Is All-Star Superman the Superman of Earth-One?

[Super Monkey]

This is an all new Superman which takes elements from the 1940's, 1950's, 1960's, 1970's, 1980's, 1990's, and 2000's versions to create something fresh and new yet classic all at once.

[Great Rao]

I was hoping that All-Star Superman could be considered a kind of 70s Superman continuity (if that Superman had continued), but the change of certain key elements--like Jonathan's death--now make this impossible
...
There are a lot of things I can allow for in the All-Star version as just artistic license, but Jonathan Kent's death sets the series outside Earth One continuity.

As Beppo so succinctly explained, this Superman can be seen as all versions of Superman, including the Earth-1 version, rolled into one.  This fits with some of Grant's original comments that he made back when the series had just been announced:

We're using the leeway the All-Star concept gives us to take the best elements from every era of Superman and use them to build a whole new world and direction for the character.
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Ma & Pa Kent—one dead.  We're going with the version where Pa Kent has died.  That's the day Superboy becomes a man.

That's Grant's take.  But personally, I have absolutely no problems seeing this as a continuation of the 1970s/1980s Superman.  To my mind, Superman: The Movie had such an incredible impact on mass culture that it's easy to imagine elements of it having worked their way into the comic book continuity at some point.  The comic-book Superman has a long history of absorbing continuity elements from his other media incarnations and this might have been no different.  The fact that it's also consistent with Superman's origin from the movie serial and the TV show is ancillary.

[India Ink]

If pressed to it I could probably perform a thought experiment where somehow All-Star would fit into Earth One continuity. Or rather, where Earth One would fit into the All-Star continuity.

Since there's a lot left unexplained in A-S, we can simply assume that there's tons of story that accounts for the seeming contradictions.

In the past I've said that everything Byrne did could have been done in the regular Earth One continuity. The one major problem with this, though, is Ma and Pa still alive. But death is hardly an obstacle in the DC realm.

I've also thought out my own scenario that would continue from Schwartz, with many of the same creative teams, taking all the existing mythology in 1986 and moving toward the post-CoIE state of things (with a big loophole in the middle that would allow everything from the past to flood back into continuity if they wanted). Someday I'll have to write this down as a fanfic.

If I can do all those mental gymnastics then I can cope with All-Star fitting into Earth One.

Lately I've been thinking that if I were Grant Morrison or Alan Moore (if only I had that power) and I had been able to deal with the combined Weisinger/Schwartz eras, I would use the Bottle City as my magic mojo machine for explaining everything then and now.

It's like this, the Bottle City was so much more than Superman thought it was (on a conscious level--subconsciously he might have been communicating with it). It used science that Brainiac's 10th level mind could only understand (I think he was only at the 10th level at that time, being pushed to 12th by Luthor later on)--what would have seemed like magic to us.

By getting that Bottle, Superman got a kind of thing that allowed his mythological self to extend across the world and the universe. With it, stored in his Fortress of Solitude (itself some kind of spiritual house of power), the Bottle generated all kinds of new realities in the world.  Now there were surviving Kryptonians in Phantom Zones, Survival Zones, and even on Argo City (existing in its own Fictional Zone bubble of reality).

More than that there was Superman's cousin, Supergirl. There was Krypton's cousin planets, Lexor and Daxam. And so on.

But once Superman released the residents of the Bottle into an alternate dimension, and took them away from his reality and his Fortress--all of that science/magic was siphoned out of our universe. Lexor died, Supergirl died, Brainiac was transformed. Bits of the old reality (pre-Bottle) like Wizard City winked into existence briefly.

Superman would have to eventually realize the true power of the Bottle and that getting it back would be the only way to save the reality he cherished--putting back the "Kandorians" into the Bottle (a la putting the genie back in the bottle)--and allowing them to persist as Kryptonians (even though Superman would know their true nature as fictional constructs inside the bottle).

Of course, in true Moore or Morrison fashion there would be all kinds of mind-bending moments in this epic.  And in the end who knows who would still be alive or dead (in my own fanfic Sylvia DeWitt would be the great hero of this storyline).

