Look up in the sky! It's a Bird! It's a Plane! No, It's SUPERMAN!
I had to, I'm not apologizing.
Decided to pivot from doing a few
more episodes of Beast Wars to talk about a new show from a company I’ve
been neglecting in recent years. Let’s talk about My Adventures with
Superman. The latest adaptation of the story of the boy from Krypton follows
a 22 or so Clark Kent living in Metropolis at the start of his journey as
Superman. They change quite a bit about the story to fit into a modern setting,
but we’ll get to those when they crop up. Let’s get to it.
My Adventures With Superman
begins with the titular Superman, Clark Kent, when he was about 8 or 9 years
old. He’s in front of his house and attempting to get his kite out of a tree. There
is just something so funny about seeing this kid struggle to jump more than a
few inches off the ground when ya know he’s going to be flying any second now. His
fruitless attempts to get it are interrupted by a speeding car. A young,
clearly stressed-out mom is doing her best to placate her toddler as she speeds
to her dad’s place. She’s driving so fast she doesn’t notice Clark trying to
warn her about a nasty pothole coming up. She hits the pothole; her car spins
out and heads toward a tree. Clark runs after the car to do… something. I know
he wants to be helpful, but Clark you’re like 9 years old and 45 pounds soaking
wet, not much you can do… unless you spontaneously develop superpowers. Thankfully
for everyone involved, he spontaneously develops superpowers. It seems the
desire to help someone triggered Clark’s dormant powers. His eyes spark with
blue energy and he super-speeds over to the car, grabs it, and uses his now
immense strength to slow the car before it hits a tree. The woman is clearly
shocked by the almost accident, but I guess doesn’t look around as she drives
off. You’d think she’d note the small child behind her car. Clark, jazzed at
his new strength, goes back to the tree and leaps into the air to get his kite.
He grabs it and is ecstatic at getting the toy back, so much so that it takes
him a moment to realize he’s not falling back to Earth. After realizing that he
can defy gravity, Clark flies off into the sky, enjoying the exhilaration of
flight. After doing some aerial tricks, he stops and asks the big question of
this first season… “How am I doing this? Who AM I?”
We jump forward 15 years and about
200 miles to Clark Kent in Metropolis. The now 20-something Clark wakes up,
excited about his new job. So much so that he misjudges his strength and
smashes his and his roommate’s alarm clock. Way to go, Kent. He then goes on to
snapping their faucet in the bathroom and then ripping through his shoe as he
prepared to take a morning run. Honestly, this is a great way to show his
nerves as being able to always judge his strength and force is something that
is, ya know, 1000% necessary for Clark to keep his powers on the down low. At
the same time, we see Lois Lane getting up. If, somehow, you don’t know who
this is, because you’ve like jumped forward in time from 1920, she’s our woman
lead and love interest for Clark, as well as coworker at the Daily Planet. Or
will be in a few hours. Back on task. Lois is up and she’s also excited about
the day, as she’s planning on pitching a story to her boss that she believes
will make her a real reporter. Thematic parallels, the beyond human alien
chants to himself “just be normal,” and the 100% human chants to herself “be
extraordinary.” Oh, and they’re both going on pre-work jogs.
We shift over to Clark on his run.
He’s optimistic about his day, believing that he’s going to be able to live a
normal life and keep his powers hidden. This belief is basically shattered less
than thirty seconds later when he notices a missing cat poster and said cat
hanging from a tree branch. Using his phenomenal speed, he grabs the cat, finds
the cat’s owner, and drops the cat off with the child. He tells himself that he
had to save the cat, but he’ll be normal starting now. He makes it to his
favorite convenience store and rips the door handle off when he tries to pull
instead of push. Clark, my man, take a deep breath. These nerves of yours are
going to cost you millions. Before he can do anything about it, Lois walks up.
Clark opens the door for her, just to try to hide the break from her, but they
make eye contact and immediately start blushing. Oh ho, instant attraction, it
seems.
Clark follows her in and tries to
chat but is interrupted by the store’s owner. She’s a sweet old gal that
clearly is very fond of Clark, hugging him and thanking him for fixing a door
(that he is implied to have broken) and bringing him three boxes of a dozen
donuts, saying he’s going to eat them all. She inadvertently further
embarrasses Clark by mentioning his preference for donuts with sprinkles and
that she and her husband made him a bib as a joke due to his messy eating of
said donuts. Clark, blushing furiously, says “well, now you’ve seen me with a
bib. … so, I’m just gonna go before this gets worse. Goodbye forever!” rushing
out the door and breaking it more. He shouts he’ll be back to fix it later.
