Clark Kent, Super-Showoff!
This month we’ve seen Superman forget he’s Clark Kent, Clark Kent forget he’s Superman and an impostor convince Clark he was never Superman at all. Now we investigate Superboy #107 (Sept. 1963), wherein Clark simply discards his super alter-ego so he can hog the glory for himself.
Writer Jerry Seigel and artist George Papp start us off at Smallville High School, where Clark and Lana Lang are attending their Geology class. Clark’s x-ray vision reveals that “through a student’s error, a chemical mixture is about to explode!” (Make that two errors; the student is doing his Chemistry experiment in Geology class).
Clark’s first impulse is to slip away and change to Superboy, but then he experiences a sudden change of heart. “I’m fed up always pretending to be weak and cowardly in my Clark Kent identity!” he thinks, “There are going to be some changes made, right now!”
Clark warns the other students that “one of my super-powers reveals an explosion coming,” and steps in front of the bubbling brew to absorb the blast.
Meanwhile, a band of crooks has arrived in Smallville with evil in their hearts and Green Kryptonite in the trunk of their car. Krypto happens to fly over their car and crashes to Earth due to the Green-K’s effects, so they know it’s a “live” sample.
Arriving at his parents’ general store, Clark again uses his super-powers openly when Pa’s “slicing machine” breaks down.
PA KENT: “Uhm…I uh…I guess you’re wondering how Clark could move at super-speed. Well, you see…”
CUSTOMER: “Actually, I’m more concerned that he didn’t put on gloves first! I hope you don’t think I’m going to pay for that!”
You’ve got to love “super-feats” like this one. I don’t care how fast his hand is moving, unless he can change its shape so it’s thin as a blade, it’s only going to pound that roast out of shape, not slice it into deli meat.
It doesn’t take long for Clark’s revelation to spread through town, and soon Chief Parker drives over to the store to get confirmation from the horse’s mouth. Having turned into quite the showoff, Clark answers him in dramatic fashion, while the visiting gangsters look on.
I don’t know, would crooks really refer to themselves as “us racket guys” and their superiors as “crime big shots”? Somehow I always figured nobody really sees themselves as crooks, even when they are.
Anyway, Clark flies off (in his street clothes) to a stone quarry, where he fashions a giant Clark Kent statue to place next to the Superboy statue in front of the Superboy Museum (thus demonstrating that his obsession with statue tributes to himself began at an early age).
The criminal element wastes no time in exploiting the new status quo, as one of the visiting crooks barges into the Kent store and opens fire on Ma and Pa.
Tragedy is averted, but Pa points out that he and Ma will always be at risk now from Superboy’s old foes. “Stop whining,” says Clark, “I’ll take you where it’s safe!” Sure enough, he flies the couple to a “deserted South Pacific island” that “isn’t even on any maps! No crooks will find you here! And there’s plenty of food on those banana and mango trees!”
That night, Clark is off to the big school dance, where he ditches Lana to dance with five other girls at the same time (through super-speed). Lana sobs, “I guess Clark will never forgive me for not showing more interest in him before he revealed himself to be Superboy!”
This brings up an interesting point, by the way. If Lana and later Lois are so convinced Clark is Superman, and if they want to marry Superman, wouldn’t it therefore be logical to treat Clark really nicely, in hopes he’ll propose to such a “swell girl”? Surely it makes more sense than badgering, spying on and try to expose him, which only makes the girls come off the last any man in his right mind would want to wed.
Anyway, after entertaining his classmates by simultaneously playing every instrument in the dance hall band, Clark makes a patrol of Smallville and suddenly comes to his senses, realizing he’s been a jerk, marooning his parents on a desert isle and giving away his most precious secret. Only now does his super-recall remind him that there was a glowing, red rock in that Geology class, a rock that must have been Red Kryptonite, the substance which always affects him in a different way.
See, this is why I love these old stories; you always learn something. Turns out intense jealousy can prevent you from feeling a tingling sensation. So if I ever find myself in the path of a jellyfish, I’ll just think of how much richer Bill Gates is than me and I should be okay.
Clark rescues Ma and Pa from the uncharted island faster than you can say “Dharma Project” and soon comes up with a plan to extricate himself from his self-made crisis. When the out-of-town crooks at last show up at the Kent home bearing their chunk of Green-K, they are surprised to see it has no effect on Clark. And now we see the “brilliant solution” to Clark’s dilemma.
When Chief Parker arrives, Superboy explains “You see, I had learned these crooks planned to attack me with Kryptonite, but I didn’t know when they’d strike! So with the cooperation of the Kent family, I wore this ‘Clark Kent’ disguise to lure them into striking me at the Kent home!”
But what, you ask, about that Green Kryptonite that had no effect? For that, you can thank an ingenious invention by Clark:
And so the secret is safe once more. Uh-huh.
Siegel comes close to getting this one right, but muffs it at the end. If Superboy isn’t affected by the crooks’ Green Kryptonite — and he deliberately gives the crooks and Chief Parker the impression that he isn’t — then why bother with the “Clark Kent masquerade”? It really doesn’t matter where and when the crooks attack him with a powerless green rock.
