Does Clark Kent Work?

The debate has raged on since the character was introduced in 1938, is Clark Kent an effective disguise for Superman?  Another question that has been broached is “Does Superman even need Clark Kent?”  Over the years different writers have had different takes on the relationship between the two personas, each with their unique spin on the personas.  Some have suggested that Superman’s portrayal of Clark Kent is his ultimate, if unintentional indictment of the human race.  Clark is portrayed as bumbling and weak, suggesting that is how Superman sees the everyman.

Others treat Clark as the true man, whereas Superman is a symbol rather than a persona.  Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman had a very good line in one episode when Clark was explaining to Lois the dichotomy between the two: “Superman is what I can do, Clark Kent is who I am.”

The Christopher Reeve portrayal, I think, came the closest to getting it right by approaching Superman as three personas.  There is, of course, Superman, then there is the closed off, bumbling, humble Clark Kent, then there was the man between, the true man, Clark as he is without his glasses and without his cape, just the man who grew up a farmer’s son in Smallville.

However, does it serve as an effective disguise?  A lot of people claim it’s just a pair of glasses, but could it be a lot more than that?  First there is the way he presents himself.  Generally Clark is portrayed as slouched, not making eye contact, quiet and reclusive.  He isn’t in the middle of water cooler conversations and doesn’t do anything terribly memorable.

“But Clark Kent is a Pulitzer Prize winning Journalist!” you say?  So is Eric Lipton.  He works for the New York Times and won the prize in 2015: “For reporting that showed how the influence of lobbyists can sway congressional leaders and state attorneys general, slanting justice toward the wealthy and connected.” http://www.pulitzer.org/bycat/Investigative-Reporting

Here is his picture:  http://www.c-span.org/person/?ericlipton

Would you recognize this man on the street?  Would you think “Why if that man took his glasses off and dressed in blue spandex, he’d look like a top notch superhero!”  No, you wouldn’t.  It would be unlikely that you’d pick him out of a crowd.  That, folks, is a news paper reporter.

“But Superman is a public figure!  Everyone knows what he looks like!”  Well, yes they do and no they don’t.  See, Superman is a busy…man.  He flies at super speed, tosses buildings around and crosses paths with villains on a regular basis.  That’s a lot of movement, a lot of action, and as we saw in Man of Steel, a lot of people running away from where he’s at.  When we see Superman on the screen, we see what the director wants us to see, which is a nice tight shot of Superman.

But people actually involved in the incident see

 

Very difficult to link that to this guy

“But in Dawn of Justice, there’s a huge statue of Superman!”

Here again is something addressed in the comics.  Lex Luther, arguably one of the smartest men in the DCU, built a computer to determine Superman’s alter ego.  The computer came up with Clark Kent, even did a split screen shot of the two men, with the only difference being the glasses.  Lex called bollox on the results, stating that there was no way Superman would disguise himself as such a lowly person.  It calls out a very big question, why would Superman need a secret identity?

I mean, he is, after all, Superman.  The general population of the DCU, the rank and file man-running-in-terror on the street probably never entertains the thought that Superman would ever need a secret identity.  Take a look at what Superman allows the public to know about his biography: Super powers, alien from a dead planet.  That’s it.  What about that says “I occasionally like to dress like a nerd and walk among you.”?

We now start to see a clearer picture of how Clark can support his secret identity, but why would he want to?

No police officer, solider, firefighter, doctor, EMS worker, or public servant is ever really off duty, but we, and I speak from experience, do take off the uniform from time to time.  You have to have down time, you have to reconnect with the reasons why you do what you do.  That is why Superman needs Clark.  We see it a few times in the comics, but notably in Kingdom Come where Superman closed himself off from humanity and that distance created a disconnect.  He wasn’t a hero anymore, he was a dictator, causing more harm than good.  If any of the professions I mentioned above start to do that, their work suffers and the public suffers.  We need to be connected to humanity to remind ourselves that humanity is worth saving.

It sets up an argument that Superman is actually more human than Batman.

Check in next time.  Thanks for reading.

"The MULTIVERSE!!!"

Well, its me again.  If you recall a few posts ago, I waxed intellectual about the idea of DC Comics having two universe in live action media, that of the Movieverse and that of the TV Universe.  I offered up an idea that maybe the two would find a divergence point in the character The Flash.

