Brace yourself...

SCIENCE!!!

OK, in fairness, it was still canon at this point that Superboy grew up in the 1930s, so these scientists might not have been as clued in as they should be on "nuclear blasts."

But their next idea suggests that yes, they are stupid:


So, off to the moon, where...


Geez!! Take some Gas-X, Superboy!!

And...there's a side effect:


And in Kal-El's gut?



Rather than just taking a couple of Prilosec, Superboy tries going underwater and into the vacuum of space to extinguish his fire breath. But no luck.

Next plan?!?

!!!!

Folks, DC writers realized this 54 years ago. So maybe it's not a Chinese hoax?!?

It needs to be said, though, that the DC writers didn't quite realize the scope of the problem...

One village, saved with a sea-wall. Maybe it's really not that big of a threat?!?

Anyway, since his flame-breath won't go away, Superboy goes to live on the "fire planet," and:


YOW!!!!

The moral of the story? Don't let Superboy give you mouth-to-mouth. God knows what he's been breathing!!

(And before anyone asks, this was 1 1/2 years after Fire Lad was introduced with the Legion Of Substitute Heroes, and he didn't come from a planet like this. He inhaled odd meteorite vapors to get his power...still, if I were allowed to write comics, maybe there's a story here...)

From Superboy #115 (1964)

Poor Superman is whining again about his dead parents...

Fortunately, Jimmy has a magic wishing totem (seriously) and decides to waste use the final wish on giving Superman his wish!


The real reason for typing? So we can have a stupid plot complication like this:

Oh, Jimmy. Typing "mate" when you meant "meet"? How does that even work? Sounds like a real naughty Freudian slip, to me!

Good thing this is a Silver Age, Code-approved book, then. I sure some modern creators would literally try make Superman mate his parents. Ewwwwww!!

Nope, that just means he has to help them get married. Phew!!

Kal-El meets them when they're young and adorable...but they have a secret!!


"Kil-Lor"? Kil-Lor?!?!?! Oh my.

You do have to love the partially obscured but very obvious swastika behind them. Were Jor-El and Lara space Nazis?!?


Just then...

The KBI!!

Ah, so Jor-El is undercover, infiltrating the space Nazis!! Gee, only two cliched things could go wrong with that plan...what are the odds of both of them happening here?

100%, it turns out!

Sure, you gotta trust the Kryptonian justice system!

D'oh!!

After Kal-El frees them, and creates some Kryptonite decades early in order to defeat Kil-Lor...

Damned convenient, this science stuff!

But...but...that's very timey-wimey!!

Wait!! If Superman hadn't intervened, they would have been on in suspended animation on their satellite for 100 years, and Kal-El would not have been born before Krypton exploded!! But...but...

Forget about it snell...it's the Silver Age.

From Superman #123 (1958)

Someone has taken over the Fortress Of Solitude (shh--it's Brainiac!!), and they've turned all trophies and captured weapons against Superman!!



Time to unleash a new/long forgotten/pulled-out-ofthe-creators-ass power!


Ten billion decibels? Really? What utter nonsense. It's a logarithmic scale, Kal-El. That the Tunguska meteor crash, generally considered to be the loudest sound in Earth history, was merely 300 decibels or so. That would make Superman's "ten billion decibel" shout approximately 10^(999999997) times louder than the loudest sound ever, and probably would have cracked the Earth into pieces. (Yes, I almost certainly screwed up the math on that. Don't @ me)

Still, now we can look forward to the great Superman/Black Bolt shout-off, right?

From Action Comics #514 (1980)

No one has been quicker to pick on Silver Age DC stories for their...questionable use of "science" than I have.

So, it's only fair that when they get a story pretty much right--no matter how unlikely that may seem--I should praise them.

Barry, because of some Flash shenanigans, is late for his dinner with Iris and her scientist father...





Hmm...well, he is kind of absent-minded and nutty...

All right, what's going on?!?!



Patronizing much...?


[Editor's note: later experiments using super-accurate atomic clocks showed that time indeed did move more slowly on a plane compared to a stationary clock. SCIENCE!]





But a plan is hatched when Professor West finds himself at the scene of a bank robbery:




So, after some pretty astonishing calculations for pencil and paper, Professor West is ready to spring his trap:


So how did Barry overcome the theory of relativity?



...or maybe just not wear a watch while crime-fighting?

And of course, what's a Silver Age Flash story without Iris trashing her fiancee?

"Slow old lazy Barry." Oh, Iris...

From The Flash #141 (1963)