But I need being Clark-- I need a private life just like anyone! In the past, I've tried assuming other identities-- But it just didn't work! Clark Kent is as much a part of who I am as Kal-El of Krypton is! Ma and Pa Kent... The way they raised me... My boyhood in Smallville-- They made me what I am-- And I'd sooner die than give it up! — Superman src

Contents show]

History

The Last Son of Krypton

is Earth's premier superhero and the stalwart protector of Metropolis . Bornon the distant planet Krypton , he was sent to Earth as a child to survive Krypton's destruction. Raised with high moral ideals, he uses his extraordinary superpowers to fight evil and protect the innocent. In his civilian identity he is, a mild-mannered reporter working for thein Metropolis.

Kal-El was born to the highly decorated scientific genius Jor-El and his wife Lara, a former astronaut on their home planet of Krypton. Like all Kryptonians, Kal-El had no superhuman powers or abilities on Krypton due to the rays of its red sun Rao, but was, like his father, a very astute and intelligent boy who learned to speak and read in his native language by the time he was three years old. Jor-El and Lara decided to name their darling baby boy after a thespian friend of theirs who spent a few weeks in Kryptonopolis involved in the shoot of a film with the world-famous actress Lyla Lerrol. Unfortunately, the actor was presumed killed, propelled into the stratosphere in a disastrous incident involving a flame-dragon.[28] (Unbeknownst to Jor-El and Lara, this very actor was the time-traveling future adult version of their son, creating the strange tautology that Kal-El was named after himself.)

About the same time, Jor-El learned that Krypton was doomed to explode, and he brought this to the attention of Krypton's technocratic ruling body, the Kryptonian Science Council. Fearing the worst for his planet, Jor-El advised the Council to build a fleet of space rockets to carry the population farther away from the dying planet.



The Last Son of The Last Son of Krypton

Disbelieving Jor-El's prediction, the ruling council refused to warn their fellow Kryptonians and forbade Jor-El to do so. Lara pledged to remain with her husband when Jor-El tried to force her to leave along with her son so that the escape rocket would have a better chance of surviving the trip. Knowing that Krypton was soon to explode, Jor-El launched the ship to Earth, knowing that Earth's lower gravity and the yellow sun would give his son incredible powers.

Tragically, Jor-El's prediction may not have been Krypton's fate if not for the intervention of a malicious alien agent named Black Zero, whose stock in trade was the engineered destruction of worlds. An interstellar empire of raiders regularly contracted Black Zero for his diabolic services to suppress the development of space-faring civilizations throughout the universe and eliminate potential future threats to its own hegemony. Upon landing on Krypton, Black Zero detected with his instruments that the reactions in Krypton's core were actually dying down. In order to make Jor-El's predictions true, and thus doom the Kryptonian people, Black Zero artificially accelerated these reactions until Krypton's core reached critical mass. Tomar-Re, the Green Lantern of Space Sector 2813, was tasked with the salvation of Krypton by the Guardians of the Universe. Although Tomar-Re gave it his most valiant efforts, collecting Stellarium samples that could relieve Krypton's internal pressures, he ultimately failed for lack of more time.[29][30]

Adopted by the Kents

The rocket crash-landed on Earth in an open field outside of Smallville, Kansas. It was there that the rocket and the young Kal-El were discovered by small land farmers Jonathan and Martha Kent. Upon finding the young boy, Martha became attached to Kal-El while Jonathan elected to have the child's true family found. Martha persuades Jonathan to keep the boy as their adopted child, naming him Clark.[31]

The Kents fashioned a set of clothes for their "Superbaby" from the now-virtually indestructible red, blue and yellow blankets in the rocket. This same Kryptonian fabric was later used to create the costume Kal-El would wear as Superboy and Superman.

Jonathan and Martha instill in him a good sense of right and wrong but also a good appreciation to try to fit into society as a positive being using his talents for the local townspeople's welfare. The young Clark takes the advice to heart and starts helping people out as Superboy, starting at the age of eight years old. Clark's first outing as Superboy was to rescue a married couple who were also government nuclear scientists working on a top-secret project from the clutches of an international spy.[32] It is as the heroic Superboy that Clark begins to find his true calling. Meanwhile, as Clark Kent, Kal-El pretends to be a normal human and forms connections with Lana Lang and Pete Ross while going through the stages of his primary and secondary education. While Lana tries repeatedly to prove that Clark Kent and Superboy are the same person, it is Pete who actually bears witness to Clark's secret with his own eyes, watching in secret as Clark changes into his Superboy costume during a camping trip. Nevertheless, Pete takes it upon himself never to reveal this secret to anyone, and never to give any indication to Clark that he might know it either. Superboy discovers his origins from Krypton for the first time by overtaking light rays reflected off the dead planet prior to its destruction.[33] As he grows older and his powers increase, however, Kal-El develops total recall of his first few years of life on Krypton, as an aspect of his superior mental abilities. This at times leads to some frustrating moments between him and his foster parents such as when Krypto (Kal-El's now-superpowered puppy from Krypton) first arrives in Smallville, having been launched into space by Jor-El to test the prototype of the rocket which later carried Kal-El. Though there are several mishaps in Superboy's life on Earth, they never really lead to the troubles of teenage rebellion. Deciding to support his public actions, Martha unravels Clark's blankets and reweaves them into the familiar costume. Clark continues to use Martha's design throughout all of his costume career.

Superboy

As Clark grows up on Earth, he is mindful to obey the laws of humanity and works directly with Police Chief Parker and other law enforcement agencies, which leads to Superboy's acceptance as a hero by the people of Smallville. In fact, by the time Clark is around 12 or so, the town officially recognizes their most popular citizen with a billboard that publicly announces: "Welcome to Smallville - the home of Superboy". Nonetheless, Superboy's presence attracted all manner of trouble to himself, chiefly in the form of protecting his secret identity and combatting criminals and alien beings. It is during this period that Clark first learns about his vulnerability to Green Kryptonite, when Jonathan Kent accidentally exposes him to it and it has an immediate effect. Even then, Clark managed to keep awareness of this weakness secret as Superboy for a time, until the Smallville municipal government declared the first "Earthday" (the anniversary of baby Kal-El's arrival on Earth) as a local holiday, when a scientist unveiled a sample of Kryptonite in Superboy's honor and inadvertently caused him to collapse during a televised news broadcast. From that day onwards, the whole world knew that Kryptonite could weaken or kill Superboy.[34] Later, Superboy encounters the threat of Red Kryptonite when a Martian traveler exposes him to it and creates an evil duplicate of his Clark Kent persona.[35] Occasionally, Superboy met and teamed-up with the half-Atlantean wandering youth Arthur Curry, alias Aquaboy.[36] Lana Lang would acquire a Bio-Genetic Ring from an alien that she rescued, allowing her to manifest insectoid abilities and traits at will. With the ring, Lana fabricated an alter ego as the super-heroine Insect Queen, although her heroic exploits were mostly limited to those which would grab Superboy's attention.[37]

Enter the Legion of Super-Heroes

Superboy is also contacted by a club of adolescent superheroes from the 30th Century, known as the Legion of Super-Heroes. Legionnaires Lightning Lad, Saturn Girl and Cosmic Boy appear to Clark in Smallville and reveal they know his double-life as Superboy. Explaining that they originate from the future, the Legionnaires escort Clark to the 30th century and have him compete against each of them in a battery of tests, in order to evaluate Superboy's worthiness to join the Legion. Superboy technically fails all three tests, albeit because he was distracted by crises popping up elsewhere on the way to his objective. When Clark takes the declaration of his rejection by the Legion like a good sport, not once considering making excuses for himself, the Legionnaires inform Clark that they were truly testing Clark's character with his response and had simulated all the crises that diverted Superboy from his objective all three times. Superboy is thusly made a member of the Legion and sent back to his own time with a Legion medal from the future, in addition to the knowledge that the Legion would return to have many more adventures with him, both in the present and the future.[38] (Unbeknownst to the Legion, a temporal upheaval rewrote these events in the timeline so they had rejected Superboy in earnest after he flunked his initiation test, causing a 75th Century time-traveler named Anti-Lad to intervene in order to resolve the discrepancy in the timeline and prevent reality from collapsing in on itself. Anti-Lad accomplished this by traveling to the 30th century, applying to join the Legion under false pretenses, and tricking the Legionnaires into believing that he had sabotaged Superboy's initiation test out of jealousy, only to erase all specific memory of his existence from the Legionnaires' minds. Consequently, the Legion were left with the subliminal suggestion that they should give Superboy a second chance to prove himself, whereupon he aced the tests and joined the Legion in the revised timeline, preventing a domino effect from sweeping through time and changing reality more extensively.[39]) Superboy encounters Ultra Boy for the first time when the youth is dispatched from the 30th century by the Legion to uncover Superboy's secret identity for his initiation test. Succeeding in his mission, Ultra Boy helps Superboy rescue Pete Ross from a booby-trapped bank vault before explaining his intent and returning to the future.[40] Superboy was later present in the Legion's battle against a masked foe who possessed all the Legionnaires' super-powers and participated in the lightning-rod ritual on Korbal to revive Lightning Lad after an encounter with space-pirates left him in a death-approximating state.[41][42] Superboy and the Legion encountered their first major nemesis when the Time Trapper created an Iron Curtain of Time blocking time-travel more than a few months into the Legion's 30th-century future.[43][44] Superboy made several attempts to shatter the Iron Curtain of Time by accelerating to multiple times the speed of light, all to no avail. The Time Trapper then stepped up his game by impersonating the commissioner of the Science Police and subjecting the Legionnaires to grueling psychological torture to uncover the secret of an ultimate weapon called the Concentrator. Although he failed, the Trapper directed a barrage of dark stars at the Legion to finish them off, which even Superboy could not repel in time. The Legion had to construct the Concentrator and draw upon every power source in the universe to repel the onslaught, after which the team decided that capturing the Trapper would have to be their number-one priority going forth.[45]

