We’re almost here, friends. With the time remaining until I’m in the theater watching Superman measured in hours, excitement is at a fever pitch. Just this morning (July 9th), my son told me just how excited he is to watch the movie, then he asked me if Batman is gonna be in it. Like I said, FEVER PITCH.

I don’t even know what I’ll be reading or watching AFTER I see the movie, but until then, let’s hit the last book on James Gunn’s list of inspirations for Superman.

And as always, you can check out earlier blogs in the Year of Superman Archive!

Wed., July 9

Graphic Novel: Kingdom Come (Collects issues 1-4, plus a new epilogue)

Notes: I may have read this single graphic novel more than any other in my life. Kingdom Come, by Mark Waid and Alex Ross, is perhaps the zenith of DC’s Elseworlds imprint. A story that was out of continuity, but at the same time, still felt so accurate and so perfectly attuned to the characters within that for years afterwards, DC would have their various titles make small hints or pushes in the direction of this book, suggesting that this Elseworlds might – just might – wind up being the “real” future of the DC Universe. Eventually they dropped this (wisely, I think) and established it as Earth-22, one of the many worlds in DC’s multiverse, but that in no way diminishes the power or impact of this most incredible story.

The story begins in the future with the death of Wesley Dodds, the Sandman. On his deathbed, he plagues his pastor – a quiet little man named Norman McCay – with visions of the apocalypse, which he swears is imminent. The world they live in, you see, has become overrun with superhumans. The children (some literal, some metaphorical) of the heroes of our era have lost their way, turning their battles on one another with no regard for the lives of the innocent. And Superman, of course, isn’t there to stop it. No one has seen him in ten years. Shortly after Wesley’s death, a cataclysm happens: a superhuman battle in Kansas causes Captain Atom to explode, irradiating the entire state and killing a million people. Furthermore, the destruction of America’s farmland sends the entire globe into an economic spiral. Chaos is reigning and Norman finds his faith in God weakening…and then an angel appears. It is the being we once knew as the Spectre, the Spirit of God’s Vengeance, and he has come to take Norman on an important journey. Armageddon is close at hand, and he will need Norman’s guidance to pass judgment.

Over the course of these three issues, we learn that Superman retreated from humanity after the Joker murdered the entire staff of the Daily Planet (obviously including you-know-who). But that wasn’t what sends him away. Instead of being made to pay for his crimes, Joker was murdered by one of the new superhumans, Magog, and it was the way people accepted Magog acting as judge, jury, and executions that broke the Man of Steel. With Kansas gone, Wonder Woman brings him out of hiding and together they begin to reassemble the Justice League. Their old allies offer the new breed of superhumans a choice: join them and accept their ways or get thrown in a superhuman gulag. Not everyone is happy about this, of course, least of all Batman and his team – members of the old guard who are afraid of what Superman is doing. As the tension builds, old friends become enemies, old enemies become uneasy allies, and ultimately, the line between god and man must be defined before it’s too late.

This book is magnificent. Waid, as I’ve said many times, has a love and an understanding of these characters that is unparalleled among contemporary comic book creators, and he brings every bit of it to the page here. He manages to craft a story that makes us believe that, yes, Superman WOULD give up in these circumstances. That he and Batman WOULD wind up at odds with one another without any sort of stupid misunderstanding or plot contrivance. He explores the relationship between Wonder Woman and Superman in a way that feels more real and natural than most others. There is a love that develops between the two, but unlike most of the stories that try to shoehorn them into a relationship (such as the Superman/Wonder Woman book of the New 52 era) this isn’t a story about two hot, powerful people who are mushed together by virtue of them being hot and powerful. This is a different kind of love, a more mature kind of love. It’s the kind of thing that happens when people who have loved and trusted one another for their entire lives grow older and cling to one another to alleviate the loneliness of their loss. I don’t want that to sound like I’m diminishing it, mind you – this is a kind of love that is very real and very comforting to a lot of people. And as such it’s the most believable Superman/Wonder Woman pairing I’ve ever read. 

