Pre-Flashpoint Superman; Was it that bad?

[Jim Kelly]

I dunno, up to the departure of Byrne, I took them at their word and assumed that a good portion of pre-Crisis stories were intact.

Most of Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes stories had happened--with the exception that the Superboy and the Supergirl in those stories were from a pocket universe (also pocket universe Pete Ross and Lana Lang). This was the prevailing continuity through the end of the Levtiz Legion and at the beginning of the TMK Legion. Some issues into that run, Carlin changed his mind and TMK had to throw out the continuity they were using.

Most of Justice League of America happened. Event books like LEGENDS and MILLENNIUM depended on prior JLA continuity. The exceptions being Wonder Woman, whose place was taken by Black Canary. And maybe Martian Manhunter never left or only left for a shorter time. And the JLA/JSA crossovers had to have happened under different conditions. But very little of that has much to do with Superman--so most of his adventures with the JLA could be assumed to have happened.

All of the Kirby Fourth World books were assumed to be in continuity--with the exception that Clark might not have worked for Galaxy and might only have worked for the DAILY PLANET. Hard to say, though, because you could think that WGBS was still in Superman's past, as they never said anything about it one way or the other, as far as I recall.

I know that Brainiac was rebooted--but about Mxy, I'm not so sure. Metallo was rebooted. But I assumed that other villains like Parasite and Darkseid kept their old DC continuity.

I assumed that many WORLD'S FINEST adventures could still have happened--because Batman's continuity seemed to be intact. It was only as more stories came out about Batman's past that a lot was removed from Batman's continuity. And Batman and Superman became more and more hostile toward each other as the years went by.

I would assume that the Superman-Flash race (one of them, at least) happened. Many stories with STAR labs must have happened--because Jenet Klyburn was still there. A lot of the DC COMICS PRESENTS stories could have still happened--the rest of the DC characters hadn't been rebooted so their history with Superman should have still been intact. BOOSTER GOLD was a spoiler in this, because his origins involved pre-C Superman continuity and his book is arguably the first place we see the rebooted Superman.

It's true that many stories could not have happened--or had to have happened in a different way. Anything with Luthor, Lana Lang, Wonder Woman, Supergirl, Kandor or Brainiac probably was out. But even still, that left a lot of Superman stories from the previous thirty years that could have happened.

My desire was to think that all the comics I had in my collection were still relevant. So I always assumed that all the past stories had happened in that interval of time between MOS and the Superman ongoing titles--until such time that it became impossible to make that accommodation.

[Slaughter]

I can accept a Luthor-type being President of the United States of America in an Alan Moore universe like WATCHMEN, but I can't accept Luthor being President of the United States of America for any significant period of time (a month tops) in the Superman universe.

I'm Canadian, but when I enter the world of Superman there are certain operating principles I accept--one of these is that the United States is the most free land in the world, governed by the righteous and the just. There can be corrupt senators within that world--and the odd renegade general--but the Constitution and Bill of Rights wll always ensure democracy and liberty for all. There can be flawed politicians within that system and these ideals may not always be realized. Yet in Superman's universe America is the promised land. It's impossible for a truly evil and murderous human being to hold the highest office in the land for such an extensive period of time. Superman would sooner break the law and abduct Luthor to some space prison, before he would accept such a miscarriage of the Truth, Justice and American Way that he defends.

When writers go off-book from that, they are writing fan fiction where they can introduce their own commentary on the real world and how they feel about the United States or politics in general. The thing I admire about Alan Moore (moreso than Grant Morrison) is that he didn't let his own set of beliefs determine the beliefs of the characters in his stories. He might introduce someone that is similar to himself to speak his philosophy (Constantine)--but he let Batman, Superman, Flash, Green Lantern be the characters they were created as. And when he wrote about them, he worked within the world that those creators had constructed. If Alan Moore wanted to indulge in social engineering--then he would create his own universe and his own characters for that purpose.

