Super Sons

Here's a little more time travel for you, with a flashback to July of 1975, and Worlds Finest #231. The art is by Dillin and Blaisedell and the story, natch, is by Bob Haney.

This is one of the issues that presented what were, at the time, imaginary stories of the sons of Superman and Batman, aka Clark Kent, Jr. and Bruce Wayne Jr. They were supposedly created...or their premise was...by some super computer, though none of the issues featuring them which I read ever mentioned that. As I understand it, the Super Sons now share an earth in the New Multiverse with the Kathy Lee Crosby version of Wonder Woman and the Debra Winger version of Wonder Girl. And that makes as much sense as anything.

Here, the "boys" decided that their Dads are too establishment and really only being heroes for the grandstanding and public adulation and they call for the heroes to be put on trial...and oddly, the jury comes back in favor of a conviction (of what charge is never really made clear...tho apparently it would be Grandstanding in the First Degree). The Super-Dads agree to stay within a barbed wire fence enclosure.

As luck would have it, the Super Sons are suddenly called on to work with other heroes - Green Arrow, Flash and Aquaman - in response to a series of natural disasters and other similar events, each time returning to the pen to be sure their Dads haven't escaped. (I guess this was part of the Don't Trust Anyone Over 30 mentality of the times.)

Eventually, the Sons realize, through working with the other heroes, that their Dads aren't bad people and really have been working to save lives and since they've been so good about not escaping, decide to let them out early. Of course, we readers learn that the Super-Dads have actually left their androids in the holding pen (everyone had an android double in the 70s--it was the way you disproved anyone who thought they'd guessed your secret identity, after all!) and impersonated the other heroes to prove a point. Seventies silliness at its finest.

[And a big Yes to the eagle-eyed amongst you, both Superman and Batman on the cover are sporting moustaches. What can I say? I guess I liked facial hair, even way back then.]