Alex Ross was coming off his star-making work on Marvels, in which he and Kurt Busiek explored the early days of Marvel Comics from the perspective of an outsider. This book is kind of the inverse of that – a story of the end of the DC mythology. Once again, it’s from an outsider’s perspective, but in this case that outsider is forced within. Whereas Phil Sheldon (protagonist of Marvels) spends his entire life at arm’s length from the heroes he photographs, Norman McCay is thrust into the lives of the Justice League at their most personal, their most vulnerable, seeing corners of their souls that even they themselves aren’t privy to. 

And even if it weren’t for the fact that this is one of the greatest stories ever written in comic book form, it would be worth it just for the artwork alone. Ross, creates fully painted artwork for every page of the story, and those pages are absolutely loaded. His Superman is strong and powerful, but has a humanity to his face that makes it easy to relate to him. Wonder Woman, similarly, is beautiful, but in a sort of unattainable, almost unearthly way that befits a goddess. Norman McCay, who was based on Ross’s own father, comes across as a very ordinary man who has been forced to shoulder the weight of the entire world, and your heart breaks for him.

And then there’s the FUN behind it. Ross fills nearly every page of this book with Easter Eggs and cameos – obscure characters who appear in only a panel or two, celebrities and comic book creators popping in just for a moment…even Phil Sheldon himself makes a cameo appearance if you look hard enough. And it’s not just the faces that give us surprises, but the books on a shelf, the artifacts in the Planet Krypton restaurant…there is SO MUCH going on in this book that some editions of the graphic novel even come with a section of annotations almost as long as the story itself to help you find them all.

Gunn’s Superman will be young, of course – not the elder statesman of Kingdom Come, and I’ll be very interested in seeing how this particular story influenced him. Besides the obvious, of course. 

Thur. July 10

Eddie is excited.

I need you to understand just HOW excited my son is. When he woke up this morning, the first thing he said was “Tomorrow we are going to see Superman.” He asked me to pull up our tickets on the AMC Theaters app so he could see what theater and what seats we were in. He asked if it was going to be in IMAX. He asked if we were going to get a regular popcorn bucket or a Superman bucket. He asked what Superman shirts he, his mom, and I are going to wear.

He’s almost as excited to see this movie as I am to take him to it. 

The next 24 hours are going to CRAWL.

Junior Novel: Welcome to Metropolis by David Lewton

Notes: On the last day before we finally see the movie, I thought it would be appropriate to read the “Junior Prequel Novel” to the film, Welcome to Metropolis. Gunn has quite famously reminded us all that the movie will NOT be yet another origin story (thank goodness), and that by the time it begins Superman has been active for about three years. This novel steps back and shows us Clark Kent’s arrival in Metropolis, his attempt to get hired at the Daily Planet, and his first encounters with the other metahumans in town.

And it is, sadly, painfully skippable.

It’s not that it’s unnecessary (although it is – if it weren’t, then the information in this book would have been included in the movie), it’s that it’s not even pieced together well. In many iterations we see Superman have a huge, public debut – saving the space shuttle, catching the helicopter falling from the roof of the Planet building, and so forth. In this book, he bursts on the scene stopping a heist at a toy factory, something which barely anybody sees, although it does get Clark Kent hired at the Planet in a truly unfathomable amount of time. 

Speaking of time, the timeframe of this book is confusing. The way it’s written, it feels as though everything happens in a matter of days. In fact, if not for a brief scene in Smallville, I would assume it was a narrative of Clark’s first week in Metropolis. When he visits his parents, though, they talk about subscribing to the Planet and how they read all his articles, as though he’s been there for at least several weeks. 

Everyone in this book also talks as though they assume everybody else is an idiot. Mr. Terrific gives Superman a lecture on what a robot is, for example. Is there anybody who doesn’t know what a robot is? And is it necessary to get into the etymology of the word? Although this isn’t quite as egregious as the scene where a waitress instructs Clark Kent on how to tip for a cup of coffee. Even the narration gets in on it, introducing one of the other characters as “Green Lantern, whose real name was Guy Gardner.” It’s a clunky, poorly-phrased piece of exposition that could have been worked in more organically.

