I've been reading some early Superboy recently, and I had a handful of questions.
* Humpty Dumpty? Really? Really?
* When did Superboy start using Superboy robots and Clark Kent robots and robots in general?
* How big was Smallville supposed to be? From reading these stories, I have to assume it's bigger than your usual small, rural town, but exactly how much bigger? What sort of population size?
Replies
I'm not sure about the first two, but when the Earth-2 Lana Lang was introduced in Superman Family #213, there was a footnote explaining that the Earth-1 Smallville experienced a population & economic boom after Superboy first went public, while without a Superboy, the Earth-2 Smallville did not, hence Lana's family had moved away before she could have become Clark's high school sweetheart. This doesn't answer just how big Smallville was, but it does tell us when, and sort of why, people and businesses moved to Smallville that were otherwise unlikely to have set up shop in a usual, small, rural town.
Of course, the Earth-One/Earth-Two split is a much later invention. And as I recall, Superman supposedly didn't become Superboy on Earth-Two.
That's neither here nor there. The early Superboy stories aren't located in Smallville. Sometimes it seems like the action is happening in Metropolis. But once Smallville is established it doesn't seem very big. The Kents' general store is the main hub of activity.
I have no idea why Humpty-Dumpty is a problem. There were lots of fairy tale inspired characters in comics. And characters from myth and legend. And characters from history. And characters "borrowed" from popular novels and movies.
I would imagine that Superboy robots were introduced shortly after they were introduced in the Superman stories.
Superboy was an evolving concept. Lana originally arrived in Smallville as a teenager, but later stories had her having lived there since a little girl. Retroactive continuity was a constant process in Smallville. Maybe Jonathan Kent shouldn't have hidden Kal-El's rocket in the barn--or wherever it was that he put it. Clearly the metaphysical engines that had powered the rocket's transit through 5th dimensional space were still leaking Kryptonic plasma that altered the time-space quantum field surrounding Smallville.
The only one I can really tackle is the question about Superboy's robots. As is usually the case, there is a point when things become a bit vague, but the references are specific, anyway.
The first time Superboy is seen to build a Clark Kent robot occurs in the story "Superboy's Robot Twin", from Adventure Comics # 212 (May, 1955). From the gist of the tale, though, this Clark robot is not designed to be an on-going resource for Superboy; it's just something he built to deal with the predicament in that particular story.
The same thing holds true for the first Superboy robot built by the Boy of Steel. (Two earlier tales featured Superboy robots, but they were not of Superboy's invention.) He constructed a robot duplicate of himself to help out in some identity-concealing from Lana Lang. This took place in "1,001 Rides with Superboy", from Adventure Comics # 234 (Mar., 1957).
In "The Two Boys of Steel", from Superboy # 63 (Mar., 1958), Ma and Pa Kent activate a Clark Kent robot to cover for their son's unexplained absence. This now establishes that Superboy maintains a Clark Kent robot in waiting, ready to step in when needed.
And that brings us to "Superboy's Last Day", from Adventure Comics # 251 (Aug., 1958). Most of this tale is a flashback to Superboy's first year as a publically known super-hero and it deals with his first Superboy robot. However, what makes it significant, and creates that slight vagary I mentioned, is that this is the next published tale to include the idea of a Superboy robot (after Adventure Comics # 234) and we see that the Boy of Steel not only has one Superboy robot standing by as a resource---he now has several of them. In other words, he jumped from "none" to a "whole bunch".
Anyway one wants to rationalise it, it is from this point on that Superboy is regularly shown to maintain Superboy and Clark Kent robots.
Hope this helps.
Dave Elyea said:
I'm not sure about the first two, but when the Earth-2 Lana Lang was introduced in Superman Family #213, there was a footnote explaining that the Earth-1 Smallville experienced a population & economic boom after Superboy first went public......
This is the first time I've heard of an actual effect, positive or negative, on the tiny town that suddenly was home to the most powerful guy on Earth. You'd expect It would have been overwhelmed by people from all over the world.
And other worlds. And other times. And other dimensions. Mxyzptlk would have brought all his buddies to hang out during spring break.