In February 1980, the Justice League and Society, with the forces of the world New Genesis, fight the Injustice Society which has teamed up with the forces of Apokolips.

In May 1980, he fights the Martian Manhunter, his old ally, and first meets Mongul, who will become one of his most persistent foes, and first hears of Warworld.

In July 1980, Superman met Spider-Man again (as well as having a memorable fight with the Hulk) and confronted Doctor Doom, the ruler of Latveria, for the first time, with Doom aided by the Parasite. For a short while, Clark Kent worked for J.Jonah Jameson's Daily Bugle, and Peter Parker worked for the Daily Planet.

Superman meets the Vixen, a heroine who will later join the Justice League, in February 1981.

He also fights the Secret Society of Super-Villains, with both the League and the Society, led by his oldest foe, the Ultra-Humanite---now in a gorilla's body.

In August 1981, he had a very---very---strange experience. There were reports of humans beings acting more like apes, and they seemed to emanate from an energy barrier that weakened him, very much like Kryptonite. He grabs hold of a meteor to let it pull him through in his weakened state. It explodes into six fragments, and Superman lands and changes to Clark Kent---only to find he's not in Kansas anymore.

Instead, he's on a parellel world where humanoid rabbits and other animals have their own civilization. There he met cartoonist Roger Rodney Rabbit (not the Roger Rabbit of WHO CENSORED ROGER RABBIT and WHO P-P-PLUGGED ROGER RABBIT by Gary K. Wolf, who lived in a world where humans and toons shared existences. Roger Rodney Rabbit had never seen a human before), who becomes Captain Carrot, thanks to the meteor falling in his carrot patch, and later, the other members of the Zoo Crew---and his old Justice League foe, Starro, who is behind the devolution rays on both Earths. The Zoo Crew gained their powers from the meteorites charged with both Superman's and the barrier's energies.

Of course, that sounds ridiculous, and doubtless much of it was exagerated for humorous purposes. Yet a strangely humanoid Duck named Howard had been walking the streets of Superman's old stomping grounds, Cleveland, for some years...and claimed to be from a parallel world dominated by humanoid ducks. Toward the end of the nineties, Mxyzptlk would introduce many superhumans to the characters from the Looney Tune Cartoons---although of course it's debatable whether Mxy might have created same based on the cartoons, rather than contacting a parallel reality.

This parellel world of Captain Carrot's was designated "Earth-C", and an even closer parallel world, "Earth C-Minus" would later be discovered.

One also wonders, after Superman returned to our reality, how Roy Thomas and Scott Shaw knew of the following adventures of the Zoo Crew, or if the rest were totally fictional. (Of course, they later were portrayed as meeting the Changeling, from the Teen Titans, so he could have brought news of their later adventures.) Superman himself wondered if his weakened state had instead brought a hallucination.

Let us stray from this (strictly factual) account and engage in some speculation...

In fact, Howard emerged from a Florida swamp which was supposedly a "nexus of realities". Is there another such nexus, in Los Angeles? In the late twenties, did a humanoid mouse enter our world, as he had a habit of getting into odd scrapes and situations? Scared and cold and alone, he may have covered himself with a large hat and a trench coat, searching for a way back to his world. After some adventures, and wanderings, including travelling to Kansas City, he might have ended up on a train leaving that city...

One can imagine the humanoid mouse was covered in coat and hat, when the rumbling tracks made his hat tumble off and Walt Disney said, as Beverly Switzer would echo to Howard (albeit with "duck" instead of "mouse") decades later,

"You're a m-m-Mouse!"

It's significant that in a Disney Studio interview we supposedly have a statement from Mickey Mortimer Mouse himself on how he and Walt Disney got together:

"Destiny brought us together. We shared the same seat on the train. Having heard from my cousins in Kansas City that Mr. Disney was good to his pet mice as a boy, I volunteered my services as a cartoon character. After we got to Hollywood, Mr. Disney made a few sketches of me and gave me a screen test."