Superboy was around when the duplicitous Dynamo Boy joined the Legion under false pretenses, used constitutional loopholes to usurp leadership and banish all other members from the team, and fraudulently admitted Lightning Lord, Saturn Queen and Cosmic King, the time-traveling members of the adult Legion of Super-Villains from a few years into the LSH's future, to run a scam of protecting the United Planets by day while looting it by night. The LSV found Dynamo Boy superfluous to their plans and banished him to a distant future, long after the Earth became uninhabitable by living beings, to die, whereupon Superboy confronted the remaining villains and forced them to surrender.[46][47] Superboy would encounter the adult Legion of Super-Villains in the 20th century as an adult Superman, whereas the Legion of Super-Heroes would encounter a younger, incipient version of the Legion of Super-Villains a couple of years into their own 30th century timeline. When Lightning Lad lost his arm to a mutated space-roaming beast, Superboy was one of the Legionnaires who was chiefly concerned with Lightning Lad's mental state, afraid that his obsession with slaying the creature would compromise the Legion's main mission. Fortunately, Lightning Lad's initial fury subsided and his arm was replaced with a cybernetic prosthetic.[48] Brainiac 5 next uncovered an ancient tome recording an unknown war between Krypton and Earth millions of years ago, before hominids even evolved on Earth. Superboy and the Legion traveled back through time to divine the authenticity and meaning of the tome and discovered that a settlement of rogue Kryptonian scientists was established on Earth due to the backwards superstitious taboos of medieval Kryptonian society. Concurrently, another settlement was constructed by alien refugees from another world called Vruun. The Legion felt obliged to take sides when the two alien colonies on Triassic Period Earth entered into a state of war, with separate factions led by Brainiac 5 and Saturn Girl supporting the Vruunians and the Kryptonians, respectively. However, Brainy deduced that xenon gas in the Earth's atmosphere was deadly to the Vruunians, while the Kryptonians suffered many fatalities due to the unusual reaction of the Vruunians' ordinarily non-lethal stun rays on their unique physiology. The Legion reunited to help the Vruunians transform themselves into an aquatic race with genetic engineering technology and to sink their colony into the ocean, in order to safeguard them against the deleterious effects of atmospheric xenon, while the Kryptonians were eventually wiped out after the Legion's departure by the normally docile, yet temperamentally altered, beasts they brought from their homeworld, which became the dinosaurs on Earth. Over millions of years of evolution, the descendants of the Vruunians became the Atlanteans, and their submerged colonial settlement was developed, expanded, and redeveloped over that time until it became modern-day Atlantis.[49] Superboy and the Legion's next big adversary was the criminal mastermind Starfinger, who threatened to destroy the Seven Wonders of the 30th Century unless the United Planets government council turned over the only existing sample of Rejuvium. Starfinger was eventually unmasked as a hypnotized Lightning Lad, sent by his treacherous physician Dr. Lars Hanscom to retrieve the Rejuvium for him. A cornered Hanscom made his last stand in a thermonuclear reactor, threatening to destroy it with himself and the Rejuvium inside to escape custody, but Superboy called his bluff and nabbed both the criminal and the miracle-mineral in his possession.[50][51] The Time Trapper struck again, using his beautiful henchwoman Glorith to reduce most of the Legion to infants and trapping Superboy and Brainiac 5 millions of years in the future. The Trapper was done in when Superboy and Brainy found a way to circumnavigate the Iron Curtain of Time and struck a deal with the Trapper for the restoration of their fellow Legionnaires. Although the Legion delivered on their part of the bargain (creating a space-craft for Trapper to get off-world), they creatively interpreted their agreement by erecting an impenetrable force-field around it, keeping the Time Trapper stranded on a lifeless world.[52]



Superboy and the LSH vs. Superboy and the LSH vs. Computo

Superboy helped the Legion combat Brainiac 5's renegade creation Computo, albeit not before the AI menace killed one of Triplicate Girl's three bodies, causing her to rename herself as Duo Damsel.[53][54] Superboy volunteered to defend Star Boy when Brainiac 5 took him to court-martial for killing an armed assailant, arguing that his invulnerability put him in a better position than other Legionnaries to use non-lethal force in the course of fighting crime. Star Boy was expelled from the Legion by a slim majority vote and joined the Legion of Substitute Heroes with his girlfriend Dream Girl.[55] Superboy presided over the Legion as temporary chairperson during the recruitment of 4 new members: Karate Kid, Princess Projectra, Ferro Lad and Nemesis Kid. The Khunds then launched an invasion of Earth which Superboy and the Legion rushed to respond to. It became apparent that there was a traitor in the Legion assisting the Khunds, and Karate Kid became the other Legionnaires' primary suspect, until Nemesis Kid tipped his hand and gave himself away as the real infiltrator. Thanks to Superboy's quick thinking, some of the Earth's defensive systems were safeguarded from sabotage and mounted an effective response to the Khundian fleet.[56][57] Superboy next fought the solar-powered menace Dr. Regulus with the Legion by his side, preventing him from stealing away with the Legion Clubhouse and other buildings along the 30th-century Metropolis skyline.[58] Superboy tried to stop the criminal hypnotist Universo from breaking into the Legion Clubhouse only to be put into a perpetual trance by the villain. Brainiac 5, Saturn Girl, Shrinking Violet, Colossal Boy and Chameleon Boy were tricked into departing for remote past eras of Earth history by Universo and encountered peril in each one, but Universo's son Rond Vidar helped the Legionnaires return to the 30th century, put Superboy back to normal, and thwart Universo's attempt at overthrowing the United Planets.[59] Superboy and Supergirl were honorably discharged from the Legion when a Green K cloud coalesced around the Earth's atmosphere, but not before they nominated their own successors "Sir Prize" and "Miss Terious" to take their places. After the two new Legionnaires used their unique skills to defeat Prince Evillo and his Devil's Dozen, they were revealed to be Star Boy and Dream Girl, and permitted to rejoin the Legion in their full capacity. Evillo's turncoat physician also restored Lightning Lad's missing arm, Bouncing Boy's bouncing powers and Matter-Eater Lad's slender frame. Color Kid of the Legion of Substitute Heroes then changed the Green K cloud into Blue K, allowing Superboy and Supergirl to retake their places in the Legion.[60][61]

When a Sun-Eater was spotted on a runaway course for the Sol system, the Legion sought out the Fatal Five to help them stop it in return for presidential pardons, with Superboy being tasked with the recruitment of the Emerald Empress. When the time came, the Sun-Eater proved too great for even Superboy's might, overwhelming him with its raw power before putting him out of commission with a burst of red-sun energies. The Sun-Eater was eventually demolished through the heroic sacrifice of Ferro Lad, and the Fatal Five subsequently turned on the weakened Legionnaires. Fortunately, Princess Projectra appealed to Validus to revolt against Tharok's self-serving leadership, and the Fatal Five vanished in a flash of light as Validus's incalculable power collided with the Atomic Axe of his erstwhile ally, the Persuader.[62][63] Superboy brought Lana Lang on one of his trips to the 30th century as a reward for showing greater respect of his secret identity. Eager as ever, Lana applied for Legion membership in her superhero identity as Insect Queen. Although rejected for full-time membership on the basis that her powers derived from her Bio-Genetic Ring, Lana proved herself when she helped Superboy and the Legion save an Antarctic city from the designs of a madman and was admitted as a Legion reservist.[64] While grieving for Ferro Lad's sacrifice, Superboy was attacked by an apparition claiming to be the deceased Legionnaire's spirit, demanding the immediate disbanding of the Legion as vengeance for allowing him to die. Superboy was then captured by a renegade Controller, who revealed that he was responsible for setting the Sun-Eater loose upon the galaxy, simulated the recent appearances of Ferro Lad's "spirit," and intended to possess Superboy's body in a bid for universal domination. Just as the rest of the Legion arrived to rescue Superboy though, the Controller ran into a corridor and suffered a fright-induced heart attack, believed to be from spotting the true ghost of Ferro Lad.[65] Superboy and a few other Legionnaires were captured by Otto Orion, the Hunter, who took them to a jungle planet to pit his talents against theirs and perished in the undertaking.[66] Universo kidnapped and impersonated the Vice-President of Earth, Kandro Boltax, and arranged the assassination of the incumbent President, paving the path for his ascendancy to rule over Earth and leadership over the United Planets Inner Council. As "President Boltax," Universo ordered the construction of a water treatment plant as a cover for poisoning the water supply with hypnotic chemical agents, put a sadistic mercenary in charge of the prison-planetoid Takron-Galtos to convert the holding facilities into a slave-labor camp, and kept the Legion busy with manufactured crises while he enacted a law mandating the dissolution of their organization. Universo then issued a curfew and forbade the Legion from using their powers or costumes in public, knowing that circumstance would compel the Legion into action and give him precedent to have them arrested. Superboy was imprisoned on Takron-Galtos for the "crime" of saving a monorail from going off-track, weakened to a manageable level with Kryptonite chains, and forced to mine jewels, until he organized a breakout with his fellow captive Legionnaires. Superboy returned to Earth just in time to witness the final showdown between the Legion Espionage Squad and the Science Police in front of the water treatment plant and Universo's exposure as the mastermind of the increasing government authoritarianism by Rond Vidar, who was subsequently declared an honorary Legionnaire for his repeated contributions.[67][68] Superboy was involved in a mission to protect a Dominator peace envoy to the United Planets from the Dominion's belligerent former leader.[69] He was then led on a wild goose chase with the other members of the LSH by the mad scientist Mantis Morlo and his shape-shifting Chemoids.[70][71]



Superboy in the ring with Superboy in the ring with Validus

Superboy was deployed with Cosmic Boy, Brainiac 5 and Karate Kid to investigate the uncharacteristically belligerent behavior of the planet Talok VIII. The Legionnaires were assigned a Talokite guide to the planet named Shadow Lass by the Science Police. Upon infiltration of the Talok government citadel, the Legionnaires were put into death traps. In the process of escaping the traps, the Legionnaires generated enough energy output to power machines whose function was to shatter the dimensional barrier, thereby facilitating the return of the Fatal Five from wherever they were sent at the end of their last outing. It was revealed that Tharok was somehow using machines to extend mind-control over the entire planet and caused Talok's sudden shift to a military society to attract the Legionnaires' attention, with the explicit purpose of using them to enable his return. The Five then occupied Metropolis and seized control of Earth, planning to use the central command console of the United Planets' defensive weapons systems to enforce their rule. However, the Fatal Five only had 2 of the 3 keys required to access the console; the third and final key was in the Legion Clubhouse. The Legionnaires fortunately returned from Talok VIII in time to fortify the Clubhouse against the Five's attempts to break in and confronted the villains head-on. Although neither the LSH nor the Fatal Five could get the upper hand in the battle, the Legion stalled for enough time for the U.P. to mobilize an effective response from other planets and regain control of the capital. The Fatal Five were forced on the run, and the five participating Legionnaires, including newly inducted Shadow Lass, were given high presidential honors for their heroic resistance. Regrettably, the Legion Clubhouse was irreparably wrecked by Validus during the skirmish.[72][73] As such, the U.P. subsidized the construction of a larger and more advanced Legion HQ out of gratitude to the club of young heroes. Superboy and the members of the Legion were besieged unexpectedly by the Dark Circle during their recovery from the battle with the Fatal Five. Thankfully, Brainiac 5 won the day by using one of the gifts sent to the LSH, a reality-reshaping Miracle Machine manufactured by the Controllers out of gratitude for stopping their renegade, to repel the Dark Circle invasion and complete construction work on the new headquarters.[74]

