Superman, the Current
Man of Steel.
Clark Kent / Kal-El Post Crisis
Born: c.1958 (adjusted to c.1961 by Zero Hour)
Started costumed career: c.1983 (adjusted to c.1984 by Zero Hour)
First comic book 1986.
While the Post-Crisis version of Superman is much maligned by comic fans who liked the unlimited Earth-bound god that he'd evolved into on Earth-1, the Post-Crisis "reboot" made Superman into a real, human character with emotions, motivations, and humor that readers can identify with. No longer is he a superior being from a lost world far better than ours trying to help the pathetic little earthlings. He's now a normal, all-American guy with a wholesome farm upbringing who just happens to have incredible super-powers. He never even heard of Krypton until he was a grown man and an established superhero. And he looks back on the world that spawned him with a little pity, for they never knew the fullness of life the humans of Earth experience.
In high school, Clark Kent was an ordinary boy... But not too ordinary. He was tall, good-looking, and popular. The football hero with a cute girlfriend. He worked on the family farm, hung out with friends, and basically had a normal life...
Okay. So he had a secret that he shared only with his folks. But it didn't seem like a big deal to him because it'd happened so gradually. When he was eight they'd realized that he was becoming invulnerable to physical harm, and stronger than any normal person. He'd always had great eyes, and hardly noticed when he started being able to look through solid walls. The ability to fly, which he'd stumbled upon at 17, had been a thrill. But his folks had wisely cautioned him to keep his powers under wraps. For the most part, his powers didn't have a lot of bearing on his life. He just figured he'd hit the genetic jackpot!
But his folks had a secret too. One that they waited to share with him until he was 18.
It had started with Jonathan and Martha Kent securing the farm against a nasty winter storm that was rolling in. Suddenly there was a streak of light across the sky and an impact on a distant corner of the farm. Investigating, the Kents discovered what looked like some kind of "Sputnik" with a large, ebony, egg-shaped section. It opened at Jonathan's touch, releasing clear fluid and a newborn baby boy. Martha quickly resolved that whatever maniacs shot a helpless baby into the sky were not going to get their hands on him again. Jonathan worried that maybe the child was a martian, but Martha told him that was ridiculous. The baby was clearly a normal human being! Just as they got back to the house, the worst winter storm in living memory hit and isolated the Kents from Smallville for most of the winter. When it was over, the Kent's simply told their neighbors that Martha had given birth to the boy, whom they named Clark after Martha's maiden name. Since folks in the small town knew that Martha had lost previous pregnancies, and knew that the Kents were forty-ish and this was probably their last chance at having a child, it seemed natural to them that Martha would keep her pregnancy quiet lest she jinx herself.
The revelation that he was "adopted" stunned the 18 year old Clark. He realized that fate had given him his powers for more than winning football games. So he revealed his secret to Lana Lang, his dearest friend, and struck out into the world to use his abilities for good.
For several years Clark managed to help others covertly. His actions were always seen as some kind of incredible luck, or even divine intervention.
Then he found himself in a situation where he couldn't save the day without thousands of witnesses. His first public action, saving a NASA space plane which was about to crash into Metropolis, seemed to bring out the worst in the huge crowd at the airport. After a momentary meeting with Lois Lane, who was on the plane, Clark flew away confused and dumbfounded.
When he went home to Smallville to tell his folks the story, they helped him deal with the situation. They created the costumed facade of Superman to distract the public from the hero's real identity. By wearing glasses, changing his hairstyle, and adjusting his posture, Clark would make himself look different from Superman from then on. Since Superman didn't wear a mask, it never occured to most people that he had another identity to hide.
Returning to Metropolis in his new Superman outfit, Clark began doing the hero thing hot and heavy, with Lois Lane chasing him trying to get the story on Superman. She finally gets it, but is enraged to learn that a new reporter just off the street has already beaten her to the punch. Clark Kent is now on staff at the Daily Planet.
Over the next few years Clark enjoys a full life, becoming the rising star of print journalism and overcoming some of Lois' initial resentment to establish a relationship with the potential for becoming romantic.
As Superman, he did heroic deeds in grand fashion. His body's way of metabolizing solar energy made him well-equipt for the task. He was strong enough to lift the weight of the Great Pyramid (bot not enough to juggle planets), able to move at supersonic speed (but nowhere near the speed of light), and could easily fly carrying anything he could lift. His living cells generated a sort of energy field which rendered his flesh (and close fitting garments like most of his costume) invulnerable to all but the most forceful blasts. He could hold his breath for perhaps two hours of moderate activity, and could survive the vacuum of space as well as the pressure of the ocean floor. He could cause matter to heat and burn. (Called "heat vision" because his eyes glowed as he did it.) His vision extended far beyond the normal range of visible light, enabling him to see heat trails and through solid object other than lead. His hearing allowed him to hear sounds too quiet for humans to hear, as well as those outside of the normal human audible frequency range. His senses were limited by the nature of light and sound. For instance, he can't hear anything in space, because sound doesn't travel in a vacuum. If someone yells at him from a thousand miles away, he might hear it, but it'll take more than an hour for the sound to reach his ears.
