before Bruce Wayne took in young Dick Grayson. It wasn't just Catwoman, the Joker, Riddler, Two-Face--characters like Ra's al Ghul and Talia were also retconned into Batman's past. That didn't sit well with me.

Yet, decades earlier, the stories of Superboy did the same thing. A lot of the villains and supporting cast were all retconned into Clark's past. Superboy became the mechanism by which a new continuity and mythology for Superman was built, overwriting the stories that had come before.

Since much of this happened before I ever read Superman comics, it didn't bug me. The Lex Luthor I liked was the Lex Luthor that was created through this mechanism.

The Luthor (no first name) that I saw in some reprints was not that interesting. Maybe that Luthor started out with some potential, but he went downhill from there and, by the 1950s, was a bland heavy with little personality.

I don't mind the Gene Hackman Luthor, because Hackman gave that character some dimension, but that version is certainly based on the old Luthor. Just as the writers of the movies seemed to be basing a lot of their knowledge of Superman on the movie serials and not any recent comic books.

Once we're introduced to young Lex in the comics, that retcons him in as this new super-villain--and not the same guy as the bland, old Luthor. And the writers were able to go more places with that new Lex.

[SuperCrab]

All I'm saying is that comics books, including secret identities, pretty much fall apart when you start doing that.

Why doesn't everybody suspect that the guy running around like a giant bat with all kinds of overwhelmingly expensive tech whose parents were murdered (motive) and who disappeared for several years after (time to develop skills and training) is Batman? That rich guy with means, motive and opportunity adopts a boy and vigilante bat soon has a Robin. And let's not even get into leaving his blood everywhere. There's this thing called DNA testing these days.

Yeah, all good points about modern technology making the whole secret identity thing even less plausible.

With Superman, are two main things that we basically have to assume are not very developed in the DC Universe- facial recognition technology and satellite or advanced aerial surveillance. Superman makes all kinds of public appearances (Appearing in news footage, on smartphone cameras, police body cameras, etc.), and would appear on security camera that are used as evidence in trial (When the crooks he catches are prosecuted in the legal system) all the time, while Clark is presumably captured by CCTV, has a driver's license, and perhaps even has his picture run in the newspaper regularly in continuities where he's an editorialist. All that would seem to need to happen is one cop to have a computer run a facial recognition scan match of Superman against their archives and they should be told he and Clark Kent are at least identical twins and probably the same person- and that cop would have probable cause to run a scan because a lot of what Superman does, since he is not an authorized law enforcement agent, is technically illegal- it's understandable why everyone turns a blind eye to to it in-universe and doesn't try to arrest him, but they wouldn't have any trouble justifying privately running a facial recognition match (They might need to get a court order, I'm not sure how that part works.). Heck, I'd think the FBI would be very interested in who he really is for various reasons, even if they choose to let him basically do his thing unimpeded.

Similarly, Superman is always flying around various places, sometimes changing as he moves. One would think that between satellite and aerial surveillance could be traced back to it's source and maybe even slowed down to see him switching into or out of his costume. At minimum, though, they should at least be able to trace his flying routes back to their launch points. No matter what efforts he takes to obscure them, eventually, there would almost have to be a pattern of a ton of them being in and around Clark Kent's apartment and the Daily Planet offices. I mean, sure, he's "friends" with Clark and works a lot with the Daily Planet on stories, but after a certain point you'd realize that he's at those two locations way more than anywhere else he could conceivably live and work. Also, everyone would know exactly where the Fortress of Solitude is (At least the governments of the world's largest powers would).

I remember during the relatively short lived Superwoman monthly that featured Lana Lang as Superwoman, they said that she had some sort of power or technology that subtly obscured her face so that it could be captured on video or film. Superman's never had anything like that mentioned, and he gives a lot of press interviews, including to television, that are key story points, though. In theory, the source of Lana's power initially was inheriting the new52 Superman/Superman Red essence when he died, later retro-conned when they did the Superman Reborn arc that reunited Superman's "two halves" and rewrote the timeline retroactively, so we could say that her power (If it was a power and not a technological device) could be something Superman had or has, but the problem with that it is that it was never mentioned in the New52 Superman continuity leading up to that run, or the Superman Reborn continuity that came out of it.