The stakes were raised when Mordru, the Dark Lord of Zerox, escaped from the anoxic conditions of the vault where the Legion had kept him imprisoned and defeated a quartet of on-duty Legionnaires consisting of Superboy, Mon-El, Duo Damsel and Shadow Lass. The four Legionnaires escaped into 20th century Smallville using Rond Vidar's Time Cube while the quick thinking of Princess Projectra, Dream Girl and the White Witch of Naltor deflected Mordru's assault on Legion HQ while giving him the illusion that he succeeded. Tracking the four escaped Legionnaires to the 20th century, Mordru put a spell on everyone in Smallville to subconsciously send out a psychic alert signal if any of them spotted Superboy or the other Legionnaires. After hiding for over a week and covertly routing a raid of the town by mobsters, the Legion were spotted by Mordru through the eyes of Lana Lang, causing the dark wizard to appear in the town. In a last-ditch effort to get Mordru to retreat to the 30th century, Superboy mind-wiped himself and the other Legionnaires for an hour with a hypnosis ray, so that he would be unable to telepathically detect the presence of any of them in Smallville. Instead, when Mordru's mind scanned the town for the Legionnaires, the effect of making contact with the mindwiped Legionnaires' minds was to extend the duration of their brainwashing indefinitely. Desperate to find his enemies, Mordru erected a force-field about Smallville and magically erected it into the stratosphere, before summoning his futuristic armies to weed the Legionnaires out by interrogating the populace. Pete Ross saved the day by revealing Superboy's secret identity as Clark Kent to Lana Lang, allowing Lana and Pete to bring Clark out of his brainwashed state by proving to him that he was invulnerable and therefore had to be Superboy. Subsequently, Superboy undid the effects of the hypnosis ray on the other Legionnaires and rallied the Legion forces, including Lana as Insect Queen, to engage Mordru in a final battle. Mordru overpowered the heroes again, judged them "guilty of anti-crime" in a kangaroo court of mesmerized toadies, and prepared to destroy them with a bolt of concentrated magical power, when the energies of the bolt destabilized the ceiling of the cavern they were in and crushed Mordru under tons of rubble. To set everything back to how it was before Mordru's arrival, Superboy used the hypnosis ray on Lana to make her forget his secret identity. Then, Mon-El wrested the ray from Superboy and used it against him to make him forget that Pete Ross knew he was Clark Kent, because he knew that Pete's knowledge of Superboy's secret identity would save lives in the future.[75][76]



Superboy feigns his death at the hands of Superboy feigns his death at the hands of Tarik the Mute

Back in the 30th century, Colossal Boy was expelled from the Legion for trying to smuggle sensitive info about the Legion to Tarik the Mute, who was holding Colossal Boy's parents hostage to force him to help build up his criminal counterpart to the LSH: The Legion of Super-Villains. After it was determined that Colossal Boy was being coerced into his actions, Superboy went undercover as a delinquent Legion reject, with a disguised Chameleon Boy and relatively unknown Legion trainees Timber Wolf and Chemical King as his "gang," to attract the attentions of the LSV's recruiters and receive entry to their training grounds. However, Superboy and the infiltration squad were unable to keep up the ruse, and a battle erupted. Reinforced by the rest of the Legion and the Science Police, Superboy and his teammates were able to shut down Tarik's operation, save Colossal Boy's family, and put away many of the LSV recruits, of whom a significant proportion were disgruntled LSH rejects, like Ron-Karr, Spider Girl, and Radiation Roy and sociopathic youths with a criminal record, such as Nemesis Kid and an adolescent Lightning Lord. This was the same organization which would evolve into the adult LSV of Superboy and the Legion's future, dominated by the triumvirate of Lightning Lord, Cosmic King and Saturn Queen. This incident also served as Timber Wolf and Chemical King's trial by fire. After the mission reached a successful conclusion, the two trainees were allowed to join the Legion in an official capacity, and Colossal Boy was allowed to rejoin in light of the extenuating circumstances of his betrayal.[77] Superboy encountered the Tornado Twins with the rest of the Legion, initially resentful of their habit of showing the LSH up and superior super-speed, until they revealed that their actions were merely meant to generate hype for the new holiday which the U.P. declared in honor of their 20th century ancestor, The Flash.[78] When the Legion's allies, the Wanderers went bad under the influence of a radioactive nebula, concurrently with the challenge of a being from another dimension calling upon the mightiest Legionnaire, the LSH organized the capture of the Wanderers as a contest to determine which Legionnaire could be considered the mightiest. Come the final round, only Superboy and Bouncing Boy remained. Surprisingly, Bouncing Boy triumphed in the capture of the Wanderers' leader Celebrand, although it was then revealed that the Legionnaire in question was actually Chameleon Boy, wearing Bouncing Boy's form to capitalize off of the element of surprise.[79] Superboy briefly feigned having gone mercenary along with the rest of the Legion as part of a plot to neutralize a sentient planet volunteering itself as a hideout for criminals.[80] On Brainiac 5's birthday, Superboy was one of 5 Legionnaires to consume a drink poisoned with the potent toxin Rakurga, or rather a type of Rakurga using a Kryptonite base. After the rest of the team scrambled about on a diversionary mission, Ultra Boy used the Miracle Machine to save his comrades from certain death.[81][82] Superboy stranded the rest of the Legion on a distant planet, faking his own death and secretly charging the Legion of Super-Pets with their protection, to get them out of the way of a villain who sought to wipe the team out by harnessing the solar winds. After Superboy dispelled the ruse to his teammates, the Legionnaires confronted the villain in his lair within the corona of the Sun, where he committed suicide to evade capture.[83] The time came when the Legion of Super-Heroes came under review by the United Planets' internal revenue service for failing to pay taxes exacted upon all private organizations exceeding 25 members. As the Legion had since reached 26, it became necessary for the Legion's incumbent chairman Karate Kid to dismiss one Legionnaire to fall under the limit and avoid charges of tax-evasion. Various Legionnaires volunteered themselves to resign for the good of the greater cause, and several Legionnaires attempted to sabotage tests employed to impartially decide which Legionnaire was the least useful to the group. Ultimately, Superboy decided to quit the Legion and return to the 20th century, rationalizing that Mon-El shared his powers but lacked his Kryptonite weakness and therefore was more than sufficient to replace him. The Legion accepted Superboy's resignation, but they honored his period of service with them by casting a statue of Superboy in gold to display in their headquarters.[84]

During this era, when Superboy and the Legion were still wide-eyed, young and fresh, Duo Damsel harbored a secret crush on Superboy, although she never opened up about her feelings because of low self-esteem and knowing from the historical records who Superman would ultimately end up with. Duo Damsel's feelings of unworthiness to approach the great Superboy blinded her to the affections of another Legionnaire, Bouncing Boy, who shared similar reservations about the practical usefulness of his power and crushed on Duo Damsel in secret ever since he had joined the Legion. Only at the end of this era did Bouncing Boy and Duo Damsel begin to gain insight into the feelings of the other. Even then, Duo Damsel gave Superboy a goodbye kiss to remember her by, prior to his resignation from the team.

The Beginnings of the Rogues Gallery

One day, Superboy was incapacitated by a large Kryptonite meteorite on the property of the Luthor family. By pure happenstance, the boy tending the fields, Lex, happened upon the scene and removed the Kryptonite from the vicinity with his quick thinking. Lex gushed over Superboy's legendary achievements, explaining that he was the Boy of Steel's most devoted fan and that his great interest was in the sciences, despite spending most of his days working the fields on his family property to supplement their income. A flattered Superboy responded by fixing up a makeshift laboratory and stocking it with rare chemical substances for Lex to use. Using the means at his disposal to achieve the impossible and create primitive life, Lex planned to thank Superboy by synthesizing a serum that would remove Superboy's Kryptonite vulnerability, but he knocked over a vial of flammable liquid in his excitement and set his lab ablaze. Superboy arrived and blew out the fire with his super-breath, but he unintentionally blew a vial of strong acid into Lex's protoplasmic lifeform, destroying it. To add insult to injury, the fumes generated from the reaction caused all of Lex's hair to fall out and cauterized his hair follicles so that it could never regrow. In his rage and bewilderment at being denied on the cusp of the ultimate scientific victory, and resentful of his new appearance, Lex accused Superboy of thwarting him deliberately out of envy and spent the next few months trying to surpass Superboy as Smallville's resident hero by boosting the town's commerce and welfare with his inventions. Unfortunately, every last one of Lex's inventions went wrong and caused disaster. This led Lex into a downward spiral towards insane, unreasoning hate, as Lex's failed inventions caused the people of Smallville to resent and distrust him and brand him as an outcast. Lex then took his rivalry with Superboy to the next level, creating machines and unique scenarios to destroy the teenaged hero outright. This was the last straw for the Luthor family, which disowned Lex, left Smallville, changed their surname to "Thorul," and told Lex's little sister Lena when she grew older that her brother died in an accident. His future prospects ruined and his reputation irreparable, Lex had nowhere else to go from there- except for reform school. Lex would continue to challenge Superboy even into their adulthood, and just as in their adolescence, Lex would formulate schemes to eradicate his arch-enemy only to be foiled every time and jailed like a common criminal.[85][86]

While bearing witness to Professor Dalton's exhibition of a Duplicator Ray, which could theoretically materialize perfect copies of existing objects down to the molecular level but actually created imperfect duplicates, Superboy was accidentally hit by the ray. The product of this mishap was the materialization of a malformed copy of Superboy, possessing all of Superboy's powers and vague hints of his memories, but bearing an ugly, chalk-white, chiseled face and a subnormal intelligence. Overhearing Superboy calling it "bizarre," the creature assumed that its name must be "Bizarro" and wandered aimlessly as Superboy and the U.S. Army endeavored, unsuccessfully, to destroy it. Bizarro met only one human who was cordial to it, much less not running in terror from it: a blind girl, who could not perceive Bizarro's appearance and therefore could not be repulsed by it. Superboy ultimately figured out that the irradiated fragments of Dalton's destroyed Duplicator Ray had a similar effect on Bizarro that Kryptonite had on him. Possibly realizing that he did not belong in this world, Bizarro collided directly with Superboy while Superboy was holding an irradiated fragment of Dalton's machine as a shield. As a result, Bizarro disintegrated into the unliving matter from which it was formed. Tragically, Bizarro accomplished its one and only good deed only in death, as the vibrations from its collision with Superboy miraculously restored the blind girl's sight. The girl's final words on the matter - "I never saw Bizarro myself, while blind! But I know, from his gentle voice, that he must have had a kind face!"[87]