One imagines he was using "cousins" in the evolutionary sense that apes are "cousins" to human beings, not as actual relatives. Perhaps in Los Angeles, they found another such nexus, and he was able to journey back to his reality...but remembering his deal with Walt Disney, posed for, and told of his adventures to make into cartoons, and showed him photos of such friends as Donald Duck and others. He visited again. Both Disney and Mickey kept quiet about their deal, knowing that it would not be believed...that the inhabitants of Mickey's world wouldn't believe in humans, and that Disney knew that people would be panicked by the notion of an alternate reality...but now that Mickey knew where the "nexus" was, perhaps halfway between Termite Terrace and the future Disneyland, he visited again and again...

One wonders what he was paid in? Cheese? Gold? What sort of currency would cross realities?

At another studio, Leon Schlesinger had a similar experience. In the Fritz Freling combination of live action and cartoon,the 1940 short "You Oughtta Be in Pictures" we see actual film footage of how both Porky Pig and Daffy Duck regarded Leon as their boss, and that they were actors under contract, where Leon and Daffy and Porky react to each other. (Their emerging from drawings was exagerration, of course.) We know that Bugs Bunny would also talk about his "contract" with Warner Brothers. (Speaking of which, are there really two buglike Warner brothers and a Warner sister--the Animaniacs--- in that water tower on the Warners lot?)

On the "Disneyland/Wonderful World of Color" show, Walt Disney was sometimes shown on film talking with Donald Duck, and in the movie FANTASIA Leonard Bernstein, conducting the orchestra, had his coattails tugged by no less than... Mickey Mouse.

What Gary Wolf called "Toontown" in the fictionalized Roger Rabbit novels was actually a sort of limbo between realities, where the humanoid animals from other realities came and learned of the reality of humankind, a sort of halfway house between realities. The lure of stardom is strong, even if in another reality, and certainly many of them---Daffy Duck comes to mind immediately---have their share of vanity. Perhaps some humans wandered into that limbo/nexus generations earlier, and settled there, but were gradually warped over generations by a physics similar, but not exactly the same as our own. Thus the gravity-defying figure of Jessica Rabbit or the obtuse Elmer Fudd, human yet cartoonish.

In their home realities,(there seem to be several) humans were at best, a baseless rumor. Duckburg, for instance, would regard them as fictional. (I suppose it is possible, therefore, that Roger Rodney Rabbit is the son of the forties' cartoon star Roger Rabbit...) It was only the few who "crossed over" who learned the truth...just as it was the few humans who witnessed the humanoid animals and realized their existence was real, rather than a product of drinking too much. (Michael Jordan shared their astonishment decades later, as shown in the movie SPACE JAM.)

One might also note that Superman had a fleeting cameo appearance in the Tiny Toons' HOW I SPENT MY SUMMER VACATION, but with no explanation of what he was doing near the reality known as Looney Acres...

One wonders about such classics as THE WIND AND THE WILLOWS,and if they had any reality on Earth-C or similar worlds. Or the Beatrix Potter books. One also wonders about old stories about Anansi, the Trickster Spider and Coyote, the trickster, in African and Amerindian myth.

Of course this is all rank speculation: I am not seriously advocating there is a secret conspiracy of cartoonmakers and media moguls drawing upon beings from other realities as models and originators of story ideas. That Bob Clampett, Tex Avery, Chuck Jones, Carl Barks, et al, initially doubted their sobriety and their sanity before they realized such beings were real, and really able to serve as models and springboards for stories. That they kept mum because they knew they wouldn't be believed, and would probably be sent to an insane asylum--- and if they were believed, would cause a panic. Of all the ridiculous ideas!

No, mine is the much more reasonable idea that there are superhuman beings in the world that the governments are aware of but are shielding knowledge of to the general population, and comic books are a "disinformation" ploy to make any possible revelation of their existence laughable.

After all, how gullible do you think I am?