I think the most plausible way to handle that stuff is to say, essentially "The DC universe is already clearly not the universe we live in. You may notice that we don't have costumed superheroes or many of the big cities they reference, or open knowledge of and contact with aliens. Other differences are that that universe has not developed very advanced DNA, facial recognition, or surveillance technology." (Maybe that could even be explained by Wayne Tech and whatever that company the Green Arrow or his father owns secretly making sure to retard it's development behind the scenes and offering any scientist or engineer elsewhere on the verge of developing it a big check to come work for them and not develop it.). However, they'd have to take pains to adopt that line-wide consistently. Though I can't think of any examples off the top of my head, I think we've seen that they *do* have all those technologies in current comic continuity.

Of course, Marvel has had great success in movies basically ditching secret identities, and I suspect what they are doing with Superman revealing his identity to the world in the comics is a trial run for future Superman movies (Either handed down by WB to DC Comics or just a coincidence that DC Comics is trying something that could be of interests to people involved with future Superman movies. In recent years, the comics have often been talked about as a testbed or a way of generating ideas for television and films, and we've seen a lot of DC Comics stories adapted for the Arrowverse shows. In fact, Flashpoint is about to be done for a second time- it was done on The Flash TV show (Sadly, no New52 Superman in that one- this was before the Arrowverse crisis, when Flash's earth had no Kryptonians, before Crisis merged with Supergirl's [and by extension the Superman and Lois] universe retroactively so that they'd always been the same earth as far as anyone but the main characters, who got both sets of memories thanks to Martian Manhunter's intervention, knew.) and is the basis of an upcoming Flash movie (I hear they are either altering it to include a bunch of parallels universes or perhaps alternate timelines while Flash tries to get things back to what he remembers, or tries to create his "perfect" timeline, which is letting them do things like give the Michael Keaton Batman at least a small role. I think it'd be cool if they at least gave a small cameo to a Superman who looks like the New52 Superman was drawn and has the full costume with the high collar, hand coverings, Kryptonian body armor, original New52 harcut, etc.. I'd settle for him even just sort of flying by for a few seconds. He doesn't even have to have a speaking role. I doubt they'll do it, though.).

[JAK]

I suppose Pre-Crisis, the loss of his adoptive parents was a factor in him no longer wanting to stick around Smallville as well.

Honestly, my bigger problem with Superboy as a public figure is the coincidence of Clark Kent and Superman both being from Smallville.

I mean, think about it. Superboy was the most powerful being on earth and he was from Smallville. Then he moves to Metropolis and becomes Superman. Around the same time, Clark Kent moves from Smallville to Metropolis as well.

The Daily Planet staff at least should have put two-and-two together before long.

No one suspects Clark Kent of being Superman because there's no reason to associate a guy from some town in Kansas with the Man of Steel.

But if the guy happens to be from the same town in Kansas where Superman comes from, then you might start looking at the other coincidences a bit more closely - like the similarity in their builds and their faces. Hell, maybe you'd just start looking past those glasses...

I do have a possible answer for this. Usually, we see Clark come to Metropolis first.. but I'd reverse it. Have Superman show up in Metropolis first for a while, and then Clark shows up - saying that he can get the inside track on Superman because they grew up around the same time in Smallville.

That way, it looks more like Clark moved to Metropolis because he wanted a city reporter job and saw Superman as an opportunity to get it.

[Powerboy]

I haven't read much of the Silver Age Superboy stories. There are many reasons why I dislike the idea of Clark being the public figure of Superboy, but the main problem comes down to this. If there were enough supervillains and problems in Smallvile for Clark to defeat as a teenager, why in the world would he leave that town, since he knew it would suddenly lose the reliable savior it seemed to relly on.

With his vision, hearing and speed, he could be monitoring Smallville every few minutes and be as aware of problems as if he was living there, and be there within a nano-second.

Also, I suspect most of Smallville's problems followed him to Metropolis and were mostly in Smallville because he was there.

As others have said, I really like the idea of Superboy (the adventures of Superman when he was a boy) and he went to Metropolis to pursue a career.