It is during his youth that Clark first encounters the juvenile 5th-dimensional imp Mxyzptlk, who breached the third-dimension with a space warp against the wishes of his elders. For no reason other than the sake of mischief-making, Mxyzptlk tries to prank Superboy several times, but Mxyzptlk's parents reveal to Superboy that the imp can be forcibly recalled to the 5th dimension for a 90-day period if he says his name backwards - "Kltpzyxm." Tricking Mxyzptlk into doing as such begins a long rivalry between Clark and Mxyzptlk which would extend well into Clark's adult life.[88]

The Legacy of Krypton

Superboy would encounter remnants of the Kryptonian civilization during his time on Earth, starting with a casket of technological artifacts from Krypton that crashed on Earth and was discovered by Lana Lang's archaeologist father, Professor Lewis Lang. Superboy was summoned by the professor to open the casket and deciphered the note left within, written in Kryptonese by his father Jor-El, which explained that the devices contained were powerful weapons, illegally manufactured on Krypton by Jor-El's cousin Kru-El. Contained along with the arsenal of forbidden weapons was the Phantom Zone Projector, which the Kryptonian penal system used in lieu of prisons and capital punishment to banish Krypton's criminal element to an ethereal twilight dimension: The Phantom Zone. Superboy was transported to the Phantom Zone when a lizard pressed a button on the back of the Projector. However, Superboy realized that he had a limited influence on the physical world, even as a phantom, by focusing his thoughts, and used this method to clue Jonathan Kent in on his predicament and arrange his release from the Zone. Afterwards, Superboy placed the Phantom Zone Projector and other Kryptonian weapons back into the casket and deposited it at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, where only he could locate and access it.[89] Over the years, Superboy would have to contend with the escape of Kryptonian criminals from the Phantom Zone back into the physical world and the havoc they would play with his life. Many of the Phantom Zoners had a personal reason to despise Superman, as his father Jor-El played a role in catching and prosecuting many of them. Although mostly powerless in the form of wraiths, they exerted a low-level psionic influence over the physical world and frequently broadcast their thoughts in sync with one another to facilitate their escape. Nuclear experiments, atom bomb tests, chemical accidents, and scientific mishaps also had the potential to tear a hole in the veil separating the corporeal and incorporeal planes, which the Phantom Zoners exploited whenever possible.



Superboy's Promise to Superboy's Promise to Mon-El

Superboy briefly believed that he had a brother when a rocket crash-landed in Smallville carrying a strangely-garbed teenager with similar powers as Superboy. Although the youth had retrograde amnesia and could recall nothing of his past, the boy's rocket contained a letter bearing Kryptonese well-wishes from Jor-El and Lara, leading Superboy to assume his Kryptonian ancestry and familial relationship. Because the rocket arrived on Earth on a Monday, Superboy constructed a Kryptonian name for his "brother": Mon-El. Meanwhile, Mon-El would adopt his own "secret identity" as traveling salesman Bob Cobb, a "cousin" of Clark Kent, to provide an alibi for his sudden appearance at the Kent residence. When Mon-El had no reaction to Green Kryptonite radiations and Krypto failed to recognize him, Superboy began to suspect Mon-El of secret, malicious motives for appearing in his life. To force Mon-El to reveal his presumed treachery, Superboy exposed him to lead coated with phosphorescent green paint to resemble Kryptonite. This caused Mon-El to experience a strong reaction to the metal and had the unintended effect of restoring his memories. Mon-El explained that he came from a planet called Daxam, whose inhabitants have powers approximating those of Kryptonians under the yellow sun, and that he stopped briefly on Krypton prior to the destruction of that planet, having met and befriended Jor-El and Lara in the process. As Daxamites have a similar reaction to lead as Kryptonians do to Green Kryptonite, with the added caveat that the effects are irreversible, Superboy determined that the only way to save his life would be to banish him to the Phantom Zone until such time as a cure for Daxamite lead-poisoning could be devised.[33] In the 30th Century, a temporary salve for Daxamite lead-poisoning would be formulated by the Legion of Super-Heroes, allowing Mon-El to join their adventures for limited periods. After helping to best a hostile android sent to the future by Lex Luthor, Mon-El was unanimously inaugurated into the Legionnaires' ranks.[90] When Brainiac 5 created a permanent cure for his lead poisoning, Mon-El was released from the Phantom Zone for good.[91]

Superboy would later encounter a genuine survivor of Krypton of comparable age to himself: the juvenile delinquent Dev-Em, who tried to ruin his reputation by banishing Superboy to the Phantom Zone and impersonating him to frame him for incorrigible actions, before letting Superboy go free and using his powers to travel into the 30th Century.[92][93] There, Dev-Em would learn the error of his ways and join the Interstellar Counterintelligence Corps of the United Planets, aiding the Legion of Super-Heroes to arrest interplanetary crime kingpin Molock.[94]

Return to the 30th Century

Although he resigned from the Legion of Super-Heroes, Superboy remained available for contact by the team as a reservist. After some time, the Legion once again found need of Superboy's services when Cosmic Boy encountered a mysterious duplicate of himself roaming about HQ and required the Boy of Steel to use his versatile abilities to tell which was real and which was the imposter. Upon arrival back in the 30th century, Superboy was threatened by the astral projection of Mordru, who warned that one of the Cosmic Boys was his magical doppelganger and would bring doom upon all the members of the Legion unless found out in time. Superboy tested the powers of the Cosmic Boys by creating large plastic projectiles and painting them to resemble iron fragments. The Cosmic Boy unable to manipulate the object with his magnetic powers was identified as the real Legionnaire, whereas the Cosmic Boy who could remotely manipulate the plastic vanished from existence when pointed out. Superboy returned back to his own time-period as soon as he was able, but the basic re-establishment of contact marked the inception of an all-new series of 30th-century adventures.[95] Superboy's world intersected with the Legion's once again when Mordru broke free from his subterranean, hypoxic prison and crafted a mystical blood-gem that would entrance all who gazed upon it and instill within them the irresistible compulsion to kill Superboy at any cost. Superboy discovered the plot and buried Mordru once again, tossing the mystic gem with sufficient velocity to escape the Earth's orbit and leave the outer reaches of the galaxy. This decision came back to bite Superboy when an LSH mineral-harvesting outpost manned by Chameleon Boy found the gem drifting in space, still intact and unblemished 1000 years later. Cham was entranced by the gem and assaulted Ultra Boy, taking his form to obtain clearance to travel to the 20th century using the Time-Cube. Although Brainiac 5 and Lightning Lad pursued Cham once the real Ultra Boy warned them of the situation, Cham had taken Superboy's form by the time of their arrival and deflected their suspicions, causing them to return to the 30th century. Then, Cham continued with his plot to murder Superboy, his ex-comrade, with Green Kryptonite. Superboy broke Mordru's spell over Chameleon Boy by following the same line of logic as the rest of Mordru's powers: near-asphyxiation snapped Cham back into his right state of mind.[96] While on a mission to hunt down a vicious interstellar predator menacing the starways in the 30th century, Superboy and Timber Wolf were caught in the abrupt explosion of the asteroid X52, and Timber Wolf disappeared and was presumed killed. Six months later, Timber Wolf returned to the Legion alive and well, though with amnesia about the details of where he was during that time period, and furtively attempted to activate the self-destruct sequence in Legion HQ under cover of wanting to assassinate the Earth President Kandro Boltax. As it turned out, Wolf had been brainwashed by the alien mercenary Tyr to accomplish this goal, and the detonation of asteroid X52 was deliberate by Tyr to lay the ground for this plot. However, Timber Wolf was released from his mental programming by Saturn Girl, and the Legion were able to thwart Tyr's plan against them and capture the villain.[97] The Fatal Five then made a comeback by planting a device called a Time-Sorter in 20th century Smallville which would alter time to retroactively erase the Legion from all history. The Fatal Five even overcame Superboy on his own home-turf for the purposes of their plan, but a team of Legionnaires consisting of Brainiac 5, Karate Kid, Element Lad, Princess Projectra, and Chameleon Boy traveled back in time after the villains before the effect could take hold and therefore were spared when the Time-Sorter erased the existence of the Legion in the 30th century. The stranded Legionnaires used their ingenuity to deceive the Fatal Five, saved the captive Superboy, and smashed the Time-Sorter, reversing its changes to the timestream before they could become permanent.[98] The sentient cybernetic arm-cannon of Tyr, which ejected itself when its chief designer and user was captured, executed a spate of contingency programs to release Tyr from the Legion's captivity while striking at the Legionnaires themselves. However, the AI of the arm-cannon went rogue in the middle of carrying out its mission, latching itself onto Superboy's arm and overriding his central nervous system to control his body. Fortunately, Chameleon Boy pulled a ruse that deceived the AI and put it into Legion custody alongside its creator.[99] On the day of Bouncing Boy and Duo Damsel's wedding, the latter was kidnapped by Lars Hanscom, the criminal known as Starfinger, in order so Starfinger could deduce the secret of Carggite self-replication abilities. Superboy defeated Starfinger in his lair and rescued Duo Damsel from his clutches, though the villain escaped capture. In the aftermath, Bouncing Boy and Duo Damsel quit the Legion to begin their new married lives together. Now down two members from their old roster, the Legion restored Superboy to service as a full-time Legionnaire, putting his short period as a reservist to an end.[100]

