Superman: Lois and Clark: Five Easter Eggs From the Pre-Flashpoint DC Universe

The pre-Flashpoint Superman is back…and he’s brought his wife and son with him.

Superman: Lois and Clark #1 is on the stands today, and in case you hadn’t heard, legendary Superman writer Dan Jurgens has brought the post-Crisis, pre-Flashpoint Superman back to the current DCU, where he’s been secretly operating for nearly a decade, averting tragedies and saving lives without the world knowing he’s even there.

There’s plenty to say about the issue, and about the decision to bring this version of Superman back to the current DCU…but first off, let’s take a look at the Easter eggs DC Comics, Jurgens and artist Lee Weeks seem to have left us to remind us of just who we’re reading about.

TRIANGLE NUMBERS

  

In 1991, the Superman titles (there were four at the time) introduced the idea of “triangle numbers.” Small triangles located on the cover, they would indicate where in the year’s calendar the individual issue fell.

That way, casual fans could know that Superman #78 came before Adventures of Superman #501 without it being a confusing ordeal.

While the triangles themselves were generally white or yellow (or sometimes just a different shade of whatever color the cover was), later on the evolved into small Superman symbols rather than triangles. It’s for this reason that the “triangle numbering” is sometimes called the “Never-Ending Battle” system of numbering instead.

At any rate, to my recollection there were a LOT of those Never-Ending battle shields that looked just like the “S” behind the comic’s logo above.

THE SCRAPBOOK

  

Like Lois Lane does now, Martha Kent kept a scrapbook of Clark’s secret exploits.

First seen in The Man of Steel #1 by John Byrne, that scrapbook was later stolen by operatives of LexCorp and made its way around the comic a few times, a storytelling engine that drove a couple of adventures before it finally made its way back to Clark.

Eventually, it was buried along with some of Clark’s effects in Smallville after the Death of Superman, since the Kents couldn’t get their son’s body back.

Heck, there’s even one story — a bridge that holds just long enough for everyone to get off it before it collapses — that appears to be in BOTH timelines. Well remembered, Clark!

THE EXCALIBUR

  

Everyone remembers Hank Henshaw as the Cyborg Superman, who destroyed Coast City and remained a persistent menace to Superman and Green Lantern for years after his first appearance in Reign of the Supermen!…

…but before that, he was just an astronaut and a family man.

It’s no secret that Henshaw’s “origin story” revolved around an experimental shuttle which, bombarded with cosmic rays, crashed to earth and changed the biology of those inside. Henshaw, his wife and two friends all eventually died from the effects of the crash of the Excalibur, the tragedy Clark is trying to prevent in Superman: Lois and Clark #1.

Even down to the “help me” that Henshaw utters when Superman first enters the shuttle — that’s pretty similar to a panel featuring one of the other crewmembers of the Excalibur in The Adventures of Superman #466!

BEARDED SUPERMAN

  

Does this one count? It’s hard to say. But we’re going to count it.

There have been plenty of times that Superman has sported a beard over the years — often in Elseworlds or Imaginary Stories kind of tales.

One time he didn’t, though? When he was exiled from the rest of humanity in space and essentially forced himself to live alone. During that time, he came into possession of an artifact called The Eradicator, which gave him a deeper and richer understanding of Krypton’s history than he’d had before in the post-Crisis era.

Not QUITE the same as being stranded on an alternate Earth where it seems likely Jonathan Kent will discover his true roots…but there’s something there, that’s for sure.

THE SPACE PLANE

  

Going back to The Man of Steel again, the shuttle Superman rescues looks less like the traditional NASA space shuttle (see the previous entry for the Excalibur) and more like the experimental space plane that Lois was riding on board when it started to fail.

Clark, who had never appeared publicly as Superman, had to save the shuttle publicly and it necessitated Superman’s creation.

Could this one force a return to action for him? Certainly it doesn’t seem as simple as “I saved Henshaw and now onto tomorrow’s job.”

Even the coloring seemed to reinforce the idea that the Excalibur in the post-Flashpoint universe resembled this ugly goldenrod from The Man of Steel. While the craft wasn’t that color, it looked like it in many shots as the sun reflected off of it.

Lastly, of course, the idea of Superman saving the space plane is one of those things that just resonates. In Superman: The Movie, he saves that helicopter. In Superman Returns, it’s a commercial jet. In the new Supergirl pi