Source: Action Comics #370 (1968)
Type: The real deal (since retconned)
So Superman's rocket went straight from Krypton directly to Earth (tiny detour aside), right? Well...
Action Comics #370 reveals that it actually entered a "space-warp", which sent it to another dimension for well around 100 years! A century in which Kal-El lived a whole other life! Ridiculous, you say? You don't know the meaning of the word.
So the rocket crashes on a planet in another dimension, one with properties very different from ours, which explains EVERYTHING. Kal is found and adopted by a kindly caveman couple, drawing only jealousy from his foster sister Ruda. By the time he's a grown boy, the society has somehow evolved to Antiquity. Kal - baptized Sonn by his new parents - never developed powers, but he nevertheless has the heroic instinct, such as when he defeats a rampaging "devil-dragon" that shoots "evil beams".
That's right. Not beams that are evil, but beams that MAKE YOU evil. Ruda will become his secret arch-nemesis. When they are adults, society's moved on and passed 20th-century technology and culture. Sonn is wearing a big S because the planet apparently uses the Latin alphabet, though no one else is silly enough to wear their initials, and his caveman father, now a scientist, discovers that society's leaps and bounds are caused by something Sonn radiates. It boosts their intelligence so much they feel the need to accelerate their fashions. This makes Ruda extra-mad, because despite all of her civilization's advances, she's still stuck in a dead end job as a telephone operator.
The discovery makes Sonn an overnight hero. He soon gets married to a girl whose name starts with L, and runs for president (and wins!).
Unfortunately, Ruda finds a way to distill the devil-dragon's "evil" energies and looses them on the world, dying herself from an evil overdose. Soon, the super-advanced people who remember living in caves cause a devastating nuclear war. They of course blame Sonn. His family is arrested, and he becomes a fugitive.
40 years later, he's a crazy old man living in the atomic wastes when his grown son finds him and brings him back to a lab. Vol, Son of Sonn, has built a rejuvenation booth. He'll put his father inside, regress him to an infant state, shoot him off the planet in his refurbished rocket and back into the space-warp from whence he came. As the rocket moves away, Sonn's influence on the world dissipates and everyone becomes a caveman again.
They did bomb themselves back into the stone age, after all! But wait, you say! What about all those stories where Jor-El peers at Earth and sees tractors and stuff? Well, it so happens that the other universe moves really fast compared to our own, so only a few minutes have passed. And though Superman has a mystery on his hands when he carbon dates his rocket, all that's left of that other life is a few vivid nightmares. He never found out the truth before it was Crisised out of him.
Type: The real deal (since retconned)
So Superman's rocket went straight from Krypton directly to Earth (tiny detour aside), right? Well...Action Comics #370 reveals that it actually entered a "space-warp", which sent it to another dimension for well around 100 years! A century in which Kal-El lived a whole other life! Ridiculous, you say? You don't know the meaning of the word.
So the rocket crashes on a planet in another dimension, one with properties very different from ours, which explains EVERYTHING. Kal is found and adopted by a kindly caveman couple, drawing only jealousy from his foster sister Ruda. By the time he's a grown boy, the society has somehow evolved to Antiquity. Kal - baptized Sonn by his new parents - never developed powers, but he nevertheless has the heroic instinct, such as when he defeats a rampaging "devil-dragon" that shoots "evil beams".
That's right. Not beams that are evil, but beams that MAKE YOU evil. Ruda will become his secret arch-nemesis. When they are adults, society's moved on and passed 20th-century technology and culture. Sonn is wearing a big S because the planet apparently uses the Latin alphabet, though no one else is silly enough to wear their initials, and his caveman father, now a scientist, discovers that society's leaps and bounds are caused by something Sonn radiates. It boosts their intelligence so much they feel the need to accelerate their fashions. This makes Ruda extra-mad, because despite all of her civilization's advances, she's still stuck in a dead end job as a telephone operator.
The discovery makes Sonn an overnight hero. He soon gets married to a girl whose name starts with L, and runs for president (and wins!).
Unfortunately, Ruda finds a way to distill the devil-dragon's "evil" energies and looses them on the world, dying herself from an evil overdose. Soon, the super-advanced people who remember living in caves cause a devastating nuclear war. They of course blame Sonn. His family is arrested, and he becomes a fugitive.
40 years later, he's a crazy old man living in the atomic wastes when his grown son finds him and brings him back to a lab. Vol, Son of Sonn, has built a rejuvenation booth. He'll put his father inside, regress him to an infant state, shoot him off the planet in his refurbished rocket and back into the space-warp from whence he came. As the rocket moves away, Sonn's influence on the world dissipates and everyone becomes a caveman again.
They did bomb themselves back into the stone age, after all! But wait, you say! What about all those stories where Jor-El peers at Earth and sees tractors and stuff? Well, it so happens that the other universe moves really fast compared to our own, so only a few minutes have passed. And though Superman has a mystery on his hands when he carbon dates his rocket, all that's left of that other life is a few vivid nightmares. He never found out the truth before it was Crisised out of him.
Comments
I'll need to track down the issue with the LOC's on this one to see what contemporary readers thought.
We just mentioned this, what, about a week ago? That's fast service, Siskoid!
Post-Crisis, Superman also had nightmares about another life... one as Gangbuster.
I respect Matthew Turnage's comments but it was the fact that it wasn't an imaginary story that had an impact on my eight year old consciousness. To think that my fave superhero had experienced an entire other life was almost too much for my developing brain to accept.
I have been noticing a resurgence of delight in the wacky imagination of the Silver Age and can only agree.
Thank you Siskoid; great blog!