Over the next few weeks, Superboy joined the Legion for the inauguration of new member Wildfire and the battle against Validus in which long-time member and former team leader Invisible Kid tragically perished.[101][102] While escorting Lana Lang to the 30th century on her birthday, Superboy came across a conspiracy to brainwash and enslave the Legion, dismantling it with the help of Ultra Boy and Lana's alter ego as Insect Queen.[103] At the request of President Boltax, Superboy headed up a team of Legionnaires consisting of Light Lass, Timber Wolf, Shrinking Violet, and Chameleon Boy, accompanied also by Science Police Officer Benn Pares (Pre-Zero Hour)ntervention in a scheme of theirs to assassinate a universal peace prize recipient in the 30th century and frame the LSH for the deed. Fortunately, Superboy and Mon-El learned upon their return that the on-duty members handled the situation admirably and broke up the LSV plot under the capable acting leadership of Sun Boy.[104] Superboy pursued Element Lad as he returned to his home-planet Trom to confront the genocidal space-pirate who murdered his people, Kivun Roxxas, and pleaded with Element Lad not to execute Roxxas, but to leave his ultimate fate to the law of the United Planets. Although Chemical King kept Superboy from stopping Element Lad from going through with the deed, he neutralized the energy-charge in Element Lad's laser gun and allowed him to believe he had killed Roxxas for a few seconds, so that Element Lad could experience the bitter emptiness that naturally follows the fulfillment of vengeance-lust and know better from it in the future.[105] While the rest of the LSH went on a mission in Space Sector 14 to capture master thief Benn Pares, Superboy remained in Legion HQ to guard the Miracle Machine from Pares's clutches. When the thought of entering a space-serpent's maw to reach Pares's lair sent Ultra Boy into a panic-attack that endangered the integrity of the Legion Cruiser, Superboy's stray thought about extricating his fellow Legionnaires from their peril was picked up by the Miracle Machine and teleported Superboy to within Pares's lair, to capture the villain and rescue the team.[106] Superboy led a team consisting of Brainiac 5, Wildfire, and Shadow Lass on a mission to reprogram the computer systems of a fully automated industrial planet owned by Leland McCauley, the United Planets' second-wealthiest man. Things became complicated when McCauley's spoiled son entered the picture, forcing the Legionnaires to save him from his father's deranged former employee who had sabotaged the planet's all-cybernetic security mechanisms.[107]

The Death of the Kents

During Clark's teenage years on Earth, the Kents had sold their farm, became shopkeepers in Smallville and settled into a more modern lifestyle supporting Clark's day-to-day life as well as his superhero activities. But they grew elderly and eventually died of a tropical fever, when on a voyage. Even with all his abilities and science, Clark could not save them. Before dying, Jonathan Kent reminded Clark to continue doing good deeds and not lose sight of who he was.[108]

The Secret Years

With the death of his foster parents, Clark left Smallville and resettled in Metropolis, deciding to continue his costumed career as a public hero. Attending university to obtain his degree in journalism for the sake of his future profession, Clark would continue to operate as Superboy in the city for some months. One of Clark's early Metropolis exploits would involve thwarting a scheme by Lex Luthor to manipulate a computerized banking system to make illicit transfers and withdrawals. Later, Clark would meet and fall head over heels for the handicapped foreign student Lori Lemaris, whom he would have informal dates with on multiple occasions. In addition, Clark rapidly made friends with fellow student Billy Cramer. Clark entrusted Billy with the secret of his double-life and bequeathed him a supersonic whistle to summon him in case of emergencies, but unfortunately, Billy was killed in the process of rescuing a child from a burning building while Superboy was preoccupied. Once more, Clark would acutely experience the guilt of failing to protect those important to him. To compound Clark's grief, Lori informed Clark that they would no longer see each other and that she would be returning to her homeland shortly. Clark investigated Lori's background out of concern and arrived at the fantastic conclusion that the woman he loved was a mermaid from Atlantis, dispatched to survey the progress of the surface world under human guise. Lori also revealed that she knew from her concealed telepathic abilities that Clark was Superboy all along. Together, Clark and Lori rescued a valley full of people from the flooding caused by a burst dam, and then shared one last intimate moment together before Lori returned to the ocean. Luthor made his comeback in spectacular fashion, launching a network of satellites into orbit around the Earth which would beam enough energy into Lex to make him into Superboy's physical equivalent. Hijacking every broadcasting frequency the world over, Luthor presented Superboy with an ultimatum: to face him one-on-one or watch as his satellites rained orbital devastation down upon the planet. Even with Luthor's new advantage, Superboy won the day and returned Luthor to prison. This victory would serve as a line of demarcation in Kal-El's costumed career: Feeling he had experienced enough that he no longer ranked as a kid, a seasoned Clark Kent changed his superhero alter ego from Superboy to Superman.[109][110][111][112][113]

The Man of Tomorrow

The Fortress of Solitude

Main article: Fortress of Solitude

One of the first determinations which Superman made as a fully-fledged costumed hero was to establish a base for himself to work on secret projects, store sensitive equipment and items, and be left to private thoughts. Superman created his first Fortress of Solitude in outer space, believing that he would be more isolated and undisturbed in space than in any Earthly locale. However, a malevolent presence called Urko the Terrible invaded the space-borne Fortress and tried to attack Superman by animating statues of his friends and loved ones, forcing Superman to destroy Urko. Subsequently, Superman scoped out an area in the Earth's core as a potential location for a second Fortress, only to be assaulted by a sentient race of magma-creatures which he had disturbed.[114] For a time, Superman maintained an undersea fortress, but he finally elected to establish his Fortress's permanent location in the Arctic, hidden behind an enormous door capable of being unlocked only by a gigantic key, weighing hundreds of tons and disguised as an airplane marker.[115][116][117] Within the Fortress, Superman created halls dedicated to his greatest friends (i.e. Jimmy Olsen, Batman, Lois Lane, Legion of Super-Heroes) and most pernicious foes (i.e. Lex Luthor), including memorabilia from adventures involving them in some manner. In addition, Superman would store The Bottle City of Kandor and the Phantom Zone Projector in the Fortress, as well as an interplanetary zoo, an arsenal of high-tech and extraterrestrial-designed weaponry, and the incinerator pit called the Atomic Cauldron. While temporarily admitting the public into his Fortress for a charity drive, Superman failed to screen out two members of the Anti-Superman Gang, who combined the two components of a chemical explosive once inside and hid it. Only for the warning of the people of Kandor was Superman able to detect the explosive and dispose of it before nabbing the culprits.[114]

The Daily Planet

After graduating from college with his journalism degree, Clark rented an apartment and set about looking for a profession in the big city. Ultimately, Clark applied with the Daily Planet newspaper, where Perry White held a position as editor-in-chief and Lois Lane was already employed as a reporter. At first, Perry saw Clark as a pest and tried to stymie Clark into leaving, first by quizzing Clark on historically significant Planet bylines, then by sending Clark on assignments to uneventful, humdrum locations, and finally by tasking Clark with convincing Superman to pose with a confiscated chunk of Kryptonite in front of a camera. To Perry's astonishment, Clark managed everything Perry had requested (with a little help from his super-powers) in spite of the impossibility of it all, so Clark was hired on as an investigative reporter. Over the next few years, Clark and Perry would develop a healthy mutual respect, with Perry never once suspecting that "timid" Clark Kent was in fact the Man of Steel.[118] However, Lois was considerably keener than Perry in that department and harbored unconfirmed suspicions that Clark was secretly the Man of Steel for years. At first, Lois believed that Clark's timid manner made it extremely unlikely that Clark was Superman, but a series of events changed her mind on the matter. She witnessed Clark crushing a telephone in his grip out of frustration and saw Clark change into costume on the night of a Daily Planet masquerade party. Lois tried testing her theory by exposing Clark to a minute quantity of Kryptonite concealed within a pipe. When Clark evidenced no weakness, Lois was prepared to give up until she realized that the pipe she had used was lead and would block the radiations. Although Clark substituted the lead pipe with an aluminum one while Lois was out-of-office to mislead her, Lois held her suspicions that Clark and Superman were the same man from that day forward.[119] Although Lois made numerous attempts to test her theory, she never succeeded in obtaining any concrete evidence. Lois's suspicions would recur upon noticing Clark making surreptitious usage of his Kryptonian abilities, only for Clark to mastermind an alibi or fabricate evidence of baseline human normalcy to put these suspicions to a rest, at least for the moment. Copy boy and staff photographer Jimmy Olsen became Superman's best pal, even being given a watch that could emit a supersonic frequency by Superman, to summon him in case of an emergency. Like Lois, Jimmy also went on his own series of adventures, although many involved bizarre and unusual transformations into superhuman or non-human beings. Once his reputation as "Superman's pal" became widespread, a fan club sprung up in honor of Jimmy, whose members wore bowties, red wigs and green plaid jackets in ritual imitation of the man. Jimmy himself became the fan club president.

The Thing From 40,000 A.D.

Superman would encounter all manner of nefarious villains and strange monsters in the first couple of years in his career. One notable antagonist was an amorphous creature with intentions of world conquest, known only as The Thing From 40,000 A.D.. After arriving from the distant future of 40,000 A.D., the gelatinous monstrosity duplicated Superman's form and powers and engaged him in a lengthy battle. Only when Superman's and the creature's respective durability levels were tested by an A-bomb test did the monster meet its demise.[120]

Superman vs. Lex Luthor

Lex Luthor continued to be the source of innumerable problems for Superman, especially in his early career when few other foes matched Luthor's cunning and intellect. In an era when a dearth of truly powerful enemies caused Superman's indestructibility to go mostly unchallenged, Luthor devised all manner of ingenious gimmicks to circumvent it. On one occasion, Luthor created an armor that would siphon and redirect Superman's power. Luthor set off a series of explosions around Metropolis to trick Superman into expending himself physically attending to them, while Luthor built up that expended energy within his armor and used it to go on a one-man crime spree. Superman defeated Luthor by deliberately exposing himself to Kryptonite, causing the energy in Luthor's armor to dissipate along with his own.[121] On another occasion, Luthor ingested a serum that enabled him to passively emit Kryptonite radiation from his body, briefly rechristening himself the Kryptonite Man, and using a satellite device to transmute all lead on Earth into glass. Forced to flee from Luthor and unable to use lead armor for protection, Superman resorted to trickery to convince Luthor that his serum was inert and manipulate him into ingesting the antidote.[122] After Superman made an alliance with Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder, Lex Luthor responded by opening a period of cooperation with the Joker to humiliate their longtime enemies. To accomplish this, Luthor and Joker feigned reformation and entered into a legitimate business enterprise in mass-producing android laborers called "Mechano-Men" for menial jobs. Multiple times, Luthor and the Joker deceived Superman and Batman into believing them to be committing criminal activity, in order to make the legendary heroes appear as impulsive fools to the public. Superman took up impersonating one of Luthor's Mechano-Men to investigate the evil duo for plans of villainy, only to be detected by Luthor and Joker almost immediately. Nevertheless, Luthor and Joker tried to make Superman's cluelessness work to their advantage, conducting a quick heist while Mechano-Men built in their images were busy taking up the heroes' attentions elsewhere. Fortunately, Superman and Batman outsmarted Luthor and Joker and sent them both up the river.[123] Superman and Batman would team up against Lex again when the villain shrunk himself and his gang down to the size of dolls, tricked Superman into smuggling them into the Fortress of Solitude, and invaded Kandor with the intention of establishing their rule in the bottle city, raiding it for Kryptonian technology and weapons, and luring Superman into the city to overpower and capture him. Batman and Robin discovered Luthor's scheme by pursuing leads through the members of his gang and provided the assistance to Superman which ultimately proved pivotal to Luthor's defeat.[124] At a technology expo, a disguised Luthor tried to trick Superman into testing a faulty teleporter, which would disassemble Superman at the atomic scale, but the plot was exposed by Batman, Robin and Batwoman.[125] Later, Luthor would summon Hercules from the mythical past to help him knock over banks. This time, it was Hercules's own self-image as a hero and distaste for being used which caused Luthor's plan to backfire.[126] In spite of repeated failure, Luthor's boundless ego prevented him from ever stopping to try to best the Man of Steel, with such ingenious devices as a cannon that could absorb and redirect Superman's power at him, an illusion-caster that could make Superman artificially sense the proximity of Kryptonite, and a spherical prison capsule linked by EM wave emissions to a nuclear bomb underneath the foundations of Metropolis.[127][128][129]



was always Superman's most implacable foe. Lex Luthor was always Superman's most implacable foe.

