Many researchers into Superman's life divide Superman's life into three seperate segments. The Golden Age/Earth-Two Superman, the Silver Age/Earth-One Superman, and the post-Crisis Superman....but the distinction may be artificial.

Although Kryptonians do age and die, they seem much more long-lived than normal earthlings. Hugo Danner/Clark Kent, in an age where much less documentation was needed to move about, managed to go from a World War I veteren to a "young" reporter at the Daily Star without much fear of someone investigating and finding he was much older than he appeared. (Besides, by being a reporter, he was sort of on the inside track of most investigators.)

There he met Lois Lane, who was much younger than himself, but who appeared to be about the same age as himself. He treated her somewhat differently than he had the women in his past. He had gotten past the "wild oats" stage that Hugo Danner was famous for, and he was more amused by her attraction for him in his Superman identity...and her scorn for his Clark Kent act. From 1934 on, they participated in adventures together.

Roy Thomas, in the seventies, started writing "All-Star Squadron", which focuses on the adventures of many of the forties' masked heroes. Thomas, a good researcher, had found out at Marvel that many comics heroes are more real than generally believed. His meticulous research continued at his stint at DC, but he followed Gardner Fox's lead about the supposed Earth-One/Earth-Two difference, made by Fox to throw off a reporter who was investigating the reality of Jay Garrick, the first Flash.

Thomas, who often corresponded with Fox before his death, got some details from him.

Not all, or even most of the All-Star Squadron's adventures were based on reality, but a substantial number were. For instance---the second All-Star Squadron Annual explains why Dr. Fate changed helmets, and why the first Green Lantern left the leadership of the Justice Society, and why the Justice Society members seemed not to age as quickly as they should have. Bathed in the chronal "energy" stored by Ian Karkull, their aging slowed.

What was not hinted that some were closer than others, and for some, their aging stopped altogether. Lois Lane was in that crowd. Lois was closer than anybody---she has never let danger get in the way of getting a story, and never will--and bore the full brunt of that "chronal radiation".

As the years progressed, as Lois found out Clark's identity (in the unpublished story reprinted in STERANKO'S HISTORY OF COMICS) they found that Lois did not age. It was exhilerating for a while. Yet at the end of the forties, it started to look a little unnatural for both Clark and Lois to look so young.

So Clark and Lois quit the "Daily Planet", the New York newspaper they had been working for.

They spent several years travelling, while the comics kept on churning fictitious stories about them. Siegel and Shuster had lost their lawsuit, and the writers had no idea that there were real people these were based on---which is the way Clark preferred it. In their travels in the early fifties, they found Doc Savage's Fortress of Solitude, abandoned after Doc's disappearance. Humanity was making more and more inroads into the artic, and it was only a matter of time before this huge gleaming blue dome would be discovered. Clark broke in, and on examining the super-scientific machines in there, shuddered at the thought of the governments of the world getting hold of these weapons. They were already entering a deadly arms race that could end humanity, with their atom bombs and hydrogen bombs. They didn't need these devices too.

He constructed a huge hiding place in the side of a glacier, and moved the Fortress' equipment in there, for safekeeping. He also emptied out his Secret Citadel, his earlier mountainside retreat, and moved his trophies to this artic retreat.

He kept the Fortress' name as a homage to Dr. Clark Savage, and knew that Doc would have approved his getting those tremendously powerful devices away from where munitions-makers could mass-produce them.

Meanwhile a momentous discovery was made. In 1953 Watson and Crick discovered DNA.

A government project was started to explore the ramifications of tampering with human genetics, called The Cadmus Project, or more simply, The DNA Project. Clark, as a member of the now-disbanded Justice Society, had government clearance to get access to such records---but the project sought him out, for his unique genes.

Though Clark was descended from a kidnapped bunch of prehistoric humans who were genetically altered, enough genetic drift happened where, though his virility has never been in question, judging by his actions in GLADIATOR, his fertility with human women was at least questionable. Which was just as well, for if the child inherited at least part of his strength, the child could be a danger to the mother of the child.