In September 1981, Superman meets with Mongul again, and fights the Sun-Eater with the Legion of Super-Heroes---a nearly irresistible force he had first met in the 30th century, with the Legion.

In late 1981, Superman fights Luthor and meets the heroic Luthor of Earth-Three and fights Ultraman. To make it even more suspenseful, they added the "Earth-Two" Superman and Luthor to the story. The heroic Luthor returns Ultraman to the dimensional bubble between the dimensions.

In February 1982, a team-up between the Justice League and the Justice Society, plus the wartime All-Star Squadron, fighting Per Degaton and the Crime Syndicate both did---and did not--happen.

Instead, in its place, the team-up between the League and the Society that revealed the truth about the Black Canary (and had them fighting the Crime Champions again) took place.

In September of 1982, the League has a fight between its original and new members, and then combined fight the Apellax aliens again.

Afterwards Batman resigns from the League to form the Outsiders.

In December 1982, Superman confronts his foe, Luthor, who had been on Lexor for several months with his newborn son, Ardora's child. However, his insane hatred for Superman had warped him even on this most convenient and loving of worlds for Luthor. There is a battle between Superman and Luthor, in his "Maurauder" armor based on ancient Lexorian technology. (Note that Superman has super-powers on Lexor. He's found a filter that keeps it gases from weakening him.) In it, Luthor accidentally fires one of his deadliest blasts, misses Superman, and hits a "neutrarod"---a device to keep Lexor from exploding like Krypton did. Instead, it triggers a Krypton-like explosion.

Although not shown in the story, it was Superman's fellow Justice League partner, Green Lantern, who had taken him to Lexor, and GL snatched him away before he could die in an exploding planet, just as his career began in one. All of Lexor died, including Ardora and young Lex Jr. Luthor was more consumed by hatred than ever, and with the ancient Lexorian battlesuit, more dangerous than ever.

Returning home, Superman found another of his old foes had changed. The humanoid computer Brainiac had been reformed by, among other things, a world of living computers, to a deadlier form. Superman enlists the aid of the League and the Titans to help.

After that fight, he is lured by the Ultra-Humanite to the Waters of Ruthlessness, of Koehaha. This is a day or so before Christmas. He becomes insanely ruthless, and lures some of the other Justice Society members there. He later plans to remodel NYC/Metropolis into a duplicate of Krypton.

On into February 1983, Superman's ruthlessness, combined with the other JSA members, culminates in a battle with the newly formed Infinity Inc., composed of the sons and daughters and proteges of the Justice Society, including Power Girl. (Please note that Power Girl is weakened by Kryptonite, something hard to explain if she was Arion's grandmother and got her powers by mystical means.) Brainwave Jr. and other members, when they were temporarily trapped in the past keep on referring to 1983...it's evidently just past Christmas---they are thinking of the new year, 1983.(The first issue was published in March of '84, and there is not enough time for events to have happened and it be published on that early date if it was Christmas '83---besides, Roy Thomas would have to know about them before they formed as a team.)

A month later, the JLA satellite is virtually wrecked (perhaps it is then that the UN decided to build the Stormwatch satellite in its place.) and Aquaman heads a new JLA team of full-time members, who won't be distracted by other careers. Soon afterwards, Aquaman, distracted by his career, leaves the League, and J'Onn J'Onzz assumes the leadership.

In July 1983, the Crisis on Infinite Earths happened. At the same time---although it wasn't published until May of 1984--many of the heroes that Marvel published were kidnapped by the Beyonder to a far distant world. I suspect the Beyonder, feeling that our reality was doomed, wanted to save some of his favorite heroes and their opponents.

