As Week 47 dawns, I find myself in a quandary. You see, with only six weeks left in the year, I am looking down at the list of stuff I wanted to cover and I know there’s simply no way I’m going to get around to everything. I expected that, to be honest. But there are certain things that I feel I SHOULD cover, particularly different media productions of Superman that I’ve barely touched upon, if at all. From today, Nov. 19, I looked at this week – after Saturday I’ll be on Thanksgiving break. That will give me a little bit more time to do some of these things, but will it be enough? Can I squeeze in ALL of the movies and TV shows I haven’t done? Or would I have to wait until next week, which will begin the day before Thanksgiving…but I’ll be back at work that Monday. And in the meantime, there are several days where I know that my time will be limited – Thanksgiving itself, at least one “shopping” day, and two days during the break which are devoted to taking the family to the Louisiana Renaissance Festival and taking my son to see Zootopia 2. How can I POSSIBLY choose a week to fit all of these things in? I’m sitting here pulling out my hair…

And then the answer hits me.

“You dummy,” the answer says, “this is YOUR challenge. You can make the rules whatever you want. Who says it has to be just ONE week?”

Doy.

So over the next TWO weeks, I’m going to endeavor to cross off as many of the remaining Superman adaptations as I possibly can, while allowing myself the days where I know I’ll have to find something short to read that will not fit the theme. I am choosing to be kind to myself. Superman would approve. 

I’ve created for myself a list of every Superman movie – theatrical or animated – I have not already reviewed this year. I’ve also added the pilot episodes of any show I haven’t discussed substantially. (I feel like I’ve written, at various points, enough about Superman: The Animated Series, Superman and Lois, and My Adventures With Superman that I’m okay skipping those.) I’ve also added in the old theatrical serials, a few significant documentaries, and a few adaptations that are too weird to resist. All in all, there are about 30 different things I hope to watch, and I make no promises of getting to them all, but I’ll do my best. 

And I’m going to start with something entirely different.

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

Wed., Nov. 19

Radio Program: The Adventures of Superman serial “Clan of the Fiery Cross,” episodes 3-12. 

Notes: I’m gonna share a little behind-the-scenes magic with you guys. That internal monologue I just shared with you? That didn’t happen today. I went through it a few days ago. Please continue to trust me.

That said, once I decided to do this format, I knew that one of the things I HAD to include was the Adventures of Superman radio show, which starred Bud Collyer – the Superman of the Fleischer animated shorts – as Clark Kent and Superman. Beginning in 1940, the radio program was the way that a lot of people were first introduced to the Man of Steel, and between that and the Fleischer shorts, helped make him a household name. In particular, there was one storyline from 1946 that I’d intended to listen to from the day I decided on the Year of Superman project, and this seems like the perfect time to do it. The story, which lasted for about 15 installments of daily 15-minute episodes, is titled “Clan of the Fiery Cross,” and it is EXACTLY what it sounds like.

Clark Kent is hanging out with cub reporter Jimmy Olsen (Jackie Kelk) who tells him about the hot new pitcher on the Unity House baseball team, a kid named Tommy Lee. Their previous pitcher, Chuck Riggs, is pretty sore that Tommy took his spot when he moved to Metropolis. He keeps harassing Tommy, even intentionally hogging the plate in practice, resulting in him getting beaned by a pitch. Jimmy, the manager, throws Chuck off the team for his behavior. Chuck goes home to his Uncle Matt and tells him the story, and Matt brings Chuck to repeat his tale to a “secret meeting,” embellishing and lying to make it seem like Tommy hit him malevolently. Chuck’s group, the Clan of the Fiery Cross, uses this as an excuse to launch an attack against Tommy and his family, especially his father, a doctor who was recently awarded the job of the city’s top Bacteriologist. As the Clan’s activities get more frightening and brutal, even kidnapping Jimmy and Perry White over an anti-Clan editorial, Jimmy’s pal Superman naturally has to step in to preserve the fight for truth, justice, and the American way.

