DC Histories: Superboy-Prime

Here at DC Histories, we try to make sense of the continuity that perplexes, befuddles, and intimidates. We discuss what worked and what didn’t. This week, we’re talking about the last survivor of Earth-Prime, Superboy-Prime.

During the Silver Age, the concept of the multiverse was introduced to DC Comics. When Barry Allen crossed over with Jay Garrick for the first time, it was shown that they were from different versions of Earth. Barry, the current Flash, was on Earth-1 while Jay, the Golden Age Flash, was on Earth-2. Over time, a wide variety of other Earths were revealed, each on its own separate vibrational plane. Along with Barry and Jay’s Earths, there was Earth-3, Earth-C, Earth-S, Earth-X, and a whole infinite number more.

Among these worlds was a place called Earth-Prime. This was the place Barry accidentally found himself in during one of his adventures. On Earth-Prime, the heroes of the DCU were known to everyone as comic book characters.

Earth-Prime was, in essence, our world. It was the world where the person reading this story existed. During this tale, Barry ran to the DC Comics offices and got help from Flash editor Julie Schwartz in his efforts to get home. It was a fun, meta tale.

Other adventures were had on Earth-Prime in the coming years. Writer Cary Bates jumped from Earth-Prime into the DCU where he set about battling both the JLA and the JSA. A character named Ultraa, the first super powered being on Earth-Prime, appeared in 1978 but he didn’t stick around long as he almost immediately jumped to Earth-1 permanently. The only other super powered being on Earth-Prime was introduced just as the Crisis on Infinite Earths was destroying the multiverse.

Readers were introduced to the Clark Kent of Earth-Prime in DC Comics Presents #87. There it was finally shown that Earth-Prime and our Earth weren’t exactly the same. There was a Krypton on Earth-Prime that was also destroyed. Before he died, Earth-Prime’s Jor-El teleported his baby Kal-El to Earth where he was found by hikers named Jerry and Naomi Kent. Not feeling the need to alert the authorities to the baby they just found, Naomi named the baby Clark, after her maiden name even though Clark Kent was already known on Earth-Prime as the true identity of the famous fictional character, Superman.

Earth-Prime’s Krypton was different in another way from the Kryptons of other worlds. Young Clark didn’t have super powers as he grew up. In fact, he only learned he was Kryptonian when out on a stroll with his girlfriend Laurie during a costume party on the beach. Clark has dressed as Superboy for fun while Laurie went as a mermaid, just like Superman’s former girlfriend, Lori Lemaris. As Halley’s Comet passed far overhead, something triggered in Clark that unlocked his super powers. He suddenly discovered he could fly.

Clark then ran into Earth-1’s Superman and the two worked together to repel an army of aliens intent on overrunning Earth-Prime. The two parted ways soon afterward.

The young man had little time to enjoy his new found powers. Soon, the entire multiverse was destroyed by a being known as the Anti-Monitor. A group of heroes pulled from the most active Earths remained to help fight him, but learned that each of their worlds was gone. The one Earth that remained was closest in nature to Earth-1, but it wasn’t exactly the same. The Earth-2 Superman, the Earth-2 Power Girl, and Earth-Prime Superboy learned they were the sole survives of their universes.

After one last confrontation with the Anti-Monitor, the remaining Earth’s history was cemented. There was no place for duplicate versions of other heroes. Realizing they didn’t belong on Earth anymore, the Alexander Luthor of Earth-3 created a pocket dimension for a few select heroes to live. He brought Earth-2’s Superman and Lois Lane with him, along with Earth-Prime’s Superboy. The four of them would live in peace and happiness forever.

That everlasting peace only lasted until 2005. That’s when Earth-2’s Superman broke free of the dimension Earth-3’s Alexander Luthor created for them. Lois was getting sick and Superman thought that the only way to cure her was to bring back Earth-2. He set off to attempt to fix a troubled world by recreating the one he knew so well.

Little did he realize that he was being manipulated by Alexander Luthor and Earth-Prime’s Superboy, from then on known as Superboy-Prime or simply Prime. The pair had manipulated events and had brought the heroes of Earth into direct confrontation with each other so they’d have an excuse to recreate their lost worlds.

