The Reboot Quiz

by Michael J. Condon

Can you solve it before, oops too late!

Questions

1. Each of the heroes listed below have been published by another company before they were acquired by DC, but one has been published by three companies altogether and thus rebooted twice. Which one?
   1. Blue Beetle.
   2. Bulletman.
   3. Spy Smasher.
   4. Firebrand.
2. Which of the following Charlton superheroes did not appear in the DC Universe?
   1. Judomaster.
   2. Nightshade.
   3. E-Man.
   4. Thunderbolt.
3. Roy Thomas, the continuity cop's friend, was very concerned after the Crisis that there was no one in the DC Universe to take over the Golden Age Superman's role, so he retconned a character. Which one?
   1. Captain Marvel.
   2. J'onn J'onzz. In his Bronze Wraith persona.
   3. Bulletman.
   4. Iron Munro.
4. One of the surprises revealed by the End of an Era storyline that heralded the end of both the pre-zero hour and Pre-Crisis Legion was the identity of the Time Trapper. Who was he?
   1. The pocket Universe Superboy.
   2. Rokk Krinn. (Formerly called Cosmic Boy.)
   3. The Guardian of the Universe who had renounced immortality to travel across America with Green Lantern and Green Arrow.
   4. Brainiac 5's mother.
5. John Byrne wasn't the first writer to reboot Superman. Denny O'Neil tried the same thing in the early 70's. Not all of his changes stuck though. What changes did he institute?
   1. Exposure to gold kryptonite cost Superman his powers but with the help of Kryptonian science and the martial arts master I Ching, Kal El continued the good fight as a high tech version of Batman for two years real time. Darkseid later restored Superman's power in order that he may help him against Maaldor, a being that threatened the entire Universe.
   2. Superman lost a third of his power, all kryptonite underwent a chain reaction that rendered it inert and Clark Kent went from being a newspaper reporter to a news anchorman.
   3. Superman gave up on interstellar adventures, time travel, and even cut back on catching costumed criminals that the other members of the Justice League could handle in order to concentrate on the social ills of his adopted country and planet. Sales for the formerly lackluster Superman took off especially when compared to Action Comics, which adopted none of O'Neil's changes, but executives at DC were so upset with the radical new Superman that only Julius Schwartz's intervention kept the writer from being fired. As it was he was replaced on Superman by Cary Bates and moved to the much lower profile Green Lantern where he had a freer hand.
   4. The Golden Age Superman was more powerful than a locomotive and Silver Age writers gradually increased his strength and invulnerability and even gave him new powers such as flight and heat vision, but O'Neil felt that Superman lagged far behind other characters such as Green Lantern and the Martian Manhunter. A battle with Brainiac that plunged him into the sun increased Superman's powers to cosmic levels, made him smarter than any Earth man including Lex Luthor and gave him new powers such as telekinesis.
6. One of the major changes wrought by the Zero Hour event occurred to Batman. What was it?
   1. Batman killed a man in self-defense in one of his first appearances.
   2. Bruce Wayne had an affair with a circus performer while in college which lead to a pregnancy that he never knew about. The single mother later married a fellow performer named Grayson. Thus Dick Grayson is Bruce Wayne's biological son.
   3. Batman may not have found his parents' real killer.
   4. The criminal who fell into the acid vat and presumably died in Batman's first appearance "The Case of the Chemical Syndicate" survived and became the Joker.
7. Who was the first Golden Age hero to be rebooted in the Silver Age.
   1. Green Arrow.
   2. Green Lantern.
   3. Flash.
   4. Hawkman.
8. The major difference between the Golden Age superheroes and their Silver Age namesakes is:
   1. The Silver Age characters seem to have always been model citizens while the idea of redemption comes up time and time again in Golden Age origin tales. For example, the original Hawkman acquired his fortune through unethical stock manipulation and became Hawkman after a series of dreams that he had once been a heroic Egyptian Prince.
   2. Most of the Silver Age heroes received the powers by happenstance while the Golden Age character's origins tend to be directly related to World War II. For example, Alan Scott was a civil engineer working in China when he stopped a Japanese regiment from raiding an ancient monastery of its magical treasure. The dying lama, Volthoom, gave the American the treasure, a magic lantern and ring, in order to safeguard it from the Japanese and in order that he may use their power to protect the world from evil.
   3. The Silver Age characters all became crimefighters as soon as they received their amazing abilities, while the Golden Age stories originally revolved around the characters using their abilities in their daily lives. For example, Jay Garrick used his super-speed to test various scientific theories, to generate power for a rural town and to build a bridge in less than an hour in some of his first appearances. He didn't catch his first criminal until a year after his first appearance.
   4. The Golden Age characters tend to have mystical origins while the Silver Age characters tend to have science fictional origins. For example the Golden Age Hawkman was a reincarnated Egyptian prince who used ancient weapons because he was more comfortable with them. The Silver Age Hawkman was an alien lawman from the planet Thanagar who came to Earth to capture a Thanagarian criminal who had fled to our planet. Hawkman then decided to stay on Earth to observe our crime fighting methods and elected to use mainly medieval and ancient weapons in order to keep advanced Thanagarian weaponry out of the hands of a society not mature enough to use them.
9. Why did Black Canary replace Wonder Woman as a founder of the Justice League post-Crisis?
   1. One of the reasons for the Crisis event that rebooted the DC Universe was that the heirs of Wonder Woman's creators were suing DC for ownership of the character. As part of a bargaining ploy, DC decided to show that they could write Wonder Woman out of continuity if they had to.
   2. The editors of DC decided that Wonder Woman would work better as a character set during World War II than in the present day. In order to build dramatic tension, which might have been damaged if Wonder Woman was known to be alive and well as a member of the Justice League, the post Crisis Wonder Woman was only supposed to be known as a heroine who mysteriously disappeared after World War II.
   3. There were plans for a Black Canary movie to be released in 1988. Her taking over Wonder Woman's role in the formation of the League was part of DC's attempt to increase the visibility of the character.
   4. When Wonder Woman was rebooted post-Crisis she portrayed as the newest superhero on the block, thus she was still a teenager on Paradise Island when the Justice League formed.
10. A popular Superman villain from the 70's was Terra Man, a space cowboy who rode a pegasus in outer space without the benefit of a space suit, owned six shooters that fired tracer bullets that could even hurt Superman and a number of other Wild West inspired super weapons. The character was revamped post-Crisis but only shared his civilian, Toby Manning, and supervillain names with the older character. Which is the real new Terra Man?
    1. He was an ecological terrorist who wore an exo-skeleton and wielded super weaponry. Since he defended the Earth, he called himself Terra Man
    2. He was the leader of an anti-alien hate group that sprang up in the aftermath of the Invasion mini-series. He was against all alien and alien influenced metahumans, both hero and villain, including Superman, the Martian Manhunter, Green Lantern (belonged to an alien police force) and Metamorpho (mistakenly thought he was an alien.) His group created the Kryptonite hearted cyborg Metallo. He called himself Terra Man after the Latin word for Earth to distinguish himself from the alien men.
    3. He was a researcher for S.T.A.R. labs who merged with the ground outside the lab after a battle between Superman and the Parasite interrupted experiments involving his teleportation device. He became a fifteen foot tall earth monster who had the ability to control the ground around him. Maddened by his condition he decided to take revenge on Superman.
    4. He was an Earth man abducted during the Invasion mini series. He wound up on a Dominator colony world that orbited a pulsar. The pulsar's rays gave him a bunch of Superman level powers including super-strength, invulnerability, gravity manipulation, flight, super-speed and a stasis ray. He used his power to wreak havoc on the Dominator world and was called by the natives Terra Man due to his alien nature just as the citizen of Earth call J'onn J'onzz the Martian Manhunter. Superman had to come to the world to bring him back to Earth since his moral code would not allow him to let even the Dominators be slaughtered. Toby Manning hasn't caused much trouble on Earth but Mongul once exposed him to synthetic pulsar rays and he battled Superman to a standstill until the charge wore off.