We flash forward a bit to Clark and
his roommate/best friend Jimmy Olsen running through a park to get to their new
job. Both are excited for the day, Jimmy saying that they’ll work together to
prove the existence of aliens. Yeah, turns out Jimmy is a conspiracy theorist
in this iteration. Though, it’s funny as half the conspiracies he mentions are
100% real to the DC universe, 1. Aliens- true, Clark, and 2. A giant starfish
in Germany- True, Starro. And the Lock Ness Monster and Big Foot could also be
real there, too, just saying. Jimmy is so distracted taking pictures and
talking that he’s almost run over by a dump truck, but Clark is able to
super-speed over and shove him out of the way without him noticing. Clark is
able to look back at the speeding truck driver and sees a scary looking woman
with an odd hairstyle. I’m not sure what it’s called, the sides of her head are
shaved, but she keeps it long on the top. Jimmy tells Clark to not worry about
anything as he’ll just burst into the office to introduce them.
We jump to Lois bursting into the
office of the Daily Planet Editor-in-Chief, Perry White. Not giving her boss a
chance to get a word in edgewise, she uses a smart tablet to pitch her story.
She reveals that there was a break in at an army base that tests out
experimental weapons. We’re shown several giant robots fighting and some other
unusual items on the tablet’s hologram display as she talks. The only road into
the base leads to Metropolis, so there are people with deadly weapons in the
city. She asks Perry if he’s ready for her to bust the story wide open. Perry,
clearly annoyed, reminds her that she is an Intern, and that the only reason
she called her in was to meet the new interns, those interns being Clark and
Jimmy. She and Clark recognize each other, and again start blushing before
getting back on task. Lois, Clark, and Jimmy, being two aspiring journalists
and an aspiring camera man, are all excited by Lois’ story idea. They start
formulating a plan to investigate the story… in front of their boss. Perry, who
seems very exhausted by this, which also hints at how often Lois comes in with
story ideas, orders the new interns out to talk to Lois. He gives her an
ultimatum, saying that she needs to focus on her actual job, which is to work the
scanner and make coffee, and if she ignores his expressed orders again, she’s
done.
Outside the office, Lois, deciding
to risk her job on the huge story anyway, lies to Jimmy and Clark about what
Perry said, saying that he assigned them to help her investigate the robot
theft. Clark and Jimmy, being gullible, go along with it. It’s not ever fun to
trick Clark, the dude is so trusting that lying to him feels like lying to a
child. Lois marches ahead of them. Left to themselves for a moment, Jimmy notes
that Clark is already developing a crush on Lois, which he denies. He says he
“admires” Ms. Lane, Jimmy teasingly saying, “yeah you do,” and encourages Clark
to take a risk on asking Lois out if he’s interested in her.
We jump over to a warehouse where
the thieves are held up. The woman in charge, the scary lady from before,
Leslie Willis, arrives and lets her partner, Badger, know that they’re in
trouble. Turns out, since stealing the robots and other tech, literally every
fence, fixer, broker, or other cute street term for “guys who buy stolen
stuff,” has gone dark or disappeared. Badger tells her they can’t sit on
weapons and stolen science tech until the cops show up. Apparently, they don’t
even know what half the items they stole even do. Leslie tells him not to panic
and tip off the thieves and killers they hired for the job that there’s no
buyer. She wants to move the merchandise and get out of the city… but the
planning is interrupted by a robot ripping through its container and beginning
to attack. She shuts it down before it can do more damage and tells her men to
prepare to move out.
We return to the convenience store
where Clark, Jimmy and Lois meet Lois’ journalistic source for the robot story,
four ten-year-olds. They are Flip Johnson, Big Words, Gabby, and Patty, the
“Newskid Legion” as they like to call themselves. They’re a group of newspaper
delivery kids that work for the Daily Planet and thus see a lot of weird stuff
going on around town. Lois, after haggling with Flip to get the Newskid’s kid
newspaper in as an insert to the Daily Planet and to help Flip on her next two
English papers, get the lowdown on things happening in town. Most of it is just
gossip, but Flip mentions Gabby saw a bunch of trucks running a red light and
disappearing. Clark, remembering the scary lady in the garbage truck, puts
together that the best way to move metric tons of stolen equipment through a
city would be with a truck designed to carry metric tons. They figure out where
the trucks disappear on a map, and they head out. Most unrealistic point of the
story, by the way. No way in hell four kids born post 2010 know how to read a paper
map. Hell, I can barely read one and I’m 32 at the time of writing.
