Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-43505-20161008233233/@comment-1257201-20161011012301

There is a long tradition in fandom that (1) Superman appearances from 1938 until at least 1949 are Earth-Two; (2) Superman appearances from at least 1961 until Crisis are Earth-One; (3) all Superboy appearances from 1949 until Crisis are Earth-One. This is not a convention invented on this site, and therefore it makes sense to honor it.

True, this is all retconning, because it's impossible and absurd to draw a precise line between E2 and E1 stories in the 1950s. No DC reader or writer between 1949 and 1961 imagined that the Superboy and Superman comics sitting next to each other on the newsstand were on different planets. Superboy's 1949 origin was a retcon, and from that point on it was accepted that the one and only Superman had started as Superboy, and the lack of any mention of Superboy in his earlier origin stories were not a problem. Rather than an Earth-E, it would make more sense to simply say that every single super-story from 1938 until JSA #21 were "the pre-multiple-earths Superman". It was in the 1970s that DC writers came up with a list of differences, such as his parents' names, and most of these were based on the very earliest years of Superman (not all through the 1940s). In fact, in the 1970s run of All-Star Comics, the E2 Superman can't even fly, even though flight was added as a power in the comics by 1940 or so.

But this is all irrelevant, because if we are to reject the three points I listed in the first paragraph, we reject the fundamental multiple earth premises that have been around since the 1970s. So we have 1949 Superman stories on E2 and 1949 Superboy stories on E1. We just need to mention this in the article and be done with it.