Luthor created his own answer to Superman's Fortress of Solitude in the form of "Luthor's Lair", a concealed hideout within a museum building whose construction Luthor had funded under a false identity. The main defining feature of Luthor's Lair was a Hall of Heroes containing statues of Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, Captain Kidd, Al Capone and other infamous marauders and outlaws. Luthor vowed to add his own statue to the gallery once he had contented himself with Superman's humiliation and destruction.[128] The police eventually became privy to knowledge of the lair's location and surrounded him, forcing Luthor to blast off in a rocket for another world populated by sentient androids. When Luthor was held prisoner there for the destruction of one of the ruling robot-caste, Superman had to outwit the robots so Luthor could complete his sentence on Earth. Afterwards, Luthor forced Superman to let him go, pointing out that the robot planet was outside the jurisdiction of Earth law, although it also meant he would be marooned on the planet as a consequence.[130] Winning the robot ruling-caste's trust by providing them with a defense against a swarm of belligerent giant insects, Luthor contrived to release three rebels of the planet's underclass from cryogenic suspension and transformed them with his machines into creatures made of diamond, lead and Green Kryptonite. Luthor used these beings to attack interplanetary shipping lanes as a space-pirate to provoke another confrontation with Superman, but the android henchmen rebelled against their evil master, sacrificing themselves so that Luthor could be stopped.[131] Back on Earth, Luthor tried to use a device on Superman to turn him into an incorporeal wraith, but wound up creating a "negative" duplicate of Superman instead.[132] After perfecting the device (or a similar machine), Luthor teamed up with the Joker once again to confound Superman and Batman and rob a rare gem exhibit in Metropolis.[133] Luthor formed an alliance with a duo of greedy aliens to draw Superman off-world and use an android duplicate to impersonate him on Earth. By making the Superman robot perform crimes such as looting silver, Luthor could make Superman's name anathema to the people of Metropolis and recompense the aliens with the stolen silver, which was the most valuable specie on their home-planet. Fortunately, the real Superman untangled Luthor's scheme with Batman and Robin's help and cleared his name.[134]

Superman vs. Brainiac



Superman's first encounter with Superman's first encounter with Brainiac

Superman's greatest enemy (Lex Luthor excluded) was not destined to come from the Earth but rather from the stars, as Brainiac, self-proclaimed Master of Super-Scientific Forces, descended upon the blue planet to miniaturize several of the world's major cities, including Metropolis, and teleport them into oxygenated bottles simulating the environments and gravity of the captive cities' world of origin. Reduced in size to that of an insect, Superman set about contriving a way to free the captive Earth cities from Brainiac's grip, only to make the unexpected find of a preserved Kryptonian city in miniature, Kandor. Brainiac captured the city prior to Krypton's destruction, which Superman learned about during his sojourn in the bottle city. Superman then waited for Brainiac to believe he had won, whereupon he entered suspended animation, and used the machinery in Brainiac's ship to restore the Earth cities to their proper sizes and locations upon the planet. With only enough charge left to enlarge himself or Kandor, Superman was prepared to sacrifice for the welfare of his people, only for the decision to be taken out of his hands when a Kandorian scientist pressed the button to enlarge Superman instead. Superman then kept Kandor under safekeeping in his Fortress of Solitude, vowing to its citizens that he would see to its enlargement and freedom by any means necessary.[135] Later, Brainiac returned to Earth to expose Superman to a blast containing radiations of Green Kryptonite and Red Kryptonite. To divert suspicions about his true identity and keep Brainiac guessing, Superman convinced everyone that the effect of the blast was to compel Superman to carry out rescues and solve crimes while wearing unusual hats, though the truth was that Superman manifested a third eye on the back of his head which his activities were intended to obfuscate. Beating Brainiac with a concentrated burst of heat vision, Superman sent the villain into the distant past.[136] Brainiac remained in a state of suspended animation within his space-craft from the Mesozoic Era through the invention of the first wheel by prehistoric man. Awakened when said wheel smashed into the protective glass of his space-pod, Brainiac returned through a time-warp to the present and challenged Superman while he, as Clark Kent, was accompanying Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen and Perry White to investigate a native uprising in the Congo. Neutralizing Superman with a Kryptonite-gas grenade, Brainiac reduced the Man of Tomorrow and his Daily Planet friends to the size of ants and encapsulated them in a bottle. Brainiac was undone when Congorilla, controlled by the intelligence of big-game hunter Congo Bill, helped Superman and friends out of their captivity while Brainiac was distracted by the unusual behavior of Congo Bill, whose body in turn fell under the control of the gorilla's intelligence.[137]

The Menace of Metallo

John Corben, a reporter by profession and racketeer/murderer on the side, ran off the road in his automobile one rainy night and was reconstructed by the benevolent Professor Emmett Vale as a cyborg dependent upon uranium capsules to survive on a day-to-day basis. Although Vale did mention that one other substance had the potential to sustain Corben in his new body indefinitely, he collapsed from a stroke before divulging that detail, even as his house became buried under a rockslide. Corben soon discovered his superior strength and invulnerability, going on a rampage in the pursuit of uranium stockpiles held at military and research facilities. Branded by the press as Metallo, Corben took advantage of the fact that his identity remained unknown to the authorities, seeking a job at the Daily Planet as an excuse to get close to Lois Lane and even letting her believe that he was Superman. Meanwhile, Corben returned to a revived Professor Vale and learned from Vale that Kryptonite was the substance that could power him indefinitely. Metallo then seized the Kryptonite in Vale's house safe and implanted it in his chest like a "heart" to grant him a permanent charge. Guessing at Metallo's M.O., Superman arranged to have a fake Kryptonite rock put on display in a museum, hoping to trap Metallo. The trap worked almost too well, as Metallo removed his Kryptonite heart to hold Superman at bay while substituting it for the fake Kryptonite on display. As a result, Metallo died for his error, whereas Superman melted the real Kryptonite with his heat vision just in time to save his life.[138]

The Supergirl From Krypton



arrives on Earth Supergirl arrives on Earth

A few months after finding Kandor, Superman witnessed a Kryptonian rocket crashing near the outskirts of Metropolis. When Superman went to check out the place, he found his cousin Kara. Evidently, a metropolitan district on Krypton named Argo City was not destroyed with the planet itself, but rather propelled into deep space with an atmosphere-retaining protective dome around it. When the soil upon which Argo City was built turned to Green Kryptonite (actually a sub-variant called Anti-Kryptonite that could affect even depowered Kryptonians) due to irradiation, Jor-El's brother Zor-El had the ground plated with lead to protect the Kryptonian survivors from succumbing. Over time, Zor-El affixed a jet drive to the base of Argo City to allow it to blast through space into a system with a yellow sun. Religious fanatic Jer-Em opposed this decision, believing that Rao created the Kryptonian race to live under the rays of a red sun and never to manifest super-powers, so he tampered with the jet drive to propel Argo City back into Krypton's solar system. For his counterproductive interference, Zor-El banished Jer-Em to the Phantom Zone. As a result of Jer-Em's actions, Argo City collided with a shower of meteoroids that punctured its lead plating, consigning its inhabitants to slowly die of Kryptonite poisoning. Like Jor-El before him, Zor-El only had sufficient time to construct a one-person space vessel and sent his daughter Kara to Earth to reunite with her cousin Kal-El. Overjoyed to find his long-lost relative but being unable to take care of her at the time, Superman sent his teen cousin to Midvale Orphanage under the human alias "Linda Lee," even as he trained her to control her vast powers.[138][139][140] During this time, Kara embarked on her own series of independent adventures separate from those of her famous cousin. The first time that Supergirl directly involved herself in one of Superman's adventures was when the Kandorian scientist Kull-Ex framed Superman for causing catastrophes on Earth.[141] The Legion of Super-Heroes would appear to Supergirl with an offer of membership, but sadly, she flunked their entry test for new applicants on a technicality and was told to try again some other time.[126] Next year, the Legion returned for Supergirl to try again. This time, she and Brainiac 5 were chosen for membership. Supergirl and Brainiac 5 felt an attraction to each other starting from their first meeting, though for several years Supergirl's "official" boyfriend was Jerro, an Atlantean merman. As Linda Lee, Supergirl also grew attracted to a boy named Dick Malverne, whom she first met in the orphanage. Supergirl's final test of fortitude began when the wicked Kandorian scientist and Kara Zor-El look-alike, Lesla-Lar, used a teleportation/size-reduction ray on Kara while she slept at night to switch places with Kara in Midvale. To perfect the involuntary swap, Lesla-Lar brainwashed the sleeping Kara upon arrival in Kandor, so that Kara would in fact believe herself to be Lesla-Lar until returned to her proper place outside the bottle city. Impersonating Supergirl, Lesla-Lar hatched a scheme to assist Lex Luthor in creating a Kryptonite-ray weapon, with the intention of killing Lex in a staged accident after Lex killed Superman. From there, Lesla-Lar would indulge in the fame and attention that she knew Kara would receive had Superman ever allowed her to go public, in addition to plotting the takeover of the Earth at her leisure. However, Lesla-Lar's plan was repeatedly disrupted by Kara's activities in Kandor while brainwashed into her false identity, the interference of Krypto, who could smell the difference between Lesla-Lar and Kara, and the need for the plan to accommodate both Lesla-Lar's and Kara's Circadian rhythms. During the periods when Lesla-Lar was restricted to Kandor, she robbed Kara of her powers artificially using an energy siphon. Fortunately, the convoluted scheme was put on ice before it could reach fruition by the Kandorian police, who discovered that Lesla-Lar was experimenting with forbidden materials and arrested her. Meanwhile, Kara learned from Superman's vain efforts to restore her powers that she could manifest them in past and future time periods, but not in the present. Then, suddenly, Kara did appear to regain her powers, plus an immunity to Kryptonite radiation, but unbeknowst to her, these were powers bestowed on her by Mr. Mxyzptlk with magic as part of an intended prank on Superman. As these events were occurring, there was a shake-up of the status quo in Kara's personal life, as she was adopted by the caring suburbanite Danvers family and began to take her relationship with Dick Malverne to the next level. Confident in her newfound immunity to Kryptonite, Supergirl tried to gather up Red Kryptonite meteoroids and destroy them for the benefit of her cousin, only to realize too late that she was only made specifically immune to Green Kryptonite. After suffering through 6 Red K-induced mutations, Supergirl regained her Kryptonian abilities in earnest and was introduced by Superman before the entire world and officially deputized as an enforcer of the law by all the United Nations, complete with an international passport. Superman also helped Linda reveal her identity as Supergirl to her new adoptive parents, after Linda was forced to use her powers to save their car from a bridge collapse. Linda and Superman made sure to swear the Danvers family into secrecy about Linda's double-life, for the sake of their own protection. Not long after, Supergirl had one of her first true independent victories, defeating the Infinite Monster by replicating Brainiac 5's shrink-ray with blueprints sent from the future. Afterwards, Superman declared Supergirl coequal with him in their shared mission and placed trust in her to substitute for him during periods of absence.[142][143][137][144][145][146][147][148] Supergirl was tested once again when Lex Luthor launched another crime-spree, believing her very existence to be a hoax conjured by Superman to discourage criminals while off-world (and apparently having dismissed or forgotten about Lesla-Lar's impersonation). Luthor made his move by trying a duplicate of Brainiac's shrink-ray on a bank franchise and stealing it away. When Supergirl intervened, Luthor fled and accidentally killed himself. Resolute that Luthor should serve out his sentence in full, Supergirl found a way to revive Luthor from clinical death and returned him to prison.[149] Supergirl would continue to operate on an independent basis, amassing her own cast of friends, such as Lex Luthor's sister Lena, the housecat Streaky, who was artificially empowered by X-Kryptonite, and the centaur Biron, who was transformed by a mystical enchantment into Comet the Super-Horse. Then came the day that Supergirl discovered that her biological parents did not truly die with the rest of Argo City but in fact beamed themselves into an other-dimensional "Survival Zone" parallel to the Phantom Zone. Because of the proximity of the Survival Zone to Earth, Zor-El and Allura made telepathic contact with Kara and instructed her to release them. Upon their escape, Zor-El and Allura realized that their daughter had formed a legitimate connection with her human foster-parents and that they did not fit into Earth society, so they entered the bottle-city of Kandor to resume the relationships they had once formed on Krypton, while allowing Kara to have two sets of parents for the two different "worlds" she inhabited: Krypton and Earth.[150] Soon after, Linda graduated from high school and began taking classes at Stanhope College.[151] Supergirl's ability would again be validated when she triumphed in a solo encounter against Brainiac during one of her cousin's excursions with the Justice League.[152]

