Old School Supergirl

I don't know how much buzz there is for the new Supergirl television show as compared to anything else, but I came across an image of a comic book cover from 1962 that illustrated the day when Superman revealed Supergirl to the world.

In the original canon, Kara Zor-El came to Earth in 1959 after the domed Argo City, which had been thrown clear of the explosion of Krypton, stared emitting radiation dangerous to its inhabitants, even though they weren't exposed to the rays of a yellow sun and thus having super powers (Kryptonite can't hurt a non-super Kryptonian, so this was some form of anti-Kryptonite). As in Kal-El's origin, there was just room in an experimental rocket for one person, young Kara, Kal-El's cousin. Her father Zor-El had been able to monitor Superman's activities on Earth and so not only launched Kara there, but created a costume for her similar to her heroic cousin's.

Superman, upon Kara's arrival and after hearing her story, decided to send her to an orphanage (no such thing as foster families in the late 1950s I guess), telling the administrators that her name was "Linda Lee" and her family had been killed in a flood that destroyed her home town (no records). She hid her identity under a brunette wig and only used her powers in secret. Superman felt she needed practice before doing heroics publicly.

The cover below shows the day, three years later, when Superman decided to tell the world about his younger, Kryptonian cousin, the day when Supergirl became a hero in the light rather than in the shadows.

Eventually, Kara/Linda was adopted by the Danvers, a childless couple (no older sister like in the TV show).

Thought folks might enjoy the look back.

Update: 2013

I can't believe I haven't written here since last August.

Well, yes I can. I've been busy in other areas of my life, so the "Missing Man," by necessity, had to stay missing, apart from twitter.

I had wanted to write a DVD review of Skyfall (2012) but then time passed and I didn't have the film in the forefront of my thoughts to be able to write a credible article. I've seen The Avengers (2012) and The Dark Knight Rises (2012) again, but what would I say about these films that I haven't said before. The same is true of my recent viewing of Man of Steel (2013).

On the other hand, I've avoided viewing Star Trek Into Darkness and Iron Man 3 (both 2013) on DVD because although they were entertaining films, I didn't feel like spending even a little of my cold, hard cash on reviewing lukewarm experiences.

On recommendation of a friend, I did watch and thoroughly enjoy Red (2010). It was a fun romp with a bunch of aging badasses and on that theme, a better viewing than The Expendables (2010). Not enough new, young action heroes so we have to keep recycling the old ones.

And then, just the other night, I watched Taken (2008) for the first time. The young woman at the rental place said she watched it with her Dad all the time as the "perfect father-daughter movie." All I knew was the famous line parodied in all the memes:

Brian: I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don't have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you.

And kill them he does. I don't know about the "perfect father-daughter movie," but it was a watchable action film. Bunch of plot holes such as how he and his daughter make it out of France without being arrested since Brian kills something like 35 people through the course of the film. Or what about his daughter's traveling companion? After Brian finds her dead of an overdose, that's the end of it. No one cares about her. No one worries about telling her parents she won't be coming home. Who takes care of the body count?

I'm finally in the 10th season of my Smallville (2001-2011) reviewing. I have to say that at this point, I'm getting ready for it to end again. On the other hand, I find that I've gotten very used to Clark and Lois together, now that Clark's secret is out. But the story arcs are uneven, Ollie's whining about Chloe is getting on my nerves, and I just don't buy that Tess, who has murdered more than a few people in cold blood, just gets a pass and is now one of the good guys.

I'm considering watching The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011) tonight (never seen it before) even though I have to get up early tomorrow. I watched Mr. and Mrs. Smith (2005) last night because it was the shorter of the two films and I was tired. Not bad on the subsequent viewing, but I kept thinking how much Angelina Jolie looks like her Dad Jon Voight when she makes certain facial expressions.

I did have a lot of fun watching the first two seasons of Batman Beyond (1999-2001) as well as the first season of Batman: The Animated Series (1992-1995). They were more a trip down nostalgia lane, but Kevin Conroy still is the voice of Bruce Wayne and Batman. In a way, I like Conroy's old Bruce in "Batman Beyond" better. He's more vulnerable since he's an old man, but his emotions are much less transparent, which makes him more like Batman than ever psychologically.

That's about it for now. Just a few weeks left until 2014 and a whole new year of films to look forward to, though I'll watch only a small number on the big screen.