Look, I get that this is a book for children, and I don’t expect it to be on the level of an Andy Weir hyper-detailed sci-fi thriller. But I’m a teacher and a dad and – I’ll be honest here – a nerd. I’ve read an awful lot of young adult fiction, and if there’s one thing I firmly believe it’s that kids are smarter than most adults give them credit for. They know when they’re being condescended to, and this whole book feels like that…someone talking down to a kid who may not instinctively grasp why they’re getting irritated, but they feel that way nonetheless.

I hate to end the countdown to the film on such a sour note, but that’s how this book left me feeling. I think I’ll need something else today to help perk me up. 

Movie: Superman (1978)

Notes: “Hold on a second,” you may be saying. “Didn’t you watch that already? In fact, wasn’t that the first movie you watched in 2025, all the way back in January?” Why yes, yes I did. But as Eddie’s enthusiasm for the new movie grows by leaps and bounds, today he said to me that sentence that every father hopes to hear at some point in his life:

“Daddy, can we watch the 1978 Superman movie today?”

YOU’RE DARN RIGHT WE CAN.

I need you to understand, it’s not like I’ve hidden this movie from Eddie. I’ve watched it several times since he was born, and always with him in the room. He’s never truly been engrossed in it, though, his mind (as the minds of kids often are) focused on other things. But this time, for the first time, he’s ASKED for it. And he’s actually paying ATTENTION. And as such, his beautiful neurospicy brain is full of questions.

“Is that Superbaby?”

“Sure.”

“Can Superbaby fly?”

“Well, he’s still on Krypton, so no, not yet.”

“Can SuperBOY fly?”

“Yes, Superboy can fly.”

“Only big kids can fly.”

“I love the connections your mind makes.”

That said, he’s still seven and still an active little sort, and as such he’s not as interested in some of my favorite parts of the movie. Specifically, the Smallville scenes – the slow burn as Clark grows up and discovers himself doesn’t really hold much interest to Eddie. In fact, he stops and asks me “Do we see Superman yet?” just before we get to the scene where Clark runs alongside the train. I point it out and something clicks inside of him. “That’s SuperBOY,” he says, gleefully. 

I’m not going to argue.

He gets distracted again, although he’s fascinated by the construction of the Fortress of Solitude, but he doesn’t really jump up until the end of the sequence where Jor-El mentors his son. The music starts and we see, from a distance, Christopher Reeve in costume for the first time.

“He’s Superman!” Eddie shouts.

He lifts off the ground and moves towards the camera.

“HE’S FLYING!” Eddie shouts. 

47 years later and Chris Reeve is still making people believe. 

His attention wavers back and forth, seemingly in direct proportion to whether Christopher Reeve is wearing the costume at the moment. He is delighted when he saves Lois Lane and the falling helicopter, but he has no patience for the two of them conducting the most innuendo-laden interview this side of Monty Python. He LOVES the scene where Lex Luthor holds up a Navy convoy on a bridge because, well, he loves bridges. 

He’s all in for the final scene, though, once Luthor’s bomb causes an earthquake. “Why is the gas station blowing up? It damaged San Francisco! SUPERMAN HAS TO SAVE THE GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE!!!”

(I told you he loves bridges.)

“What’s happening?” he asks, excitedly.

“The earthquake is making the Hoover Dam break!”

“What’s a (whisperwhisper)?”

“What?”

“What’s a (whisperwhisper)?”

“WHAT?”

“What’s a water station?”

Oh. “Eddie, it’s okay to say THAT kind of ‘dam’.” 

In the end, I think he enjoyed it, even if his favorite part was when – and I quote – “the Golden Gate bridge got demolished!” 

I can’t wait for tomorrow. 

