The mid-1969 Neal Adams cover of Superboy #158, “Superboy’s Darkest Secret” (Frank Robbins, Bob Brown) is completely accurate. Superboy’s parents show up alive and it’s not a dream, not a hoax, not an imaginary story.
A radio signal from space alerts Clark that his parents are out there, alive, but in trouble. He’s conflicted about this, as he’s not sure how his Earth parents will react to the discovery; Pa, of course, tells him to get out there and save them, never mind the Kent’s feelings.
It turns out to be a trap by Xonar, a Kryptonian criminal Jor-El thwarted before Krypton blew up — but the bait is real. The Kryptonian scientist Kry-Lo saves Superboy from Xonar, then identifies himself as one of the few to believe Jor-El’s predictions of Krypton’s doom. Kry-Lo, however, had a different idea on how to cheat fate: rather than gamble on rockets reaching a livable world before the passengers expire, place everyone in suspended animation, to drift until they’re found and revived. Having failed to sell Jor-El on this plan, Kry-Lo ambushes him and Lara, doses them with the suspended animation treatment, then launches them into space.
Before Superboy can revive them he has to fight off Xonar, who wanted to trap his old foe’s son (Xonar learns the hard way that randomly planting booby traps that can kill Kryptonians is a flawed strategy). Then Clark learns the terrible truth: by the time Krylo ambushed them Jor-El and Lara were fatally contaminated with radiation due to Jor-El exploring Krypton’s unstable radioactive core (the story refers to kryptonite radiation but it would have to be nti-kryptonite, which affects non-super Kryptonians). If Superboy revived his folks, they’d die in agony. He lets them drift on, forever asleep and free of pain.
It’s a good, dramatic story that makes the most of the pathos in the set-up. However it’s hard to believe Superboy left them floating in space rather than building some sort of memorial where he could keep them safe, and maybe figure out someday how to revive them. He didn’t, though.
Which may reflect that the retcon didn’t take. Subsequent stories showing Jor-El and Lara’s final fate show them dying on Krypton; I suspect it was less a conscious effort to retcon the retcon than everyone simply ignoring it, if they remembered it at all. Abandoning it was a good choice: even though I enjoyed the story, having Jor-El and Lara in limbo lacks the tragic power of They’re Dead, Clark. Plus, sooner or later, someone was bound to revive them. Still, as retcons go, this era had worse (e.g, “100 Years, Lost Strayed or Stolen“).
Now, for a much earlier strange visitor, or more precisely a fake strange visitor. Superman #123, with a “Girl of Steel” created by magic (Jimmy Olsen’s work) is accepted as the inspiration for the Supergirl we all know (it’s even in the Showcase Supergirl collection and the Supergirl Archives). I don’t disagree but I think Superman #128 deserves some of the credit too.
It’s not the cover story but the Lois Lane backup, “The Sleeping Beauty From Krypton” (Bill Finger, Kurt Schaffenerrger) that I’m talking about. In a new scheme to unmask Superman, Lois uses some props from a Superman biopic to pass herself off as Rama, Superman’s babysitter back on Krypton. She shows up floating in space in suspended animation; once revived, she tells Superman her father learned about Jor-El’s plans to escape to Earth—
— and decided to go the same route. Like Kry-Lo, he used suspended animation to keep Rama alive.
The Super-Girl from the earlier story was a magical creation with no backstory. This feels close to Supergirl’s origin from four months later with a young Kryptonian blonde surviving the planet’s doom and coming to Earth by rocket (the suspended animation aspect resembles the CW Supergirl origin, though I doubt it’s a direct influence). Obviously not identical but I can’t help wondering if it didn’t influence Mort Weisinger and Otto Binder when they developed Kara’s backstory.
Oh, in case you were wondering, Superman does tell “Rama” his secret identity. Then he has Batman impersonate Clark Kent so Lois can see them together at the same time, oops, guess she’s wrong again!
#SFWAPro.
