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[No Javascript. No Pop-Ups. No Cookies. No Tracking. No Targeting. No AI.Never had them. Never will.Your privacy is assured and your humanity sacrosanct.]

There's a new phrase running along the bottom of most pages on the site reading,


No Javascript.  No Pop-Ups.  No Cookies.  No Tracking.  No Targeting.  No AI.
Never had them.  Never will.
Your privacy is assured and your humanity sacrosanct.


This isn't really a new site policy, but actually a newly formalized statement of what has always been regular but unstated site policy.

Since 1995, various parties have approached me with proposals on how to monetize the site, but it always involved polluting the site content and/or the user experience in some way.  I have always declined, mainly because I wanted the site to remain an enjoyable, useful, and positive experience. When I initially studied Computer Science back in the '80s, I was attracted to the field because the philosophy was: How to make useful tools to assist and empower the user.  But now the philosophy is: How can we manipulate and control the user to get them to spend as much money as possible and do and think what we want them to?  Basically, how to get them to stop thinking.

Back then, I could see where things were headed and refused to go down that path; both with this site and with my career.  The approach here is to respect the user and the user's computing device and to follow the Golden Rule.

AI is new and has a whole new set of problems: mental, emotional, ethical, artistic, financial, and environmental. Plus, whenever I try to read any text generated by an AI, or view an image created by an AI, I feel physically ill.  Whatever AI is doing to the user, it can't be good.

These are wonderful books that definitely hit my sweet spot in terms of page count and price.  So far the reproduction in all of them has been great.  My favorite is "Superman Family: The Giant Turtle Man" but I'm digging the other Superman-related volumes as well.

You left one off your list:  December will bring us "The Invisible Luthor," although the (Golden Age) contents have all been reprinted before in Archives and/or omnis.

I'm thinking "Last Days of Superman" represents the progress they've made to date in restoring content for GA Superman Omnibus Vol 8, which may or may not ever materialize, but as I like the "Finest" format better, it's a win for me.

And yes, the "Gorilla World" has created a lot of confusion for folks.  Similarly the title "Superboy: The Super Dog from Krypton" must be a bit of head-scratcher to the average bookstore visitor.

I'm on board for all the super-stuff, plus I'm looking forward to "The Flash: The Fastest Man Dead" next year; the Bates/Novick era was "my" Flash.

I haven't read the Superman Adventures magazine, will have to check it out. 1993 is the year they finally went all-in on John Byrne's origin (see the test-tube rocket) after Wolfman and others ignored it, and I suspect it was because Man of Steel #1 was reprinted and on the stands during the Death of Superman saga.

Alex Ross did sneak the traditional baby-ship into Kingdom Come, but other than that I think Loeb was the first to successfully break the lock on Superman's back catalog. His Return to Krypton was overturned, but he brought back Kara and Krypto, Red K while writing Smallville, and I remember Superman/Batman even referenced the Caveman from Krypton in it.

[this origin]

Adding this origin has been on my to-do list for 20 years.

Feels good to finally get it done.  Read it here:



by Jeph Loeb and Ed McGuinness, from Superman/Batman #1, 2003

(While working on the above, I also stumbled across this origin, already uploaded to the site:

lurking closed off in a dusty corner so I  opened it up. I don't think it's ever been linked to before, probably because I never got around to finishing it.  By Karl Kesel and Mike Parobeck, 1993, from the short-lived "Superman & Batman" magazine) (Edit: I had originally but incorrectly stated that this story was from the (non-existent) "Superman Adventures" magazine. As far as I know, there was no such thing - that's just how I remembered it.)

These are both now linked to from the Origins page.

DC has just announced a DC Finest volume called "The Last Days of Superman," which will reprint 1950-51 where the Golden Age omnibuses left off (Action Comics #144-159, Superman #64-70, and World's Finest #46-53) arriving in early 2026.

Other DC Finest volumes that reprinted new material so far are Kryptonite Nevermore (which also includes Action Comics from the start of the Bronze Age, but not the World of Krypton backups) and most notably, "The Super-Dog from Krypton," which is all of Superboy and Adventure Comics from 1954-55.