Comics: Trinity: Daughter of Wonder Woman #1 (Jon Kent appearance), LEGO DC Superheroes Save the Day (Superman appearance)

Notes: Before he goes to bed, we read a book with Eddie every night. Today he picks one he checked out from the library earlier this week, LEGO DC Superheroes Save the Day. It’s a short graphic novel that mostly focuses on LEGO Batman and Robin, but Superman shows up at the end to help save the day. I hold him and help him with the tougher words, and he’s perfectly content to be reading a Superman story in preparation. I love being his dad. 

Fri., July 11

Movie: Superman (2025)

Notes: Eddie woke up at 6:43 in the morning. I know this, because he immediately rushed to me and made sure I was awake because he wasn’t about to miss our movie at 11:30 am.

I may have created a monster.

But it’s impossible to get mad at the boy – he’s pumped. We get him dressed in his special Superman shirt with his own cape. I put on my t-shirt with the new logo, then top it with my RSVLTS “Pup Pup and Away” button-down. Erin has ordered her own Lois Lane t-shirt specifically for this occasion. He spends the entire morning asking when the movie starts, what auditorium we’re going to be in, how long the commercials before the movie will be – by the time we actually arrive at the movie theater, he’s ready to combust. 

We get our snacks and I am unable to resist the siren call of the Daily Planet “popcorn bucket.” (Movies and theme parks have taken ridiculous liberties with what they deem a “bucket.” Basically, any kind of tchotchke in which there’s room for a cavity that could theoretically contain some small quantity of popcorn qualifies.) I look at the newspaper box, thinking about where I’ll put it in the Superman corner of my classroom once school starts next month. 

We sit down in the theater. Eddie is anxious, barely able to keep still, to the point where I’m starting to get nervous. But when the trailers end and the opening narration begins, he finally sits still.

And over the next two hours and nine minutes, we watch the Superman movie I’ve been waiting for ever since Eddie was born.

I’ve written a full review that I posted last Saturday. You can read it here, and I won’t reiterate what I’ve already discussed, but in case you’re not interested in the details about how I felt watching the movie that literally inspired this entire Year of Superman project in the first place, I’ll give you the short version right now:

Back in December, I was having a crappy day when the first trailer for this movie hit. And I mean HIT. I was knocked right out my socks and my whole attitude changed. Since then, I’ve been living Superman every day, examining his best stories, his previous movies, his appearances in animation and toys and anything else I could find. And the point of it all has been to crystalize, in my mind, just who Superman is so that I would know, when I watched the movie, if James Gunn pulled off what I want Superman to be.

My friends. It’s been worth every second. 

Sat., July 12

Comics: Superman Treasury 2025: Hero For All #1, Supergirl Vol. 8 #3, Action Comics #1088

Notes: Still a-tingle from the movie (and from having written the gargantuan review I linked to above) I’m finally ready to settle down with this week’s new Superman comics. In the 70s and 80s, Marvel and DC both put out several giant-sized “Treasury Edition” comics – pages nearly twice the size of a standard comic book, usually with longer stories. The very first crossovers (Superman and Spider-Man, Superman and Muhammed Ali, Batman and the Hulk) were printed in this format. Eventually, it went away. But with the current popularity of facsimile comic books, reprinting older comics in their original form, original ads, letter columns, everything, DC did a few facsimile treasury editions. Those were popular, and that’s led to more and more treasuries, finally leading up to the Superman Treasury 2025, which I believe is the first of the current crop to feature all-new material.

In Hero For All, by Dan Jurgens and Bruno Redondo, Maxima has grown outraged upon learning that Superman (whom she once had sought as a mate) has had a child with a human woman. She takes the Cyborg Superman as her consort and together they attack Metropolis, capturing Superman in a strange virtual version of his life that took a very different path, while his allies in the Justice League and beyond do their best to fight off the invasion.

This is a good book and a great use of the format. Jurgens has always done wonderful stories about the pre-aged Jon Kent, and this is another one that fits in well with his Lois and Clark stories, with the kid being a key element to the story. The world that Superman is trapped in is particularly bizarre – a world where Jonathan Kent (Pa, not son) died when Clark was young, but his friendship with Lex Luthor continued until adulthood, and in which Lex winds up marrying Lois Lane. Eventually, this last bit is what stretches credulity too much for Superman to accept the fantasy, but it’s really odd to think that Maxima’s people would think that’s a world that would keep Superman placated.