In Crisis, many of Earth's superhumans fought the Anti-Monitor, perhaps their mightiest foe ever. The Anti-Monitor was part of, and ruler of, the anti-matter universe of Qward, and he was destroying parallel universe after parallel universe. He destroyed Earth-X, where the Freedom Fighters were from, and seemingly destroyed (yet we found out, later just absorbed and recreated in the anti-matter universe: see the graphic novel EARTH TWO by Grant Morrison.) Earth-3, where the Crime Syndicate lived. He destroyed Earth-6, where Lady Quark was the only survivor. Perhaps Captain Thunder's Earth was destroyed also. I suspect the Anti-Monitor of taking advantage of the Conjunction of a Million Spheres, mentioned in Michael Moorcock's "Eternal Champion" series among others, as a time when he could more easily cross between alternate realities. It may have also been the event mentioned as the Shadow War in Zelanzy's AMBER series. Or for that matter, the destruction of various alternate Earths described by Douglas Adams.(I suppose it's possible that the Anti-Monitor himself caused it, but if so, there are a lot of alternate realities he never got to.) Only his opposite number in our universe, the Monitor, and his protege, Harbringer, could gather enough superhumans to oppose him. Many superhumans died to stop him, and one was a friend---Barry Allen, the second Flash---and another was his beloved cousin, Kara.

Like Jor-El and Lara and all of Krypton, his beloved cousin--practically his kid sister---lay dead at his feet. Younger and more innocent than he, her loss was one of the greatest he had ever faced, and would lead to a decision.

Much of CRISIS was exagerrated...there was no "warp zone", and although all our reality was in danger of annihilation, there was no merging between "Earth-One", "Earth-Two", "Earth-S" etc., which are all fictional. Still, we were in deadly danger....stopped only by the heroes. (Obviously they didn't change time. If they had changed time, we wouldn't remember previous versions of that history the way we do.)

Nor did they get rid of all alternate realities of our universe, just some of them. We know, for instance, from Neil Gaiman's writings about the Sandman that Prez' alternate history-Earth still survived, among others.

But the results for Superman were soul-shattering. He was alone again. Even Lois couldn't comfort him. He quit Galaxy Broadcasting.

He seemed younger than his supposed age of around 55, but many put it down to clever makeup. Still, if he stayed much longer, too many questions would be asked.

He journeyed back to Colorado. Having lost his last living link with his Kryptonian past, he wanted to gain ties with his earthly past...with the Kents.

He needed to return to his roots. He left without telling Lois where he was going, just that he was going, leaving her free to "reinvent" herself one more time.

He returned to the town Siegel had called Smallville and Wylie had called Indian Springs. He went to the old Kent farm, and saw someone running a tractor on it.

An older man, he politely waved hello. Clark inquired if he was hiring any help for the farm---and the older man said with the harvest coming up, he could use some help. Clark introduced himself, and the older man smiled and said,

"What a coincidence! I'm Jonathan Kent."

"Jonathan...Kent?"

"Come home, and my wife Martha and I will take care of you...what's wrong?"

"Martha and Jonathan Kent?"

Then Superman, for all his power, all his strength, fainted dead away.

When he recovered in their farmhouse---updated, yet still the same farmhouse he remembered...he found out some things.

Jonathan Kent was the grand-nephew of the Jonathan Abenego Kent who had raised him. A World War II veteren, he and Clark had never met before, although he vaguely remembered Jonathan's father, Harold Kent, his adopted cousin, as a child.

He had married Martha Ross Clark, the granddaughter of Peter Ross, his good friend from childhood. Her mother, Mariah Elaine Martha Ross, had been named for Superman's foster-mother, Martha Matilda Clark Kent. Her father, Hudson Ethan Clark, owned the local general store. It was Martha Ross Clark's second marriage. She had married a Fordman before Jonathan, but he had been dying of lung cancer. Six months after her first husband's death, they were married.

Then they said,

"We tried to give you a shot---take a blood sample. I used to be a nurse. The needle broke."

Then Martha said,

"You're the original Clark Kent, aren't you? The one who fought in World War I?"

Then she showed him her grandfather's diary, where he had discovered Clark's abilities. Jonathan Kent also knew something of it, from some letters between Clark and Jonathan Abenego Kent that he had inherited.

His secret was no secret to them. Yet they had kept quiet about it...

