posted March 13, 2003 11:58 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Aldous:
The Legion is moving through time, as you do, but Superboy would not be. He returns to the 20th Century at the moment he left!

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Hmmm. I never saw it that way.

It seemed that with their first meeting, two stakes were stuck in the time line, one in 1958, the other in 2958. From that point on, time progressed equally for both Superboy and the Legion. So all the time travel was very neat and tidy. The Legion never came back to see Superboy before their last trip; and Superboy never arrived in the 30th Century at a time before he'd already been there.

Furthermore, unlike Hal Jordan, Superboy is not always being plucked out of time by the Legion. More often than not, he just flies through time on his own when the need or the mood strikes.

Here's another digression: How the heck does someone time travelling without a time maachine with a handy chronometer know what year, month, day, and hour he's arriving?

I haven't seriously followed Legion continuity since the '60s, so I don't know. When the stories forst started, as I said, Superboy was in 1958 and the Legion was in 2958. Then the following year, Supes was in 1959 and the Legionaires all arrived from 2959, and so on through the decade. These days are the Legion stories taking place in 3003?

To go James Friel one better, I'd say that it just doesn't pay to inquire too closely into the ANYTHING in time travel stories.

posted March 14, 2003 05:47 AM            

quote:

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Originally posted by James Friel:
Electronic record keeping techniques are proving to be less than relible--already there are old computer records that can't be read. It may be unlikely, but it isn't impossible that no physical records will survive of some important events.

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This is where the printed word, as in books, has a tremendous advantage over computer records, whether on old-fashioned reel-to-reel tapes, CD-Roms, or floppy discs - in the distant future they may not have the appropiate operating systems to play these back, thereby rendering them useless, whereas as a book is always readable (if translateable), provided it has not crumbled to dust or rotted away, particularly in damp or humid conditions.

As far as records being very incomplete in the 30th century - well that doesn't to be a problem, in "Zap Goes the Legion" (Action Comics #386), for instance, several legionnaires are shown watching the Jeffries-Johnson boxing bout from 1910 on a 3-D time-scope. If they can zero in on that why not any other historical or mysterious period?

One serious lapse in logic often seen in time-travel stories, which seems very obvious to me at least, is that frequently the hero receives an urgent summons to come to the future.
But why the big hurry? The future hasn't occurred yet, so what does it matter if the hero doesn't leave straight away? Whether he leaves in ten minutes, ten hours, ten days, ten weeks, ten months, ten years, or even fifty years, he can still arrive at the appropiate time in the future.

posted March 14, 2003 11:41 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Old Dude:
Hmmm. I never saw it that way.

Here's another digression: How the heck does someone time travelling without a time maachine with a handy chronometer know what year, month, day, and hour he's arriving?

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posted March 14, 2003 12:10 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Old Dude:
Hmmm. I never saw it that way.

It seemed that with their first meeting, two stakes were stuck in the time line, one in 1958, the other in 2958.

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A minor point, perhaps, but Superboy's marker actually would have been somewhere in the 1940s, right? It was *Superman* who lived in 1958. Assuming that the adult Clark was 29, Superboy's adventures were set roughly 17-13 years earlier, when he was 12-16 or so. I admit that DC never devoted much time to having this make much sense, nor should they have.

And yes, the current Legion is set 1000 years from this year.

posted March 14, 2003 12:19 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Lee Semmens:

But why the big hurry? The future hasn't occurred yet, so what does it matter if the hero doesn't leave straight away?

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Maybe it's just me, but this sounds like it has the makings of an Alan Moore piece, like Supreme, or one of his clever Tom Strong short stories--hero is woken up in the morning by a desperate appeal from the future, eats breakfast, walks the dog, does crossword puzzle, goes fishing, relaxes in sauna, takes in a movie, then just before bed heads to the future and saves everybody in the nick of time.

posted March 14, 2003 12:24 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by lshjsa:
The time traveller just simply paid attention to the handy-dandy year markers Curt Swan labelled the time stream with.

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I can't recall; where did those time markers usually place Superboy's time period? In the 50s/60s when the stories were being published, or in the 40's where they should have been set in relation to concurrent Superman stories? As I said above, I don't expect it to make any sense.

posted March 14, 2003 12:42 PM            

This holds true throughout the sixties.