I’m not crazy about spinning Maxima back into a villain. She went through her reformation arc, was a member of Jurgens’ iteration of the Justice League, and fought with him against Doomsday. To see her revert back to the callous creature she was when she first appeared and then to align with the Cyborg, of all people, is kind of bothersome to me. Recidivism may be sadly realistic, but it’s not something I particularly care for in superhero stories – I prefer a world with a bit of hope behind it. 

Bruno Redondo, whose run with Tom Taylor on Nightwing is going to go down as one of the all-time great comic book collaborations, kills it with this story. I love his Superman, his Metropolis, his Justice League. I wouldn’t mind at all seeing him do an extended run on Superman.

I enjoyed this treasury for the most part, and I always like seeing Jon as a kid, where he worked the best. It will be interesting to see where DC goes with the format after this.

Sophie Campbell’s Supergirl #3 continues the story of Lesla-Lar, who is outraged that even though the people of Midvale have bought into her lies about Kara (even calling her “Phoneygirl”), they STILL prefer Kara to her. There’s some meta commentary in there, I think, that works well with this character, whose compassion is her greatest power. We see that a few times in the issue, such as with her interactions with Lena Luthor – still a friend despite who her dad is – and even with Lesla herself. The last scene in the comic is a great example of Supergirl’s capacity for forgiveness, something that I think runs through the best stories with her.

Mark Waid’s Superboy tales continue in Action Comics #1088. With his career as Superboy slowly taking off, Clark Kent is meanwhile forced to face the greatest challenge of all: high school. The Smallville school district has recently built a new, larger school that consolidated three high schools in the area, and so the hierarchy of high school life is totally upended, with Clark struggling to find his place in it. It’s a nice trick by Waid, allowing him to play with the tropes of making Clark the “new kid” without having to fabricate some excuse for him to have recently moved to town, something that wouldn’t really make sense in any incarnation of the character. The final page is a nice little surprise, and something that’s got me very curious as to where, exactly, Waid intends to take this story. But I’m certainly excited to see where it goes.

TV Episode: The Adventures of Superman Season 3, Episode 3, “The Lucky Cat.”

Notes: MeTV has started airing old episodes of The Adventures of Superman on Saturday nights after Star Trek. I have nothing to say about this, except that it makes me very happy.

Sun. July 13

Comic: Absolute Superman #9

Notes: This was the last of this week’s new Superman books, and it’s becoming kind of an oddity. In this issue we have Kal-El, wounded from the Kryptonite bullets last issue, taken in by the Omega Men in an effort to save his life. The battle to do so, though, turns not into merely a life-or-death situation for Kal-El, but a symbol of the legacy of Krypton itself. After the opening scenes, we see Kal-El bonding with Jimmy Olsen, aka Agent Alpha of the Omega Men, who fills us in on what it’s like living day-to-day in what TV Tropes would call a Crapsack World like the Absolute Universe.

I’m trying to wrap my brain around how, exactly, the Absolute Universe works. It’s still less than a year old, and the six titles have not directly crossed over yet, which is probably a good thing. With an endeavor of this nature, it’s best that each title stand on its own before they lean too heavily into the interconnectedness of it all. But as a friend of mine recently pointed out to me, it doesn’t really feel like ANY of the Absolute titles take place on the same Earth. The giant alien dome from Absolute Green Lantern feels like it should have at least been MENTIONED somewhere else. Same with the enormous monsters Wonder Woman is fighting in her book. And while the Gotham of Absolute Batman is very dark, it’s not necessarily the same flavor of dark as we’re getting here or in Absolute Flash. And Absolute Martian Manhunter feels more like a psychedelic trip that’s spinning from Deniz Camp’s mind than anything else – if they had just called it something else and made it a Black Label book, I don’t think anyone would have noticed the difference. 

