Wait a minute. Superboy-Prime changed continuity by banging on a wall? And part of the continuity that was altered was his origin? So Superboy changed his own history by banging on the wall? :roll:
If in fact Superboy's past was altered, then why would his motivations remain? If he was adopted by different people, how could he mourn the parents and Earth-Prime we saw pre-COIE? The older version of SBP seemed well-adjusted and sane, this one is neither. Is that because the "yuppie" parents were good and the "farmer" parents not so good? Or because the end of Earth-Prime now occured in a more upsetting way than it did before? Does his "new" origin account for his madness? But if it does, how can it when he started banging on the wall before he "got" the new origin?
Seven issues, multiple tie-ins, lead-ins and spin-offs later, the message of IC to collectors is clear (if not very original): A fool and his money are soon parted. Poor fanboys. Hardly seems worth those double shifts at Taco Bell just to collect this farce.
I don't know if the crystals in the Paradise Dimension protrayed ONLY real events, or were sometimes shaped by the viewer's thoughts. This could be a case where observation indeed affects the observed phenomena.
Also, one poster on the DC Message Boards recalled an earlier multi-Earth Crisis involving Earth-Prime DC Comics staff Cary Bates and Elliot S! Maggin. Once on Earth-1 and Earth-2, these "normal" Earth-Prime residents could affect REALITY. Perhaps they were already "attuned" to Earth-1 and Earth-2 due to their profession, or maybe they possessed sufficient imagination to actually manipulate the other DC Earths.
So perhaps Superboy-Prime unknowingly possesses the most incredible power of all -- the manipulation of reality. When Prime struck the crystal wall to retrieve images of his idealized past again (almost ike whacking a TV set to get better reception), he inadvertantly CHANGED what he was viewing. Not even Kal-L could do this -- note there were no alternate images when he pounded his way through the crystal wall, and neither did Lois experience ill effects. But neither Prime or Alex truly understood what was happening. Otherwise, they could have accomplished their goals by selectively "rapping" on the crystals until the desired result was jarred into existence, and only Lois would feel it.
As for changing his own background, remember that Superboy-Prime never learned about his true past on Krypton-Prime. This was VERY different in several aspects -- Krypton was doomed by the sun going supernova, Prime was transported to Earth, rather than via rocket ship, etc. But Superboy-Prime would naturally assume his history fully paralleled Earth-1 and to an extent Earth-2. So he HAD to arrive by rocket, and the Kents HAD to own a farm, even though the true facts deemed otherwise. If you examine Prime's other memories, you'll see other glaring inconsistencies with the account in DC Comics Presents #87 -- they weren't on the beach to see Halley's Comet, Laurie didn't kiss him just prior to his superpowers manifesting, etc. But that's how Prime WANTS it to be, and in recreating his own past to reflect his skewed perspective, Superboy-Prime became far different than the kid in DCCP #87. That's why he can't find HIS Earth-Prime -- it actually never existed in Pre-Crisis history the way he "remembered" it. But if Prime ever realizes this, and imagines strongly enough... :shock:
I'm admittedly still in post-Infinite Crisis denial, but I'd like to believe that the REAL Superboy-Prime is still somewhere in a temporal vortex, waiting for Superman to rescue him so they can fight the Anti-Monitor. The Superboy-Prime that appeared since Crisis #10 and we ASSUMED was the same one was really a temporal "clone" created by the Time Trapper before he decided to create an entire Pocket Universe...
At least, that's what
I want to believe. Anyone got a crystal wall I can "bounce" this idea off?