It's only in '71, in a special feature page that announced the new scheme of things for all Superman books, that Superboy now followed along after Superman in his continuity. Presumably about thirteen years ago from whatever the present moment was at the time (given Superboy is sixteen and Superman is 29--Superman was established as perpetually 29 in the seventies continuity).

Except that Mike Grell and others gave Superboy long sideburns, when he was supposed to be living in the fifties.

And long after the thirteen years ago rule should have brought Superboy into the sixties, he was still in the fifties.

posted March 14, 2003 03:19 PM               

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Originally posted by India Ink:
[T]he editors and writers seemed to be stuck with the idea THAT Superboy must have lived in the twenties or thirties before he became Superman (in 1938).

And long after the thirteen years ago rule should have brought Superboy into the sixties, he was still in the fifties.

Also in the first Superman movie, Clark is in the fifties. But given the 1978 release date this would suggest that Superman was much older than 29 at the time.

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It only looked like the 20's or the 30's. Remember, he was living in Kansas. They're even farther behind than we are in Iowa. I could easily believe that even in the 60's, people still dressed and acted like it was the 50'. Shoot, we're still trying to get through the 90's here. Hope to make the turn of the century any day now.

Only slightly facetious. Perhaps the writers and artists realized that in a small town farming community, not everyone buys a new car every year. My uncle still uses an H that looks just like the old red tractors you see in the books. Of course, that's just around the home place. In the field he's got a gps system that steers his tractor.

posted March 14, 2003 04:27 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Aldous:
No. When he returns to the 20th Century his mind must be COMPLETELY IGNORANT of the existence of the 30th Century world. Like Hal Jordan in the 58th Century stories by John Broome, Superboy cannot remember anything at all

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Then why does he recognize the Legionnaires when they travel back in time to visit him?

posted March 14, 2003 04:36 PM            

Mon-El comes to Earth, is exposed to lead by Superboy, and is placed in the Phantom Zone. A thousand years later a serum is devised which allows him to leave the Phantom Zone. After that point, on numerous occasions, 30th Century Mon-El travels back in time to 20th Century Smallville while 20th Century Mon-El is still trapped in the Phantom Zone. Unless Superboy is really stupid, he knows it'll be a thousand years before Mon-El is cured, so what's his incentive to try and find a cure? Even when he grows into Superman, he knows that Mon-El is doomed to spend a thousand years in the Phantom Zone.

And how about 20th Century Mon-El? Wouldn't he be able to see his 30th Century counterpart when he travelled back in time to visit Superboy? Wouldn't he know that he was doomed to spend a thousand years in the Phantom Zone?

posted March 14, 2003 07:18 PM               

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Originally posted by Corrosive Kid:

The problem with comic book time travel stories is that they've always been treated as traveling between two point on the map, not two points in time. And don't get me started on how when a character moves forward in time, they always move forward in space, as well. You know, the Legion are in trouble on Mars in the 30th Century and summon Superboy. He leaves Smallville in the 20th Century and emerges from the timestream over Mars in the 30th Century. Why didn't he emerge over Smallville in the 30th Century? What was up with that?

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Actually, the question is why doesn't Superboy emerge somewhere completely unknown in the galaxy in the 30th century? With the earth, our solar system, and the Milky Way all in constant motion, what's the likelihood that Smallville or any other location Superboy is familiar with would be in the exact same spot in the universe in 1000 years?

posted March 14, 2003 08:08 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by bob_r:

It only looked like the 20's or the 30's. Remember, he was living in Kansas. They're even farther behind than we are in Iowa. I could easily believe that even in the 60's, people still dressed and acted like it was the 50'. Shoot, we're still trying to get through the 90's here. Hope to make the turn of the century any day now.

Only slightly facetious. Perhaps the writers and artists realized that in a small town farming community, not everyone buys a new car every year. My uncle still uses an H that looks just like the old red tractors you see in the books. Of course, that's just around the home place. In the field he's got a gps system that steers his tractor.

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At the risk of taking a light-hearted post too seriously--I would go along with your theory, except for the occasional mentions of things like the Capone gang, Prohibition, and Nazi Germany in some sixties Superboy stories.

The metaphysics of the Weisinger universe was different from the metaphysics of the Schwartz universe. Both are loopy, but on their own terms.