DVD Review: Smallville Season 1, The Pilot

Somebody, save me. No, not really. I was in the public library the other day looking at the DVDs and saw that the Smallville season 1 collection was available. That's kind of unusual. Almost none of the Smallville DVDs are on the shelves for very long and in fact, season 1 was the only season of Smallville there. On a whim, and because I have only seen each season once, I decided to check out the first season of Smallville from the library. Figured it would be entertaining holiday fare, since I took a few days off for Christmas.

I remember the first time I saw the pilot episode. I had no idea what to expect. Well, scratch that. I had an idea of what to expect. I was just wrong. For one thing, I didn't expect a meteor shower of kryptonite. I didn't expect Lana's parents to be blown to bits. And who the heck is Aunt Nell?

I thought casting John Schneider and Annette O'Toole as Jonathan and Martha Kent was brilliant but unexpected (a young Ma and Pa Kent). I didn't realize just how much of a divergent trajectory Smallville would take from previous Superman canon. Actually, I wouldn't realize that for quite some time and eventually, it would get to be a real problem, but in the pilot episode, it worked out well.

Smallville has always been an uneven series. Some episodes just rocked while others were total dogs. So far, I'm about halfway through the first season and some of them are just ridiculous. It's amazing how kryptonite gives individual "meteor freaks" abilities that go so well with their personalities and personal problems (a fat girl who suddenly loses weight but has to eat a ton of fat to keep from starving?).

In the pilot, Clark already has powers but they're not fully developed. This was a real boon, since the audience can experience Clark's evolution toward becoming Superman along with him, which is the point of the series. He's fast, he's strong, he's durable, but that's about all he's got in the pilot. Oh, and he's very charming in a shy sort of way. Having achieved his abilities slowly and having been raised by parents who are caring and strong, Clark has been given the perfect platform for not abusing what he's got while at the same time, struggling to be popular in high school like any other 15 year old boy (I had some trouble picturing Welling and a number of the other "students" as that young, though).

Nobody knows what kryptonite is. They do know about meteor rock, but only Chloe suspects that the stuff has anything to do with the weirdness that's been happening in and around Smallville for the past twelve years or so. Meteor freaks would be the main catalyst in the first season, providing Clark with most of the foes he would battle. Most of them aren't bad people, just human beings whose bodies have been involuntarily changed and mutated by radiation exposure. The annoying thing about these freaks though is how they just disappear after Clark beats them. Sure, some die, but others are just (supposedly) taken away by the authorities. I think that's explained in subsequent seasons, but never entirely to my satisfaction.

These are super-powered metahumans, many who know that Clark is "special" himself. No one ever tells the cops, "Oh, by the way, the kid who stopped me has a punch like a crashing jet plane and can move about as fast?"

Lex Luthor.

More than any other character in the pilot and first season, he stands out as the somewhat dangerous but loyal big brother Clark never had. While driven by his own conflicts with his father Lionel (wonderfully played by John Glover), Lex is positively affected, not just by having Clark save his life, but by who Clark is. For most of Lex's life, he's been influenced by people who were primarily interested in power and manipulating others. Clark, super powers or no, is a truly transparent (except for his secrets), authentic human being (well, he looks human) who doesn't want anything from Lex except just to be friends.

Lex does everything he can do to help Clark and his family, though his methods definitely come from the "dark side" of being a Luthor, his intentions at this point are good. Lex's behavior shows us that he loves his friends (and as far as we know, Clark is his only friend) and hates his enemies. He's a great guy to have in your corner, but never, ever cross him or he'll find a way to get you.

Chloe Sullivan.

I hadn't realized just how annoying she was in the beginning. She's bitchy, and cranky, and sarcastic, and geez, would somebody shut her up. Quick to judge, slow to forgive, opinionated, and kind of full of herself. In some ways, she's like Lex in that she doesn't care who she hurts to get what she wants, which in her case, is the next "wall of weird" story. Unlike Lex, she's not calculating about it and in fact, she is rather careless, pursuing the goal without seeing the consequences. She matures as the show continues, but as I recall, by the series ending, she was still a little cold-hearted and goal driven.