The Absolute comics seems to be doing well, and that’s a good thing. I’m just a bit concerned that I can’t get a feeling for where this universe is going. 

Mon. July 14

Short Films: Eleventh Hour (1942), Destruction, Inc. (1942), The Mummy Strikes (1943), Jungle Drums (1943), The Underground World (1943), The Secret Agent (1943)

Notes: With the main event behind me, I decide to spend this Monday getting in some more of the classic Flesicher shorts. I kick off the mini-marathon with Eleventh Hour, another of the World War II-era shorts. Oddly, this one does something that we haven’t seen since the very first of the shorts: a recap of Superman’s origin. It’s oddly out of place, and I can’t imagine it was really necessary even in 1942, not after the shorts had become so popular. I honestly wonder if they popped it back in because the film ran short. 

This is another one with Lois and Superman running afoul of the Japanese army. As Superman works to take down some of their operations, they capture Lois and post warnings that if he continues his attacks, they’ll execute her. Superman doesn’t see the notices until he wrecks a  battleship that’s still under construction, and he winds up having to swoop in and save Lois from a firing squad. 

It was World War II. The depictions of the Japanese soldiers are, to put it mildly, somewhat insensitive. But in the context of the time, it’s still got the amazing animation that you look for from Fleischer, and an interesting bit where Superman is temporarily caught under an avalanche of steel beams, something that his later power levels would make nothing more than a minor inconvenience.

Wartime worries remain in Destruction, Inc. This time out, the night watchman at a Metropolis munitions plant is found murdered. Lois goes undercover in the plant to investigate, where she quickly runs afoul of spies trying to undermine the American war effort. She’s captured and placed inside a dummy torpedo that’s about to be fired in a demonstration. Superman has to race through the water to catch the torpedo before it can collide with a derelict ship with Lois inside! With Lois safe, it’s time for Superman to turn his attention to the saboteurs.

There’s a nice change of pace here, dropping the Japanese angle while still telling a distinct wartime story. We also see how clever Lois can be, seeing right through a disguise Clark is wearing to hide in the plant himself (although still being unable to see past the glasses.) I think my favorite bit in this one is a short comedy routine where Clark encounters “Lewis,” a character that looks like he rolled out of a Looney Tunes short who gets momentarily offended when he think Clark calls him “Lois.” It’s an utterly ridiculous moment that adds nothing to the short except for a few seconds of levity, but honestly, what’s wrong with that?

Hallelujah, war is over! Or at least on pause, for 1943’s The Mummy Strikes. Clark is called to the Metropolis museum to investigate the death of a recently-murdered archaeologist. Lois, not buying Clark’s excuse of going to see “the doctor,” follows him to the museum where the curator tells Clark the story of the oath taken by the guards of a child prince in Ancient Egypt. When the child died of illness, his guards killed themselves so that they may guard him in the valley of the dead. The late Dr. Jordan, it seems, had violated an ancient warning against opening the pharaoh’s tomb. When Clark and the curator accidentally do the same, his mummified guards come to life and attack!

I love this short. It’s so great to see Superman have to fight a real supernatural menace after so many shorts focusing on the war, and the mummies themselves (a more classical case, not the sort that we think of as being terminally wrapped in bandages and decaying) are legitimately creepy as they swarm in on Lois and the curator. My only real disappointment is that the final battle is so short. The buildup is great, with Clark learning about the history of the pharaoh, but when the battle finally happens it’s over almost before it’s begun.

  Sadly, the war is back on in Jungle Drums. Once again, it starts with the recap of his origin before the story starts. In this one, Lois is aboard an army plane that’s shot down in the jungle by a hidden Nazi base. Entrusted with important papers, she’s captured by natives in the shadows and brought to the Nazis, who threaten her with torture to get the papers. When she refuses, they turn her back over to the natives. When Clark happens to fly by in the next plane, they see the wreck of Lois’s aircraft. Clark’s “Lois sense” alerts him to the fact that she’s gotten herself into even more trouble, and Clark jumps out of the plane so that Superman can save the day.

