The Mystery Son of Clark and Lois-Lane Kent

A mystery developed in February 1976, when writer E. Nelson Bridwell discovered a long concealed truth while interviewing the Supermen of two worlds. During this discussion*, the older Superman Kal-L revealed that he and his wife Lois Lane had a son**!

A legitimate question could be asked… was this a biological or an adopted child for the couple? It would be decades later in the late 1960s when  Kal-L’s long lost cousin Kara Zor-L arrived on Earth-Two, whom they would unofficially adopt. She would later take Superman’s place in the Justice Society as Power Girl, and she never mentioned a super-sibling.

A clue as to the identity of this “son” was a two-part tale (penned by E Nelson Bridwell in Superman Family #218-219), when Clark and Lois created the villain identity of Flying Tiger for Superman to use in his search for a hidden cache of Kryptonite that was being stored by a criminal gang in Metropolis to use against the Caped Crusader. Although pretending to only have the ability of flight through an anti-gravity device, Superman manifested his actual superhuman abilities in this identity.

Some time after this, an actual duplicate of the Flying Tiger was spawned from the criminal Funny Face’s bio-ray projector. The evil clone of Superman disguised as Flying Tiger was subdued and reverted to normal, while his creator Funny Face was captured. In effect, this fabricated Flying Tiger was a brain-child of Clark and Lois Kent brought to “life” from an idea made into reality!

And just as the imperfect Superman clone Bizarro and his wife Bizarro-Lois together made a Bizarro Junior (which was briefly human and raised by Superman and Supergirl on Earth-One, before returning to Junior’s home world of Htrae), Clark and Lois Kent quite likely used the fully functioning bio-ray in their possession to create and raise a new “Flying Tiger” clone. This Clark Junior would have all the same abilities and weaknesses of his father. Why he was recreated*** and what became of him is an untold tale****.

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* During this same interview, certain facts were in error. For instance, Superman-One mentioned that an ancestor of his step-father Jonathan Kent was the masked man known as Silent Knight, who was secretly Brian Kent during the days of Camelot. As revealed during Crisis on Infinites Earths while on a case with the All-Star Squadron’s Firebrand, Brian was shown as being from Earth-Two. Apparently, the folklore of his exploits was relayed in tales on Earth-One, just as comic book characters had portrayed heroes of other Earths. Jonathan heard of stories passed down from generation to generation about his ancestor... in fact Brian was the forefather of Jonathan’s counterpart, John Kent!.

** References to Lois Kent’ pregnancy were mentioned, as was an appearance by Clark Junior (within the Superman Dailies in 1946 and 1949), showing the potential future offspring of Mr. and Mrs. Superman. Since there is no record of this child possessing superhuman powers… in fact his father Kal-L himself hasn’t manifested these until he was an adult… the baby may have had a normal human physiology. As no later record of the lad was mentioned, he may have tragically died of crib death. If so, then the reproduced Flying Tiger Clark clone may’ve been spawned to ease the pain of this loss.

*** There is an established history of the Kent’s adopting a child to raise. In the early 1950s, they briefly sheltered the super-powered Liandly from the planet Rolez after she was accidentally transported to Earth-Two when she inadvertently triggered her father’s teleportation ray (in Superman Family #220). When she was pulled back to Rolez, this left Clark and Lois with a taste of having a child of their own, which a clone would provide them. The Kents would once more have opportunity to raise a teenager when, several years later, Kara Zor-L finally arrived on Earth-Two.

**** This “Clark Junior” could’ve been trained to be a replacement for the malfunctioning Superman robot which Kal-L had previously used (in Superman Family #195). In a text piece the Crisis on Infinite Earths Absolute Edition, it was revealed that Clark and Lois' son ended up turning evil, despite having been trained by the original Man of Steel. This may have explained Kal-L's absence from tales of the Justice Society from their revival in 1963 until 1969, when he rejoined their ranks as an active member. Likely, this heir to Superman would’ve been reverted back to the two- dimensional world he was created in.