In Weisinger folks lived for decades without aging, but never noticed this fact (or at least they never talked about it--although there were some anomalies like Supergirl who did age (but not at a normal rate for our reality) and Jimmy Olsen who could change his age within a single issue--a teen in a lead story, and a twenty-something in a back-up story.

posted March 14, 2003 10:09 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Corrosive Kid:

And how about 20th Century Mon-El? Wouldn't he be able to see his 30th Century counterpart when he travelled back in time to visit Superboy? Wouldn't he know that he was doomed to spend a thousand years in the Phantom Zone?

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Excellent questions, CK.

posted March 14, 2003 11:18 PM            

quote:

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Corrosive Kid:

Then why does he recognize the Legionnaires when they travel back in time to visit him?

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Again speaking hypothetically, I'm not sure he would.

Am I expected to entertain the notion that Superboy's "mental block" has infinite nuances and subtle permutations that allow Superboy to fully recognise each Legionnaire yet erase from his memory any expression, word or other indication from each Legionnaire that may give away something of the future?

Merely by Superboy arriving in the 30th Century, the game is up!

I listed some examples of complications that could arise, but basically I'm saying even a very vigilant and intelligent Saturn Girl could not remove every potentially dangerous piece of "future" information from Superboy's mind. Merely by staying in the 30th Century, meeting people, having adventures, making friends, having hundreds of conversations, Superboy is in on the "future knowledge" ground floor. He will pick up a million things to be logically assimilated and stored in that super-memory. He will, in a short time, become a walking encyclopedia of future events. Nobody or nothing would know what to "erase" from his mind and what to "leave in". It's ridiculous.

posted March 14, 2003 11:52 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by India Ink:
Before 1971, Superboy was always stuck in a specific vague period of time somewhere around the 1920s or 1930s. Even though time went on after those first early Superboy stories in More Fun, the editors and writers seemed to be stuck with the idea THAT Superboy must have lived in the twenties or thirties before he became Superman (in 1938).

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They were pretty sloppy about it, however.

posted March 15, 2003 11:58 AM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Aldous:
Again speaking hypothetically, I'm not sure he would.

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But he did. It happened many, many times. Every time the Legion travelled back to the 20th Century, he didn't say, "Who are you?" Never mind the Legion statutettes in his trophy room.

Superboy's mental block only pertained to details about his personal life, not details about the future. Again, that's something which was repeatedly established. And there's a difference between seeing flying cars and knowing how flying cars work. After all, we've all seen flying cars in movies. Do we know how they work?

posted March 15, 2003 12:11 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Aldous:
Nobody or nothing would know what to "erase" from his mind and what to "leave in". It's ridiculous.

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Not to beat up on you, Aldous, but that's not how it worked. Superboy had a hypnotic suggestion that caused him to forget details about himself when he returned to the past. It didn't involve any external sources - it was all internal. This was especially shown in the story in which he met his future descendent, Laurel Kent, and was told who she was. Upon returning to Smallville, he immeadiately forgot about her, even though he was thinking about her on the trip home.

Or, as Wildfire put it, "Tell him, Laurel! He won't remember when he returns to his own time! We used super-hypnosis to block out any knowledge of his own future!"

Y'ain't calling Wildfire a liar, is ya?

posted March 15, 2003 12:45 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Corrosive Kid:
Superboy's mental block only pertained to details about his personal life, not details about the future. . . . After all, we've all seen flying cars in movies. Do we know how they work?

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Right. The idea wasn't to get him to forget future technology (or even necessarily generalized future history) just his personal details. After all, Superboy had visited countless planets with more advanced technology than Earth. And he and Superman never really made any attempt to share that technology with us. Imagine if the SA Supes had shared just a little of Kandor's medical knowledge with us. A tad selfish on his part after all; there's got to be a balance between the Prime Directive and giving cavemen tactical nukes. One little hint, "Oh Professor, what do you think would happen if you mixed elements A and B?"

Got off topic there a little. Before there were too many possible futures, the following line of reasoning held true: When traveling to the past, a time traveler cannot change the past. Superboy couldn't save Lincoln in one comic. IIRC, he actually accidentally stopped Luther from saving the president, Luther not being totally evil. So from the Legion's perspective, they cannot change Superboy's past. What they know will happen will and must happen. They already know that whatever Supes learns and applies from the future has already happened. And they know that they can't save the Kents, for example, so the spare Superboy the knowledge of the details. Just like they know who he will marry, but want him to really feel the emotions not go through the motions because he knows it is his destiny.

