1930s Superboy and the 21st Century LSH

[assault]

I've been doing some research on Superboy and the Legion of Superheroes, and came across some interesting facts.

 

1. Apparently, from the late 50s to the early 70s, Superboy's stories were mostly supposedly set in the 1930s.

 

2. Several stories from the same period set the Legion of Superheroes in the 21st Century, rather than the 30th.

 

This, obviously, has got me thinking...

 

Superboy was active during the Pulp era. In particular, he was around during the time of the Public Enemies - Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, Bonnie and Clyde, etc. And he was living in the right place, too. "Hmm..."

 

And the LSH live in that strange 21st Century that never quite happened. The one with flying cars and personal rocket belts.

 

Of course, the relatively brief separation in time between the two leads to some potential problems. It's possible for characters from "the past" to still be alive in "the future". This particularly applies to Superboy/man himself. This could be minimised by making "the future" the other end of the 21st Century, but this takes away from the conceit of making the present day into "the future".

 

There's at least one simple enough answer, though. Adding a Crisis into the timeline in the 80s would do the trick. Superman would mysteriously disappear in a period which "temporal turbulance" (or some such) makes too dangerous to explore.

 

Of course, if I was to actually develop this line of thought into a campaign setting, I would convert all the characters into homages, so as not to make the mistake of misleading people into thinking the characters are the same as those appearing in the source material.

 

The future conceit is the only tricky bit. Is "the future" the world as it is now, or the world as "it should have been"? The problem with the latter is the general problem of science fiction settings, with the extra difficulty of it not being a particularly logical one. Either way, it will still be 2006...

 

---

 

As a result of this line of thought I've already got a nice "back of an envelope" outline of a character inspired by Star Boy. I think he could be both quite tough and fun to play. I'll have to crunch his numbers a bit more, and come up with a background that isn't completely bogus, but he has definite potential.

[OddHat]

Re: 1930s Superboy and the 21st Century LSH

 

A Pulp-Champions campaign in the 21st Century of the 1950s sounds groovy.

 

I'd base the look and feel of the "present" on Robert Heinlein mixed with the sci-fi pulps and serials. There's a world like that called Gernsback described in GURPS Alternate Earth. Great potential as an adventure setting.

[McCoy]

Re: 1930s Superboy and the 21st Century LSH

 

The future conceit is the only tricky bit. Is "the future" the world as it is now' date=' or the world as "it should have been"? The problem with the latter is the general problem of science fiction settings, with the extra difficulty of it not being a particularly logical one. Either way, it will still be 2006...[/quote']

Why not both? If your only time traveler is an NPC, he might mention "You know, the last time I was here, in this room talking to all of you, I could see flying cars through that window. There were people on the Moon and Mars, and crewed vehicles en route to Jupiter and Saturn. Now the computers are smaller, but the buildings are shorter, and you say you're at war. What happened?"

[assault]

Re: 1930s Superboy and the 21st Century LSH

 

Why not both? If your only time traveler is an NPC' date=' [/quote']

 

The problem is that it would be a waste to ignore either of the two settings. That makes PC time travel more or less a must.

 

Of course time travel causes problems of its own, but they can be worked around.

[McCoy]

Re: 1930s Superboy and the 21st Century LSH

 

The problem is that it would be a waste to ignore either of the two settings. That makes PC time travel more or less a must.

 

Of course time travel causes problems of its own, but they can be worked around.

Even better. They go from "post 911" 2006, back to the pulp era, travel forward, and wind up in "Gernsback" 2006. Did they do something? Which reality is the one that's "suppost to be?" How can they change it back? Should they change it back?

[vitruvian23]

Re: 1930s Superboy and the 21st Century LSH

 

Of course, the relatively brief separation in time between the two leads to some potential problems. It's possible for characters from "the past" to still be alive in "the future". This particularly applies to Superboy/man himself. This could be minimised by making "the future" the other end of the 21st Century, but this takes away from the conceit of making the present day into "the future".

 

Well, you could make it unlikely for there to be *too* many survivals simply by making it a hard 100 year separation, much like the later Legion stories were usually considered to be set an even 1000 years ahead. So, not much chance of Clark and friends still being around, unless this version of Superboy/Superman has enhanced longevity *and* doesn't mysteriously vanish saving Metropolis/Earth one day...

 

You could even go with a Byrne 'Generations' theme on this, having Superboy's adventures be in the late 20s and early 30s, the move to Metropolis and change of name to Superman in 1938, further changes in the succeeding decades, with the 'classic Legion' era being still in the future, roughly 2030-2038. Of course, in order to have all the mutated human descendants from other planets, it needs to either be:

 

1) a truly alternate future, with extensive space colonization starting in the 50s or so,

 

2) set after some event that has human mutants resettled (whether willingly or forcefully) in space, or

 

3) in a setting where humans or at least hominids have *already* been spread around the universe by some precursor race, whether the Guardians, the Ancients and Go'auld from Stargate, or any combination thereof you like. The latter has a certain appeal, explaining why Kryptonians can breed with humans and offering the opportunity to go back to the 'more evolved human' origin for Kryptonian superpowers.

