Looks Like We're Not In Kansas Anymore (Smallville Edition)

We've had many, many discussions of DC geography in these parts.

And it seems clear that, pre-Crisis, Smallville was somewhere very near the east coast of the USA:

That's from All-New Collectors' Edition #C-55 (1978)--the treasury edition sized wedding of Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl, and you'd think that Paul Levitz knew what he was talking about. "Just inland from the eastern seaboard" would surely seem to rule out Kansas, or anywhere in the Midwest or the plains states.

That's pretty consistent with the map from The New Adventures Of Superboy #22 (1981), which pretty clearly shows that Smallville is either in Delaware or Maryland.

I think the 1978 Superman film was the first to put the Kents' farm in Kansas (look closely at Pa Kent's truck). And gradually that idea seeped in, and by the time of the Byrne reboot, most of the comics and TV shows settled on Kansas--maybe because filming in Alberta and other rural locations was cheaper, maybe because the myth of Clark Kent being raised as a true red-blooded American icon fit better with "flyover country" than with being a short bus ride from the "east coast elites."

But pre-Crisis? Smallville was definitely Eastern time zone.

Manic Monday--Today Smallville, Tomorrow The World!?!

A buncha jerks are trying to start up a protection racket in Smallville, including beating the living crap out of Pa Kent:

Why Smallville?

Yeah, that's some crime empire you're gonna have...

From Superman Family #192 (1978)

Rebirth Thursday--The Smallville Rodeo?!?

Thought balloons narrative captions from the All-New, All-Different Clark Kent:

So wait a minute...in the Rebirth universe, the Kents had a cattle ranch?

In fairness, we still don't know what the deal with this "Clark Kent" is yet (they're probably waiting for Geoff Johns to send them a memo explaining it). So maybe *this* Clark Kent grew up rousting livestock instead of plowing fields.

Or maybe Clark went off summers to work at Uncle Jedediah Kent's cattle ranch?

Or Smallville had a rodeo?

Or...

From Action Comics #963 (2016)

Tales From The Quarter Bin--Smallville Is Where Now?

Ah, my insane obsession with DC Geography kicks in again...

Everyone has pretty much settled on Kansas as the location of Smallville.

But pre-Crisis? Some folks, including DC, had a different idea.

Check out the map from The New Adventures of Superboy #22 (1981):

Smallville (& Bigville!!) were only a stone's throw away from Metropolis--and Gotham!!

Now, Metropolis and Gotham both have sea ports, which makes it rather unlikely for them to be in the midwest.

Indeed, it looks as if that map is intened to closely resemble real-world Atlantic coast geography:

That would put Gotham City in New Jersey, Metropolis across the Delaware Bay in Delaware...and depending on the scale, Smallville is either in Delaware or Maryland.

This is consistent with the geography that DC was trying to sell us at the time. The Amazing World of DC Comics #14 (1977) straight-up declared Smallville to be in Maryland.

Somewhere along the way that idea changed, and from the Byrne reboot onward, Smallville has been pretty consistently portrayed as being in Kansas--perhaps because that better fit our preconception as the decent stock of farm folk who would raise a super man, not like those East Coast city slickers and their evil ways.

Plus, no doubt, it suited Byrne, who let both Ma and Pa Kent remain alive, to have Metropolis be farther away, metaphorically and in distance, from where Superman operated. Otherwise, there no reason the Kents wouldn't constantly visit Clark (and vice versa) with that cozy distance.

That issue of Superboy also included a map of the entire town of Smallville...click to embiggen:

Given that Scott Snyder had Superman say that Smallville had a population of 36,000 (!), that's an awful lot of people living in each house...

Worst. Genealogists. Ever.

We know that Smallville is a, well, small town (unless you're Scott Snyder, and think Smallville had a population of 36,000).

So you've got to work kind of hard to amuse yourself, especially in ye olden days.

So one group has a keen idea:

Smallville has a genealogy society?

Anyway, their unique way to honor Superboy?

OK.

Needless to say, genealogists, even small town genealogists, can't trace your "future family tree."