Credit to Lois here: even in the face of what seems to be certain death, she sticks to her guns and refuses to betray her country. She shouts insults at the bad guy leader as she’s about to be burned at the stake. She even manages to free herself and radio for help even before Superman intervenes. If all you’re looking at is the treatment of Lois Lane, this is a FANTASTIC cartoon. But as is to be expected for a cartoon from 1943, the depiction of the jungle natives makes the treatment of the Japanese seem reasoned and sensitive by comparison. As always, I hate to judge a work from the past by modern standards, but sometimes it just makes you prickle to watch. 

The Underground World is loosely based on the Edgar Rice Burroughs’ story “At the Earth’s Core,” which is fun for me. There’s something about these “hidden civilization at the center of the Earth” stories that I usually enjoy, so tossing Superman into one is like a visual Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup for me. Lois joins an archaeologist (lots of those in Metropolis) on an excursion deep into the Earth, where they find a civilization of winged hawk men (not to be confused with Hawkman). Clark, meanwhile, goes down of his own accord, no doubt expecting that Lois is going to get up to her neck in trouble again. He manages to save them just before the hawks dunk them like an Oreo in a pool of molten lava. I seem to be using a lot of snack food metaphors in this writeup. That’s what I get for watching these cartoons right before lunch. In the end, the worst part is that the editor praises Lois’s story, then burns it, saying no one will ever believe it. Considering some of the other stuff they publish in the Daily Planet, that seems kind of capricious. 

And finally, sadly, comes the last of the Fleischer Superman shorts, Secret Agent. In a nice change of pace, a group of Nazi agents with a leader who, based on his appearance, was probably named “Schmadolf Schmitler,” captures Clark Kent instead of Lois! In fact, Lois doesn’t even APPEAR in this cartoon, just an American agent who looks and sounds exactly like her, except for having blond hair. The funny thing is, as with most of these cartoons, Clark doesn’t go into action as Superman until the last few minutes, with the rest of it being setup. However, with Lois absent and Clark tied up, if only watched the middle section of this, there’s not even anything that would identify it as being a Superman cartoon. I suppose it would have strained credulity a bit to have Lois undercover for six months, but it does lead to an odd feeling that Superman was an afterthought.

And thus, we end our adventure in the world of Fleischer Studios. These cartoons were outrageously expensive for the time, but aside from those episodes that include unfortunate racial depictions, they’re still pretty glorious today. The animation is on point, the voice acting is delightful…this is the Superman for that generation, and for quite a few after it, and deservedly so. 

Comics: JSA Vol. 2 #7 (Superman, Power Girl Appearances), Four Star Spectacular #6 (Superboy and Krypto)

Tues. July 15

TV Episode: Superman and Lois Season 3, Episode 1, “Closer”

Notes: We pick up about a month after the previous season ended, with Lana settling in as mayor of Smallville, Kyle and John Henry each settling into homes of their own, Sam Lane shutting down the X-Kryptonite mines, and Clark and Lois sharing the new Fortress of Solitude with their boys, including the new actor playing Jonathan. Clark has gotten a job at the Smallville Gazette alongside his wife, and Lois sets out to investigate Intergang leader Bruno Mannheim in Metropolis, starting by pretending to need a doctor’s appointment to try to talk to the sister of this universe’s John Henry, one of Mannheim’s likely victims.

Coming off of seeing Superman just a few days ago, I find myself comparing Bitsie Tulloch’s Lois to Rachel Brosnahan, and it’s not really a fair comparison. Tulloch is good at the part, and she’s the perfect Lois for this show, but she’s playing the part of a reporter as opposed to actually behaving like one. Lying about who she is to talk to a potential source is the kind of thing that TV writers think reporters do, but is sort of frowned on in real life. It feels less like real behavior on her part and more of an excuse to get her into a doctor’s office so they can drop this episode’s big bombshell: that Lois may be pregnant.

