Originally posted by Christina:
There is something in comics canon that could be played with vis-a-vis "Clark has a twin."
There are several, actually, if you go back to the Silver Age. One that ties in very neatly with the good twin/bad twin idea is the story of Super-Menace, which went something like this:
On its way to Earth, Kal-El's spaceship collides with another, alien craft that somehow duplicates the Kryptonian spaceship. Both ships continue on to Earth, where Kal-El is found by the Kents and the occupant of the other ship by a family of crooks. Time passes and both children grow up. Clark becomes Superboy and then Superman; the other kid grows up to be a bully and juvenile delinquent, but otherwise stays out of the limelight until he becomes Super-Menace. Naturally, he encounters Superman, and I think you can guess the rest.
In the past there was a comic where Superman split himself into two to try and figure out how to restore Kandor (remind yourselves for a moment that this is the Silver Age comics.) One ends up with Lois (living on Kandor without powers... supposedly happily) and the other lives on Earth with Lana.
Ah, the famous original Superman-Red and Superman-Blue story, a classic of its time. It should be noted that the split was accidental, and there was apparently an earlier story in which Red K split Superman into a pair of opposing twins (good and bad), but I don't know that one.
In the 90s they took the "Electric Superman" (not the best comics supposedly) and split him into a Red Superman and and Blue Superman.
S-R and S-B, modern version. Not as interesting IMO since Clark was Electri-Kal at the time and not Superman at all. Straining for effect, I thought.
One was a lot more "plan ahead" while the other one was a lot more "seat of his pants." I bought the first one of those and those two are at each other's throats! Especially when it comes to Lois. [...]
There is an element of "they're the same guy" to the Red/Blue Superman though that the "twin Clark" doesn't quite have (which can feel a little squicky because it feels incestuous if they are comfortable sharing her.)
Well, they
are the same guy, or different personality aspects of him at least, so that's understandable.
Another variation on the twin theme was a precursor to
Vatman. In an anniversary origin/recap story in the late 70s(?), Luthor clones Superman and replaces him with the clone in the middle of a tour that the real Superman is giving of a new Superman Museum; the clone is programmed to be more sympathetic towards Luthor, which shows when the latter is mentioned towards the end of the tour. Lois gets fed up with "Superman's" sudden bout of self-flagellation and walks out, only to be saved by the real Superman just before she activates a trap that would have blown up the museum. The two fight until the clone is knocked into a display case which holds
real samples of various types of Kryptonite (!), including Gold K, which robs him of his powers. He came back at least once after that, though using technology instead of super-powers.
With all this talk of split Clarks and Supermen, I'm surprised that no-one has mentioned Sheila Harper's story
Mxysplit, the plot of which I think can be inferred from the name and that it's mentioned in this context...