I'm Brazilian, and I disagree.
If America is just, good, etc, then why would Superman stop Luthor from becoming president? Remember - Its the people's will. The moment Superman does that, he's saying that the people's will doesn't matter, and with his power, he's pretty much making a dictatorship bid.
A country can only be good and just through right decisions, but what happens when the people commit a mistake? What happens when evil hijacks the country and takes over? That's pretty much the Luthor presidency, and I liked it. Luthor becoming a president is a logical progression from his beloved media darling corporate star status quo.

I didn't see any real-world commentary in President Lex, apart from the obvious - that even the best democracy (which is not the USA) can be hijacked by a evil man like Luthor if the people are fooled by his illusions.

Hell, I don't know about you, but I think even I could be persuaded to vote for the guy who suited up in battle armor and went to fight Brainiac 13. Imagine the political propaganda value!

Also, Lex 2000 was awesome.

[Jim Kelly]

Superman isn't perfect. But Superman believes he knows what is best and he knows the Luthor that others don't know. So Superman would do whatever he could to remove Luthor from office.

The thing is the Luthor presidency went on too long, because it crossed paths with the realities of the times. As long as the world was in this holding pattern after the Bush-Gore split--Luthor as president was relatively innocuous.

Once America was attacked and people were in a kind of mass trauma (which was just as prevalent here in Canada and probably in other countries beyond the USA), the conditions changed. Superman became a rallying point for all that grief--not the mourning over the souls lost, but the grief over our loss of innocence and the pervasive fear that haunted every hour of our days. Yet the Superman comics were imprisoned by this ridiculous President Luthor story. You were forced to read those comics in one of two ways--either they had nothing to do with our world and they were completely divorced from reality OR they existed in some kind of meta relation to our reality which meant the USA was in the hands of a perverse, amoral, sadistic, nihilistic sociopath. (And the post-Crisis Luthor was really one of the most loathsome villains ever imagined.)

Both DC and Marvel were trapped in their sluggish decompressed storylines that involved the entire nation--or even the whole world. They couldn't get out of those stories--which was rather awful. Priorities in perspective--it was a very minor irritant. But in such a period of time, it would have been welcome if the comics could have been on the same page as those of us in the real world. I think that's part of what made the wartime comics Golden for a generation--reading their comics under the covers with flashlights and believing that the Allies would prevail.

[Jon Clark]

I dunno, up to the departure of Byrne, I took them at their word and assumed that a good portion of pre-Crisis stories were intact.

Most of Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes stories had happened--with the exception that the Superboy and the Supergirl in those stories were from a pocket universe (also pocket universe Pete Ross and Lana Lang). This was the prevailing continuity through the end of the Levtiz Legion and at the beginning of the TMK Legion. Some issues into that run, Carlin changed his mind and TMK had to throw out the continuity they were using.

From the Legion perspective that was mostly true. Except for a few questions about how Supergirl, Luthor and Mon-El fit everything in the Legion books had happened pretty much as it was printed.
From a Superman perspective he met the Legion for the 1st time post MOS. So any Superman story that sprang from his connection to the Legion was not in continuity now.

Most of Justice League of America happened. Event books like LEGENDS and MILLENNIUM depended on prior JLA continuity. The exceptions being Wonder Woman, whose place was taken by Black Canary. And maybe Martian Manhunter never left or only left for a shorter time. And the JLA/JSA crossovers had to have happened under different conditions. But very little of that has much to do with Superman--so most of his adventures with the JLA could be assumed to have happened.

I forget when they first stated that Superman had never joined the JLA in the new history. I know they later left it open how many times non-member Superman had worked alongside the JLA. Power Girl specifically mentions his being a non-member when the JLA/JSA/New Gods story was referenced.

All of the Kirby Fourth World books were assumed to be in continuity--with the exception that Clark might not have worked for Galaxy and might only have worked for the DAILY PLANET. Hard to say, though, because you could think that WGBS was still in Superman's past, as they never said anything about it one way or the other, as far as I recall.

Superman's Legends appearance made it clear Superman and Darkseid had never met before. That Superman at least had no idea who Darkseid was (I think Darkseid was implied to have kept his memories of Pre-Crisis including battling Superman but those events weren't part of THIS history).