Both John Henry and Lana figure out that Lois may be pregnant within minutes of talking to Clark and Lois (respectively), which makes you wonder exactly how they’ve held the biggest secret on the planet under their belts for the last twenty years. But the character moments here are good. Each of them gets a scene to process the news, each of them coming to embrace it on their own, which in TV terms feels like a damn guarantee that either she’s not pregnant after all or that Lois is going to lose the baby. (At the end of the episode, it turns out to be the former.) 

We also see some nice scenes of the Kent parents tutoring their kids – Lois teaching Jonathan to drive while Clark gives Jordan some flying lessons, which get out of hand when Jordan nearly reveals himself in Malaysia. This does lead to an odd question, of course: is Jordan not going for his driver’s license? Okay, he’s the Boy Who Can Fly, but most people don’t know that. Did nobody think it was odd that one of a pair of twins with the same birthday is going for his license but not the other?  Especially since the second half of the episode is centered around their shared 16th birthday barbecue?

The oddest relationship development we see here comes when Sam Lane, recognizing that his counterpart on John Henry’s Earth was Natalie’s grandfather, starts trying to bond with the girl. They’re not wrong about their relationship, of course, but to date most of the exploration of that particular quirk of this series has come from Nat lamenting the fact that our Lois isn’t her mother and that her real mother is gone. Seeing Sam step into that grandfather role is kind of surprising, but oddly charming. It’s a bit undermined a few scenes later when Sam tries to convince Natalie to enroll in the DOD Academy. Natalie is put off by it, of course, feeling like Sam’s attempt at closeness was just a ruse, but I like the way they play his character. While it’s true that he wants Natalie to go to the Academy, you also get the impression that his interest and concern for her is genuine, that he sincerely means it when he tells her how much he respects her intelligence and wants to see her using it for the better good. I can easily picture him behaving exactly the same way were she “really” his granddaughter, which is pretty close to him doing his best to be a good grandpa in these scenes.  

I remember hearing when Jordan Elsass (as Jonathan) left the show and was replaced by Michael Bishop, but I don’t remember the circumstances behind the replacement. I wasn’t paying attention to the show at that point, as I was desperately behind on viewing it. I’m not sure if I’m sold on the new guy, though. Elsass had a kind of classic jock look to him, and occasionally exhibited the same behavior when the episode called for it. Bishop’s Jonathan has less of an edge, coming off as more laid-back and less athletic. I have a difficult time picturing him in football pads, which wouldn’t be a problem if not for the fact that he’s ostensibly the same Jonathan that’s been jocking all over the series for two seasons now, or that the comedy in his driving test scene comes from him sharing the car with his former football coach (who, of course, has never had a scene with this actor before).

The relationship between Sarah and Jordan gets its own pair of scenes and, I’ve gotta be honest, I’m getting less and less on Sarah’s side as this series continues. She breaks up with Jordan (that’s fair, but let’s not pretend that their relationship issues didn’t start when SHE cheated on HIM), then at his birthday party she asks why he’s been ignoring her, because she doesn’t want it to be “awkward.” Jordan has the surprisingly insightful reply of “it IS awkward; I want to be with you but you don’t want to be with me.” To which she replies, “I just need some space.”

HE WAS GIVING YOU SPACE, SARAH, BUT YOU GOT MAD BECAUSE YOU THOUGHT HE WAS IGNORING YOU.

Between TV shows like this one and my job as a high school teacher, I spend an awful lot of my time thanking God that I’m never going to be a teenager again.

We don’t get any real Superman action – or even a hint as to what the story behind this season will be – until the last 15 minutes or so, When Clark is called away from the twins’ birthday to face off against a new metahuman in Metropolis who turns out to be a crook he’s caught before that seems to have been juiced up. Opening up a little mystery is a good thing, hopefully it’ll pay off as the season progresses. 

The movie is out, but the year isn’t nearly over yet. With five and a half months left you can expect more theme weeks, more discussion of the movies and TV shows I haven’t watched yet, a few outside-the-box choices, and an absolute mountain of comics coming your way. The Year of Superman continues in seven days!

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. You can join in the Kryptonian Konversation every day in the Year of Superman Facebook Group!