Some Superboy questions...

[Russell]

In the Silver Age, just how old was Kal when Krypton died? I've heard, in comics, conflicting reports of 2 and 3.

When did he first meet Lana? When they were children, no?

[Lee Semmens]

In the Silver and Bronze Ages - at least - Kal-El nearly always looks to be a toddler to me, when he comes to Earth, roughly about two, two and a half years old, tops, definitely not an infant, except maybe in a few very early origin stories (1940s or so).

As for Lana Lang, I don't really know.

She was introduced in 1950, and I haven't read her very early stories, but it is my guess she and Clark probably were originally envisaged as meeting for the first time when they were on the verge of puberty, or in their early teens.

Having said that, Jerry Siegel wrote a back-story in the 1960s in which Clark, Lana, Lex Luthor, and Pete Ross all met up when they were about kindergarten age - this despite stories from the 1940s and 1950s which usually showed Luthor as much older.

[Super Monkey]

In the Silver Age, just how old was Kal when Krypton died? I've heard, in comics, conflicting reports of 2 and 3.

When did he first meet Lana? When they were children, no?

I don't how old he was but he could clearly walk but not talk so around 2 seems about right.


He 1st meant Lana in Smallville High School.

[Continental Op]

In the earliest origin stories and in the movie, Kal-El was only an infant when he was sent to Earth; but during the Silver Age there were so many flashbacks to his time on Krypton that they had to stretch it out and make him a toddler of as much as three (Earth) years of age.

He was certainly old enough to comprehend events and even have conversations with adults before leaving Krypton (even if it was in Weisinger's "me do this, me do that" version of baby-talk). For example, he protested when Jor-El was sending Krypto up in a test rocket, and told Jor-El when their neighbor Dev-Em broke in to his lab. My favorite is his adventure with "Uncle Brainiac" (SUPERBOY #106).

Of course, Kryptonian children were supposed to be much more advanced than Earth children, intelligence-wise, so he could have been much younger than he seemed to be. Still, the general consensus became that he was a toddler, yet not quite old enough to really remember Krypton when the Kents adopted him. Exposures to Kryptonite in his youth eroded his memories of Krypton even more, and as a teenager he usually had to use his "memory restorer ray" to remember specific details about his time on Krypton. The "life story" retelling in ACTION COMICS #500 does a nice job of pulling all these details together.

The Byrne revamp, of course, had him literally BORN on Earth, with no memory of it until Jor-El's computer program "downloaded" all its history into his mind as an adult. Not sure how old they currently hold him to be during the rocket flight, but post-BIRTHRIGHT he is generally considered to be an infant again, I think.