 

If combining with the MU to any extent, you've got the option of making Kryptonians essentially Eternal equivalents (up to you if there are still Earth-bound Eternals in the setting), Saturn Girl can be a Titanian Eternal whose power development has focused on telepathy (possibly a daughter or granddaughter of Captain Mar-vell - or maybe she just grew up on Titan, but is the offspring of Mar-vell and Moondragon), and so on.

 

Okay, so it's not quite the present day, per se, but it wouldn't really be *our* present day even if the date for the Legion was 2006, would it? Of course, if you have the Legion coming back to 2006, it would only be one generation back and they would potentially encounter their parents, teachers, mentors, and possibly infant selves if they don't hold too fast to the teenager rule...

[assault]

Re: 1930s Superboy and the 21st Century LSH

 

If combining with the MU to any extent' date=' [/quote']

 

I wouldn't expect that I would have any MU elements in the setting. They would be pretty redundant.

 

I would, on the other hand, definitely have a link between Kryptonians, Earth-humans and so on, although I mightn't be explicit about what it was.

 

In general I would start off with a fairly simple setting, where new worlds would be added as required, rather than established from the beginning. I certainly wouldn't bother to attempt to replicate the LSH setting as it appeared 30-50 years after their first appearance.

 

The LSH writers, editors and so on made it up as they went along, so why shouldn't I?

[assault]

Re: 1930s Superboy and the 21st Century LSH

 

While I was fiddling around some more with this idea, I checked the good old faithful "Superman through the Ages" site, and ran into something I hadn't bothered to look at before - the first appearance of Superboy!

 

It starts here:

http://superman.ws/tales3/birthOfSuperboy/?page=1

 

The fourth and fifth pages are particularly relevant

http://superman.ws/tales3/birthOfSuperboy/?page=4

 

That's a nice limited power version of Superboy there. Like the Action #1 version of Superman, only even lamer.

 

Anyone for Pre-Teen Champions?

[austenandrews]

Re: 1930s Superboy and the 21st Century LSH

 

Here's an idea:

 

As Superboy has adventures in the 30's, Hitler takes note. He consults a magician (pick one; I don't know the DC universe myself) who tells him that Superman will help the Allies defeat Germany. The magician devises a villainous plot to lure Superboy to his secret base. The magician freezes Superboy in a block of ice, but not before Kal-El sets the base to self-destruct. The base is destroyed and Superboy is lost.

 

Without Superboy to make him jealous and evil (if that's still in the continuity), Lex Luthor becomes America's greatest hero of WWII. After the war, Lex turns his supergenius toward creating the futuristic world of LSH. By 2006 we've got flying cars and the whole shmear. But old Lex, now a powerful icon, is giving in to his evil nature and taking over. The LSH cannot stop him. When they flee from his robots to the arctic, they find a young man frozen in an iceberg...

[transmetahuman]

Re: 1930s Superboy and the 21st Century LSH

 

It starts here:

http://superman.ws/tales3/birthOfSuperboy/?page=1

Thanks for the link; interesting to see the differences from the version I'm used to (it wasn't the Kents that found the ship, for instance). And "THE SKY - DARK AND FOREBODING!" just cracked me up for some reason.

[David Johnston]

Re: 1930s Superboy and the 21st Century LSH

 

The problem is that it would be a waste to ignore either of the two settings. That makes PC time travel more or less a must.

 

Of course time travel causes problems of its own, but they can be worked around.

 

Do it Feng Shui/Shadowfist style! There's a stable portal that leads back and forth 97 years. You could put it in space so you need a ship or flight and immunity to space to use it, or you could just plop it in some cave underground.

The respective superteams of past and present each set up a headquarters above it so they'll be in position to stop the villains from the past who want to steal the future's technology and the villains from the future who want to rewrite history.

[assault]

Re: 1930s Superboy and the 21st Century LSH

 

Do it Feng Shui/Shadowfist style! There's a stable portal that leads back and forth 97 years.

 

Something of the sort mightn't be a bad idea. At the very least I will have some periods of time being easier to access than others.

 

The only thing that bugs me about having a portal is the fact that it coincidentally links two periods that happen to have superheroes. I guess that that isn't the biggest coincidence in a superhero world, and I shouldn't stress about something so unimportant when I'm accepting so many other equally unlikely things.

 

Incidentally, I'm also considering having a Supergirl homage in the setting as well, so there will be a third historical period as well, probably in the 50s.