Superman vs. Bizarro

A menace from Superman's past would be restored, as Lex Luthor recreated the imperfect Duplicator Ray of Professor Dalton and tricked Superman into letting Luthor use it on him. As a result, Luthor produced a Bizarro Superman that retained the memories of his predecessor but had an overwhelming compulsion to prove its worth to Lois Lane. Obsessed with winning Lois's hand in marriage, Bizarro whisked the lady reporter to a tropical island and created an imperfect duplicate of himself with the Duplicator Ray. The result was a new Bizarro that had the unblemished, unaltered appearance of the real Superman but the corrupted, childlike mind of the original Bizarro. While Lois may not have been more impressed by the new Bizarro than the old one, the two flawed entities found much to despise about the other and were soon embroiled in a duel to the death. With Superman's help, the original Bizarro destroyed the new Bizarro, and Lois used the Duplicator Ray on herself to create a perfect mate for Bizarro: a Bizarro Lois Lane. Together, the two took off for the depths of space, to find an imperfect world that they could call their own.[153][154]

Bizarro and his bride settled upon an uninhabited Earth-like world and stumbled upon the ruins of an extinct civilization, reusing the materials of its abandoned cities to create a distorted replica of Metropolis. When Bizarro Lois grew lonely, Bizarro used the Duplicator Ray to create an entire population of Bizarro Supermen and Bizarro Lois Lanes. The originals were enshrined as rulers of the planet and distinguished themselves from their subjects by wearing necklaces bearing stone engravings proclaiming them both #1. By chance, Superman stumbled upon the Bizarro World and committed one faux pas too many in working to make things "more perfect" for the benefit of its people. Little did Superman know that this was a grave violation of the Bizarro Code, which enforced a reverence for ugliness and adherence to the opposite of normal Earthly conduct as laws, causing Bizarro #1 to have Superman jailed along with a select population of Bizarros which lacked the backwards insanity characteristic of their kind. As punishment, Superman was sentenced to transformation into a Bizarro, whereas a Bizarro Lois that unsuccessfully tried to free Superman disguised as Bizarro Lois #1 was sentenced to death. Fortunately, Superman stymied Bizarro #1 by pointing out that the shape of their planet (Htrae) was not wildly deviant from Earth's shape, forcing him to let Superman and the other prisoners go on principle of making up for hypocrisy. Once free, Superman terraformed Htrae into a cube-shaped planetary mass, granting the Bizarros' wish to have a truly imperfect world at last.[155][156] Bizarro #1 and Bizarro Lois #1 went on to have a baby, which appeared as a normal human and wound up on Earth due to his father's negligence. Superman and Supergirl took custody of the baby, unaware of its origins until it eventually took upon the appearance of a Bizarro as part of its natural metamorphosis. The baby Bizarro was detected on Earth by Bizarro #1, and when the complication of a Bizarro Supergirl on Earth who was possessive of the baby presented itself, Earth and Htrae entered into interplanetary war. Superman thankfully defused the situation by using the Duplicator Ray on Green Kryptonite to create Blue Kryptonite, a variant exclusively lethal to Bizarros, and returning the baby to his father. Meanwhile, Bizarro Supergirl was killed by the Blue K.[157]

The Mischief of Mr. Mxyzptlk

Superman continued to be bedeviled by the imp from the 5th-dimensional land of Zrfff, Mr. Mxyzptlk, although the nature of Mxyzptlk's pranks remained more annoying than malicious. Every time Superman would contrive some way to make the magical being say his name backwards and return to his own dimension, and upon every return Mxyzptlk would think of some new way to "cover his blind spots" from previous defeats, such as by using hypnotism on Superman, submerging himself in water, or installing an alarm into his derby hat.[158][159][160] On occasion, Mxyzptlk would change his name to make Superman's task of making him say it backwards more difficult, but Superman always found a way to manage and leave Mxy in the dust.[161] Uncharacteristically, Mr. Mxyzptlk once tried to outdo Superman by becoming a Metropolis-based super-hero and performing good deeds instead of irritating pranks, but Bizarro accidentally sent Mxy back to Zrfff during a brief sojourn on Earth by dedicating a statue with commemorative plaque to the imp in Bizarro-form, startling Mxy such that he read his backwards-spelled name off the plaque in disbelief. Mxy irrationally blamed Superman for his downfall as a hero and reverted back to his old modus operandi on his next outing.[162]

Titano the Super-Ape



Superman fights Superman fights Titano

When the extraordinarily intelligent chimpanzee Toto was launched into space by NASA, his space pod was bathed in the radioactive energies of colliding plutonium and Kryptonite meteoroids. Upon returning to Earth, Toto grew to a gigantic size and manifested the ability to emit Kryptonite-radiation eye-beams, making him a formidable threat to Superman. While the U.S. Army sought to put the beast down, Lois Lane sympathized with the Super-Ape, knowing that its actions were not the product of malice so much as confusion, and with Superman's help, Lois managed to stop the overgrown chimp's rampage. To spare it from being euthanized by the army, Superman breached the time-barrier and deposited the creature now called Titano in the Mesozoic Era, from where it was assumed never to be capable of returning.[163] A year later, Titano returned to modern-day Metropolis because of a technological fluke and went on a rampage until Superman stopped him again and returned him to the distant past.[164] Titano was befriended by Krypto during one of the Superdog's romps through the timestream.[165]

The Superman Emergency Squad

Superman was almost done in when billionaire philanthropist John Kiley, who had good relations with Clark Kent for years, faked being on his deathbed in order to press Clark to admit to being Superman. As the secret leader of the Anti-Superman Gang, Kiley used that knowledge to lure Clark into a Kryptonite deathtrap at one of his mines, forcing the city of Kandor to assemble an ad hoc taskforce, the Superman Emergency Squad, to save his life. Kiley and his gang were arrested and taken to jail, but not before the appearance of Supergirl and the Emergency Squad (neither of whose existences were public knowledge at the time) was used by Superman to convince Kiley that Clark Kent's confession to being Superman was a drug-induced hallucination.[166] The Superman Emergency Squad would be of immense help to the Man of Steel on a number of further occasions, spawning ideas of similar Kandorian auxiliary teams such as the Supergirl Emergency Squad.