The trio move to an alley just
outside where the trucks are parked. Clark, wanting to try to protect the two
people he’s with that can’t shrug off bullets, points out that this is very dangerous
and if Lois is sure Perry wants them to investigate this. He’s obviously
going to try to get rid of them so he, the one who is bullet proof, can
investigate further. On cue, Perry texts Lois multiple times telling her to get
back to the office now. Lois decides to ignore this and keep lying to get the
story, so tells Clark that Perry just gave them the thumbs up to keep going. They
get closer to the building. Lois spies a broken window just out of reach, so
pulls Clark onto a dumpster and tells him to boost her up to the window. Clark does as she asks but ends up lifting
her just a little too fast and hard, throwing her into the air, so she ends up
flailing her arms and legs about in the sky for a second before dropping. He
grabs her around the waist, and they get lost in each other’s eyes for a
moment. Jimmy calls their attention back to reality and says that the door is
open.
To their disappointment, the
building is completely empty. They find a single badge on the ground though
with the letters PM on it. Jimmy jumps on the idea that PM stands for Paranormal
Meta Sapiens, a term for super intelligent Gorillas France is hiding. Chock up
one more insane but true conspiracy theory for Jimmy. Clark’s phone goes off
and he answers, learning from a very angry Perry that he, Lois, and Jimmy need
to get back to the Daily Planet now or they shouldn’t bother coming back at
all. Lois deduces that the badge is for the Port of Metropolis and tries to
lead everyone there, but Clark confronts her about lying. Clark’s good boy
Midwestern attitude treats intentionally lying about anything other than the
existence of Santa to children like murder, so he’s rather upset with Lois. He
accuses her of using him and Jimmy for her story that is more about her ego
than what’s good for the city. Clark says he’s out, so Lois grabs Jimmy and
storms off.
On the street, Jimmy tries to go to
bat for Clark, but Lois isn’t really listening, as she’s complaining about his
dumb, beautiful, coward of a best friend. She says that she didn’t believe
Clark would help her if she told the truth, bulldozing over Jimmy’s question
about her saying beautiful. She then lists off all the people Clark helped
without asking, like the old lady, he negotiation with Flip, and bringing
everyone at the Planet donuts… trailing off when she realizes that Clark
probably would have helped her if asked and she had indeed acted selfishly.
She’s pulled out of wallowing in self-pity by Jimmy who saw the thieves moving
the crate that the Robot inside half destroyed earlier. Leslie sees them, takes
a shot at them and orders someone to take care of this. One of her goons
activates a robot and it starts hunting Lois and Jimmy, much to Leslie’s
annoyance. I gotta agree with her on this one, sending one killer robot after
two people is not a great way to stay low. Thankfully for Jimmy and Lois, Flip
had seen them enter the port and saw the robot chasing them. She rides off on
her bike to look for help and ends up running into Clark. She explains what she
saw and in panic asks what they should do. Clark, realizing he has to do
something, flies off when Flip looks away for a second. Better hope she’s too
panicked to remember how things happened, Smallville.
Clark arrives at the dock and more
or less just appears behind Lois. Lois, far too freaked out to question how
Clark showed up, tells him they need to find Jimmy. Jimmy finds them a moment
later, the robot trailing him. Clark puts his body between them and the robot
and rather conveniently gets knocked aside into a bunch of boxes. The robot
corners Lois and Jimmy, giving Clark a chance to throw a disguise together
using a dockworker’s jacket, pants, and hood. He leaps into the way and stops
the robot from crushing them. He beats the robot back with his fists before
being smashed to the ground by it. The robot beats him a little, but Clark
notes that its chest is sparking after he puts some distance between them. He
super-speeds and flies around its attacks long enough to get close and rip out
the robot’s power core. Leslie, being a sore loser, activates four more robots
and then sneaks off. Clark, exhausted and bruised but still up, flies in to
fight the robots but is pretty outgunned by four of them. Lois, though, having
seen how Leslie turned them on, knows how to shut the robots down. She runs
over to the platform the robot’s containers are on and turns off one before it
can attack Clark. The other three charge at her while she quickly hits the
buttons to deactivate another. The robots cut through the platform holding
their containers, separating Lois from the last two buttons. She’s able to race
over and hit one more, but the last Robot has her in its crosshairs. It
prepares to blast her, and an extremely injured Clark tries to get to her to
save her. This triggers something in Clark again, causing the blue energy from
years earlier to spark off. The energy seems to heal Clark and supercharge his
powers, allowing him to fly at the robot at top speed and punch it into the
stratosphere. While this happened, back at the Kent farm, the iconic S like
sign of the house of El appeared in their field.
