Knowledge Waits is a feature where I just share some bit of comic book history that interests me.

A couple of years back, I wrote about when Superman's Leap Day birthday was first established period. Let me recap that first.

The first time that Superman's birthday was established as being on Leap Day occurred in a letter column! Towards the end of Mort Weisinger's run as tenure of the Superman titles, someone asked a question about Supermnan's birthday and Weisinger's main assistant was E. Nelson Bridwell, so in the pages of 1966's World's Finest Comics #164, Bridwell gave the answer out...

The idea then spread from there.

It was listed in a 1976 calendar that DC put out...

Oddly enough, as you can see, Captain Marvel's birthday is somehow also on Leap Day. I think that this is some wink wink nudge nudge "explanation" for why Superman does not age the same way that other people do, because his birthday only occurs every four years! At least that's why I've always assumed that his birthday was held on that day. I don't believe it was ever expressed WHY that day was chosen.

It was famously used as the date for Superman's birthday in the classic Superman Annual #11 by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons in 1985 where Wonder Woman, Batman and Robin visit Superman for his birthday.

And, of course, it was memorably featured when Time Magazine released its Superman 50th Anniversary edition on February 29th, 1988 (cover-dated March 14th)...

I used to believe that the Superman Annual was the first time that Superman's Leap Day birthday was established in the comics, and honestly, it pretty much still is. However, reader Juan Carlos Castro from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil wrote in with the following interesting bit:

There actually IS a comics appearance for that date before 1985's For The Man Who Has Everything but it's an Elseworlds story. Well, they didn't call it Elseworlds back then, they called it "imaginary stories." It's in Superman #300, from 1976. Coincidentally (not), a leap year.

In that story, baby Supes' ship touches down in the ocean February 29, 1976, is rescued by a US sailor named Thomas

Clark

He was raised by a good-hearted general named Kent Garrett (you may already know where this is going)

and Superman shows himself to the world in the oh-so-futuristic year of (gasp!) 2001, just in time to save the world from a four-armed monster. The story title is, in fact, Superman 2001. Give them a break, it was the seventies.

I read the Brazilian translation of that comic, which came out a couple of months after it was published in the USA. I was 11. Never saw it again, translated or otherwise, but a few details stuck with me. The Feb 29 date, the clever new way to get to the name Clark Kent, the four-armed monster, the competition between the USA and USSR helicopters to get to the floating alien ship first, the retro-futuristic title.

Speaking of retro-futuristic, the villains' main motivation is to cause a war between the USA and the USSR in order to seize world power. In 2001.

Thanks, Juan!

Happy birthday, Superman!

If anyone has any interesting comic book related story that you'd like to see me feature in a future Knowledge Waits, feel free to drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!