Martha Kent, since she was a little girl, had quietly kept a scrapbook of averted disasters...which she was sure Superman was behind. She was startlingly accurate in a large number of cases.

For six months Clark worked on the farm with Jonathan. Though he was literally older than Jonathan or Martha, he naturally fell into a role of a son, especially since their own son---who had been named for himself---had left to travel the world after his graudation from high school. Their son, Clark Joseph Kent, had been a football star and a very popular person in high school, but he had a wanderlust...

During the winter of 1984, after the crops were in at the Kent farm, he journeyed back to the Arctic Fortress of Solitude one last time, so some good friends could give him birthday presents in late February. There Mongul sent him a "Black Mercy", that keeps their victims in a trance, granting them a fantasy of their heart's desire. Superman's was a fantasy about staying on Krypton---but his subconscious mixed it with current American problems, where an elder Jor-El was the chairman for the Klu Klux Klanish Sword of Rao movement. Afterwards, he fought and overcame Mongul---with a little help from Robin.

Supergirl had always been his living link with Krypton and Kryptonian society. With her gone, his Krypton-nostalgia seemed..hollow. Kara, a few years before her death, even had him swearing by Rao, the Kryptonian sun-god...but that wasn't who he really was. He was raised as an earthling. It was time to embrace the human, earthly heritage he had been raised in. He returned to the Kents.

Then the Kents got a telegram...that it was not confirmed, but that their son had disappeared in a far corner of the world, and was feared dead. Clark promised to find out the truth. He first journeyed to a French news service, posing as a journalism student, and there met famous reporter Simone DeNeige(and future Daily Planet circulation editor), who was attracted to the handsome "student". He scanned the files of foreign stories, and soon found mention of an American named Kent dying in the Far East. He quickly used his JSA/JLA connections to travel to the Far East, and found that Jonathan and Martha's son had indeed died. With sadness, he brought back the body of their son to the Kents.

It was Jonathan who broached the subject, by their son's graveside on the farm.

"Our son was never officially declared dead by a doctor, correct? So as far as the legal processes are concerned, he's still alive?"

"Yes, until we notify them..."

"Why should we? You need a new identity? Take his---he doesn't need it. Son, I know you're really my elder. Yet right now...I think you need some relatives. Not Kryptonian demigods, but down-to-earth farmfolk. Right now...we might need a son. It may be the only way for us to get past this."

In their mutual need---theirs on the loss of their son, he on the loss of the cousin he treated as a kid sister---they found comfort.

Clark stayed all the year. In the farming ritual of spring planting, summer maintenance, fall harvesting, he found a focus and a renewel.

In 1985, he returned to New York City. Towards the end of his previous career, he had used makeup to make himself seem a little older in appearance than he was, as had Lois. He abandoned that, and claimed to be the son of a cousin of Clark Kent, Galaxy Broadcasting's old anchorman. (He even had letters of introduction written by his two previous "selves", the reporter of the thirties and forties, the reporter/broadcaster of the sixties and seventies...)

So Clark stepped moved back to the city, finding that Lois had established a new identity in yet another paper. She dyed her hair so it was more a reddish-brown than raven black like her hair had been. She had quickly established herself as a columnist. (She had won her job investigating Lexcorp and she had gotten caught. She had been strip-searched by Lexcorp's security, and unfortunately, Lex Luthor had the original prints.)She also worked on, and published, several mystery novels, including SHADOWS IN THE GRASS, which won an Edgar. He himself went back into newspaper work, becoming a columnist and for that matter, an author. He authored UNDER A YELLOW SUN, THE GOLDEN THRONE, and THE JANUS CONTRACT, the second one being on the bestseller list for 17 weeks.

Martha Ross Clark Kent was very proud of him, and sent ideas for "revamping" Superman to one John Byrne, who had been assigned the task of handling the post-crisis Superman. He adopted some, rejected others, resulting in a Superman that was equally fact and fiction. (Especially in his depiction of Krypton, using a style of dress that Kryptonians hadn't used for decades before Jor-El's time.) Still, his powers at least were reduced to somewhat more realistic levels, although not quite as much as the early Superman stories or Superman's real strength level.

