“
It's a Bird... It's a Plane... It's Superman!” There is no
character more iconic than Superman. You would have to travel to a very
obscure and isolated spot on this Earth to locate someone who couldn’t
identify The Man of Steel, and today we will take a journey through some
of the major highlights in the many incarnations of Superman.
When
Jerry Siegel and Joel Schuster put pen to paper and created their story
of a baby launched from a dying world to become the world’s first
superhero, they could never in their wildest imaginations have dreamt of
what their brainchild would one day become. Hell, certain aspects of
the current Superman differ so greatly from the one that first appeared
in Action Comics #1 in 1938 that Siegel and Schuster of the day would
have had a hard time recognizing him.
This costume is similar but there is a lot of differences under the hood.
Superman
has evolved more than almost any other comic book character with his
powers, abilities and origins constantly being changed and revamped so
often that if it was finally revealed that he was a creation of the
fifth dimensional imp Mister Mxyzptlk, I wouldn’t be surprised. When he
first graced the pages of Action Comics he was “
Faster than a speeding bullet” but certainly not fast enough to break the speed of light and travel through time, he was “
More powerful than a locomotive” which is a far cry from being able to move the moon around, and he was “
Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound” but he definitely could not fly.
He was a “super-man”, godlike powers would come much later.
Superman’s first foray out of the four colour comic book was in
The Adventures of Superman, a radio serial starring voice actor
Bud Collyer,
where three times a week Superman battled various shadowy organizations
such as the Ku Klux Klan. It was during the run of this serial that
kryptonite was first introduced so that Collyer could get time off for
vacations while Superman was incapacitated.
“It contains five nutritional minerals including kryptonite.”
Then came the
Max Fleischer Superman Cartoons
produced by Paramount from 1940 to 1943 and to this day are still
considered some of the best moments in Superman history. Though only the
first nine cartoons were produced by Fleisher Studios, all 17 cartoons
are lavish big budget productions that rivaled anything Disney or Warner
Brothers was doing at the time. In these cartoons Superman battled
numerous types of enemies; mad scientists, Japanese saboteurs,
dinosaurs, mummies and of course giant robots. These amazing cartoons
have all fallen into public domain so if you want to see some exciting
action with great animation they are only a YouTube away.
Before television became the media juggernaut it is today everyone
went to the movies, and at least once a week, and for 24 cents you not
only got a movie but also a newsreel, a cartoon and your weekly chapter
of the latest serial. Serials dabbled in such genres as westerns, crime
fiction, science fiction but some of the best serials were the ones
based on comic book characters.
Superman 1948 Serial
The first actor to don the Superman costume was
Kirk Alyn
for the 1948 Columbia serial. This serial provided the standard origin
story but sadly due to budget constraints, a problem live action
Superman vehicles will suffer for decades, his main opponent was a
criminal underworld type called “The Spider Lady” and not a giant robot
or dinosaur. The most interesting thing about this incarnation of
Superman is the technique they used to simulate Superman flying,
Columbia studios decided to go with animation. Kirk Alyn would run
behind a rock or a tree and then turn into a cartoon Superman to fly
around, and then the cartoon would land behind another rock or a tree
and out would step the live action actor. It’s kind of neat that this
technique is often used today only now with CGI.
George Reeves is Superman!
Superman and the Mole Men
(1951) is considered by many to be the first theatrical version of
Superman, but that’s if you discount the serials, as this “movie” was
only 58 minutes long and I myself can’t do that as it basically is just a
pilot for the upcoming television series…
Both the “movie” and the series starred
George Reeves
as Superman and though he may have used some muscular padding to play
the Man of Steel, his version of Clark Kent is still one of my
favorites. Siegel and Schuster based Clark Kent on the hard hitting news
reporters of the day and that is what you got with fedora sporting
George Reeves. He may have been called “mild mannered” but at times good
ole Clark was known to sock a crook in the jaw without rushing off to
phone booth to change into Superman first. Reeves was originally teamed
up with
Phyllis Coates as Lois Lane but she had to leave after just one season and was replaced by
Noel Neill
who just so happened to have played Lois Lane in the Kirk Alyn serials.
This version relied on George Reeves to dash into a closet or nearby
alley to change costume and then to run out, hit a springboard and then
launch himself into the air followed by footage of him in front of a
rear projection screen as he flew around Metropolis. Still no giant
robots or dinosaurs, or even a sign of Lex Luthor for that matter, for
once again he spends most of his time taking on the shady underworld
types that a television budget could afford.