In the beginning, she's a bright but unpopular person. Her hair always looks like a small explosion has scattered it at odd angles. She's the ugly duckling who is jealous of Clark's attention to Lana's beautiful swan. At one point in the first season, she calls the school paper her identity and in another episode, she refers to her laptop as her life. At age 15, Chloe is only as good and as interesting as what she writes about, which is probably why she goes after the unusual stories, rather than sticking to typical school activities. She's a proto-Lois Lane and is displaced by Lois in season four and afterward, which is why she has to develop other skill sets to stay interesting as a character. But in season 1, the writers of Smallville seemed to think Clark needed to play off of a Lois-type character from the very beginning.

Lana Lang.

Cute. Not as superficial as she seems for a cheerleader. Like most kids, she's trying to find out who she is and where she's going, which is another big point of the first season, since that's Clark's quest in spades. Having her parents die in the meteor shower when she was three mirrors Clark's own mystery, not having known his birth parents at all or even what planet they were from. Lana at least has Nell to fill in the blanks, along with pictures, diaries, and other documentation. Clark has a spaceship that, as of the middle of the first season, he's seen only once (as the series progresses, we get to see tons and tons of Kryptonian stuff and people and it finally gets rather oppressive how much we learn about a planet that blew up a long time ago). And of course, Lana has to wear that pesky little kryptonite necklace which disappears at odd times allowing her and Clark to actually have a conversation while standing closer than five feet apart. By the middle of season 1, Clark is weaning her from wearing it, which makes developing a friendship that includes more than phone calls and email easier to film.

Whitney Fordman.

He's not as big a pain as I remember him. Most of the time, he's actually a nice guy, for a jock with limited internal resources. He's authentically devoted to Lana, insecure enough to be jealous of Clark, worried about his future, and struggling with his father's heart disease (something Clark will have to deal with in his own Dad as time goes on). He's actually an OK guy and I can see why Lana likes him. On the other hand, Lana is smart enough to outgrow Whitney in a few years which is why it's a good thing he's eventually killed off. Oh, and that makes room for Clark to move in and hook up with her...until Lois shows up by season four.

Pete Ross.

Every guy needs a buddy and Pete is Clark's. Besides Lana and Clark's parents, Pete is one of the few people that comes from the silver age comic books. Of course, back in the 1960s, Pete is tall and blond and white...kind of like how Whitney looks. Of course, this is the early 21st century and in real life, even Smallville has a diverse population. I also didn't realize how well actor Sam Jones III was built. We expect the occasional beefcake shot of Clark in the boys locker room, but I noted Pete looking really buff himself.

Truth be told, Pete is really Chloe's buddy more than Clark's. In the pilot, Pete and Chloe bet whether or not Clark makes it to the bus stop in time to get his ride to school, and again whether or not Clark will stumble and act like a buffoon when he gets anywhere near Lana. Chloe and Pete are most often the two people you see actually working on stories for the Torch (Smallville High's school paper) and just as friends, they go to the homecoming dance together (neither being popular enough to score their own dates). Pete joins the football team to increase his popularity, which is natural, but you never get an impression that he's there to do much more than back up Clark and Chloe.

Relationships.

The whole "shipper" emphasis of Smallville wasn't in full swing in season 1 since the audience is still trying to figure out who people are supposed to be. We do see the beginnings, though. Whitney and Lana are dating, but Clark is totally pining for Lana. Somewhere inside, Lana realizes this but it doesn't come to fruition this early in the game. Lex, for his part, sees all this and repeatedly tries to set up situations where Clark and Lana are together. Chloe has a "thing" for Clark, but it's not so overpowering that she doesn't have interests in another guy (such as womanizing student Sean Kelvin, played by Michael Coristine in the episode Cool). Eventually, this will develop into a "shipper" issue of Clark/Lana vs. Clark/Chloe, but we aren't there yet.

And thankfully, that's all of the "shipper" drama we get to see in season 1. At this point, there's still a strong teenage angst thread running through the series, which I'm sure is present to satisfy the demands of its target audience, but for me, Smallville season 1 is mainly about watching Clark discover who he is as the future "Man of Steel."

Conclusion.

I particularly like the pilot episode of Smallville and a number of developments in Clark as a person and a "superhero" in season 1. It's "good clean fun," so to speak. I'm even thinking of getting season 2 after I'm done with this set of disks.