I apologize if the following description offends anybody, but I have to say it: putting this story on the radio in 1946 was ballsy as hell. Without ever using the real name, the story was a direct attack on the Ku Klux Klan, painting Matt and his cronies as bitter, angry cowards and not flinching away from the nasty portrayal of their bigotry. The story was inspired by a man named Stetson Kennedy, who infiltrated the real KKK and suggested the story to the show’s producers, even giving them details about real Klan rituals, some of which were used in the show. The writers also took great pains to paint the average Clansman as weak and cowardly. One of the most amusing parts comes in the final few episodes, when Matt Riggs flees to the leader of the Clan, only to learn that his “Superior” doesn’t even believe in the racist bile that they’ve been spewing. He sees the Clan as nothing more than a means to milk money out of hateful, pathetic men. I’m not sure if that makes him better or worse than the true believers, but either way, it’s food for thought. 

The show reportedly had a real-world impact as well, trivializing groups like the Klan and cutting into their recruitment and membership, taking away the power. For the first time, Superman wasn’t just a fictional hero, but was doing real, measurable good in the real world.

To make it even better, the story itself not only cuts some real world bad guys off at the knees, but it’s a corker of a story, too. One of the things I like about it is how they slowly build the threat. In the first episode (each of which is only a little more than ten minutes, with the commercials cut out) all we really see is that Chuck hates Tommy for taking his spot on the baseball team. The implications are pretty subtle for the first and second episode, with it not quite being overt just WHY Uncle Matt hates Tommy’s family so much. The only clear comment I remember hearing, in fact, is Tommy shouting the word “yellow” in the midst of an argument, and with multiple people shouting it would be easy to miss or to misconstrue as meaning “coward.” The Clan is introduced in episode two, and it was obvious from the outset just what group the producers were parodying, but it’s not until episode three that Tommy and his family are explicitly stated to be Chinese. Now to be fair, I’m not a historian. It’s entirely possible that in 1946, just having the last name “Lee” would have been a dead giveaway. But they don’t SAY it. Tommy has no accent and never says anything that would betray his heritage, helping drive home the point that he’s just like the rest of the boys on the baseball team, so by the time we know his family is Chinese we’re already on his side. If a listener was the type of person who would have been put off by that, the structure cuts them off at the pass.

On a pure character note, I appreciate how much of this story is taken up with Clark Kent, rather than Superman. Clark is the one who encourages Tommy, then Tommy’s father, to stand up to the Clan. Clark is the one who frequently puts out speeches about how cowardly and vile the Clan is and what it means to be a true American. In fact, he doesn’t even put on his Superman costume at all until episode six, when he has to save an injured Tommy from drowning in the river. Jimmy, on the other hand, is brave and stalwart, but comes off as a little dim. There are several instances where Clark has to use his powers in a way that causes Jimmy to question how he knew something (like the bomb he spots with his X-Ray vision) or where he went (saving Tommy from a deliberately hurled baseball bat), but when he asks about it, Clark simply changes the subject and Jimmy never thinks to bring it up again. This is why you’ve been a cub reporter for 90 years, James. 

The one-off characters are served well, too. Tommy and his father are well-drawn characters, with realistic actions and motivations. And even Chuck Riggs gets a redemption arc, struggling with whether to help Clark Kent track down his uncle once he realizes just how vicious the Clan actually is. I love a good redemption arc, probably because it speaks to a belief that somewhere inside, most people are good at heart. 

It can be a little heavy-handed at times – at least once an episode somebody (usually, but not always Clark) launches into a speech about how bad the Clan is and how people can be as American as anybody else regardless of “the color of their skin or the church they attend” (not an exact quote, but that’s the gist of it). I usually find it off-putting when a movie or TV show hammers their point in like this, even when it’s a point I happen to agree with, but it’s easier to swallow here when you remind yourself that this was a different time (a time when the Clan’s ideas were far more popular than they are today), that it was a show for children who maybe NEEDED to hear it over and over again, and that the show was originally presented as a daily serial and perhaps needed to restack not only the theme, but also the plot frequently. 