It's A Bird... It's A Plane... It's Superman. (1966)
One
wouldn’t think a comic book character of the likes of Superman could be
easily adapted to a live stage musical production, and one would be
right. Of course this didn’t stop Charles Strouse and Lee Adams from
giving it a shot. The plot centered around a Nobel Prize winning
scientist who is bitter about his brilliance being dismissed by the
public, so he decides to destroy the ultimate symbol of goodness. As one
would do. Though it opened to fairly good reviews it never really
caught on with the public, but has been revived many times since its
initial run and even got a television special. A really terrible
television special that ditched any charm the Broadway production had.
The New Adventures of Superman (1966-1970)
These
animated cartoons produced by Filmation where the first attempts at
animated Superman since the Max Fleischer cartoons in the 40s and they
are abysmally poor even by television standards. On the plus side, he
was finally tackling such foes as Lex Luthor, Brainiac, Toyman and
Mister Mxyzptlk, and he was hanging out with members of the Justice
League. What was most damaging to the Man of Steel was that this caused
grassroots organization “Action for Children's Television” to protest
the violence portrayed on a show aimed for children which resulted in
the show being cancelled. This shift in “Standards and Practices” for
television would lead to…
This
long running animated series had many incarnations with an ever
changing roster of heroes and villains, but front and center of all of
them was Superman. Unfortunately, due to the protests from parent
groups, any kind of action-related violence such as punching was not
allowed. This mostly affected Batman and Robin as punching is kind of
their thing, but even Superman was limited to wrapping the villains up
in steel bars or gently dropping them in jail. Worse is the fact that
they were forced to team up with idiot kids Marvin and Wendy along with
their dumb dog and then later the Wonder Twins who were basically an ad
for alien inbreeding. The early seasons even had sympathetic villains
who were just misunderstood, and it wasn’t until 1978 with
The Challenge of the Superfriends
that our heroes faced off against classic supervillains such as Lex
Luthor, Gorilla Grodd, Bizarro, Solomon Grundy just to name a few. Most
episodes ended with the Legion of Doom’s nefarious plans being thwarted
but then escaping because Superman kept forgetting he could just fly
after them.
Superman: The Movie (1978)
“
You will believe a man can fly.” This tagline changed everything because when
Ilya and
Alexander Salkind
teamed up with Warner Brothers they made it their mission to create a
believable version of Superman that kids and adults alike would enjoy.
With director
Richard Donner
at the helm that is exactly what we got, but for me what was more
important than all the advances in special effects was the casting of
relative unknown
Christopher Reeve
as Superman. Now I’m not a huge fan of the bumbling Clark Kent persona
but Christopher’s portrayal of Superman is bang on perfect to me. He
just oozes sincerity out of every pour; there is no winking at the
camera at all. The first two movies of this series were filmed
back-to-back and pretty much give you everything you want from a
Superman movie; epic yet touching origin story,
Gene Hackman
as the brilliantly evil Lex Luthor, Superman heroically battling the
effects of a manmade earthquake, and a Time Square smack down with
Kyrptonian Supervillains.
“Kneel before Zod!”
The
third and fourth installment in the series was not so much a drop in
quality as it was a complete abandonment of what made the first two
good. In
Superman III (1983) our title character finds himself co-starring with
Richard Pryor in a slapstick comedy that forgets to be funny. The original idea for
Superman III
had to do with Supergirl, Mxyzptlk and Brainiac but Warner Brothers
vetoed that and instead we got stuck with Pryor's Gus Gorman computer
genius and his super computer that he builds for
Robert Vaughn.
So not Brainiac then?
Just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse Canon films picked up the rights to the Superman franchise and the reason
Superman IV: The Quest for Peace
(1987) looks like a bad television show is because Canon funneled much
of the film’s budget to other projects of their own. Crappy effects
aside the story is also atrocious, as Superman basically declares
himself “World Dictator” and disarms every nation in the world of its
nuclear arms. Gene Hackman is back as Lex Luthor and is clearly in
paycheck cashing mode here, but along with him is a terrible
Jon Cryer
as Luthor’s idiot nephew and then to top it off there is the cosmic
clone Nuclear Man played by Mark Pillow but dubbed by Gene Hackman.
Unlike
Superman III, this movie is so bad it’s entertainingly awful. I’ve probably watched
Superman IV: The Quest for Peace more times than
Superman II.
Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman (1993-1997)
This series starred
Dean Cain as Clark Kent/Superman and
Terri Hatcher
as Lois Lane. As the title implies, this show focused more on their
relationship and not so much the super heroic deeds of the Man of Steel.