First of all, they have no idea of whom Superboy might marry.

Secondly, they don't even know if he can breed with humans. I'm not getting all "Woman Of Kleenex" here--but seriously, different species, guys. It probably shouldn't bet aken as a given, right?

Third, really, should you presume that there will always be a male offspring, and that male offspring will always choose to a super-hero named Superman? Seriously, what if one wants to become a librarian, or a taxidermist?!? What's if there's only a female child? What if he decides that Superman is a lame name, and wants to call himself Hyperdude?

But the most egregious thing is the extreme care taken to portray the pictures of the future descendants of Kal-El:

And another look at the banner:

Come on, they're all going to look alike?!?! For heaven's sake, Smallville genealogists, don't just cut and paste the same picture for every generation--try using a teeny bit of imagination! Why not a blond Superman? One with no cleft chin?

Well, the citizens of Smallville seem to be having a good time:

I guess it beats another barn-raising or square dance...

From Superboy #120 (1965)

Manic Monday Bonus--Apparently, Smallville Is On Earth-Cliche

A typical day on the mean streets of Smallville:

Thank you for the helpful note, Editor. Of course, I doubt there were "many" organ-grinders outside of major metropolitan areas. And even then, this was a dying phenomenon: New York City banned organ-grinders in 1936, and a hostility to begging and (seriously) copyright concerns from song writers and sheet music publishers rapidly led to their demise everywhere. Safe to say, outside of a Bugs Bunny cartoon, 98% of the world's population has never seen an actual organ-grinder with monkey.

Still, Smallville is probably a soft touch, and attracted hordes of organ-grinders, mimes, folk singers, traveling medicine shows, and heaven knows what other street performers looking for coins.

And fortunately for our unnamed organ grinder, Superboy was just exposed to Red Kyrptonite, so...

OK, that's worth a quarter or two...

From Superboy #142 (1967)

Listen To the Flower People!

You know, they must have some awfully interesting class reunions in Smallville.

The can reminisce about the good old days, times like this:

Sadly, this story wasn't the occasion for a team-up with Swamp Thing...

From Superman Family #194 (1979)

Why Everyone In Smallville Is So Dumb

Clark Kent needs to get out of class...but how??

Oh, yeah, no chance of brain damage there. Especially since it worked so well, and Clark must have used that trick many a time over the years.

No wonder no one could ever figure out who Superboy was...

From Superboy #152 (1968)

Spoiler Saturday--Another Issue Of Superman Unchained, Another No-Prize

Wow, Scott Snyder seems bound and determined to unhinge me with minor details in his Superman Unchained scripts.

Last time it was with the vagaries of supposedly top-secret space stations. This time, however, I think I'm on somewhat firmer ground, as we raise the question, how big is Smallville?

Terrorists are trying to bring down the world's tallest building, the Burj Kahilfa in Dubai:

As he's trying to save the building, and the people inside, Kal-El thinks captions this little factoid on us:

36,000 people? In Smallville? Really?

All right, game on!!

*Initially, I had been willing to dismiss this as a simple transcription error--perhaps Snyder had written "3600" or "thirty-six hundred," but somewhere between script and lettering it got muddled.

But, it turns out, not so--because the Burj Khlaifa was built to accommodate "up to 35,000" people. (Granted, it has probably never been near maximum occupancy, and probably has no more than 12-15,000 people at any one time. But that's just getting too hyper-picky. Maybe the Dubai Comicon was going on that day...) So credit Snyder for doing the research.

BUT that also means he must have meant it when he says Smallville has a population of "roughly" 36,000. Game still on!

*The town I grew up in--Portage, Michigan--was no Smallville. A largely suburban community, we had two major shopping malls. The worldwide headquarters of Upjohn pharmaceuticals (later Pharmacia later Phizer) was here. We had two high schools, with a total number of students of roughly 2500-3000. My graduating class was nearly 300.

Does any of that sound like your image of Smallville? Because while I was growing up, Portage's population hovered between 36,000 and 40,000. And while we were no Metropolis, we sure didn't feel like "Ma and Pa Kent had a farm and then a small general store on Main Street" territory.