After establishing Superman as a legend in Metropolis, and himself as a top writer at the Planet, Clark returned to the Kent farm for a visit. While there, he discovered that he'd broken Lana Lang's heart the night he left Smallville to become a hero. She'd thought that he was going to propose, and she was looking forward to having a normal family life with him. Instead, he shared his greatest secret with her, then flew out of her life.
During the same Smallville visit, Clark was approached by some kind of alien force-field hologram. It touched him and sent an incredible flood of data into his brain. Suddenly, he knew about a planet called Krypton with an ancient human civilization. He saw how all Kryptonians had lived almost monastic, lonely lives in their sterile surroundings, communicating with other people primarily by electronic means. Only an event of the utmost urgency would justify one Kryptonian actually entering the physical presence of another. Clark learned how Kryptonians reproduced by having parents selected for the ideal genetic match, their seed mated in-vitro, and their children gestated in artificial wombs in a communal gestation chambers monitored by droids.
Clark also saw how one Kryptonian named Jor-El chafed at the state of things. A hopeless romantic by Kryptonian standards, Jor-El actually developed feelings for the genetic mother of his unborn child. Jor-El's unusual personality also led him to discover that the planet was doomed. He was one of the few who realized that a metal being created by forces in the planet's interior was killing millions of Kryptonians with its unique radiation, and the only one who knew that the same forces would soon blow Krypton to bits. A romantic to the last, Jor-El saved a small part of himself and his beloved Lara by attaching the gestation matrix of their unborn child (who would have been named "Kal-El" by the traditional Kryptonian naming system) to a hyperspace drive and launching it toward Earth... A planet whose natural, emotional society Jor-El admired.
Clark knew that he was Kal-El. He also absorbed a great deal of Kryptonian cultural information... While he was facinated by it all, he decided that it was ultimately of little importance. "Kal-El" was who he might've been on Krypton. But instead he was born on Earth when his matrix had opened on American soil. The only real parents he'd ever known were the Kents, and he was their boy, Clark, who used the facade of Superman to do some good for the people of Clark's home world, the planet Earth.
Shortly after learning of his origin, Clark would have his first encounter with kryptonite... The metal that had killed so many Kryptonians before the final destruction of the planet. Exposure to kryptonite caused Clark immense pain, and canceled out his powers, including invulnerability, for the duration of the exposure. Only one small chunk of kryptonite existed on Earth. It had become lodged in the tail-section of Kal-El's spaceship just before it jumped into hyperspace. Lex Luthor, evil billionaire, acquired the kryptonite and used it against Superman on several occassions. Lex even had a signet ring made from the metal to give him continuous protection from Superman... Unfortunately for Lex, it turns out that long-term contact with kryptonite isn't good for any living thing. In a year his hand had to be amputated, and his whole body was racked with radiation-induced cancer.
When he wasn't busy being Superman, Clark continued to develop his relationship with Lois. A handsome, charming, witty, and kind man like Clark was hard to resist, and Lois eventually fell for him. After the two were engaged, Clark let Lois in on his Superman secrets.
Then came Doomsday. Noone knew how or why, but a seven or eight foot tall monster appeared in the wilderness and began to cut a swath of destruction across the country. He possessed incredible superhuman strength, and apparently total invulnerability, and seemed to have no thought other than blind, malevolent rage. He obliterated anything and everyone in his path, incuding many powerful superheroes. Then his path led to Metropolis.
Superman took a lot of punishment as he was frequently destracted from his fight with Doomsday by the need to rescue people endangered by the monster's destruction. Finally realizing that the only way to save Metropolis was to concentrate every bit of his effort on stopping Doomsday, Superman tapped reserves of strength he never knew he had, and unleashed it all on the monster. In the end, Doomsday lay dead. Superman was mortally wounded, and had insufficient energy reserves to heal the wounds quickly enough to survive. So, assured that his City and loved-ones were saved, the Earth's mightiest hero gave up the ghost.
There was a squabble over the body. The clandestine Cademus government genetic research project tried to take possession, but were stopped by those who demanded that Superman be given a proper hero's burial. Cademus stole the body from the tomb, but Lois led a mission to retrieve it, and it was returned.
The stress of it all was too much for Jonathan Kent, who suffered a heart attack. After a near-death experience, Jonathan awoke saying that he'd seen Clark on the "other side", and had convinced him to try and return! Lois took this to be the delusional wishful thinking of a greiving father, but when she returned to Metropolis, Superman's body was missing again... And her sources said it wasn't Cademus this time.
Then four individuals appeared in Metropolis, each claiming (at least to some extent) to be Superman. One appeared to be a kid, and was sometimes called "Superboy". The other three each seemed to represent one of Superman's popular titles: The Man of Steel, the Last Son of Krypton, and the Man of Tomorrow.
Superboy (although he hated to be called that at first) looked like a fifteen year-old version of Superman. But he had a brash, girl-crazed attitude and advanced powers that Clark certainly hadn't possessed at that age. He made no bones about the fact that he was a clone of the original Superman who'd been created at Cademus, but had escaped before the maturation process had completed and before Cademus had established control of his mind.