This version of Clark Kent dispatches the clumsy incarnation made
popular by Christopher Reeve and was more in keeping with what was going
on in the comics at the time during the John Brynne era. The first
season took a page out of the George Reeve
Adventures of Superman with most of the criminals being members of the criminal underworld, often working with Lex Luthor (
John Shea),
but later seasons the show got a bit goofier and revelled in throwing
in supervillains of their own making. This was a solid show that maybe
went on a season too long. Speaking of going on too long…
Superboy (1988-1992) and Smallville (2001-2011)
These two shows are not technically Superman vehicles but they do deal with the early years of young Clark Kent, and while the
Superboy show starring
Gerard Christopher embraced the comic book character, the creators of
Smallville had a strict “
no tights, no flights”
policy which certainly limited some of their storytelling ability and
made the ten year run harder to pull off believably. When Clark Kent (
Tom Welling)
finally donned the Superman costume for the shows last episode everyone
in Metropolis would immediately assume correctly that Superman and
Clark Kent are one and the same. That is unless he kiss/mind wiped
everyone on the planet.
Smallville had a fairly decent budget
with really decent effects but what worked best was the early
relationship between Clark and Lex Luthor (
Michael Rosenbaum)
and not the kryptonite caused villain of the week. On the other hand,
we have the Superboy show that had little to no budget and featured
Superboy refereeing Hockey games and working secretly for a government
organization that investigated unusual and paranormal disturbances.
Though Superboy did meet the odd supervillain.
And I do mean odd.
When Bruce Timm launched
Batman: The Animated Series 1992 it forever changed the look of animated television shows, and one of its more successful spinoffs was…
Superman: The Animated Series (1996-2000)
This is easily my favorite version of Superman, and creators
Bruce Timm and
Paul Dini
are personal idols of mine for all they have done for superhero shows.
In this series they beautifully blended elements of the classic Silver
Age Superman but with the powers and abilities more in keeping with the
John Byrnne reboot from his
Man of Steel run in the late 80s. The voice cast is equally brilliant with
Tim Daly as Superman/Clark Kent,
Dana Delany as Lois Lane, and
Clancy Brown
as my all-time favorite Lex Luthor. In this series he tackles almost
every Superman foe you could imagine and with some interesting new
origins for some of them. The work they did here and later in
The Justice League cartoon still hold up as some of the best Superman stories ever told.
Superman Returns (2006)
This film is in my opinion basically
a failed love letter to Richard Donner's Superman. Director
Bryan Singer earned great cred among comic book fans with his
X-Men movies but lost a little when he created this version which has a deadbeat dad super-stalker as the film’s protagonist. I like
Brandon Routh, and he does a fairly good impression of Christopher Reeve’s Superman, but along with
Kate Bosworth as Lois Lane they are both way too young for the parts they are supposed to be playing, especially if this is a sequel to
Superman II. This Lois Lane looks like a college newspaper intern and not a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist for the Daily Planet.
Kevin Spacey
seems to be the only one really having fun with the part, taking what
Gene Hackman did and then making it his own. The effects are of course
fantastic but the story makes no sense, especially if you consider it a
sequel to the Donner films, and Luthor’s plot to create a continent is
beyond moronic. Who the hell would want to live on his shitty rocky
hellscape?
Man of Steel (2013)
The success of the
Chris Nolan's
Batman movies certainly made an impact on the genre and even greater of
an impact among the executives of Warner Brothers who seem to think
this is the only way to make a comic book movie these days. I’m not
saying you can’t have a dark and gritty version of Superman, I’m just
questioning why they think we
need a dark and gritty version of Superman. In this movie Superman (
Henry Cavill)
causes the death of countless people in Metropolis, billions of dollars
in damages and then murders General Zod. This is not the Superman I
know and love, but what is most terrible about this is that it is in
keeping with the character we are shown in this movie. Director
Zack Snyder gives us a Superman who was raised by a Jonathon Kent (
Kevin Costner)
who instills in him the belief that he is more important than the
people around him, that it’s okay to let a bus load of kids drown
because gosh darn you are here for a purpose. I myself always thought
Superman’s purpose was to save bus loads of kids from drowning, but what
do I know? Once again there is no knocking the visual effects here as
they are simply stunning, but sadly they are in service of a story I
just can’t get behind.
I’d tell Zack Snyder to lighten up but I think I’m too late.
This
is far from the end for Superman, and looking back at all the different
take on Krypton’s sole survivor I feel confident that we will get many
more; some will be good, some will be terrible and some I'm sure will be
full of sheer awesomeness.
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