Compare with some of the more rural towns not too far from Portage/Kalamazoo (population numbers from the 2010 census):

Mattawan: 1,997
Schoolcraft: 1,525
Three Rivers 7,811
Constantine 2,076
Paw Paw 3,534
Vicksburg 2,906
Bangor 1,885

Those are all big enough to have their own high schools; don't those sound more like the size you'd envision Smallville to be?

*Taken from a Kansas perspective: if Smallville did have roughly 36,000 people, it would be the 12th biggest city in Kansas, between Leavenworth and Hutchinson. Counting just towns with more than 5,000 folks, there are 48 cities in Kansan smaller than "Smallville." And that doesn't count all of the smaller towns--Kansas law allows cities to incorporate when they reach a population of 300. It also doesn't count the 1400 townships, or the hundreds of unincorporated communities.

Again, all of those smaller towns, townships and unincorporated areas sound a lot more like our ideal of Smallville.

*Of course, this is the nu52, and we've not seen too much of Smallville there. Perhaps it's bigger post-Flushpoint. Maybe it's attracted some big businesses, or perhaps Google Fiber came to town, and the resultant IT revolution made Samllville the regional hub for data centers and the such.

*Maybe Smallville was named ironically, like Greenland...

*Perhaps there's a Smallville county, and "our" Smallville is merely the county seat, so Superman is speaking of the whole county, Smallville plus other towns and townships and unincorporated areas.

*Or, maybe it's the Busiek Hypothesis run amok. Kurt Busiek speculated that, given all of the extra cities, DC Earth must be larger than ours, or have a greater surface area. Given that, perhaps the definition of a small town is different than on our tiny Earth. Perhaps on DC Earth, 36 thousand is a small town...

*Or, like Lois Lane, perhaps Scott Snyder is a big city boy who has never been outside of a burgeoning metropolitan area, and has no idea what the population of a tiny town might actually be. Maybe he thinks thirty-six thousand is small...

Or, maybe Snyder was just trolling me, trying to make me waste my Saturday morning on researching populations and town sizes. Well played, sir...well played.

Kibbles And Bits

A couple of Smallville hoods fresh out of prison decide to get revenge on Police Chief Parker. So, since their cellmate was a dog trainer (!), they decide to train a random to to become "a killer" and slay Parker.

Seriously, this kind of stuff is going on in Smallville, and none of ends up on the damned TV show? WTF?

Well, you can't have dog-related crime without Krypto getting involved. And when the goombas try to erase the evidence...






Good. Dog.

From The New Adventures of Superboy #22 (1981)

Coming Soon From the CW

Everybody's favorite quasi-network, the CW (the same boneheads who canceled Veronica Mars) has something special planned for us.

Just as we have Smallville, focusing ad infinitum on a young Clark Kent who was never Superboy and pouted around like he was part of the cast of Roswell, now the CW is "readying" another can't miss series: The Graysons, which will "follow the world of Dick "DJ" Grayson before he takes on the iconic Robin identity and aligns himself with Batman." Man, I can smell the circus already!!

Since I just know this will be great (please, please please make young Harvey Dent his best friend/rival while constantly giving us ponderous hints to a future you'll never have the balls to show us!!), I'm thinking, why should the CW stop there?? Here's some more ideas:

Rogers: The depressing adventures of skinny Steve Rogers in depression era NY, long before he became Captain America!! His best bud: wacky immigrant trouble maker "Red" Skullinski.

Poor Little Rich Boy: The adventures of Garfield Logan before he became Beast Boy. Surprise: even back then, his favorite color was green!!

Oh, That Savage: The heartwarming adventures of the Neanderthal teenager, before he became immortal and outlived his entire species. Think of it as a caveman 7th Heaven!!

The Osterman Files: The life and times of John Osterman, apprentice watchmaker and nuclear physicist, before he becomes Doctor Manhattan. Bonus: Alan Moore can whine about it and put curses on it, all the while cashing the royalty checks from the increased graphic novel sales the project generates!!

Give me a call, CW...I've got a million of them...