I know that Brainiac was rebooted--but about Mxy, I'm not so sure. Metallo was rebooted. But I assumed that other villains like Parasite and Darkseid kept their old DC continuity.

Myx was totally overhauled when Byrne had him meet Superman for the 1st time. Myx's name was now made-up. Saying it backward was supposed to be a one time rule Myx was abiding by for that story. So nope all his prior stories went out the window.

Parasite was recreated by Darkseid in Firestorm as a "new" villain who had never fought Superman- so one more Superman foe gone.

I assumed that many WORLD'S FINEST adventures could still have happened--because Batman's continuity seemed to be intact. It was only as more stories came out about Batman's past that a lot was removed from Batman's continuity. And Batman and Superman became more and more hostile toward each other as the years went by.

Again it was established early on that Superman and Batman were just discovering each other's IDs for the 1st time when Superman had Batman look over the scrapbook Lex stole in Superman #2 (definitely set after the Crisis in the new history) So all of the buddy-buddy aspects of the WF were removed from history.

I would assume that the Superman-Flash race (one of them, at least) happened.

But the scaled back powers of the Byrne era meant that Barry ran at light-speed and Superman definitely did not. Not sure just how fast Superman was implied to be under Byrne, but I know by the time the Wally-Superman race occurred Superman was challenged to keep up at Wally who was still not at full speed compared to Barry.

Many stories with STAR labs must have happened--because Jenet Klyburn was still there.

I'll give you this one, but point out that nothing about Klyburn's presence at STAR required her to have a history with Superman.

A lot of the DC COMICS PRESENTS stories could have still happened--the rest of the DC characters hadn't been rebooted so their history with Superman should have still been intact. BOOSTER GOLD was a spoiler in this, because his origins involved pre-C Superman continuity and his book is arguably the first place we see the rebooted Superman.

Again a lot of DC Comics presents were possible, but a lot weren't. Any requiring a Superman who could travel in time or unaided in space are out. The Jon Ross trilogy involves the Legion, Superboy, and Pete knowing Clark's secret. The later ones with Captain Atom would be out as Captain Atom was rebooted.

It's true that many stories could not have happened--or had to have happened in a different way. Anything with Luthor, Lana Lang, Wonder Woman, Supergirl, Kandor or Brainiac probably was out. But even still, that left a lot of Superman stories from the previous thirty years that could have happened.

My desire was to think that all the comics I had in my collection were still relevant. So I always assumed that all the past stories had happened in that interval of time between MOS and the Superman ongoing titles--until such time that it became impossible to make that accommodation.

Once you remove any Superman story with Lex, Brainiac, other Kryptonians, Myx, unaided interstellar travel, unaided time-travel, Bizarro... how many stories worth remembering are left?

[Jim Kelly]

A lot of the Superman stories I liked had nothing to do with Lex, Brainiac or surviving Kryptonians. There was a period in the early to mid '70s, when writers hadn't really figured out how to use Lex or Brainiac in an effective way. Lana and Krypto had diasppeared from the presentday Superman stories and there wasn't a lot of flashbacks to Superman's days with the Legion--and even references to Krypton were not that many (mainly we had the Tales of Krypton--but those didn't depend on presentday Superman, being usually set in a distant past).

Of course, I'm sure if you looked at all those stories, it would turn out there's some other glitch that prevents them from fitting the post-reboot narrative. And, of course, this is almost all during the time that Clark was reporting for WGBS.

I will tell you what it was like for me in this period between 1986 and 1988. We were told that there was a number of years where Superman was active prior to the Byrne run and during this time a lot of his old adventures had happened. So I went in with this idea that you could still include a lot of continuity from the old days. Then as each new comic came out, one more story or number of stories was made nearly impossible given what we were told in this presentday comic. So as you went down your list of favourite Superman stories, each month you were ticking off more and more adventures that couldn't have happened as you remembered them. Until you had a very skimpy list. But that's why I said 1987 previously--because at that point I was still relatively hopeful.