Now this means no one in the universe has free will, assuming, as the stories initially did, that there was only 1 time line. Because somewhere in the 20 billionth century, someone has a big old history book of everything that happened. And we cannot help but complete that history. We can talk Boethius here if you want.

posted March 15, 2003 03:31 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Corrosive Kid:

Mon-El comes to Earth, is exposed to lead by Superboy, and is placed in the Phantom Zone. A thousand years later a serum is devised which allows him to leave the Phantom Zone.

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So why didn't the Legion bring the cure back in time so that Mon-El wouldn't have had to spend 1000 years in the Phantom Zone? I know there are all of the excuses about time parodoxes, etc., but what about a little compassion? Even if you don't want Mon-El around messing with history, you can zip up the time stream with a cure, fix his lead poisoning, and then bring him back with you.

By the way, wouldn't it have been neat in Byrne's Superman retcon if Mon-El had appeared as "Superman's Kid Brother" (riffing on the "Superboy's Big Brother" origin) and had taken the role of this century's Superboy (in a red/blue reverse colored supersuit)? The Legion would still have been inspired by Superboy; Mon-El (as Superboy) could still hang with the Legion, and a lot of Dis-Continuity wouldn't have happened.

posted March 15, 2003 11:25 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by India Ink:
It's only in '71, in a special feature page that announced the new scheme of things for all Superman books, that Superboy now followed along after Superman in his continuity. Presumably about thirteen years ago from whatever the present moment was at the time (given Superboy is sixteen and Superman is 29--Superman was established as perpetually 29 in the seventies continuity).

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I was a bit fuzzy on details when I posted this before, but I've since done a bit more research.

Here's a bit of what I posted over on the Superman in the 70s thread...

Originally posted by India Ink:
Cover-dated January, 1971--the story in Superboy 171, by the usual team of Robbins/Brown/Anderson--has Superboy meeting Aquaman (called Aquaboy) for the first time in "Dark Strangler of the Seas!" This story is interesting for all kinds of reasons--including its pollution-conscious plot which has the super-friends stopping oil-leaking tankers in the ocean (Superboy returns these to the Arabian sands, where he lets out all the oil).

We see--I think for the one and only time--Aquaboy's red-haired girlfriend, Marita,who seems to be a willing pawn of the oil conglomerate that seeks to foil Aquaboy and Superboy--decked out in her matching green fish-scales bustier and hot-pants--hubba, hubba.

On the 22nd page--after the story, but before the special two page "A new year brings a new beginning for Superman 1971" that was carried in all the super-books for January--there''s a full-page "editor's note" illustrated by Brown and Anderson.

Instead of the usual "The End" sign-off on page 21, it says "The Beginning..." and the editor's note picks up on that.

quote:

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Editor's Note: But when was this "beginning" in Supeman's youth? Perhaps some sharp-eyed readers have already caught the sneaky "boo-boo" we planted in our last issue when Superboy returned to his own time... in 1955! And the updated technology of this latest story...we-ll...
...If Superman is now 29 years old...
...Superboy had to be in his "teens" between 1951 and 1957! But...
Since Superman was created full-grown in 1938, his youth had to take place earlier! But as time went on, Superman stayed the same...29...while Superboy...
...remained stuck in a time slot not of his own making! So-o...
...We decided to rescue him! And from now on he'll tag along behind the eternally 29-year-old Superman...and "stay with it" as the years roll on!
That's it! Superboy has come of age...And it's all yours! Positively the "living end"...till next issue!

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To go along with these captions, Brown and Anderson have fashioned some cool panels. The first panel shows full-grown Superman standing against a back drop that lists a column of years (going up from the 1930s to 1970). The second panel has the same idea with Superboy against a back-drop going up to 1957. The third panel shows a hand holding a pencil drawing Superman, while a day-by-day desk calendar shows the year 1938. The fourth panel shows a forlorn Superboy in the foreground, while in the background a 1930s town scene unfolds behind him. And the fifth panel shows Superboy flying in the sky following after Superman--floating among the clouds behind them are the years 1955 (behind Superboy) and 1970 (behind Superman).