I’ve always enjoyed old radio shows, but most of the time I listen to the comedies. This was a fun, exciting trip to the past with Superman, and although I haven’t quite finished the story as of this writing, I’m really happy to have made it into the rotation. A few years ago Gene Luen Yang adapted it into a three-issue miniseries, which was also excellent, and I’m going to try to squeeze it in before the end of the year. But the year is already pretty packed, so no promises. 

Comics: Aquaman: Yo-Ho-Hold On to Your Hook #20 (Guest appearance, Power Girl), Justice League of America #44

Thur., Nov. 20

Radio Program: The Adventures of Superman serial “Clan of the Fiery Cross,” episodes 13-16. 

Comics: Spawn #10 (Oblique Cameo), Justice League of America #46 (Team Member)

Movie: Superman and the Mole Men (1951)

Notes: My goal, over the next two weeks, is to scratch off as many movies and pilot episodes of the various Superman adaptations as I can. Today I got to do two in one. Superman and the Mole Men was a short theatrical film (only 58 minutes!) starring George Reeves and Phyllis Coates in a sort of trial run for the Adventures of Superman TV series, which would premiere in 1952. Reeves and Coates, of course, carried over to play Superman and Lois Lane, but Coates would later leave the series and be replaced by Noel Neill, who had previously played Lois during the Kirk Alyn movie serials, at least one of which I’m going to try to watch in this block on a day where I’ve actually got the time. (Those suckers are four hours long, all together.) This short movie was later edited down into two TV episodes at the end of the first season of the TV show. 

Which is easy to do, honestly, because at the time there wasn’t really the insistence we have today on pilot episodes setting up a series. If you watch the first episode of most TV shows from the last few decades, be they comedies, dramas, or genre shows, that first episode almost always includes a story that sets up the status quo for the series: a new person joins the workforce, a family moves to a new town, a superhero gets an origin, and so forth. In the 50s, though, pretty much every series was given a status quo right out of the box that never deviated, allowing people to watch any episode in any order without any risk of confusing them. So George Reeves’ Superman never got an origin beyond the opening narration that tells us about the ol’ “Strange visitor from another planet” and “Who, disguised as Clark Kent” routine. 

In Superman and the Mole Men, Clark Kent and Lois Lane are sent out to write a story on the world’s deepest oil well. The night they arrive, though, a pair of bizarre, furry creatures climb out of the oil shaft, frightening the night watchmen enough to trigger a fatal heart attack. As Lois and Clark try to investigate his mysterious death, Lois spots the “mole men” and we get the classic Cassandra bit of her telling people all about it, but them not believing her, at least not initially. When the mole men are spotted in town, an angry mob forms and attacks, shooting one of them. Superman rescues the wounded creature, taking it to the hospital, where the mob follows them, but Superman protects the recovering mole man. Three more of the creatures come out of the drill shaft, this time with a laser gun. They fire on the mob, but Superman blocks the laser to protect the humans. He returns the injured mole creature to his people and they take him back down into the Earth, destroying the well on their way down.

As a movie, this isn’t exactly the sort of thing that burns up the screen. The story is pretty small and we barely even glimpse the world of Superman – we never see the Daily Planet office or even any of the city of Metropolis, after all. But that’s judging it by modern standards. At the time, this would have fit in perfectly with the sort of B-roll movies that studios turned out to fit the back half of a double feature. And looking at it as a pair of TV episodes, it’s clearly got a bigger budget and wider scope than the standard episode of The Adventures of Superman usually did. It also does a great job of establishing Superman’s values right away: he protects EVERYBODY. He saves the mole man from an angry mob, then he saves the angry mob from the mole men. He gives the rioters a good talking-to, admonishing their behavior like a disappointed high school principal even as he’s taking their guns away from them, but even then he’s not going to let them get hurt either. There’s my Superman for ya. 