Superboy-Prime quickly showed himself to be unstable. Jealous of Conner Kent, the Superboy who’d debuted shortly after Superman died, Superboy-Prime sought him out and went one-on-one with the latest Boy of Steel. Soon realizing he was losing the fight, Conner called in every Teen Titan who still had a Titans communicator. In the chaos that followed, Superboy-Prime lashed out at the Titans, killing several of them on accident. Prime never fully trained with his powers and didn’t know how to hold back when he was panicked. Bushido, Pantha, and Wildebeest never recovered from their injuries while Risk had his arm torn off. He also killed Conner Kent, but not before Conner upset Alexander Luthor’s plans.

In an effort to contain Superboy-Prime, he was sent into the Phantom Zone but he quickly escaped. Having no other choice, Bart Allen and Wally West dragged Prime into the Speed Force, from which no one had ever returned. That seemed to do it, as Superboy-Prime was gone for a little while. However, he came roaring back, angrier and more powerful than ever. Somehow, he’d been able to break free of the Speed Force and had designed armor that fed him more yellow sunlight, making him more powerful than ever before. This armor was based on the Anti-Monitor’s old suit and made Superboy-Prime even more of a force to be reckoned with.

It was here that Superboy-Prime stated that all he wanted in the world was Earth-Prime back. Alexander swore that he would bring it back, but the heroes of the DCU intervened in time. The unstable multiverse Alexander artificially created collapsed in upon itself and only the one Earth that existed since the Crisis on Infinite Earths remained. Superboy-Prime was found guilty of his crimes. He was imprisoned by the Guardians of the Universe inside a red Sun-Eater, which sapped him of his powers. In an effort to define himself, Prime cut the Superman symbol into his chest.

Having already escaped Alexander’s pocket dimension, the Phantom Zone, and the Speed Force, it seemed only a matter of time before he escaped this cell as well. It was only a year later that Sinestro set the insane young man free when he attacked Oa. Sinestro needed new recruits for his Yellow Lantern Corps that could help spread fear. To that end, he brought in the biggest threats in the DCU, including the Anti-Monitor, the Cyborg-Superman, Parallax, and Superboy-Prime. Along with the other rank-and-file Corps members, this was a group of which most of the universe would be extremely afraid.

Somehow, the Green Lantern Corps and its allies managed to turn the tide of the war against Sinestro. One-by-one, the major Yellow Lantern Corps members fell to the Green Lanterns’ light until it was only Superboy-Prime fighting everyone. As he had all the strength and powers of the Supermen of Earth-1 and Earth-2, it was a hard fought battle. He was in such a frenzy that Prime lashed out at everyone in his vicinity, comrade and foe alike. No one, it seemed, could stop him.

Then, a Guardian of the Universe came forward, attached himself to the insane boy, and detonated his body. Superboy-Prime appeared to disintegrate into nothingness.

But that wasn’t what truly happened. Superboy-Prime had simply been jettisoned into the recently formed multiverse. It seemed that while Alexander Luthor’s tinkerings with the multiverse in Infinite Crisis hadn’t born fruit, the multiverse had naturally reformed shortly thereafter. Superboy-Prime quickly set out to find his precious Earth-Prime somewhere in the various universes.

Look. Let me be honest right now. I hate talking about Countdown to Final Crisis. It was an awful mess of a series that lead to a whole slew of narrative dead ends and terrible stories. But, this is where Superboy-Prime next appeared. Now looking older than in his previous stories, Superboy-Prime called himself Superman-Prime, due in large part to a legal battle happening at the same time which held that the heirs of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster owned the Superboy character and name. Anyway, Superman-Prime learned that a world named Earth-51 was as close to Earth-Prime as could be found in the new multiverse but during a battle with an absurd take on Captain Atom named Monarch, Earth-51 was completely destroyed. But don’t bother worrying about that as this story was never referred to ever again.

