Not a dream, not a hoax, not an imaginary story — I guess it must be true!

“Not a dream, not a hoax, not an imaginary story!” In the Silver Age putting that or similar phrasing on a cover was a way to telegraph that no matter how unbelievable the cover scene looked, it was the real deal. They used it in the Silver Age itself on this Bob Brown cover.

This Neal Adams cover used it in the Bronze Age.

And Marvel used in the 1980s. in the issue where Aunt May became the Herald of Galactus (while Greg LaRocque’s cover specifies it’s not a hoax, an imaginary story or a What If, you may notice it does not rule out a dream).

I will pause here to note that unlike dreams and imaginary stories, “hoax” stories were in continuity. In “The Weddings That Wrecked The Legion,” for instance, the cover event takes place. However they’re fake weddings to justify a membership drive to replace the four Legion of Super-Heroes members who married and quit. The team correctly guessed the super-powered aliens they’d been battling would join the team to spy on the Legion, unaware they were being spied on in turn.

Second pause: why did the World’s Finest cover above feel the need to specify the story wasn’t “a cop-out?” Any regular WF reader had seen multiple covers with Superman and Batman at war, like #143 —

— or #145.

Neither of those was a hoax, a dream or an imaginary story, nor were most of the others.

Perhaps it reflects the growing discomfort that imaginary stories weren’t sophisticated enough for the older readers who enjoyed Marvel’s offerings. Certainly they were better than “it was all a dream” as they made it clear up front what was happening instead of in a twist reveal. Even so, disdain for imaginary stories lingered long after the Silver Age. When the Elseworlds line launched, someone in DC editorial (Denny O’Neil I think) declared these were definitely not “imaginary stories” — they were alternative timelines! So much more sophisticated!

That may explain why many Silver Age “imaginary stories” were later redefined in various reference sources as alternative timelines where Superman had kids, Lois Lane landed on Krypton and became a superhero, Kara was the grown-up Superwoman dealing with an immature Superboy, etc.

The discomfort with these stories is almost ironic as imaginary stories provide what so many people say was lacking in Silver Age DC. Instead of being tied down by continuity, they’re free to imagine Superman and Batman as brothers or to speculate what would happen if Superman and Lois had kids, one super-powered, one not.

They also provided drama, tragedy and emotional power. I love the end of “The Sons of Superman,” in which Kal-El Jr. — the nerdy son born with no super-powers — takes down the villain who’s paralyzed Dad and Jor-El Jr. with kryptonite (“Sometimes science can beat super-powers!”). And you’d have to have a hard heart not to be moved by “The Three Wives of Superman” in Superman’s Girlfriend, Lois Lane #51: Superman marries Lois, who dies; he marries Lana, who dies; and he marries a widowed Lori Lemaris who — well, you get the point, right?

There’s also the possibility of going completely bonkers, as Cary Bates does in Superman #230 and 231. In the backstory, one of Jor-El’s inventions killed Lara. Deranged by grief he blew up Krypton, fled to Earth with his son Lex-El and accidentally killed bank robbers Martha and Jonathan Kent when making landfall. The Kents’ son Clark grows up into the most ruthless criminal America has ever seen, as a mad scientist’s experiment makes Clark as rotten as both his parents combined. Lex-El, of course, becomes Lex Luthor, a mild-mannered toupee-wearing Daily Planet reporter who is secretly — well, you can figure it out, right?

Whatever the pros or cons of imaginary stories, by this point in my Silver Age reread (mid-1971), they’re on the way out. We’re still seeing stories like Action #396-7 in which Superman is an embittered, depowered paraplegic in a future Metropolis. After “The Satanic Son of Superman” in Action #410 (Superman marries a witch. Doesn’t work out well), they become a rare, occasional thing, like 1976’s Superman #300 which imagines Kal-El crashlanding on Earth that year and becoming “Superman: 2001.” Reflecting the “it’s not imaginary, it’s Elseworlds!” approach, Superboy #183 and #188 imagine Kal-El’s rocket crashing in the African jungle but, IIRC, it’s identified as a parallel world rather than “imaginary.”

(The S, by the way, represents a snake little Karkan fought and defeated).

That’s already become a go-to approach in the Super-books by 1971. Supergirl witnesses her own funeral, then discovers she’s in a parallel world. Superman returns from a space mission and discovers Earth and his supporting cast look different than he remembers. Action #399 has Superman pulled into the future where he learns he’s a clone of the original Superman (though the word “clone” never appears), doomed to die on his next mission. After he returns to the present, carries out the mission and survives, Superman realizes that future belongs to a parallel world.

Even before the 1970s, DC was using alternatives to “imaginary” as Commander Benson looks at in a series of blog posts (here, here and here). Using computers to project alternative histories. Alfred writing a series of stories about the next generation’s Batman (Dick Grayson) and Robin (Bruce Junior).  Plus the Amazon photoshop that let Wonder Woman, Wonder Tot and Wonder Girl adventure together with their Wonder Mom, Hippolyta.

The imaginary story doesn’t really define Silver Age DC. The Julius Schwartz books didn’t use them, neither did the Legion of Superheroes, Aquaman or the Teen Titans. Still it’s quite obvious they loom large as a symbol of a time when DC, for better or worse, did things very differently.

Lois Lane cover by Kurt Schaffenburger, Adventure Comics by Neal Adams, Superboy cover by Nick Cardy. All other super-covers by Curt Swan.