Clark made new friends like Cat Grant, Maggie Sawyer and Ron Troupe. His current editor was, as the usual Superman convention, called "Perry White". Yet one reading between the lines would see that editor was different from his previous two or three. His greatest enemy?

Lex Luthor.

The second.

The billionaire Lex Luthor was the son of Lex Luthor the brillant criminal who had fought Superman repeatedly in the forties through the eighties. (There has been some speculation that Lex Luthor was the son of John (Colonel) Clay.) The original Luthor, who managed to keep his youth via various scientific means, nevertheless died during the events of the Crisis. His son was determined to keep things more legitimate, and used the inventions of his father to establish a technological superiority over other companies. Soon he was one of the wealthiest men in the world.

He was an illigitimate son, born circa 1950, and his mother was an aunt of Wilson Fisk, also known as the Kingpin, who fought both Spider-Man and Daredevil. (At one time there was speculation that the Kingpin and the later Lex Luthor were the same man---but the Kingpin's steadfast love for his wife, as opposed to the second Lex Luthor's philandering ways, argues against it.)

He despised his mother, and her husband, whom the world thought was his "father". They lived in a slum, among the dregs of society...and he dreamed of something better. Forging his "father"'s name, he took out a large insurance policy on them---and then arranged his own parents' murder. Then, though the invention of "designer drugs" and other illegal means, caused the immense growth of his funds---and he was able to launch his own company, and soon ammassed an amazing fortune.

He was attracted to the latest "Lois Lane"---aided by some pictures he took of her while she was strip-searched when she broke into Lexcorp. He learned, through government sources he had, of the truth of Superman, and tried to enlist him into his payroll...

Instead an unending rivalry was struck between them.

Thus began Superman's third career...Clark Kent's third "life"....as Clark Joseph Kent.

In March 1986, Superman encounters the new Metallo. The "Professor Vane" who operated on him, was, in reality, Roger Corben, finally driven mad by his desire for revenge and his inability to get it. He hallucinated he was the professor Vane who once operated on his brother, and that Superman was an "evil alien"---and so he was, in his view. So he staged an "accident" on his own nephew, John Corben Jr., son of the Metallo of the late fifties and turned him into a murderous cyborg, hoping youth would succeed where fanaticism didn't.

In April 1986, he first encounters Dr. Kitty Faulkner, who could transform into Rampage.

In May 1986, pressure is put on President Reagen to revoke his tacit acceptance of superhumans in America. He puts out a Presidential order banning superhumans from operating within America---not on television of course, but via secret government organizations such as the NSA and SHIELD. This pressure originated from psychologist "G. Gordon Godfrey", also known as "Glorious Godfrey", and was a scheme hatched by Darkseid. Interestingly enough, Superman is stuck on Apokolips for a few days during the "Legends" series. A new Justice League is formed after the deaths of several members of the last League, but Superman declined full membership.

In June 1986, a being takes over Superman's body, and fights the Teen Titans.

In October of 1986, Superman fights the Demon. Also in October of 1986, he fights a supposed Vietnam Vet who can teleport weapons as he needs it, including Kryptonite slivers secretely supplied by Lex Luthor.

In November of 1986, Superman encounters a Superboy who seems straight from the fifties' comics---in a "pocket universe" developed by the Time Trapper. That Superboy, with his near-omnipotent powers, even more overpowered the Superman who had his original powers than Byrne portrayed. (However, the Legionnaires were also from that pocket universe, not his old allies...)

In March of 1987, Superman and the Apokolips warrior known as Big Barda fall under the control of a particularly revolting member of Apokolips, and were made to...perform. On camera. Luckily they were saved by Mister Miracle, Barda's husband...who hopefully destroyed the negatives.