Superboy vs. The Blur: A Brief History of a Teenage Hero

With the amazing success of the Smallville television series, chronicling young Clark Kent's early development as he approaches a career as Superman, it's easy to forget an earlier series, also depicting a teenager from the planet Krypton: Superboy (1988-1992). I was actually only aware of the first two seasons of the series and assumed it had been cancelled thereafter, but apparently, it survived in a somewhat altered form under the title "The Adventures of Superboy". So why has no one (except die hard fans) heard of this series and why did it never attain the succes of Smallville?

I have only theories, but I think they're good ones.

The Superboy series started out life as a 30-minute live action series telling the story of college student Clark Kent and his friends at fictional Shuster University set in equally fictional Siegelville, Florida. This puts Clark at about age 18 when he first puts on the costume, but despite his being legally an adult, he retains the name "Superboy" as opposed to "Superman". Clark and his childhood friend/love interest Lana Lang (played throughout the series by Stacy Haiduk), have left Smallville, Kansas and, for some unknown reason, have enrolled at a university in Florida instead of the more logical Metropolis University (probably had something to do with the fact that the series was initially filmed in Orlando, Florida).

Clark's sidekick in the first season, is T.J. White his college roommate and a photographer on the school's paper, the Shuster Herald (and Perry White's nephew). This is where Clark gets his first reporting experience, and the two manage to get into plenty of trouble together, either by themselves or with the help of Lana, requiring that Superboy come along to save them. At that time, Lex Luthor (played in the first season by Scott James Wells) is a fellow student and is only villainous to the degree that, spoiled rich kid that he is, he fixes school basketball games and tries to make Superboy look foolish.

For the most part, the first season of the series is "kid stuff" (though Lana makes the occasional appearence in a bikini which certainly grabbed a lot of adult male attention), which isn't necessarily bad, but it also wasn't necessarily something that could sustain the series.

Each successive season took on a darker tone, changing Lex into an older and more evil version of himself, now dedicated to killing Superboy by any means (to avenge the insult of Superboy making Lex bald). and allowing Bizarro, Metallo, and other traditional Superman enemies to show up. The actor playing Clark was replaced and Clark went through a few different sidekicks as events progressed. That the series lasted four seasons speaks well of it (many series don't make it that far) even though it went through a number of transformations. Its ratings were still high after season four and legal issues seem to the main reason that it died.

What about Smallville?

It was conceived as a full-hour live action series, which gives it more room to tell a story an episode at a time. It also was more tied into the movies, perhaps drawing from a broader fan base and giving it a closer connection to Christopher Reeve fans (and Reeve appeared in some of the episodes). It also incorporated longer, more entwined storylines, which tended to "hook" fans into the series for significant stretches in order to find out the resolution of the various conspiracies. Romance was also more heavily involved and many fans are rabidly devoted to different variations of couples to which Clark should belong (Clark-Lana, Clark-Chloe, Clark-Lois). Sometimes the series seems half super adventure and half super soap opera.

More and varied elements of the larger Superman universe have been incorporated such as the Justice League of America, The Legion of Superheroes, characters such as Doomsday (highly altered from the comic book version), Zod, Zantanna, and so forth. There's also the continual dynamic tension of when and how Clark will eventually realize his destiny and become Superman. It's like the Twilight movie and book series when the romantic couple forever hover at the edge of sex without ever quite consumating the relationship. The tension ends when sex happens or, in this case, when Clark puts on the costume and learns to fly.

The series could probably go beyond 10 seasons and is ending for what I imagine are two reasons.

Reason One: The producers are wise. Every Star Trek series except the original and Star Trek: Enterprise ended after the seventh season no matter how popular they were. They ended on a high note rather than wait until they sucked so bad that fans just lost interest. It's better that way, plus you can squeeze some movies out of the deal.

Reason Two: It's time for Superman to get back on the big screen. For continuity reasons, it's easier for Clark's apprenticeship as "the Blur" to end on TV so he can become Superman in the movies. Also, the fan base isn't split between two venues.

Superman, in one form or another, has been on television, practically since there has been television. No doubt he will return in some manner or fashion, but in whatever form he reappears on the small screen, he will have a tough time beating the popularity of Smallville and it's ten year run in the opening decade of the 21st Century.

Superboy vs. the Blur. In this case, the Blur won...but there's always a future.