Brief history lesson: At the beginning of the Superman comics, the limited imagination of the people of the time severly limited his powers. As time went on, he became more and more powerful, eventually becoming nearly omnipotent with all those powers aforementioned. That period of time is now known as pre-crisis. In the 1980's, there was a mini-series called Crisis on Infinite Earths, which is the turning point of the series. All comics after that are known as post-crisis. After that point, Superman was depowered, but again, over time became incredibly powerful.
Exactly. 🙂
Superman before The Crisis On Infinite Earths series (1985) was massively powerful, capable of travelling through time and dimensions, with strength to kick planets across the universe and tear apart the fabric of space with his bare hands.
Superman nowadays is not capable of the same logic-defying feats.
It's not yet clear, whether Clark in Smallville is going to end up with Pre-Crisis powers, or post-crisis.
So far, there's been a great focus in Smallville about the effect that KNite has on him - it's usually the only way that Superman got beaten in the old days. Whereas current Supes can be beaten by physical means.
I personally think that Clark in Smallville is going to grow into the original, unstoppable iconic hero that Superman used to be. 🙂
Nope - in the old comics, it's clear that Supes is one of God's 'chosen' heroes. 🙂
And the effect of a star on his powers depends on how much life the star has left.
Our sun is in the prime of it's life and gives him great power.
A red star, which is older, has used up whatever radiation it used to emit that gives Supes his powers.
Thus, under a red star, he has no power.
Crisis on Infinte Earths was created basically to allow DC to recreate the majority of their comic franchise. So in the mini-series, a character named the Monitor gathered all the heroes of all the universes in order to stop his counterpart, Anti-monitor, from destroying all time and space. They won, but the Monitor was killed, and the death of Anti-monitor caused the five DC universes (which the comics focused on before the series) to be merged together, combining aspects of all.
Thus, the new universe allowed DC to update their characters to be more plausible, e.g. Superman.
Is a white or blue star in the prime of its life? I'm not too knowledable on the subject. I'm actually pretty new to the Superman universe as a whole. I kind of thought he was a pussy till I watched Smallville, then I read Superman: Birthright and Superman: Secret Identity. They kind of changed my perspective when it comes to Big Blue.
A blue or white star are different types of stars. Our sun is a yellow star, that doesn't neccessarily tell you how old it is. It's sort of like the colour spectrum: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. The higher left it is, the hotter the star is.
Oh, and second part of the question: if Clark gets power from radiation, if he gets caught in a supernova (the explosion of a star), what kind of powers would he get? Come on, be creative! Use your imagination!