Answers

1. A. Blue Beetle was published by Fox in the 40's. A character with the same name with completely different powers was published by Charlton in the 60's. The Charlton Blue Beetle acknowledged the original, Dan Garret, as a mentor. Blue Beetle was later published by DC. Spy Smasher and Bulletman were published by Fawcett in the 40's before being owned by DC. Firebrand was originally published by Quality Comics.
2. C. E-Man was an alien sentient energy being who was learning to be human. He could change his shape at will and fire energy blasts.
3. D. I think that Captain Marvel would have been the better choice as his powers are almost identical to Superman's, Dr. Sivana is a credible stand in for the Ultra-Humanite and Lex Luthor and Captain Marvel is a legend in his own right. Also, Captain Marvel seems to work better as a retro character. The Bronze Age Captain Marvel was supposedly trapped in suspended animation, along with most of the other important characters from his mythos since his final Fawcett appearance in the 50's. The continuity geek in me has some affection for the Iron Munro character though. He has the exact same powers that Superman had in first appearance, super-strength, invulnerability, super-speed but not to the cosmic extremes he later attained, nor does he have the additional powers such as flight or x-ray vision. Also, the character is the son of Hugo Danner, the pulp magazine superhuman who has a strong influence on Superman's early stories. Bulletman was retconned to be Captain Marvel's replacement in the 40's. Unlike many retcons, Bulletman was an actual, and fairly popular, Golden age character
4. B. Rokk Krinn found himself lost in the Infinite Library after escaping from Mordru and Glorith. The library contained all of the literature concerning the control of time. As the library was removed from the temporal flow, Krinn was able to master the infinite secrets contained within and escaped as a being of great power. Knowing of the imminent destruction of the entire space-time continuum by the Zero Hour event he tried to change history so that it would not occur. Unfortunately, whenever he changed history, he merely invented a new scenario that would involve the collapse of the space-time continuum. Repeated attempts drove him mad with frustration and changed his personal timeline so much that he forgot that he was ever Cosmic Boy thus causing him to be the villain of recorded pre-Zero Hour Legion history.
5. B.
6. C.
7. C. Green Arrow like Batman and Superman was published continuously throughout the 50's so he wasn't brought back during the Silver Age since he never left.
8. D. Volthoom was the evil Buddhist monk who gave Power Ring, the evil Green Lantern of Earth 3 his power ring.
9. D. The Wonder Woman TV show of the 70's was set during World War II and the comic was changed to match the show, but it had returned to the present by the time of the Crisis.
10. A. Metallo was created by an anti-alien fanatic but had no connection to Toby Manning.

Mike Condon, Fanzing's trivia quiz guru, is a librarian who lives in Brooklyn.

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