For an article on the 75th anniversary of Superman, Mike Sangiacomo of the Plain Dealer in Cleveland created this simple graphic to chart Superman's timeline. Piece of cake:
Here's the main article he wrote on the topic: http://www.cleveland.com/comic-books/index.ssf/2013/04/superman_75_years_of_truth_jus.html
By the way, Mike is going to be a member of the Fan panel to take on Mark Waid at the Silver Age Trivia Challenge at C2E2 on April 26th. Hopefully, he can help the team make Waid sweat!
-- MSA
Replies
I still believe it's easier to consider the current Man of Steel as Superman V. That way, "our" Superman, whomever you prefer, still exists as a seperate entity.
After all, we don't have to have any version supercede any other.
Maybe one day, the Justice League/DCnU will team with the Justice League of Earth-One. Y'know the REAL one! ;-)
Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $200 nor Kryptonite...
It's more like Chutes & Ladders, the Superman Edition but no one really wins!
I like that he included the two Flashes meeting there in the middle on the JSA-JLA squares. That's when you know you're dealing with a real geek. The biggest lapse is no mention of the Byrne revamp, which was a major change, although he includes the two Earths merging, which happened just before but wasn't that big of a deal for Superman directly. And that "Everything Wiped Out" box is kinda sad there at the end.
After all, we don't have to have any version supercede any other.
I always figured that when the Earths "merged," it actually created a new Earth, and that Earth-1 was still out there. We just weren't reading its stories any more. Kind of like the way most of the stories that kept happening on Earth-2 after the comics started focusing on Earth-1.
Batman's timeline would be a little cleaner (he wouldn't have a Superboy-like segment), but he'd still have to deal with the Earth-1/2, Crisis, and Everything Wiped Out boxes.
I wonder what Joe PD Reader made of all that junk? He probably didn't read it.
-- MSA
The Post-Crisis Superman #1 was a problem because it was stated that Superman had been around for ten years, having adventures that we knew nothing about which was very confusing when they created "current" versions of Brainiac, Metallo, Mr. Mxyzptlk, Titano, etc. So who did Superman fight all those years? And why couldn't he join the JLA? And how did he and Batman co-exist?
The DCnU Superman #1 is a problem because it was stated that Superman had been around for five years, having adventures that we know nothing about which still is very confusing.
"Those who forget the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them."
Mr. Age wrote: I always figured that when the Earths "merged," it actually created a new Earth, and that Earth-1 was still out there. We just weren't reading its stories any more. Kind of like the way most of the stories that kept happening on Earth-2 after the comics started focusing on Earth-1.
Kind of. I tend to view every Superman story from issue # 233 on (Jan. 1971) to be post-canonical. The entire Silver Age of Superman was edited by Mort Weisinger, so anything that comes after that, in my opinion, is set on a different world than the world the 1960s Superman was set on.
It's kind of like any James Bond book not written by Fleming, any Sherlock Holmes story not written by Doyle, any Fantastic Four story not co-plotted by Jack Kirby, etc. The nature of serial adventures is such that the stories have to continue (for commercial reasons) even after the creator has moved on, but they don't really "count" the way the stuff counted when the character's driving force was there.
Of course, Weisinger wasn't the creator of Superman, but the way he took over the title in 1958, he might as well have been. Plus, I never saw the Siegel and Shuster Superman until after Mort retired, so it was the Earth-W Superman that I came to consider as the "real" Superman.
I actually loved what Julie Schwartz did with Superman, at least at first, with the sandman-Superman / WGBS stuff, because it was an entirely different take on the Man of Steel, it was well written, and exceptionally well drawn. When Schwartz chickened out and started tossing all the old Weisinger ideas back into the title, I thought the book really suffered for it. It was nowhere near as good as the best Silver Age stuff was, and it was just plain bland compared to a lot of the other titles on the stands in the 1970s. So while I read tons of Superman stories post-1971, none of them really compared favorably to the stuff from the 1960s.
I never had a problem with the old continuity (well, at least, not too much). Superboy was our (Earth-1) Superman as a teenager. Superman of Earth-2 never was Superboy. Well, um, except that Superboy was introduced in the last half of the 1940s. I grew up with the comics of the 1960s. And I admit a resentment when Byrne came along and said none of that happened. I think he even wrote in one of the comics that unless HE says something happened, it didn't. And all the fans of the past can be swept out with the garbage.
I didn't have a problem with Byrne saying stuff didn't happen till he said it did, because I considered his Superman a completely different character, in the same way Barry Allen was a completely different character from Jay Garrick. If Byrne wanted to start from scratch, that was his prerogative. So I didn't mind that attitude at all. What I did mind was that the stories he chose to tell weren't good enough to get me to stick around, so I bailed pretty early in the Byrne run.
Dave, the difference was that with Earth-1 and Earth-2, it respected with what came before and said basically the stories happened on their individual Superman. Byrne said, no, none of that happened. I can see your point of Byrne's having a different Superman. After all, the Curt Swan Superman I loved wrapped up somewhat neatly with the Alan Moore two-parter. But for Byrne to throw out 50 years of DC history was galling. And then he also insisted the "Superman" series start up again with number 1, letting the actual "Superman" title become "Adventures of Superman." And then Byrne left after two years. Byrne was the David Caruso of comic books.
Dave Blanchard said:
I thought Grant Morrison's comic was supposed to have told us what happened 5 years ago with Superman.
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