Nowadays we know the younger years of Superman by the name of Smallville, as the Kryptonian orphan was raised by the kindly Ma and Pa Kent, who gave him the Earth name Clark (considerably less cool than Kal-El, but certainly less conspicuous) and raised him to be a fair, even handed and well-rounded young man who just happened to be the most powerful being on Earth. That's the gist of the current comics continuity, too, with child Supes keeping the superheroics to a minimum until he grew up and left his small Kansas hometown for the brights lights of the big city. And Brainiac. In the Golden and Silver Age, meanwhile, things were different (as they were with most things). Between the forties and as late as the eighties, Superman spent his childhood as Superboy, complete with a miniature version of his famous blue-and-red costume and adventures more suited to a pre-teen superhero. Note that this is a completely different Superboy to the totally nineties incarnation, who was an imperfect clone of the original Man of Steel created by Lex Luthor. The old Superboy, meanwhile, had a pet superdog called Krypto, joined the Legion of Super Heroes in the 30th Century and made Lex Luthor his enemy when they were still teenagers. All of that was written out of continuity following Crisis on Infinite Earths and has never been undone. Same thing with Batboy, come to think of it.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
