Someone mentioned in another thread that the story is they were active 20 or 30 years ago, which puts them in the old timey
period of the 1980's.
It doesn't matter if they've been active since then or if they were shut down. The media and
every single character on the show have acted like superheroes have only ever existed in comic books. The idea of someone like Green Arrow running around in a costume is both shocking and ridiculed by the media. And despite there obviously having been heroes in the past, it's still pretty hard to swallow that the best name the media could come up for Clark is "The Red-Blue Blur."
It's just not
believable in the setting. At all. If they had even so much as hinted at it before, I could swallow it. But at best we get references to Clark being "Guardian Angel," a fictional action hero. He's never been compared to another 'real life' superhero. Ever. Because, up until they decided to do this, there never were any. The closest we get is the Martian Manhunter, and he's always been cowering in the shadows himself.