 

Of course, I shouldn't get too excited by these heroic homages, since they are really only place-holders for the PCs.

 

The actual separation of the timelines isn't actually a major drama, now that I think of it. No radical shift is required. All that I really need to do is allow all the mad and eccentric science that goes on in a superheroic setting to actually have a cumulative effect over seventy or so years.

 

The key period would probably be the 60s, after the colonisation of the Moon begins.

 

To quote that invaluable historical resource, The Simpsons:

"By 1964, experts say man will have established twelve colonies on the moon, ideal for family vacations."

 

"The moon belongs to America, and anxiously awaits the arrival of our astro-men. Will you be among them?"

 

Quotes from: http://www.snpp.com/episodes/4F21

 

Of course, none of this would have happened if Adlai Stevenson hadn't been elected President.

 

In reality, of course, early space travel is a natural outcome of having Superman type characters hanging around, as well as the occasional alien invasion and so on.

[David Johnston]

Re: 1930s Superboy and the 21st Century LSH

 

Something of the sort mightn't be a bad idea. At the very least I will have some periods of time being easier to access than others.

 

The only thing that bugs me about having a portal is the fact that it coincidentally links two periods that happen to have superheroes. I guess that that isn't the biggest coincidence in a superhero world, and I shouldn't about something so unimportant when I'm accepting so many other equally unlikely things.

 

Well that isn't really much of a coincidence at all, if all of history from the time of the first superhero continues to have superheroes. Any portal into the future would lead to a timeframe that had their own superheroes and villains. And if the portal is actually created by supervillainous shenanigans 97 years apart which "rip the fabric of time" (sort of like the Philadelphia Experiment movie) then the two sides of the portal _have_ to lead to a time that has supervillains, and thus one would hope, those who oppose them.

 

Through the night

To the dawn

Behind you another runner is born

Don't look back

You'll be laaaate...

[assault]

Re: 1930s Superboy and the 21st Century LSH

 

Well that isn't really much of a coincidence at all' date=' if all of history from the time of the first superhero continues to have superheroes. Any portal into the future would lead to a timeframe that had their own superheroes and villains. [/quote']

 

True.

 

That implies that the portal was opened in the relatively low-tech past, rather than the relatively high-tech future, of course.

[OddHat]

Re: 1930s Superboy and the 21st Century LSH

 

Have you read Tom Strong's Terrific Tales vol.1? There's a very good faux-retrospective on Tom's home, Millennium City, in the 1920s and 30s. Cool tongue-in-cheek look at what the Mad Science of the Victorian and Pulp eras would have meant to daily life, and a clear path towards a Gernsback future.

 

So, I think your idea of just letting Mad Science take its course is a good one. It's what I've tried to follow in my own campaign, with a few moderating factors (primarily the impact that a near constant low level state of war over the last seventy years has had on civillian infrastructure and the economy).

[casualplayer]

Re: 1930s Superboy and the 21st Century LSH

 

Speaking of Alan Moore's work, he did some great riffs on Superman and LSH with Supreme and the Legion of Infinity. They had members still active that had been killed by other members to protect the timeline! Good times.

[assault]

Re: 1930s Superboy and the 21st Century LSH

 

This is just a random thought, but I am considering eliminating WWII from the alternate timeline. Basically it would start, but would end after a couple of days or weeks. It is possible that the PCs may have something to do with that.

 

Of course, the ramifications of such a radical change could be a bit mind-boggling. Still, it wouldn't necessarily make much difference in the short-term. Basically, the world carries on with the pre-War status quo in the 30s era. It would be more noticeable in the 50s era, if I use it, but by "The Future" the world will be so changed anyway that it wouldn't matter.

 

I suppose I could assume that the 50s look a lot like the late 30s. Depending on the PCs actions, a fair slab of Europe (not just Spain and Portugal) may be under fascist or quasi-fascist governments. There wouldn't be an Eastern bloc - just the Soviet Union. The Baltic states would be independent, and Germany would have its pre-war borders, possibly including Austria. Czechoslovakia may or may not exist.

 

In the rest of the world, the European colonial empires would be healthier than they were in our timeline. They would still be under challenge, but the rate of decolonisation would have been slowed.

 

I suspect that if I would set the 50s sub-setting in the early, rather than late 50s, so the Civil Rights movement wouldn't be a factor in the US. Nor, I think, would McCarthyism, which was largely a consequence of the outcome of the War. "Routine" anti-Communism would exist, of course.

 

Oh yes, and Adlai Stevenson would become US President in 1952. The first American Astro-men would land on the Moon during his second term. And the rest is history...

[OddHat]

Re: 1930s Superboy and the 21st Century LSH

 

GURPS Alternate Earths did that with Gernsback as well.