By comparing Clark's DNA to that of more normal humans, the scientists of the Project were able to progress far beyond those of more normal geneticists. By witnessing just where he was different from normal humans, it gave clues to the entire genetic structure. (Jack Kirby, who was the first writer-artist given permission to talk about the Project, mentions that Superman was one of the first people to take part in the Project. Now you know why. That was the same story arc that introduced Darkseid for the first time, and the New Genesis-Apokolips war....so you can't have one without the other. Jack Kirby's source was the slum kid whom he first receieved information about the Newsboy Legion, Gabby---now grown up and working for the Project.)

They began to develop test-tube babies, and then Lois had a request. Could they see if they could develop an earthling-Kryptonian hybrid? This was in the mid-fifties. After many attempts, they finally had a fertilized ovum...but fears about having to reinforce the test tube made them "freeze" the ovum for a few years until they could develop more secure artificial wombs to rear the child in.

Meanwhile, Clark and Lois decided to go back to the profession they loved. Pretending to be nephews and nieces of the "Clark Kent" and "Lois Lane" of the thirties and forties, they joined a NYC newspaper. (Not necessarily the same one they worked at before. Any paper they worked at was called "The Daily Planet" in the comics, just as any editor was called "Perry White" by the writers.) It was around this time that Jerry Siegel decided to go back to writing Superman comics.

Most of the stories from 1948 to 1955 had absolutely no basis in reality---and it was during that period that Superman's powers magnified faster than a Paul Bunyan tall tale. To keep in the continuity of the previous tales, Siegel and Binder, no matter how much or little they knew of the truth, had to mold the adventures to fit the web developed by comics about Superman, Superboy, Jimmy Olsen, and even Lois Lane.

There was another momentous occurence when in 1957 (not 1959, as indicated in the story "The World's Greatest Heroine", an understandable typo) his cousin, Kara Zor-El, landed on Earth. This was the only other Kryptonian Superman had ever encountered, and her knowledge of Kryptonian life and customs expanded his own knowledge (and Siegel's) of his origins immensely. He grew to love her like a sister or daughter, and Lois who (despite what the comics said) was privy to such secrets, became very fond of her.

The Project then contacted Lois and Clark. They had developed a reinforced artificial womb where they thought they could bring the fetus to term safely. They did so, and a beautiful girl was born---with blonde hair.

Samuel Lane, Lois' father, was a blonde, who had a taste for brunettes. Both Lois and her sister Margo were brunettes, but Lois' much younger sister Lucy was a blonde.

They decided to name her Kara, after Clark's cousin. Yet Lois and Clark had never legalized their union, and Lois was single. Nor would the scientists who developed this test-tube baby feel safe letting her out of their sight until they could judge how fast and powerfully the child would grow.

With reason. The process resulted in some speeding up of the child's aging metabolism, and in a decade, the child who was born in 1960 became a very-adult looking woman by the early seventies.

Clark and Lois' second careers continued. Clark joined the UN-sponsored Justice League, and only occasionally saw his old friends, the Justice Society members. In time, a Morgan Edge, a broadcasting magnate, brought the paper they worked for and made Clark into first a travelling TV reporter, then later an anchorman. For a while, Lois also was a part-time newscaster, for a show called People USA. Then she became a freelance reporter, and then went back to being a staff reporter.

Meanwhile, the second Kara observed some of Clark's old allies, the Justice Society, in trouble. She wanted to leave the sheltered protection of the Project. (She had been friends with the "Hairies", and it was her strength that helped her contruct "Habitat", their tree-commune.) However, the Cadmus Project managers did not want her to leave and potentially give information away about the Project. (It was government sources that clued Kara into Brain Wave and Per Degaton's plan.) Luckily, there was a solution...

The "Hairies" were genetically manipulated to have higher I.Q.s than normal people, and invented many new devices. They invented the "Symbioship" out of the reinforced artificial womb that Kara II had been raised in, and imprinted in her mind a false history---a quick rerun of Supergirl's history...so that no accidental slip of her tongue could lead anyone to the Cadmus Project. Then they allowed her to leave.