The most important thing about this is George Reeves himself. From the outset, his Superman and Clark Kent are fully formed characters – brave, noble, and dauntless in their pursuit of what is right. If there’s any flaw to his performance, is that he doesn’t do enough to distinguish Clark from Superman. Clark is TOO bold, TOO heroic, and the notion that Lois Lane wouldn’t see through his disguise in ten seconds is more laughable here than in any other iteration of the franchise. Reeves’ Superman is great, and I love his performance dearly, but he’s exactly the same whether he’s wearing glasses or tights. 

As for Phyllis Coates as Lois Lane…I would never say her performance is BAD, but she lacks the sort of fire and verve that I like my Loises to have. I grew up watching reruns of this show on Nick at Nite, and even as a kid I could see a distinct level up when Coates left the show and Noel Neill took over. But I’ll get my chance to talk about her when we get to the movie serials.

This movie isn’t a masterpiece, but it’s a fascinating piece of Superman lore, and if you’re a real fan of the character who has never seen this (or at least seen the edited two-parter of the TV show) it’s worth looking up. 

Fri, Nov. 21

Comic Books: New Adventures of Superboy #37, Batman: Wayne Family Adventures #41 (Guest Appearance), World’s Finest Comics #307

Notes: I mentioned in my preface this week that there will be days over the next few weeks where I just flat-out know I won’t have the time to watch anything longform, or possibly anything at all, and today is such a day. So I’m going to sneak in The New Adventures of Superboy #37 from 1983, mostly because issue #38 is an all-too-rare Thanksgiving story, and I want that to be available to read next week.

This is actually part two of a story I read a little while back but didn’t blog about, in which Clark’s teacher William Wright gets mental powers. In the previous issue, he managed to defeat Superboy while using his powers to make some of his students rob a bank. Superboy approaches him, but Mr. Wright again stops him, throwing a car at him and somehow taking away his ability to fly. Wright tells Superboy that he’s discovered that he can do literally anything, provided he BELIEVES in it strongly enough, and that linking his brain to the teenagers enhances his powers. Despite his repeated defeats, Superboy confronts him again and Wright uses his powers to believe that the moon will stop orbiting the Earth. Superboy’s super-senses immediately confirm that it worked, but he pretends that it didn’t in order to put a chink in Wright’s belief system. He bluffs his way into making Wright’s powers diminish, then he helps Pete Ross – one of Wright’s mind-slaves – break out of his control, further weakening Wright’s powers. Eventually, he defeats Wright, using the reasoning that if Wright’s powers only work because he believes they can, they WON’T work if his victims DON’T believe they will.

It is, of course, infallible logic.

There are a few things, I think, we can take away from this story. First, it is incredibly stupid for anyone – hero or villain – to explain exactly how his powers work to his opponent. That’s just a recipe for defeat. And second, the Small County, Kansas Department of Education really needs to tighten up its screening process for potential hires.  

Sat., Nov. 22

Comic: Superman Unlimited #7

Notes: I just got home from a long – and fun – day in Hammond for the annual Louisiana Renaissance Festival. We don’t go every year, but it’s been a few years since the last time we went and Eddie has gotten much more attentive. We wanted to see how our older little guy would enjoy it, and also, my wife wanted to consume a comically large turkey leg. All of our goals, I am pleased to announce, were satisfied during the course of the day.

But the Year of Superman waits for no Festival, and even though I’m bone tired and my dogs are barkin’, I cannot go to bed without getting a little Kryptonian Kontent. Fortunately, yesterday one of the various errands I ran involved picking up the last couple of weeks of Superman comics from the local shop, so as Eddie watches LSU football, I’m snuggling into the couch with issue #7 of Dan Slott, Jeremy Adams, and Lucas Meyer’s Superman Unlimited.

