Last time I did a Superman Thoughts post, I foreshadowed this one. To reiterate, I like that Clark is just drawn to using his powers to have socially-beneficial adventures from a young age. It is, as far as I’m concerned, perfectly in character for him to want to use his powers to help people. I just don’t like him going by the name “Superboy” while he does it. This is the post where I expand on that.

For the most part, it’s like this: the name “Superman” is a specific reference. If we assume a world where superhumans didn’t exist and then someone with those Kryptonian powers showed up, yes, it would make sense to name him after the concept of the Ubermensch, since we’d think of him as being above normal humanity. So yeah, naming him Superman makes sense. The name Superboy, however, only works as a reference to the name Superman. As a title, it relies on the audience knowing that this guy is going to grow up to be Superman, but the people in the stories don’t know that* so why would they call him that?

One way it could work is if someone sees young Clark doing his super-feats and does indeed compare him to the concept of the Superman, and then somebody says “Well, he’s awfully young. He’s more of a Superboy.” and then that name sticks. Sure, that’s work. But I also prefer when Lois Lane is the one who gives Superman the name. It definitely feels better if the moniker doesn’t come from Clark himself, and giving Lois the honour does her character a good turn. And since I prefer that Lois and Clark not meet until they’re adults, my preference can only be for a Superboy who was not called Superboy except perhaps retroactively.

I’ve said before that I state my Superman preferences as fact here on this site when I’d likely be more diplomatic when actually discussing with other people and their preferences, but the thing is I’m not even sure how controversial this preference would even be. Certainly there’s plenty of people who just prefer that Clark was never Superboy because they think it’s goofy or whatever. I’ve never had a problem with goofiness in my Superman. There’s plenty of popular takes on the character who were never Superboy: The original Golden Age stuff, the Post-Crisis stuff, all the movies and most of the shows (the obvious exception being the Superboy show). Heck, Smallville remains a dominant part of the Superman fan landscape and it had Clark having teen adventures without a superhero identity. For all I know, this might be one of the rare times when my preference places me in the majority. It’s weird to be on this side, but my reasoning is sound.

*An exception to this, of course, would be those who DO know that Clark will grow up to be Superman. A classic example here would be the Legion of Super-Heroes, a team from the future who travel back in time to have adventures with Clark. Well, I don’t want them around anyway (I’ll do a post about it sometime), so I feel fine just not caring about them with regards to this discussion.