The Loved and Lost

Lois Lane was Superman's most frequent romantic interest after making his debut in Metropolis, though their relationship could often seem one-sided. Though Superman always cared for Lois and came to her rescue when the situation called for it, he felt that his immense powers and responsibility to the world to preserve freedom and fight crime made the maintenance of a love-life unnecessarily burdensome. On top of that, Superman suspected on many an occasion that Lois was more fascinated by his popularity and might than actually attracted to his personal qualities. Additionally, Lois's reporter's instinct led her on a quest to uncover Superman's secret identity, which she always suspected was Clark Kent. Although Lois's suspicions were on the mark, of course, she was never able to conclusively prove anything, thanks to Superman's own quick-wittedness and talent for misdirection. Nevertheless, having his prospective girlfriend poke around in an area best left unexplored did not endear him to the notion of a long-term commitment at any rate. Lana Lang, who was infatuated with Superboy during Clark Kent's adolescence, also returned as an important figure in Superman's adult life, having become a TV-news reporter in her maturity. Often Lana would compete with Lois for Superman's hand in marriage, though at some level both women knew that the Last Son of Krypton would never have either of them so long as he retained his duty to humanity. Lori Lemaris would also return to Superman's life as an adult. Clark Kent's first suspicion that Lori was back was while overhearing an urban legend about a mermaid that stops illegal fishing in the spawning waters. Clark and Lori reunited and thought of rekindling their relationship, but Lori's informal nemesis, a disgruntled fisherman, attacked her with a harpoon, forcing Superman to search the stars for an alien surgeon from an aquatic planet, who might have insight into the physiology of mer-people. Superman was successful, but Lori quickly fell in love with the alien merman that Superman brought back, Ronal. Soon, the two were married, but that didn't stop Lori and Clark from frequently interacting, typically in some capacity having to do with Superman's love life vis-a-vis Lois Lane.[167][168][169] On an accidental trip through time to Krypton, several years before its destruction, Superman fell in love with the actress Lyla Lerrol. Tragically, any permanent romance between the two was not to be, as the circumstance of Krypton's looming death and the necessity of Superman's departure prior to the cataclysm cut their relationship short. Like everyone else on Krypton at the time of its destruction, Lyla Lerrol perished, to be mourned by her erstwhile lover decades into the future and light years away.[170]

Tales of the Phantom Zone

The Superman Revenge Squad

When a rift began to open between the Phantom Zone and the physical world, which would grow wide enough for its imprisoned criminals to escape, Mon-El warned Superman of the peril at hand, in spite of his incorporeal state. After technologically reducing himself to the size of a child to fit through the rift and consult with Mon-El about the problem, Superman eventually determined that the phenomenon of the Aurora Borealis was responsible for the rift and closed it by focusing his heat vision upon it with Supergirl and Krypto.Kryptonian mad scientist Jax-Ur later escaped the Phantom Zone by influencing the mind of Fred Danvers into concocting a serum that breached the veil between dimensions, but Supergirl drove him back with the help of Mon-El Several criminals from the Phantom Zone were released by a space-warp caused by a 50-megaton atom bomb test and took up residence in a Southwestern ghost town. Anonymously tipping Lois Lane on to the town's existence, the Phantom Zoners spun a false tale of how they arrived on Earth from Krypton to draw Superman to them, in order so they could banish Superman to the Zone in their place. Superman deduced their intentions and beat the Phantom Zoners in a traditional Wild West showdown, with miniaturized Phantom Zone Projectors in place of pistols.For the first time, Superman was compelled by his sense of righteousness into releasing a Phantom Zoner upon completion of his sentence. Quex-Ul , who was sentenced to the Phantom Zone for 25 years for poaching Rondors back on Krypton, tried to depower Superman with Gold Kryptonite upon release. Meanwhile, Superman and Supergirl learned that Quex-Ul was not a true criminal, but was rather hypnotized by the real poacher into taking the fall for his misdeeds. Upon being told this, Quex-Ul sacrificed himself to prevent Superman from being exposed to Gold K, not only permanently losing all his powers but also losing all his memories as well. With Superman's endorsement, Quex-Ul was given the new identity of "Charlie Kweskill" and given a job in the production department of the Daily Planet, none the wiser about his Kryptonian origins.Fresh upon release from captivity in Kandor Lesla-Lar , Supergirl's nemesis and one-time impersonator, switched places with Lena Thorul to release 3 criminals from the Phantom Zone-- Kru-El General Zod and Jax-Ur-- and plot their takeover of the Earth. Unearthing the casket of forbidden weapons that Kal-El had deposited into the ocean years ago as Superboy, the Phantom Zoners used one of their weapons upon Lesla-Lar, killing her, and another on Supergirl when she arrived to respond to the disturbance. Supergirl had to call upon the assistance of Superman and Lex Luthor (whose motivation was to rescue his sister) to turn the tables on the villains and put them back where they belong. In the aftermath, Lena was extricated from the bottle-city of Kandor and her brother Lex was returned to his prison cell.Jax-Ur later leveraged an appeal to the Phantom Zone parole board in Kandor to engineer Jewel Kryptonite from shards of Krypton's Jewel Mountains . The previously unknown variety of Kryptonite enhanced Phantom Zoners' psionic abilities as wraiths to the point of having a palpable effect on the physical plane, allowing Jax-Ur to cause mass destruction on Earth with telekinetically-induced spontaneous combustion. Only by the telepathic warning of Lori Lemaris was Superman able to discover the source of Jewel K in orbit around the Earth and neutralize it.

A consortium of would-be universal conquerors from the planet Wexr II banded together as the Superman Revenge Squad to retaliate against the Man of Tomorrow for crushing their ambitions back when he was Superboy. Their revenge would repeatedly revolve around orchestrating some improbable series of catastrophes with alien technology to derail Superman's life and impair his ability to function as a crime-fighter. In their first appearance, the Revenge Squad exposed Superman to Red Kryptonite without his knowing to cause him to lapse into bizarre dreams of strange futuristic scenarios and launching an invasion of Earth once Superman realized he could no longer trust in his own senses to guide him. Superman prevailed when he recognized a pattern in his Red K-induced dreams that was not present in the Revenge Squad's invasion scenario and stopped them.[177][178] The Revenge Squad returned with a psionic weapon that would cause Superman to go mad and lash out at everyone in his vicinity, with the aim of ruining his reputation with the people of Earth. After several destructive incidents, Superman turned the tables by executing a plan with the assistance of Perry White and the Superman Emergency Squad.[179] The Revenge Squad struck again and tricked Superman into following their ships through a time-warp into a far-flung future. In this period, the Sun had become a red giant and boiled the Earth's oceans away, and humanity had abandoned the planet to colonize distant worlds millennia ago. Under the red Sun's rays, Superman lost all his powers and trekked across the barren landscape, accompanied only by an ancient robot of Perry White, until he reached the Fortress of Solitude, where Superman found the machinery required to return to his own time.[180] The Revenge Squad's next attempt on Superman's life involved transferring the intelligence of a Superman robot to a chemically-augmented quasi-human body and sending him to Earth as Wonder-Man to compete with and ultimately destroy Superman. The Revenge Squad was done in this time when Wonder-Man turned on his "handlers" and united with Superman to drive the alien menace off-planet.[181] The Revenge Squad next created android duplicates of Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, Perry White, Supergirl, Batman and Lori Lemaris, kidnapping the real versions and holding them in suspended animation in a cave, to convince Superman that his Daily Planet friends had discovered his secret identity from his super-friends and were using the knowledge as leverage to enforce blackmail demands. Superman deduced the villains' plan when he noticed certain abnormalities giving his "friends" away as non-human replicas and freed their likenesses from captivity.[182] As the Revenge Squad grew more audacious in its endeavors to destroy Superman, it attracted failed dictators and fallen petty tyrants from beyond Wexr II, expanding into a veritable confederation of interstellar despots, raiders and brigands. Some splinter groups of the Revenge Squad took to shaving their heads bald in ritual imitation of Superman's arch-enemy Lex Luthor and adopted a "team uniform" in a manner of speaking: a variant of Superman's own uniform with a green luminescent version of the S-crest, meant to invoke the imagery of Green Kryptonite.[183]

The Legion of Super-Villains

Cobbling together a communication device capable of penetrating the time-barrier in search of allies, Lex Luthor came upon the 30th Century rogues called the Legion of Super-Villains, consisting of Cosmic King, Lightning Lord and Saturn Queen. Together, Luthor and the LSV lured Superman into a Kryptonite death-trap, but they were interrupted by the arrival of the Legion of Super-Heroes, who turned the tides in Superman's favor. Superman won the day by manipulating Saturn Queen into turning on her allies.[184] Planning their revenge from the future, the LSV sent two Durlan henchmen to the 20th Century as emissaries of chaos. The Durlans gathered Red Kryptonite meteorites together into a crude statue of Superman on a small island. Then, disguised as admirals of the U.S. Navy, the Durlans sent Jimmy Olsen of the Daily Planet an anonymous news tip about the statue, knowing that he would bring Clark Kent and Lois Lane along with him. Their plan succeeded in exposing Clark to the Red K radiations, but fortunately, the first induced mutation was not a bizarre, revealing physical transformation, giving Clark the time to think about how to remove Lois and Jimmy from the vicinity before more disturbing mutations set in. After weathering all the Red K-induced mutations without harming anyone or exposing his secret identity, Superman was called to join a summit between the leaders of the United States and Russia. Using the temporary telepathy granted by the last Red K-induced mutation, Superman realized that the world leaders attending the summit were in fact the Durlans and exposed them, returning them to their native time-period for punishment.[185]

Nightwing and Flamebird

When Kandorian scientist Than-Ol invented an enlargement procedure by which Kandor could hypothetically be restored, he and his men convinced the majority of the bottle-city's people that Superman was deliberately withholding knowledge of the procedure out of a desire to preserve his perceived uniqueness on Earth. Superman became aware of the situation when several of Than-Ol's enlarged henchmen conducted raids of Earth laboratories for elements to perform the enlargement procedure on a large scale. Superman and Jimmy Olsen tracked the raiders to Kandor and shrunk themselves down into the bottle-city, at which point they realized the people had been turned against Superman. Powerless inside the bottle, Superman adopted the identity of costumed adventurer Nightwing, inspired by his crime-fighting partner Batman, while Jimmy became a Robin-inspired persona named Flamebird. With the help of Superman's kinsman Van-Zee, Jor-El's old friend Nor-Kann and the Superman Emergency Squad, Superman and Jimmy uncovered that Than-Ol's enlargement procedure stood the chance of causing Kandor's disintegration if not reversed within a 3-hour time period and proved this point to the city's inhabitants, saving their lives and regaining their trust.[186]

The Never-Ending Battle

After masterminding his next jailbreak, Lex hijacked television and radio broadcasting frequencies to challenge Superman. Alleging that all Superman's previous victories were solely on account of the powers imbued by the yellow Sun, Lex claimed that Superman would lose if both were put on a level playing field to match wits. Superman faced Luthor's challenge to preserve the people's confidence in his ability as a hero and consented to face Luthor on a planet orbiting a red sun, where all of Superman's powers would be instantly negated. After going one round with the de-powered Superman and losing, Luthor fled into a sandstorm on the desertified world and forced Superman into pursuit. Eventually, Luthor came across a people who once possessed an advanced technological civilization but fell into a dark age in the aftermath of a cataclysmic war. Reactivating several of the machines which the aliens no longer knew how to use, Lex made vast improvements in their lives before Superman caught up to resume their battle. In the rematch, Luthor and Superman dueled with ancient weapons native to the planet's construction, and Luthor would have won if not for his promise to the aliens that he would restore the planet's long-evaporated bodies of water. Lex forfeited the fight to Superman and allowed himself to be returned to Earth a captive, but only on the condition that Superman should hurl titanic icebergs from a nearby icy planet to the barren seafloor of the desert wo