In Smallville, Jon Kent is helping John Henry Irons test out some special gauntlets that are supposed to neutralize Kryptonite radiation. While he’s there, a message from Lois leads him to the brand-new Smallville office of the Daily Planet, which she’s asking him to head up, challenging him to start his new career by bringing in a story as Jon Kent, without the powers of Superman. The hunt for a story leads him underground, where he encounters an enormous drilling robot with some surprisingly familiar pilots.

First of all, I have to give Slott and Adams (pinch hitting on the dialogue for this issue) credit for trying to find some sort of structure in Jon’s life. The character has been utterly aimless for entirely too long, and although I’m never going to be happy about the way he was aged up in the Bendis run, if he’s going to be an adult at least they’re making an effort at actually treating him like one. It also provides us with a few amusing scenes, like a Steelworks employee who completely fails to see through Jon’s glasses despite the fact that he was crushing on him while in costume a few scenes earlier and John Henry being flabbergasted that the disguise actually works.

Second, in one of those little moments of serendipity that you just can’t plan for, this issue brings in none other than – drumroll please – the Mole Men! Yes, the co-stars of the first-ever Superman theatrical feature film starring George Reeves, the one we talked about just a few days ago, are brought into the DC Universe proper in the pages of this issue. The comic was released on Wednesday and I didn’t watch and blog about Superman and the Mole Men until Thursday, but I swear, this was a total coincidence. It’s just one of those little moments of serendipity that make my career as a world-famous, jet-setting Superman blogger all the more rewarding, y’know? 

Sun., Nov. 23

TV Episode: The New Adventures of Superman Season 1, Episode 1, “The Force Phantom”; The Adventures of Superboy Season 1, Episodes 1-2, “The Spy From Outer Space” Parts 1 and 2.

Notes: In 1966, over a decade after the George Reeves TV show left the airwaves, Filmation reunited Fleisher and radio stars Bud Collyer and Joan Alexander for a new series of Superman adventures, cleverly titled The New Adventures of Superman. This was one of several DC comics adapted into animated form at the time and shown in blocks with each other. There were a total of 68 seven-minute shorts in this series, and I’m about to watch the first one “The Force Phantom.” 

In “The Force Phantom,” a beam of energy from outer space arrives on Earth and coalesces into a being of pure force that begins destroying space bases across Earth, on a Westward march towards the United States. Fearing that Cape Kennedy is next, Superman zips down to Florida to stand sentinel. At the same time, a flying saucer from Mars orbits the Earth, and its inhabitants send the Force Phantom down to Earth to attack Cape Kennedy. Superman rescues an American rocket  from the creature, but its rampage continues, hitting Superman hard enough to drive him into the ground. Superman’s relentless attack damages the machine generating the creature from the flying saucer, and Superman races into orbit to stop the Martians. He fights the Phantom again, in space, this time overloading and destroying the generator. He drives them back to Mars and returns to Earth, giving the story of Superman’s latest adventure to Perry White. 

The episode has the legendarily limited animation that we’ve come to associate with Filmation studios. Although not as bad as, for example, the early Marvel Comics cartoons (which were little more than slideshows), the characters move slowly and their action is stilted, with mouths that only barely match the words that are being spoken. That said, there are some cool visuals here. It may have been cheap to produce, but I actually really like the design of the Force Phantom itself – basically a bunch of lightning bolts in humanoid shape with empty space within its body. And the Martians themselves look like old-fashioned stereotypical “evil invaders from outer space,” right down to the insidious mustaches. Collyer is doing his best in this cartoon, still sounding like Superman, but one has to wonder if he ever pondered the fact that he went from starring in the most beautiful, lushly animated cartoons of the era to something that looked like it could have been done via a flipbook. 