Kara had blonde hair like her aunt Lucy or her grandfather Samuel Lane, yet in personality she was very much like her mother Lois Lane---outspoken, impatient, reckless. It was Lois who muttered,

"No job for a woman, eh? --I've got a good mind too---"

Yet those are sentiments which Kara---or Power Girl, as she called herself---might have echoed. Some deep knowledge about how young she really was---only a decade old---caused her to insist on the Power GIRL name, despite her obvious womanly qualities.

Her original chroniclers, Gerry Conway, Ric Estrada, and Paul Levitz, were able to keep her to more realistic levels of her strength and abilities. Thus, she leaped, rather than flew, was powerful and very resistent to harm, but not totally invulnerable. She became a valued member of the Justice Society, and helped Infinity Inc. with their first adventure.

Later, after the battle with the Anit-Monitor, and the JSA disappeared for a while, she became a valued member of a European branch of the Justice League, if we can believe Keith Giffen. (She was given a new, mystical origin--the granddaughter of an Atlantean sorcerer, no less...but that doesn't explain Power Girl's weakness to kryptonite in INFINITY INC. Whether she really believed that---perhaps a hallucination caused by the strain of the events of CRISIS---or whether that's a cover story after she found out the truth of her parentage---is still to be determined.

Lois and Clark stayed in their jobs and made new friends and rivals (such as Steve Lombard and others)until the early eighties. People were living longer, and their apparent lack of age was often put down to Clark's make-up artist before he did the broadcast. Yet inquiries about how they "looked so young" were getting uncomfortable. They knew the time was coming to "reinvent" themselves once again...

Then the events known as Crisis (which may have been the same event that Michael Moorcock calls the Conjunction of a Million Spheres) happened at 1985 at the latest; and most tellingly for Superman, his beloved cousin Supergirl died, as well as his friend from the Justice League, Barry Allen. The death of Supergirl was a shock and a loss that Superman would take some time recovering from.

He resigned from Galaxy Broadcasting and the paper that currently was called the "Daily Planet". He needed to think, to reflect. He sometimes could lick his wounds at the Fortress of Solitude, but that's not what he needed this time...

He needed to return to his roots. He left without telling Lois where 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.

He had married Martha Ross Clark, the granddaughter of Peter Ross, his good friend from childhood. Her mother, Martha Ross, had been named for Superman's foster-mother, Martha Matilda Clark Kent.

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 had been a football star and a very popular person in high school, but he had a wanderlust...

Then they 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 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.

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. He himself went back into newspaper work, becoming a columnist and for that matter, an author.

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, 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". He's been a columnist and a novelwriter for nearly fifteen years. He has suffered a "death" at the hands of the monster called Doomsday---but reports of his death were greatly exagerrated. (LITERALLY---his climatic battle with Doomsday was in the Jersey swamps miles from NYC, and his funeral was a much more secret affair than hinted at in the comics.)

He has been suplanted by four different Supermen, one from the Project, albeit not from his genetic material, who became a new Superboy...

He has returned and finally made legal his long-standing affair with Lois Lane, and married her. (The "Sam Lane" who is posing as Lois' father is a military man, obviously a member of the Project who was assigned to give Lois a "history"---obviously he feels like she's part of a Witness Protection Program.) They might be able to maintain their current lives for a few more years...maybe as much as a decade. (Of course, "Lex Luthor", "Lois Lane", and even "Clark Kent" are just fictional roman a clefs for the real people involved. "Lex Luthor" the billionaire doesn't have the same name as his father, the scientific criminal---but he is called the same in the comics to clue the reader in on his relationship.) Occasionally Power Girl--who now calls herself Karen Starr---visits her parents. Yet eventually, they will have to "reboot" their lives again.

One handicap of being an immortal couple---in a mortal world.

SOURCES: I owe a great debt to "The Lethal Luthors", with its suggestion about the original Luthor's parentage.

I also owe Kai Jansson a debt for information about the modern Luthor and his origins.

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", of course, is currently owned by DC Comics/Warner Communications. All other characters copyrighted by their respective owners.