 

One point that they brought up; Anti-Semitism and Eugenics were largely discredited in the US and Europe by WWII, as was the idea of legitimate expansion by military force in Japan. This had a wave of social effects that may not have otherwise occurred.

 

Maybe there's a reason that the LoSH never seemed to have many Black or Jewish members. And their master of the Martial Arts was a white guy.

[assault]

Re: 1930s Superboy and the 21st Century LSH

 

Maybe there's a reason that the LoSH never seemed to have many Black or Jewish members. And their master of the Martial Arts was a white guy.

 

Ah yes. Someone noticed the elephant in the room. I was wondering when that would happen.

 

In fact there were precisely none of either during the period I am working with. Colossal Boy's Jewishness was a late addition, while the first Black character, Tyroc, wasn't introduced until the 70s. And, yes, Karate Kid was a white guy.

 

I've been giving this topic a bit of thought. Since my LSH equivalent are intended to be PCs, I'm not going to stress about the point as far as they are concerned.

 

More generally, I think that the easiest way to deal with questions of racism and so on in this setting would be to ignore them. Yes, the 30s and 50s sub-settings exhibit the same patterns shown in the real world. Yes, The Future is a whole lot more integrated. Yes, characters who time travel will notice the difference. But there is no particular need to make a song and dance act about it. It's not relevant to the focus and style of the game. If anybody asks, I would have an answer, but if nobody does, I won't tell them about it.

 

While this may seem a little inadequate, this is a setting for a game, not a historical text or political tract. Yes, there are elements of parody, but they aren't the core of the matter either.

 

I don't know. Any thoughts and suggestions, about this or anything else, are, of course, welcome.

[OddHat]

Re: 1930s Superboy and the 21st Century LSH

 

But there is no particular need to make a song and dance act about it. It's not relevant to the focus and style of the game. If anybody asks' date=' I would have an answer, but if nobody does, I won't tell them about it.[/quote']

 

I agree with this. I don't make much of a point of racism, sexism, religious bigotry, etc in my own campaigns touching on time travel, and I don't think it would add anything to most of my games to do so. NPCs will react to a character's race and sex (and the character may get points for this), ideologies are what they are, but my players are adults; I'm not trying to teach Important Social Lessons, I'm having fun with some friends.

 

However, I do try to work out some of these issues for my own benefit in time travel scenarios (and other settings where appropriate). At the very least, it adds some texture to the world, and it can lead to a few unexpected plot seeds.

 

So, I think it's worth thinking over.

 

Colossal Boy is Jewish now?

[casualplayer]

Re: 1930s Superboy and the 21st Century LSH

 

In a 1000 years, unless great effort was expended, everyone on Earth would be Halle Berry brown with a slight epicanthal fold about the eyes.

[assault]

Re: 1930s Superboy and the 21st Century LSH

 

In a 1000 years' date=' unless great effort was expended, everyone on Earth would be Halle Berry brown with a slight epicanthal fold about the eyes.[/quote']

 

Maybe.

 

In any case, few members of the LSH are actually from Earth. Most of them are supposedly from colony worlds, who may be relatively genetically isolated.

 

It's irrelevant to the setting I'm working on, anyway, since "The Future" is the first decade of the 21st Century.

[Kristopher]

Re: 1930s Superboy and the 21st Century LSH

 

In a 1000 years' date=' unless great effort was expended, everyone on Earth would be Halle Berry brown with a slight epicanthal fold about the eyes.[/quote']

 

That's quite the bold prediction. I understand the underlying thought process, but it's still quite the bold prediction.

 

A lot can happen in 1000 years.

[casualplayer]

Re: 1930s Superboy and the 21st Century LSH

 

Maybe.

 

In any case, few members of the LSH are actually from Earth. Most of them are supposedly from colony worlds, who may be relatively genetically isolated.

 

It's irrelevant to the setting I'm working on, anyway, since "The Future" is the first decade of the 21st Century.

 

Invisible Kid, Sun Boy, Colossal Boy (NOT Micro Lad) and Wildfire, if I remember correctly. There was that weird "I was actually born on Earth" thing about Cos too.

 

This world would have Planetary Chance Machines. Sweet! I have to dust off my old Legion issues to have more to contribute.

[assault]

Re: 1930s Superboy and the 21st Century LSH

 

This world would have Planetary Chance Machines.

 

Oh yeah.

 

If it's Silver Age and cheesy, it's in.

 

While this is a homage universe, and I'm playing fast and loose with continuity, anything neat and/or funny is probably in.

 

Broadly speaking, I am drawing on LSH, Superboy and Superman continuity, up until about 1970 or so, and with a preference for earlier material. I'll use other stuff if I think it is interesting.

 

I am not using anything from Marvel, or even non-Superman DC continuity, apart, perhaps, from pre-1964 Batman.