Superboy would later learn that he was not really a clone of Superman. Cademus had been unable to accomplish that. Instead, they studied the bioenergetic field produced by Superman's body (which had no life-signs or mental activity during the breif period it was at Cademus, but was apparently clinging to life on a cellular level as it was invulnerable to decay and tissue sampling, and had even healed its external wounds) and developed a way to duplicate something similar in a human clone which had been genetically manipulated to look like Superman. So Superboy's powers varied a good bit from the Clark's.
The Man of Steel really appeared to be made of steel. Like a robot, or man in hi-tech battle armor. He could fly, seemed invulnerable, possessed superhuman strength, carried a strange sledgehammer, and fired railroad spikes from his arms. Some suggested that Superman's spirit had possessed a human and was using technology to replace his lost Kryptonian powers.
In truth, the Man of Steel was John Henry Irons, a defense technology engineer who'd gotten into political trouble in Washington and gone underground as Henry Johnson, a construction worker. Henry Johnson had met Superman once, when the hero saved his life on the high steel. When the man to whom he owed his life was killed fighting Doomsday, Henry decided to take up the mantle of Superman by using his genious to build battle armor to allow him to perform superheroic acts. The sledge hammer and railroad spikes were a tribute to Henry's legendary ancestor, John Henry.
The Last Son of Krypton looked like Superman, but had some dark, Kryptonian touches to his costume, and wore a large, amber visor. He had many of Superman's old powers, and could also fire energy blasts from his hands. He seemed to remember Superman's past relationship with Lois, but said death had changed him. He based his actions on hard, cold, Kryptonian logic. He didn't hesitate to maim or kill criminals at first. Then, slowly, more compassionate heroic ideals started to sink in. He began to understand that being Superman was more than just power.
It turned out that the Last Son of Krypton was actually an ancient Kryptonian artificial entity called the Eradicator. Severely damaged in a prior battle with Superman, the Eradicator had finally reassembled as an energy phantom just after Superman's body was retrieved from Cademus. The Eradicator used Superman's body as a template for a duplicate, which the Eradicator would possess as a physical form. But the duplicate was slightly imperfect. It could not absorb energy directly from the sun, and would need to be periodically recharged by a device called the Regeneration Matrix. The duplicate body's eyes were also hypersensitive to light. The Eradicator began to lose it's grip as it existed in the Superman-like body, and actually began to think it was Superman. Eventually, this glitch was corrected. But the things the Eradicator had learned about being a hero while living as the Last Son of Krypton would be remembered.
The Man of Tomorrow looked like the real Superman outfitted with advanced Kryptonian bionics. He had all of Superman's powers and a few cybertricks to go with them. He said he had amnesea, and had no idea how he'd been made into a cyborg. Despite his unsettling appearance, the Man of Tomorrow acted a lot like Superman, and was soon accepted as the "real deal" by the US Government and many superheros.
The Man of Tomorrow was actually an insane human scientist's consciousness living in a cyborg body created from the technology and DNA of Kal-El's spaceship and gestation matrix. Along with the alien invader Mongul, he was out to turn the Earth into a huge battle station. Although he tricked most of the Earth's most powerful heros into going on a wild goose-chase in space, the man of Tomorrow was ultimately defeated by a team including Superboy, the Eradicator, John Henry Irons, the Green Lantern, Supergirl (a sentient artificial life-form), and the original Superman (back from the dead!).
The battle with Doomsday had truly killed Superman. His spirit had left his body, and his body would've eventually decayed when the residual solar energy in his cells faded. But a unique chain of events allowed Superman to return from the grave.
When Cademus stole Superman's body, it was brought to the surface where its cells could absorb enough solar radiation to keep them viable. If the body had been left undisturbed it the deep, dark tomb, it might have perished on the cellular level.
Jonathan Kent's intervention during his near-death experience brought Clark's spirit back to his body, which had been returned to the tomb. Clark's spiritual reurn was just in time to prevent the Eradicator from possessing the body himself, and forced the Eradicator to settle for duplicating the body, using some of the original's stored energy and matter from the tomb.
At this point Clark was alive again, but dangerously low on energy and in a deep coma. The Eradicator put him into the Regeneration Matrix, which collected solar energy and channeled it into Clark's body... Although the Eradicator frequently drew power from Clark's body for his own use, Clark gradually did get stronger.
When Clark finally regained consciousness and broke out of the Regeneration Matrix, his powers were almost non-existant. Nevertheless, he insisted on leading the team to battle the Man of Tomorrow cyborg, who'd destroyed Coast City and killed millions. At the climax of the battle, the cyborg tried to blast Superman with kryptonite. The Eradicator placed himself between the weak Superman and the blast, using his power to transmute the kryptonite radiation... Instead of killing Superman, the blast reenergized him to full-power and then some, although it did appear to destroy the Eradicator.
With the Man of Tomorrow defeated, Superboy and the John Henry Irons each left Metropolis to begin their own adventures. Clark and Lois managed to come up with an explanation for Clark's return (he'd been presumed dead in Doomsday's rubble with hundreds of other unidentified bodies), and Clark resumed his double-life.
Despite many trials and tribulations since, Clark's adventures continue in various DC comics today.