They have also reissued some previously reprinted material in that format. "Zap Goes the Legion" (the Action Comics run that has been reprinted 3 times) "The Super-Girl from Krypton" (Silver Age Action Comics backups), "The First Superhero" (Siegel and Shuster 1938-40), JLA and JSA. The Super Friends volume and "The Giant Turtle Man" will extend a few issues beyond the last Showcase reprints.

I should note that the format is based on the Marvel Epic Collections, where they use the title of the most significant storyline on the cover. So the Super-Dog from Krypton is not only a Krypto book, and to my disappointment there isn't a whole series from the 50s I didn't know about called The Gorilla World.

I don't have a local comic shop but I have a subscription to the DC Digital app, which lags about 6 months behind. All of this phase of Superman comics has been pretty great, I didn't think I would be a fan of the Superman-as-a-father concept after watching the Superman and Lois pilot, but the new Superman Family vibe is fun. The Power Girl series is good.

I have read almost everything chronologically, so there are certain stories (like "Let My People Grow," Great Darkness Saga) that hit really well after reading everything that came before it. House of Brainiac was one of those recently, it incorporated things from his full history including the L.E.G.I.O.N. series.

I think you're right that Waid's Action Comics is the first real non-Legion Superboy story since the TV series, if you don't count Smallville. I've been thinking lately about doing a Superboy podcast after reading through all of it.

I'll have to look for the DC Vault book, thanks for the tip!

[available at Amazon.com]

When Caveat Corner published a new edition of Superman: Miracle Monday in 2017, they incorporated a painting by Ken Penders as part of their cover design.

But much of Ken's painting was obscured and seems a bit washed out.

I wanted to try to show more of that painting and restore the original colors; so below is the official cover as it appears on the official edition, followed by my attempt at a redesign beneath.

Official cover:


My version:



Superman: Miracle Monday is available at Amazon.com and from the author directly at San Diego Comic Con from now until this Sunday, July 27 (2025) at Table P-02 in the Small Press section.

I don't know about a "catalog" but the DC Vault book (2008) included a facsimile repro of a Superman-Tim store booklet from March 1944.  It included puzzles, a message in secret code, some promotional pitches and a text-piece story or two, along with a few illos of Superman.

I'm not reading any monthlies now, but I just finished Waid's "Last Days of Lex Luthor" and thought it really captured the spirit of a Silver Age "Imaginary Story" like "The Amazing Saga of Superman-Red and Superman-Blue" or "The Death of Superman."  It felt like it could've been used to wrap up pre-Crisis Superman instead of Moore's "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow."  In particular I think it captures the spirit of old school Lex Luthor; brilliant but held back by petty grudges and personal demons, and yet -- in Superman's eyes -- never totally beyond hope of reformation.  A really good tale but -- without spoiling anything -- one that has to be out of continuity.  Not that that isn't a major plus at this stage.

[main welcome page]

Since 1995, the main welcome page at Superman Through the Ages has been designed to work well on a desktop PC, probably around 800x600 to 1024x768 pixels.

It doesn't really work well on tablets or phones, so I've started to put together a new responsive welcome page, that is designed to have collapsible menus and other screen elements that automatically resize to fit the screens on mobile devices. (vertical orientation probably looks better)

From any of the welcome screens, you can now pick which of the four you prefer (the new mobile responsive, the original classic desktop, one of the original desktop revamps or a later desktop revamp) using the navigation options at the top of the page, and whichever option you pick should be remembered as you navigate around the site until such time as you change it.  Most of the pages on the rest of the site are still optimized for legacy desktop PCs, but I'll be updating bits and pieces as we go.

[instagram page]

Anyone who has seen the new Superman flick may have noticed an all-new version of the spoken and written language of Krypton. This is a new conlang, created by David and Jessie Peterson who have created other conlangs for other Hollywood blockbuster films and are known figures in the conlang community.  I really like the aesthetics of the new writing system; the fact that the Petersons researched and incorporated the comic book material; they give credit to the work of previous creators; and they don't try to claim that theirs is the only "official" Kryptonian language!  In fact, they leave the door open to, and welcome, any future creations. They seem like very nice people!  

They will be posting future updates and language material on their instagram page.








(some of those comics are here)



(some original vocabulary and grammar)


















(Information about the caretakers:)
E. Nelson Bridwell (alphabet, glossary, comics)
Al Turniansky
Georg Brewer
Darren Doyle
Christine Schreyer