Once again finding himself young and on the regular DCU’s Earth, Superman-Prime again took the name Superboy-Prime mostly due to another real-life court ruling, which allowed DC Comics to use the Superboy name without legal complications. However, Superboy-Prime was now in the far future. Enraged that he was simply a footnote to history in the 31st Century, Prime again lashed out, this time at the Legion of Super-Heroes. Superman got involved in the fight and tried to convince Superboy-Prime to give up his insane quest for attention by forcing him to remember the good times on Earth-Prime.

As with every other method of containing Superboy-Prime, this too failed. It just made him angrier as he remembered what he’d lost during the first Crisis. It also made him whiner, a cornerstone of the Superboy-Prime psyche.

Near the end of this adventure, Superboy-Prime came up against a Legion villain known as the Time Trapper. The Time Trapper’s identity had always been a secret but he’d recently revealed that he was an old version of Superboy-Prime. They were the same person, just from a different point in the timeline. Enraged because he knew no other emotion, Superboy-Prime punched the Time Trapper so hard that he was once again flung into the multiverse. When he awoke, he found himself on Earth-Prime. Apparently, it had formed somehow since the end of Countdown. It was what he wanted ever since the first Crisis on Infinite Earths and Prime was ecstatic. Sadly, his parents and Laurie weren’t. As the DCU was still a fictional comic book world on Earth-Prime, everyone had read about young Clark Kent’s adventures and knew him to be insane and a killer.

It should be pointed out that Superboy-Prime’s girlfriend should have been called “Laurie” on that page instead of “Lori” and his father’s name is “Jerry” not “Jerri,” but those are minor typos. Also, it’s worth mentioning that according to the comics stacked on their table, not even Jerry and Naomi Kent read Countdown to Final Crisis.

Just a few months later, Superboy-Prime appeared yet again during the Blackest Night event. Depowered and living on Earth-Prime, it was hinted that Clark had accidentally killed Laurie shortly after he’d returned to live with his parents. Obsessed with the world he left, Clark began reading every new DC comic he could get his hands on as they still told the true stories of the places Superboy-Prime had lived for years. When a Black Lantern Alexander Luthor showed up out of the blue to face off against a newly repowered Superboy-Prime, he told the boy that DC Comics’ readers hated him and that he was considered a bad character.

He wasn’t wrong. Superboy-Prime had been so overused since his return in 2005 that readers were sick of him. This Blackest Night tie-in was a big meta-joke about how DC’s readers wanted the young villain gone. As this battle happened on Earth-Prime, which is still essentially our Earth, the battle between the Black Lanterns and Superboy-Prime spilled over into the DC offices where caricatures of the DC editorial staff were sent running.

The story ended with an insinuation that Superboy-Prime was killed by a Black Lantern version of Laurie, his dead girlfriend.

However, as he had so many times before, Superboy-Prime somehow had a hold over the writers and editors of DC Comics and he appeared one final time a year later. Again, just as he’d done against the Green Lantern Corps and the Legion of Super-Heroes, Superboy-Prime appeared alongside a group of supervillains during a fight with the Teen Titans. Pulled into the regular DCU by a villain named Headcase, Prime lashed out because of the death of Laurie. He whined about wanting to go back to Earth-Prime once again.

It was a boring motivation because that’s what he wanted to do for years and he’d just gotten what he wanted. It made little sense to retread the same ground once again with him and so soon after the last time, but it happened anyway. Immediately after this story wrapped up with Superboy-Prime being fused with the Source Wall, another prison he was sure to escape from in time, the New 52 wiped everything away. Superboy-Prime was now gone from the universe and hasn’t been seen since.

Superboy-Prime would have been a much better character had he been used more sparingly. Some of his adventures, such as Infinite Crisis, the Sinestro Corps War, and his Blackest Night side tale, were wonderful and remain great comics. Sadly, he was dragged down by not only the stories he appeared in but also the frequency at which they came out. He was a one-note character that got played too many times. If he ever returns to the DCU, and I’m thinking that it may be only a matter of time before he does so, here’s hoping that everyone involved uses a bit more patience and self-control with Superboy-Prime’s stories than the character himself has ever shown to have.

 

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Jeff Reid maintains that there are no bad characters, just bad stories. He tells his own stories on Twitter.