10 Superman Questions That Always Confused You
4. How Can Superman Also Be Superboy?
By now you've probably gathered that pre-Crisis DC continuity is a complete mess, and that goes double for Superman. Most comics fans today will be aware of Superboy as a genetically aged clone of the Man of Steel who tends to dress in black, but he wasn't the first to go by that name.
It was actually Clark Kent who was the first Superboy, and this is where things get even more confusing. The character first appeared in the forties as just a younger version of Superman who got up to all sorts of adventures in Smallville. He has a super-dog, called Krypto, and just generally has a good time.
Eventually, young Clark links up with the Legion of Super-Heroes. I'll avoid getting into them here because their history too is about as linear and clear as Inception if it were edited by someone doing the hokey cokey while performing a game of Twister. Either way, all of this was stricken from the record with Crisis on Infinite Earths.
And then it came back... sort of.
There were pocket universes, time displacements that brought back the original Superboy, an insane version called Superboy-Prime, and then one that utilised concepts from the Smallville TV show. As things currently stand Clark Kent has been Superboy, but the current Superboy is still the leather-jacket wearing Kon-El most fans are now familiar with.