Also in March of 1987, the Joker fights Superman, and uses a dummy packed with explosives. It wasn't a nuclear device, despite what Byrne said, but it did have enough high explosives to knock Superman out.

In May of 1987, Superman meets Myxzptlk again, for the first time in years. Among other things, he turns Lois Lane into a store window dummy.

In June of 1987, a Guardian and a Zamaron involve many of Earth's superhumans in the search for "The Millenium", the next stage in human evolution, and in the process fight the Manhunters organization again.

In July 1987, Superman meets a British Winslow Schott--the Toyman--who appears to the be the British born son of the original Toyman. (In the same story John Steed and Mrs. Emma Peel both appeared, working for British intelligence still after all these years. Perhaps Mrs. Peel's husband finally died, and she joined with Steed for one last errand for British Intelligence.)

In September of 1987, he finds Maggie Sawyer's lost little girl. Maggie Sawyer, head of Metropolis' Special Crimes Unit, was to become Superman's main contact with the police, as Officer Casey was in a previous decade. (Maggie Sawyer married and had a child and then realized her own sexual identity as a lesbian, and divorced her husband.)

Also in September of 1987, Milton Fine, a circus mentalist who called himself "The Amazing Brainiac" detected the mind of Vril Dox, the humanoid Coluian whom the humanoid computer Brainiac was based on, who had been "killed" by the computer-tyrants of Colu. Vril maintained his mental essense, and took over Fine's body.

In October of 1987, Superman meets a kiddee show host, "Uncle Oswald", who deliberately modeled himself after the criminal Prankster of the forties--and tried to kill Morgan Edge when his show was cancelled.

In November of 1987, Superman helps Wonder Woman fool Darkseid about the location of the Olympian Gods.

In January of 1988, Superman fights the aliens Psi-Fon and Dreadnought.

In February of 1988, Superman fought Metallo with the help of the Doom Patrol.

In March of '88, Superman meets....Supergirl.

Only this one isn't his beloved Kara. This is a shape-changing, telekinetic protoplasmic mass in the shape of Kara, from a pocket universe....the same one he had met "Superboy" in.

In the process, Superman is forced to kill several superhumans, and though he knew it was necessary, part of him was understandably revolted. It had been decades since he had had to kill. (Whether they were inhabitants from a parallel Krypton, or perhaps Daxammites brainwashed by the Time Trapper, is still being discussed.)

Haunted, and struck by Matrix's, the new Supergirl's, resemblence to his beloved Kara, he had the Kents try to raise Matrix as a human being...since her very reality was gone.

In June of 1988, Invasion "begins". The Dominators find out some humans have the metahuman gene, and mass a huge invasion fleet of many alien foes of the superhumans. Most of the "action" in the books were actually proposed plans by the Dominators, spoiled by the superhumans in time before they could be actualized. Obviously Australia is not invaded, for instance.

Also in June, the new Gangbuster (the old one was Jose Delgado, who was badly injured) fights crime, and turns out to be an alternate persona of Clark/Superman himself. That frightened Clark immensely. He knew his "secret identity" skirted the psyche of multiple identies, but this was a full blown-manifestation of same, partially caused by guilt over having to kill. Scared, knowing what harm he could do if he lost control of his power, he resolved to leave earth. With a breathing recycler developed by Professor Hamilton, and a teleporter lent him by the Omega Men, he started to travel from star system to star system. As Clark, he was doing an expose on Inter-Gang. He had already typed the articles, and he said he was going to have to go into hiding to finish them without being killed by Inter-Gang hitmen. Instead, he handed the completed articles to Ma Kent, to mail to the Planet every week, little by little.

Then he left Earth. After several encounters on other worlds, lasting into October, meteorites damaged his oxygen supply, and he was rescued by a ship from a rebuilt Warworld, now ruled by Mongul.