[carmine]

I always look at comics as historical documents (like in that Superman Encyclopedia that just got reprinted)

Most of the Byrne stuff could fit in with pre-crisis continuity (if anyone at DC cared)

Different Kandor? (the real kandor was on Rokyn at this time anyways so a new differnt one isnt that weird)
Superman weaker? chalk it up to fight with anti-monitor or because mr.myx dropped argo city on metropolis so maybe all that kryptonite weakened supes (but was too diluted to kill him)
Phantom Zoners were all absorbed by Mr.Myx also
Lex was smart enough to clear himself of all criminal charges anyways (if a normal human can get OJ cleared hypermegasuper genius lex could get himself out of jail).

the kents being alive??? Hmm Supes brought them back to life in cloned bodies (hence why they are younger) kinda gross I suppose but supes is weird.

maybe in All-Star when Kent died this was just the "first time" Pa kent died.  Teen Supes finds a way to bring him back and then later on Pa and Ma die because of that tropical disease they got.

some what all over the place but there you go.

PS. I like India Inks idea also!
some what off topic I always wanted an issue about brainiac stealing the bottle city and then by the end Supes gets it back. in one panel we see all the kandorians waving (the "camera" pulls out) to show Superman holding the bottle smiling back (the "camera" pulls out some more) and shows all of earth ("camera" pulls out alot more) and shows the milky way (camera pulls out EVEN more) and shows the milky way in a bottle being held by Brianiac. (sorta like the ending of MIB)

[JulianPerez]

If there are now 52 earths to work with, what's the harm in placing ASS Superman in a universe of his own, just like KINGDOM COME got its own world?

There are several occasions where ASS contradicts Earth-1 history, and thus it would be smarter to keep it as its own world.

In the past I've said that everything Byrne did could have been done in the regular Earth One continuity. The one major problem with this, though, is Ma and Pa still alive. But death is hardly an obstacle in the DC realm.

Hmmm, interesting idea.

One thing that especially makes sense with this idea is the "falling out" between Batman and Superman. In fact, if you look at Pre-Crisis comics, you see several events that made the decline of the Batman/Superman frienship inevitable. In fact, there's signs that is precisely where DC intended to go, long, LONG before Crisis, Byrne and Helfer and the rest:

For instance, Batman leaving the JLA and forming the Outsiders. The reason Batman left the JLA was because more and more, he wasn't seeing eye to eye with that organization. This had become a part of his character since the late seventies/early eighties.

The "definitive" end of the Batman/Superman friendship might have been the death of Jason Todd (the timeline in MAN OF STEEL is so vague that conceivably their "team-up" could go anywhere in the characters' history...which is what Byrne intended). Here you had a situation where the Joker killed Robin, but Superman defended the Joker because of the Man of Steel's belief in the rule of law and diplomatic immunity.

Under those circumstances, I wouldn't be Superman's friend after that either. If Batman and Superman had a falling out (that led to the Batman/Superman story in MOS) it would be perfectly understandable.

As for the Kents, if Ma and Pa Kent can have their youth restored, other things are possible. Perhaps their resurrection was a hitherto unknown side effect of the youth treatment.

Lex was smart enough to clear himself of all criminal charges anyways (if a normal human can get OJ cleared hypermegasuper genius lex could get himself out of jail).

That makes sense. It makes sense also that the world's smartest man would also be the world's richest. I always liked that addition to the character of Lex Luthor, and I was especially pleased by Mark Waid, who had a solution that both kept this addition and reconciled it past elements of the character that were in retrospect, done away with.

[carmine]

even if Lex HAD to do jail time he could create a robot version of himself to stay in jail while he went around doing other Lex type stuff.

It could be a fun excersise to try to get everything from precrisis to have happened to Post-crisis superman  (though it would require alot of "cheats" to make it fit) but it seems like DC would rather just rewrite everythng anytime they want.

Waids take on Lex was the best part of birthright (for me) though I still like Lex being a well known super villian.