One of the other DC properties that joined Superman in the 1966 Filmation block just happened to be his younger alter-ego, given his first TV appearance with The Adventures of Superboy, starring Bob Hastings as Superboy and Judy Jetson herself, Janet Waldo, as Lana Lang. Superboy’s cartoon kicked off with a two-parter, “The Spy From Outer Space.” The cartoon begins with Krypto waiting for his master when a green man from outer space appears and begins melting a nearby mountain into lava! Krypto rushes off to summon Superboy, who happens to be in class at Smallville High at the moment, but he ducks out and joins his dog, keeping in the canonicity of the Superboy comic I read a few days ago which showed that the education system in Small County left a lot to be desired. Superboy and Krypto dig a trench to stop the lava from reaching civilization, while elsewhere the alien summons bolts of lightning and tornados to smash up nearby farms. Superboy stops the freak weather and Krypto leads him to the alien, which includes the objectively hilarious moment when Superboy looks down from the sky to see a green-skinned alien wearing a jetpack and asks his dog, “Is that the one?”

Superboy catches the alien and brings him to the police, where he confesses to being a spy and then giggles as he teleports away. The boy and his dog track the alien to his homeworld only to find that the planet’s red sun drains Superboy’s powers. He’s captured and the aliens and tell him of their plan to invade Earth, but Krypto finds a way to block the red sunlight and restore Superboy’s powers (why doesn’t the red sun drain Krypto’s powers, you may ask – and you will not get an answer) and he takes off to chase the invasion fleet. The aliens use giant magnifying glasses to start forest fires, like kids burning ants, but Superboy smashes the lenses and blows out the fire. The aliens try creating more and more disasters, but the Boy of Steel thwarts each one. Finally, he and Krypto attack the rockets directly, hurling some of them away from Earth and sending the others to retreat in fear. 

Although the Superboy episodes obviously suffer from the same cheap animation style, being another Filmation cartoon of the 60s, I actually like these more. I think having a two-part story allows it to breathe a little more and allows the writers to do more with it. And I love having Krypto along for the ride. Superman has never really had a traditional sidekick like Robin or Bucky. Even Supergirl has traditionally been the star of her own feature rather than a partner to Superman. Using Krypto in this way is very entertaining. 

I still don’t get why Krypto was immune to the red sun, though. Somebody make that one make sense. And don’t say that the aliens’ planet must be orbiting Sirius, the Dog Star, because I already thought of that joke. 

Comic: Batman/Static Beyond #1 (Guest Appearance)

Mon., Nov. 24

Musical: It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s Superman! (1975)

Notes: So the plan these couple of weeks was to cover as many different Superman adaptations as possible, and that includes one of the weirdest versions – the 1966 Broadway musical, It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s Superman! The musical that was so awful that it closed in only four months! And yet, in 1975, they took this stinker of a musical and turned it into a TV movie, so I guess that’s what I’m watching. The TV version starred David Wilson as Superman, Lesley Anne Warren as Lois Lane, and David Wayne as “Dr. Abner Sedgewick,” our supervillain who should have just been Lex Luthor, because come on.

Following a recap of his origin (it was REQUIRED) the people of Metropolis launch into our opening number, “We Need Him,” a weak and forgettable number about just how much they love Superman. Get ready, by the way, “weak and forgettable” is the prevailing description for the music in this one. The underworld of Metropolis, on the other hand, is having a rough time, and so a mob boss puts out a hit on Superman. Dr. Sedgwick arrives at the Daily Planet office, where he tells Lois Lane that the city is “doomed.” So see, the death ray installed at Metropolis University last year to put down student uprisings has been stolen. Lois is remarkably nonchalant about that, but agrees to contact Superman. What he doesn’t know is that it’s a trap by Sedgewick, who has lost the Nobel Prize ten times and logically concluded that the best way to get revenge on the world is to kill Superman. You see, if he DOESN’T kill Superman first, Superman will stop him when he tries to destroy Sweden. 

I am not making up this motivation, friends.