Clark marvels at his own power once
again while flying. Lois runs up to him
and asks him who he is. He doesn’t answer, instead flying upwards. Without the
flying man in her line of sight, Lois remembers there’s a, she thinks, very
injured Clark that needs tending to, so she runs to help him. In the sky, he
muses about being a ‘normal man having a normal day’ and asks again who he is.
He hears Lois screaming his name, though, and goes back to reality. Lois finds
his discarded tie in the rubble and is obviously freaked out by this. Clark limps
out from behind some other rubble, acting more hurt than he is. She tackles him
and apologizes into his chest. Jimmy joins them and reveals that he got
pictures of the fight. Lois is excited by the story of the century, stolen
robots stopped by a… Superman.
They take the photos back to Perry,
who isn’t impressed. Turns out, the speed Clark was moving at, and maybe a
little of the terror Jimmy was feeling, lead to him taking incredibly blurry
photos. It just looks like shots of Robots falling. Perry looks like he’s about
to tear into Lois, but Clark steps up for her and says that they all stand by
their story. Perry tells them to get out, and that he’ll figure out what to do
with them tomorrow. Everyone is excited about not losing their jobs, Jimmy
being so bold as to ask if this means he’ll run their story. Perry, rather
sarcastically, says that he’ll run their story the day they get an interview
with their “flying man.” Outside, Lois excitedly announces that they just need
to get an exclusive with Superman and Perry will have to take them seriously. She
swears to track Superman down, get his secrets and then publish them. Clark,
uncomfortable with the attention, agrees to go along with her. The episode ends
with Lois shouting that this is the best day of her life.
I think this is a very strong start
to My Adventures with Superman. The show sets a comedic tone pretty much
immediately with little Clark trying to get the kite, and older Clark doing
things like saving cats from trees, breaking things due to his nerves and Jimmy
and Lois being delightful. On the power scale, they seemed to settle Clark on
being stronger and having more of his powers than he did during the start of Smallville,
but not have him be full power Superman from the start like he was in The
Animated Series back in the day. The result is a Clark that can travel
faster than when he’s just starting out but still bleeds if something hits him
hard enough. Some folks are upset by this, I personally think it makes a good
drama. I love this interpretation of Lois Lane. She’s a bit more optimistic and
less cynical than most of her other adaptations, but her boundless energy pairs
well with Clark’s more reserved nature here at the start of the story. Ambitious,
excited, just a little underhanded, these are great Lois’ qualities. I also
love that this first episode is at least a quarter just Clark and Lois falling
in love. Most adaptations stick with them being reasonably close friends or
even just work acquaintances while the real romance is between Superman and
Lois. This version has Lois blushing the moment that that big farm boy looks at
her just a little too long and has her getting lost in his eyes a few hours
later. What I saw here, and is confirmed to me in later episodes, is Clark
being the half of Mr. Kent that Lois is clearly interested in, and Superman is
the half that Lois views as a work “relationship.” Meaning that she wants to
interview him and write a story, he’s a means to kickstarting her career, not
someone she wants to date. Jimmy is
great too. I hope they keep giving him these conspiracy theories that do sound
completely insane, but are in fact 100% true to the DC Universe. Like, I want
to hear about a test pilot that disappeared a year ago and have Jimmy spout on
about him being kidnapped by little green men, sort of thing. I also like that
he’s a weird combination of insightful but dense. Like, he has no idea that his
roommate and best friend is a superpowered alien… but he can tell within
minutes of that friend being smitten. It makes for a character with interesting
levels of insight. And I liked the robots as Clark’s first baddies. It’s a
simple fight, steel men vs. the man of steel, but it did a good job of showing
that Clark is powerful but still very much mortal at this point in the story. And
I liked that he was only able to beat them thanks to Lois figuring out their
weakness, the shutdown button, and that it was her getting into danger which
seemed to supercharge his powers. It’s a good dynamic, Clark taking on the
brunt of the villain of the week while Lois and Jimmy find ways to even out the
playing field. Leslie Willis was an
interesting choice for the first villain of the series, but more on that
tomorrow. Oh, and I liked the Newskid Legion. They’re something of a deep cut
of Superman lore, being a squad of newspaper delivery boys (they were the
Newsboy Legion before, seems like everyone but Big Words was gender flipped)
back in the 30s and 40s. Flip’s funny as this nine year old that talks and acts
like she’s also in her 20s but with child priorities, like making sure Lois
knows there WILL be snacks included on their homework help deal. It was cute.
Okay, that’s the first episode in the books. Next time, Clark gets a little…
thunderstruck.
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/86668720
Twitter: @BasicsSuperhero
No comments:
Post a Comment