Action Comics #500

[DABellWrites]

IMG_0076.jpg
While reading issue #500, I realized just how much damage this era of Superman did to the secret identity. The whole telling people outright "I have a secret identity", about the adoptive parents that raised him without mentioning their name. It doesn't take a super genius to connect the dots about Superman's secret identity. Despite that, there was a lot of strong emotional moments in the story. Justifications about why Clark's life, but that's okay okay. Now, this is me, but I think one of the most interesting things is that Superman no longer had memories of his life on Krypton from being exposed to Kryptonite so many times over the years. An overall entertaining story.

[Kuwagaton]

Yeah it was a pretty good story idea at a great time (Krypton Chronicles WoK and the WoK strips with this as a crown jewel; the movies and nice issue number to attract people) and what you would expect of Pasko from his letter hack input. Secret Origin #1, the remake of the golden age origin, is what I consider a perfect comic but other than that I think Bridwell and Pasko did a much better job with maintaining continuity.

The secret identity is why I think Superboy fails if the idea is to make the character history any less than very ridiculous, but I like Superman to be ridiculous.

[superduperman]

I like how it took all the silly SA stuff and tried to make it more coherent and halfway believable. I think the whole "Kryptonite wipes his memory" thing goes all the way back to his Superboy career. That's when he invented the device. Of course how his memory worked was always kind of wonky. They bounced back and forth between him being old enough to remember Krypton when he left to being too young to remember and his memories came along later. As for his secret identity, I don't think there's anyway to make it work if he was Superboy and Metropolis was near Smallville. It's just too coincidental.

[Digifiend]

IMG_0076.jpg
While reading issue #500, I realized just how much damage this era of Superman did to the secret identity. The whole telling people outright "I have a secret identity", about the adoptive parents that raised him without mentioning their name. It doesn't take a super genius to connect the dots about Superman's secret identity. Despite that, there was a lot of strong emotional moments in the story. Justifications about why Clark's life, but that's okay okay. Now, this is me, but I think one of the most interesting things is that Superman no longer had memories of his life on Krypton from being exposed to Kryptonite so many times over the years. An overall entertaining story.

I thought he never did remember Krypton because he was so young when he was sent to Earth? Unlike Kara, who was a teenager and so does remember.

[Kuwagaton]

In this continuity his brain was also super and he was said to have a perfect memory in comics up to or aside from this one

[DABellWrites]

I thought he never did remember Krypton because he was so young when he was sent to Earth? Unlike Kara, who was a teenager and so does remember.

Earth-1 Superman had perfect memory. In this issue, they clarified his memories of Krytpon is blanks because of years of interacting with kryptonite. It's a weird justification, as he shouldn't a lot more stuff, but I understand why they wanted to get rid of the "I remember Krypton" retcon.

[Jon Clark]

Earth-1 Superman had perfect memory. In this issue, they clarified his memories of Krytpon is blanks because of years of interacting with kryptonite. It's a weird justification, as he shouldn't a lot more stuff, but I understand why they wanted to get rid of the "I remember Krypton" retcon.

I'm not sure if the change was here or earlier. The memory device used in this issue was used more often in the Superboy stories and I think this "need help to remember Krypton" idea started there.

[DABellWrites]

I'm not sure if the change was here or earlier. The memory device used in this issue was used more often in the Superboy stories and I think this "need help to remember Krypton" idea started there.

I'll go read Jim's thread where he posts a lot of content from pre-crisis Superman to see if I can find it.

[Jim Kelly]

I'll go read Jim's thread where he posts a lot of content from pre-crisis Superman to see if I can find it.

While I've covered several stories where Clark with Ma and Pa Kent uses the Mind Prober Ray (also known as the Mind Prober Helmet), which he continues to use in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s comics, I don't think I've ever covered the first use of this device. Doing a search, this seems to be in SUPERBOY 79 (March 1960)--3rd story, "Life on Krypton" by Jerry Siegel and George Papp; cover art by Swan and Kaye, on sale January 5th, 1960.

This ray draws out deeply buried subconscious memories. In other stories, exposure to green K. impaired Kal-El's memories--otherwise he would have total recall. He once tried to build up an immunity to the green stuff by exposing himself to more and more Kryptonite and made himself deathly ill. Supergirl tried the same thing with no luck either.

Kal-El sometimes appears older, sometimes younger, when he's forced to leave Krypton. I'd put an average age of three years old on it. But hey, he's an alien. It seems that every single thing he experienced (almost from birth) was recorded in his brain, so he could later recall it. This is not so incredible, given there are ordinary people with total recall and that many creatures have the ability to know where they were at birth so they can return there later in life. There are even those that can recall information from previous generations--I think there are some butterfly that are able to follow the path back to where their ancestors came from, even though that was generations before they existed.

Even without his super-brain, Clark would have several means of discovering information about Krypton. The rocketship he travelled on board had to have a computer. In the pre-Crisis comics he discovered mind tapes from Jor-El and others. That the post-Crisis Clark doesn't use these means to find out about his origins (to answer the question why he is the way he is), until he's much older, seems more unbelievable. It's like the writers and editors deliberately made young Clark disinterested in using his resources to discover his past. That's too forced and doesn't appear natural in a story about a guy who becomes a great hero and investigator.