He was prepared as a gladiator in Mongul's games. Mongul didn't see Superman when he was first brought in, and didn't recognize the so-different gladiator, in a very different costume, as his old enemy, until too late. Clark also met the Cleric, who had visited Krypton thousands of years ago, and the Eradicator, a device of ancient Krypton. (In August of 1988, Justice League Europe is founded. Power Girl is one of the members, since the Justice Society was locked in a time-loop.)

When he returns to Earth, in November, with the Eradicator, he fights off Turmoil, but finds Morgan Edge is having a heart attack. He finds that Matrix has used her shape-changing powers to assume Clark Kent's forms, and has effectively convinced others that she is Clark Kent.

In December, Matrix attacks Superman, and then leaves Earth in a Superman-like guise. They will meet in a few years, but for right now, this haunting shape-changing "ghost" who could look so like Kara was more of a headache than a reminder of a beloved cousin.

In January, 1989, Jimmy Olsen catches a virus from outer space he caught from Superman when he landed back on Earth. It elongates his limbs in a terribly painful manner, like his predecessor becoming Elastic Lad yet with great pain.

In March, Maxima appeared. She also seemed to be of the same genetic stock as Krypton, Earth, and other worlds, and felt sure she could crossbreed with Superman, and that he was, ummm, "prime genetic material". However, Superman first fought a Maxima robot.

In April, the Eradicator causes Jimmy to become "elastic" again, Jimmy was taken to Cadmus for treatment, but resented Superman for a long while. The Eradicator was buried in the Antarctic.

Biiiig mistake.

By May the Eradicator had built a huge Kryptonian-style Fortress of...Solitude...under the Antartic ice pack, and brainwashed two American scientists into acting like the cold Kryptonians of the old culture the Eradicator was used to. At the end of Superman's fighting the Eradicator, his mind is wiped of the incident---yet affected nevertheless.

That same month, Brainiac---the biological one that took over Milton Fine's body---sent Metallo and other robots against him.

In June, Morgan found out his father Vinnie Edge was now running Galaxy. That same month, Mxyztptlk got Superman and the third Flash, Wally West, to race. Superman lost, and Flash won, establishing himself as the Fastest Man Alive.

As both Superman and Clark, he finds himself growing more logical, less emotional, like the emotionally cold Kryptonians of the Eradicator's era. He has his first fight with the interstellar bounty hunter, Lobo, and they are a close match physically, but Lobo's savagery was winning over Superman's temporary cool detachment, when Superman emotionlessly outsmarted him.

In July he fought Draaga as the Krypton Man, and was fired for his insensitivity to his co-workers as editor of Newstime. Realizing he's being influenced, he fights the Eradicator, and flings it from the upper atmosphere into a path that would eventually intersect the sun.

In August the space shuttle Excalibur crashes, in an eerie re-enactment of the Fantastic Four's origin, the Lexcorp engine's energies combinining with a radiation storm to give the crew of four odd powers. Two of them virtually commit suicide, Hank Henshaw becomes a machine-being, and seemingly dies, but his wife Terri is cured.

Over the next few months, he decided to use this new, Antartic Fortress, moving much of his equipment from his glacier-bound Northern Fortress. Exploration was getting closer and closer to the old place, and he finally had to dismantle the key and hide the golden door.

In December, the death of Amanda McCoy, the Lexcorp computer scientist who figured out Superman's true identity, was investigated by both Superman and Batman. That month Hank Henshaw also returns, and takes over the remains of Kal-El's original rocket, and headed out in the cosmos....

Superman thought he had seen the last of Henshaw---but he was wrong.

Dead wrong... as would become apparent in the next decade.

PARTIAL LIST OF SOURCES:

Of course, TARZAN ALIVE and DOC SAVAGE: HIS APOCALYPTIC LIFE by Philip Jose Farmer.

Those interested with comments, suggestions, things I have forgotten, things I messed up, contact me at...
E-Mail:al.schroeder@nashville.com

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Speculations Copyright © Al Schroeder. Superman is owned by DC Comics, Warner Communications, and the Siegels. All other characters copyrighted by their respective owners.