Did The Clark Kent Of Earth-2 Grow Up In Smallville?

The Clark Kent of Earth-2 adopted his costumed, crime-fighting identity in adulthood whereas the Clark Kent of Earth-1 had been Superboy in Smallville before he became Superman in Metropolis. Later versions of Kent grew up in Smallville but adopted the superhero identity as adults in Metropolis - except for one TV Clark Kent who grew up in Smallville, then became Superboy at Shuster University, then became Superman in Metropolis.

Thus, later versions synthesize the two earliest versions.

Thesis: Kent becomes Superman in Metropolis;
Antithesis: Kent becomes Superboy in Smallville, then Superman in Metropolis;
Synthesis: Kent grows up in Smallville, then becomes Superman in Metropolis.

The Superboy period, difficult to sustain when Superman is always in the present and Superboy is always ten years behind him, was removed but Smallville as his hometown made sense and was retained. Super(man as a) boy wearing the familiar costume was a first attempt to present the young Kent but later versions, in which his powers develop although they are not yet publicized during his teens, make more sense. In the first two seasons of the Smallville TV series, we see Clark discovering X-ray vision and heat vision - and, in an emergency, flight, although he does not believe it!

My question is: when the Supermen of Earths-2 and -1 met and the latter said that he had grown up in a place called "Smallville," did the former say, "So did I," or "There is no such quaintly named town on Earth-2"?

Andy In Action

My Comic Book Guy, Mark, tells me that, although Andy Diggle wrote the current Action Comics no 19, he will merely be plotting from no 20 because of pressure of other work. This is a Bad Thing whereas a run of Andy following Grant would have been a Good Thing.

My comments will show that I have read almost no Superman for many years.When, in no 19, Lois Lane gets interested in Kent but he backs off, I cannot help remembering that they were married until recently but the continuity was changed yet again and I do not think that the outgoing continuity was properly wrapped up as Alan Moore did with the Superman of Earth 1 in "Whatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow?"

Andy has to write a story that fits in with the other Superman titles and with the rest of the New 52 which means that the immense potential of the character is nowhere near to being realized. We need to see how the mere presence of even one Kryptonian would change the world forever. Instead, we get the pretense of business as usual despite the presence of hundreds of super-powered beings flying overhead, despite even the at least annual occurrence of a major event like an alien invasion, an evolutionary turning point or a cosmic crisis. So Andy has to show us Supes fighting war machines. John Byrne and Marv Wolfman made a start on a more realistic treatment of both Superman and Luthor but Byrne almost immediately returned to all the rubbish, Lori Lemaris, Mr Mxyzptlk etc, that initially he had seemed to discard.

The issue begins (almost) exactly as I would have wanted. Kent and Lane are covering a civil war in an unfortunately fictitious Middle Eastern country. We see four pages of people in a bar and learn about Lane's coverage of the war. Kent as Superman intervenes because the regime is smuggling in illegal weapons to crush the pro-democracy uprising. But he didn't intervene when they used legal weapons? This is the sort of question that Superman comics need to address. Why and to what extent does he intervene?

Luthor sent the "mechs" to trigger a US invasion. Here are welcome signs of the real world intruding into a Superman comic. But, at the end of this issue, Luthor has infected Superman with Kryptonite nanites... Longer term, I would prefer less Kryptonite and more about Superman and the US intervening in the Middle East. But, of course, it is too early to judge a story from its opening issue.

Grant Morrison's Action Comics

Chris Up Front, this guy in Lancaster, says he is enjoying Grant Morrison's Action Comics, and didn't yet know that Andy Diggle will be taking over soon. Apparently, someone in the fifth dimension, not Mxyzptlk, is messing with time in ways that recall earlier versions of Superman. It's like what Alan Moore did with Mxyzptlk but more so.

The problem I have with that is that it has all been done before. The only question now is whether it is being done well. Chris says it is and it should be with Grant Morrison although I found that The Invisibles became incoherent as it went on. So I will either have to borrow Chris's copies or read Morrison's run collected.

I did read issue 1 and had problems with the fact that it just seemed like an arbitrary changing around of the relationships between Supes, Lex and Sam Lane etc but, of course, the whole run can be judged as a story in its own right, instead of as just a break from what had gone before.

But I still think that a really powerful retelling of the Superman story waits to be told and that this will happen in graphic novels and feature films, not in monthly comic books.