And then John Byrne left. That made me really mad. I had signed on to this new Superman, because I had some faith in John Byrne--and I put up with all the changes for that reason. So when he left, it hit me hard and I dropped the Superman titles. This turned out to be just a short hiatus on my part as I was attracted back to the Superman comics by the Superman in space story.

I would still maintain that a number of post-Crisis stories around the DCU depended on events that had happened in the pre-Crisis continuity and that was a continuing thing right up to Flashpoint. Which made it that much harder on the reader, because you couldn't easily reconcile all the continuity. At different stages, some stories were either in or out of continuity.

By the way, at some point I remember that John Byrne did a comic that retold the events in FOREVER PEOPLE No. 1 (February-March '71). I've searched for it online, but I can't find the issue. I think it was a special and the cover made it look like a missing issue from MAN OF STEEL, although it was published much later--but I don't remember exactly when or under what title. But I remember this story because Rich Morrissey talked about it on the old DC message boards, saying that the difference between Kirby and Byrne was that Kirby had Superman not go to Supertown (New Genesis) because of his commitments on Earth, whereas Byrne had Superman leave Earth to its fate just so he could go to Supertown.

[manofsteel1979]

I think what's worth pointing out, is when the Superman relaunch was being planned originally,at that time the original plan was a more widespread reboot of the entire DC line with everything starting from issue #1, and only tenuous pieces of the past remaining (sound familiar?). However somewhere along the line that was vetoed and ultimately it was a soft reboot with two exceptions....Superman and Wonder Woman. Although initially if you look at MOS on it's own and all the time gaps Byrne placed into the timeline of the mini, one could say that most everything around it could have still happened aside from the Legion stuff. I think DC editors saw that and felt comfortable telling the fan press then that most of Superman's history was still intact unless otherwise contradicted. The problem was, starting with Superman#1 it was clear that Superman had never faced Metallo OR Kryptonite before...and the first of many old continuity dominoes fell. Goodbye every previous Kryptonite story and every previous Metallo appearance.

Also too, there was a change early on in terms of who was editing the Superman Line. Andy Helfer was the initial editor during Man of Steel and the first issue or three of the various titles,however Mike Carlin then quickly took over, so it's also possible that Helfer's editorial policy at the start was treating everything as happened unless explicitly contradicted in story, and then that changed when Carlin took over. Curiously, no one at DC ever officially said anything, as they were still marketing the silver age/bronze age Superman in their licencing and would still do so for many years to come until around the time of the Death of Superman. There was a disconnect between the reality on the printed page and the reality they were selling to the larger world until Death of Superman and likely, most people who hadn't read comics in decades and bought the storyline out of curiosity were initially largely unaware the Superman that was being killed was not the Superman they grew up with . After that and the character's return, the Licencing started using Long haired post crisis Supes and the Post-Crisis designs for other characters, Mike Carlin rose to a higher role within DC and Zero Hour sort of made the changes of COIE concrete. So, for 8 years or so from mid 1986 to mid 1994, the official stance at DC was confused, although those who were reading the comics regularly were not.

I think it's also possible that DC's initial stance that "it all happened unless contradicted directly" was in place just in case the MOS mini-series and the relaunch was a bomb,and they could have done what Marvel did a decade or so later when Byrne's Chapter One Spider-Man reboot failed, disavow it and pretend it was some alternate timeline and just continue on as if the old continuity was never changed. That also explains why the Superboy changes in the Legion stories weren't reflected right away. There was a lot of push back against the relaunch from many Superman die hards and DC may have hedged their bets and attempted to have their cake and eat it too in case things didn't work out. They did (at least in terms of improved sales), and eventually the MOS changes leaked into the rest of the DCU.

[Chazro]

Interesting to note how little the Superman/Batman title gets mentioned. The 1st few arcs(years) of this series are actually very good, especially the 'inner' dialogs revealing their thoughts/feelings about each other. Dealing with Lex as the Prez, the re-introduction of Supergirl, The Legion of Super Villains, and the hunt for Kryptonite arcs are very readable! I just came to the realization that ALL of these arcs are Superman-centric!!