What would have made a lot more sense would have been to say, “I engineered it so the crooks would use the Kryptonite on my friend Clark, who as an Earth boy is of course unaffected by its rays.” Chief Parker could have been waiting in the bushes to nab the gangsters and Superboy needn’t have appeared at all (although maybe a robot could fly in and say, “Thanks for your help, pal!” to seal the deal).
The other issue here is Clark’s Kryptonite-neutralizing belt buckle. If it works this well, then why not include a version in every Clark and Superboy belt he wears for the rest of his life?
Oh well, with all the amnesia that’s been going around, maybe it just slipped his mind.
Your last sentence triggered a partial memory of my own. I don’t recall the plot at all, but I recall speculation by Superman (or by a close associate of Superman’s) that repeated blasts of green kryptonite radiation poisoning had left troublesome blank spots in his super memory.
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You don’t even need green-K blasts - Superman’s taken enough severe beatings while unpowered, or against super-foes, that he could easily have some minor residual brain damage. The rest of his body might heal perfectly when he gets repowered, but not his brain. Come to think of it, that would explain a lot, especially his poor planning and lack of reasoning skills in some areas.
> Turns out intense jealousy can prevent you from feeling a tingling sensation.
True. If someone is distracted with strong emotion, it’s possible not to notice some physical irritations. Just think of getting some minor cuts and scrapes while playing a physical game, that aren’t noticed until afterwards. Obviously there are limits, but the Red-K effect is apparently more like goosebumps than poison ivy.
But if he decided to drop the weak-and-cowardly act, why bother still wearing the glasses?
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He wants everyone to know it’s Clark Kent who’s super, and let’s face it to most everyone Clark Kent *is* a pair of glasses. If he takes them off to do super-feats, everyone will ask, “Hey, Superboy, why the cardigan sweater?” but if he leaves them on, it becomes, “Wow, look what Clark Kent is doing!”
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Close. The specifics on this was one of the items Mort Weisinger included in his “The Superboy Legend” two-page text article. Weisinger ran this and it’s companion piece, “The Superman Legend”, from time to time in his titles. They served as what, to-day, would be known as FAQ’s sections.
On the matter of Superboy’s memory and exposure to kryptonite, Mort said this:
Although SUPERBOY has a super-memory and the power of total recall, some of his recollections of his early life have been impaired by frequent encounters with KRYPTONITE. When he wants to remember such incidents, he focuses a mind-prober ray he invented on his brain and it restores his memory.
As this device was seen being used, it was always to restore memories of his life on Krypton as a baby.
Hope this helps.
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You may think this comment is tongue in cheek but why couldn’t Sboy and later Sman keep a small plastic bag attached to his inner cheek? This bag could be filled with liquid lead (just enough to neutralize any GK near at hand) and could be activated by superspit.
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Actually, all Superman needs is a small transistor device in the heel of his boot that can focus the rays of a distant red sun in order to neutralize his superpowers so he can dispose of any green K.
This is what a robot invented in The President Of Steel storyline, and since Kal programmed the robot he probably knows how make one, too.
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The only thing wrong with your theory is what happens if crooks decide to shoot Superman with bullets at the same time as exposing him to Green K?
He might’ve still been super with the Green K, but the crooks wouldn’t know that.
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I was spoofing a bit on that earlier storyline, but isn’t this the risk he always runs by exposure to red suns and green Ks, that his vulnerability exposes Superman to damage?
I think the larger point is Superman reasonably could take a few pointers from Batman and have a few backup gizmos tucked away to deal with his very public secret weaknesses. Y’know, especially in a world where harmful fragments from an alien planet many thousands of light years distant are more common than iron pyrite, it seems.
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Good idea but what if he just happens to be out of costume?
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Such as repeatedly bringing alien objects and devices back to earth, nearly always with undesirable or even harmful effects on his family or friends, usually Jimmy or Lois …
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Thanks, Commander. As soon as you described those “FAQ” pages, the memory snapped back into my head with nigh-audible twang. I *loved* those pages (and others like them) as a young sprog.
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Glad to be of service, friend. I keep a copy of both “Legends” here at my desk. I come across so many questions and “but I always thought . . . ” comments that it’s handy to have them near-by to reference and use as accreditation.
Like you, I loved seeing them both as a boy. It was like getting the absolute skinny on the subject. Of course, sometimes it developed that they would also bite Mort—when a writer inserted something in a story that went against the info put out in the Legends (and obviously Mort missed it in the final edit).
I have to give Weisinger credit, though. When an obvious mistake slipped through—if it was a mistake and not just something the reader overlooked—and Mort got called on it, he ‘fessed up to the error. This showed a respect for his readership that few other editors (Schwartz was another) displayed.
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Kind of surprising the Comics Code Authority let the “belt buckle spraying lead paint” thing go by, because at first cursory glance (the way most dimwits look at comics, and the reason most censorship decisions are made) it looks like Clark is … uhmm … “spraying” the Kryptonite with something other than lead paint.
Given the lunacy of the Silver Age, I’m surprised at some point they didn’t have Clark “super-whizzing” on Kryptonite to destroy it.
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