I need you to understand something here: my lack of enthusiasm for this special is not because I don’t like musicals. I LOVE them. Before I had a kid, back when I actually had time, I performed in several of them. I was Max Biaylistock in the Thibodaux Playhouse’s 2015 run of The Producers, for cryin’ out loud. So it is as a lover of musical theater that I tell you that this is one of the worst musicals ever written. The songs are bland and forgettable – although I have to say that the original cast album from ‘66 is FAR better than the weird version they have here, where they’ve added synthesizers and what may be an attempt at an occasional disco beat. What’s more, most of the actors are so unenthusiastic that you have to wonder if they’re being blackmailed into performing. The one exception is Lesley Anne Warren, who is as radiant as ever and does the best she could with the plate of garbage she was given. Warren even screen tested for Lois Lane in the first Christopher Reeve film a few years later, and while Margot Kidder was the perfect Lois for that movie, I have to say that Warren could have nailed the part as well. 

The staging for this TV movie does the actors no favors, either. Still in the era of “Pow! Bam!” birthed by the 1966 Batman TV series, the sets are all dressed to look like comic book sketches (or at least what somebody thought comic book sketches looked like), complete with Ben-Day dots, inexplicably, in black and white. For Dr. Sedgewick’s motive rant/patter song, he paces around the room staring directly into the camera, which is just about the most boring way a musical number can possibly be staged. This particular theatrical crime is repeated later during Superman’s awful, self-indulgent song where he whines that the people of Metropolis don’t love him anymore (which, of course, is part of Sedgwick’s plan, because somehow that’s necessary to kill him). 

The story and characterization are the kind of thing that somebody who has never read a Superman story thinks a Superman story is about. Wilson’s Clark Kent is weak, whiney, and mealy-mouthed, while his Superman starts out pompous and arrogant, then BECOMES whiney and mealy-mouthed. At one point he even moans, “I don’t DESERVE love!” to which I had to nod and concur. Even worse is how they treat Lois Lane, who does nothing in this musical except for moon over Superman – she literally forgets that Clark Kent EXISTS at one point. I can forgive a little winking at the camera and a helping of cheese, but the character assassination of Lois Joanne Lane is unforgivable. 

Yeah, I looked up her middle name just so I could drive that point home. 

Then there’s a subplot with Planet columnist Max Mencken (Kenneth Mars) who helps out Sedgewick because he hates Superman for “stealing” Lois Lane from him, even though he’s dating another columnist played by Loretta Swit. And let’s face it, this is the only universe in which a Kenneth Mars could pull a Loretta Swit, so what’s he complaining about? To be fair, though, Mencken does provide us with one of the few funny jokes in this clunker, although it’s really only funny in retrospect: Sedgwick’s computer deduces that Superman’s secret identity is that of a Daily Planet employee who is obsessed with Lois Lane, so he must be Max Mencken. Max says the computer is wrong, at which point it beeps and Sedgewick announces, “The computer says it’s NEVER wrong!” So if nothing else, they accurately predicted the existence of people who use Chat GPT. 

The baffling thing to me is not that this musical closed in four months. If anything, that was three and a half months too long. The amazing thing is that it closed despite positive reviews. I’ve often found that when there’s a large discrepancy between the “Critics’ Score” and the “Audience Score” on Rotten Tomatoes, I’m more likely to agree with the audience, and I guess this movie is proof that some things just never change. Is it the worst incarnation of Superman ever? Well no, Chuck Austen DID write Action Comics for a whole-ass year. But it’s gotta be on the bottom ten list. 

Comic: Titans Vol. 4 #29 (Jon Kent cameo)

TV Episode: Superman and Lois Season 3, Episode 5, “Head On.”

Tues., Nov. 25

TV Episode: Superman (1988), Season 1, Episode 1, “Destroy the Defendroids/The Adoption.”