[deadboy80]

The only real problem with pre-flashpoint Superman, was his powerlevel. He was god-like. Not much could stop him.

[LifeIsILL]

The only real problem with pre-flashpoint Superman, was his powerlevel. He was god-like. Not much could stop him.

He was godlike too in most of the good Superman stories that people talk about....his power level doesn't affect the storytelling much, if at all.

[exile001]

Yeah it would be far more in-character for Luthor to be the guy who funds and puppet masters the president.

I agree if it were sudden then it would have ben out of character, but that's not what happened.

It was built very well, even having a direct starting point for his decision in a special (probably 'Secret Origins', as we got on every 3-6 months at the time), and they specifically went for a change in Luthor's world view leading to his run. He moved from mogul to the guy who wanted more power. ALL the power. The man who wanted to be more powerful than Superman the only way a human can be.

This build even tied into Batman: no Man's Land.

[Jim Kelly]

The only real problem with pre-flashpoint Superman, was his powerlevel. He was god-like. Not much could stop him.

--says the Spectre.

[Kid A]

I agree if it were sudden then it would have ben out of character, but that's not what happened.

It was built very well, even having a direct starting point for his decision in a special (probably 'Secret Origins', as we got on every 3-6 months at the time), and they specifically went for a change in Luthor's world view leading to his run. He moved from mogul to the guy who wanted more power. ALL the power. The man who wanted to be more powerful than Superman the only way a human can be.

This build even tied into Batman: no Man's Land.

If Luthor wanted power, he wouldn't seek a theatrical role like presidency.

[Rod G]

If Luthor wanted power, he wouldn't seek a theatrical role like presidency.

THAT, among other things, is why the whole "President Luthor" thing was a fiasco.

[manofsteel1979]

Interesting to note how little the Superman/Batman title gets mentioned. The 1st few arcs(years) of this series are actually very good, especially the 'inner' dialogs revealing their thoughts/feelings about each other. Dealing with Lex as the Prez, the re-introduction of Supergirl, The Legion of Super Villains, and the hunt for Kryptonite arcs are very readable! I just came to the realization that ALL of these arcs are Superman-centric!!

That series was essentially the fourth Superman title that replaced SUPERMAN: MAN OF STEEL, especially the Loeb era run. The current one seems pretty equally balance even though Batman tops the bill now.

[Adekis]

An observation:

Most of these comments are about the Post-Crisis era of Superman, i.e. John Byrne's run and everything that spun out of it- which really did influence the entire DCU for years and years.

However, the thread was asking about Pre-Flashpoint Superman, which I don't think is the same thing as Post-Crisis.

Sure, there was never a reboot, but there was never a reboot between the Golden and Silver Age versions of the character either, just a lot of retcons and changes in style or tone that made the character very different.
That's how I see the difference between the Post-Crisis and Pre-Flashpoint versions of Superman. Some of the same ideas are in play, like asking what Superman's relationship to humanity is, but the character, world and tone are not really the same thing.

Post-Crisis, he was very human in that as Clark, he really fit in for probably the first time. Perfect example- The Man of Steel has Clark playing on his high school football team.
Pre-Flashpoint Superman has a scene in Secret Origin where he breaks another kid's arm playing a sport, and only really ever felt at ease hanging out with the Legion of Super-Heroes (who Post-Crisis Superman only met as an adult).

I really love Post-Crisis Superman, how well his stories tied together- heck, how unified the whole DCU was at the time.
Pre-Flashpoint, there's ups and downs, but in general I dislike everything from New Krypton onward.

I think the Post-Flashpoint reboot was a much needed addition of energy to Superman's world. Action Comics #1-18 is one of my favorite versions of the character, and Greg Pak's stuff is pretty awesome too. Superman hasn't been great, but parts of it have been entertaining here and there. I usually think the ideas at least are good. Contrast Pre-Flashpoint, where my normal reaction to everything was boredom.

Of course, there were good points to Pre-Flashpoint Superman too, but for my money not for the few years leading up to Flashpoint.