Notes: In 1988, Ruby-Spears animation took a swing at another Superman cartoon, this time bringing in elements from a lot of different sources. The theme music is a riff on the John Williams theme from the movies, for instance, but a lot of the characterization came from the post-Crisis John Byrne reboot, probably because the head story editor for the series was comic book legend Marv Wolfman, who was also writing the Adventures of Superman comic at the time. Gil Kane, another comic mastermind, provided the character designs. The cast included Beau Weaver as Superman and Ginny McSwain as Lois Lane, with some animation all-stars filling out the cast: Michael Bell (Duke from G.I. Joe) as Lex Luthor, and voice acting royalty Alan Oppenheimer and Tress MacNeillie as Jonathan and Martha Kent. 

“Destroy the Defendroids” starts with Superman taking Lois on a flight through the sky in a scene very reminiscent of the “Can You Read My Mind?” bit from the movie. Their date is disrupted, though, when he’s called upon to stop a high-tech robot running amok in the city. The robot is riddled with LexCorp components, but when Superman arrives to arrest Lex he’s stymied by Lex’s new piece of jewelry – a ring with a Kryptonite stone. Lex makes it clear, of course, that although his company MADE those parts that doesn’t mean that HE was the one who built the robot. After all, anyone could have bought them and assembled them into a menace. The next day, though, he debuts his newest innovation to Metropolis – a swarm of robots called the Defendroids, which he offers to fight crime. Superman pretends to leave town to keep an eye on Luthor, but snaps back to save Lois, Jimmy, and Clark (whom he “wraps up in his cape” for the escape) when they’re nearly killed thanks to the Defendroids antics. When Lois and Jimmy approach LexCorp tower in a helicopter, the robots shoot them out of the sky and take them captive. Superman trails after them, despite the robots’ Kryptonite weapons. He saves them, naturally, but their danger was only a distraction as Lex uses the Defendroids to rob a train. (Lex’s assistant points out how irrational it is for someone of his wealth to stoop to a train robbery, but nobody ever accused Lex Luthor of being rational.) Superman thwarts the robbery, but Lex has naturally covered his tracks, blaming the robots’ actions on “a short circuit.” Which in the Ruby-Spears universe apparently is enough to absolve you from both criminal AND civil charges.

My favorite thing about this cartoon was that each half-hour episode consisted of the main story followed by a short, a story from Martha Kent’s Family Album. The short in this first episode was “The Adoption.” Jonathan and Martha bring a child to Smallville Orphanage, having “found” him on their farm, and express their interest in adopting him, but the head of the orphanage, Mr. Warner, dismisses them as being too old to adopt. As different parents come in to visit the new baby, they keep walking into things like a trashed playroom, the boy flying around the room on a rocking horse, or him riding a lion that he liberated from the zoo. At night, the baby flies away from the orphanage and finds his way back to the Kent farm, where Jonathan and Martha find him sleeping soundly between them in the morning. Jonathan vows to convince Warner to allow them to adopt the child, and they name him – try to act surprised – Clark.

Both parts of this show were really good. The animation is very much of the 80s, which is to say, better than the Filmation cartoons we watched yesterday, but not as good as it was going to get just a few years later. But the stories landed, at least they did for the 11-year-old kid who was watching them at the time. The characterizations were consistent with the comics, and although the stories weren’t quite as sophisticated, they were pretty good for a Saturday morning cartoon. And the “Superman’s Family Album” segments were just charming and delightful. Up until this point, there had been precious little depiction of Jonathan and Martha Kent in the media – really just their sporadic appearances in The Adventures of Superboy and the scenes in the first half of the 1978 movie. This would be the first time a lot of people really got to see them as parents, and I appreciate that to this day.

The cartoon sadly lasted only 13 episodes, its run going from only September to December of 1988. It’s a shame, it really did deserve more. On the other hand, if it had a long run, we may not have gotten Superman: The Animated Series in 1996…so I guess all things considered, it was an even trade. 

“Superman through the ages” continues next week, friends. Until then, Happy Thanksgiving! 

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!