Well, then I read this:

http://nerdreactor.com/2015/03/24/superman-flash-series/

Yeah the article is exactly a month old as of this writing, but here me out.  This could be the dawn of a very interesting day for DC's live action media.  This might be the start of something amazing, something that Marvel has tried to copy from DC's playbook but never really got right.

This could be the dawn of...THE MULTIVERSE!!!

Just imagine there was dramatic music when I said "THE MULTIVERSE!!!"

Yes, I know its a rumor and I should not, under any circumstances, get my hopes up...but a fan can dream a little.

Let me set the record straight, I love the Flash TV series.  I like iZombie, and I tolerate the Arrow, but I love the Flash. 

Smallville, I have a different relationship with.  I really wanted to love it, and I have some really fond memories of it, how it seemed to be a converging point between old and new Superman, how they brought in and fleshed out characters that had been ignored in live action media, but there was a pacing to the show that never set well with me.  I'd like to say there was a specific point where the show just went off the rails, where it jumped the proverbial shark, but there were so, so many.

I think it was a show that tried to balance sci-fi elements with teenage melodrama, and that can kind of work for say maybe four years, but then you have to let the characters grow.

Then it became a show that tried to fully embrace the comic book feel of it's source material, and I can't tell if it was desperate or lazy.  I will cite at least four instances where the show simply failed:

Proto-Justice League, Hawkman, Doomsday, and Darkseid.

If you have questions, look those up.  Sufficient to say, the show ended on a flat note for me.  I felt it had utterly failed.

But then, years later, what's this I hear?  The Flash might meet Superman...from the Smallville universe?  This could be it.  This could be the thing that makes up for 10 seasons of adequate to just plain lazy television.  The writers of the Flash clearly know how to write superheroes on a TV budget, and they know just how to embrace the comic book aspect.  So I'm down, I am with you.  If they want to do this, lets do this, but for the love of God, do it right.

Man of Steel: Superman's Kill Count

Superman killed General Zod in Man of Steel.  That fact is irrefutable, I have the DVD, I’ve seen it multiple times.  This is, apparently, a big deal because Superman doesn’t kill…

Except when he does.  In the comics.  A lot.

But those are the comics, surely Superman doesn’t kill in the live action adaptations.

Except when he does.  In the 1950’s TV series, Superman (played by George Reeves) takes a pair of thieves who have deduced his identity to the top of a mountain and lets them climb down.  Being a pair of street thieves from the big city, they of course have all the mountain climbing skills of your average fish and promptly plummet to a gruesome demise.

Okay, but he didn’t technically kill him, that was negligent homicide.

It’s still homicide though.  But let’s not count that one.  In the more recent media, Superman doesn’t kill, except that time in Smallville where Clark killed a phantom zone criminal.  After he had beaten him.  After.  That’s an important distinction by the way.

A lot of this “Superman doesn’t kill” mojo seems to stem from those of us with very fond memories of the Christopher Reeve Superman films of the late 70’s and into the 80’s.  That Superman stood for truth, justice, and the American way and certainly didn’t resort to killing his enemies.

Except in Superman 2.  In that film he sent three de-powered villains (essentially humans) plummeting to their icy deaths, one of which had been thrown twenty feet across a room after having his hand shattered.  No, the official record shows Lois killing one, one accidentally jumping to death, and our colorful hero smirking as he murders a crippled man.

To be fair, there is a deleted scene from the film showing authorities picking up the criminals outside the Fortress of Solitude, but the thing to remember about deleted scenes is they are not canon.  They are removed elements of the story.

A dark moment, sure, but later movies don’t have him killing anyone…until Superman 4 The Quest for Peace.  Here, he shuts off Nuclear Man’s power source (this time rendering him as threatening as a coma patient) and then dumps his body into a nuclear reactor.  He had broken of Lex Luther’s programing at this point, he was an individual.  Maybe they could have rehabilitated him.  Nope, better to wait until he’s defenseless and have Metropolis cannibalize his body.

And for those of you who still want to cry “deleted scenes make it all better” he kills the original Nuclear Man (ie Bizarro) earlier in the film. 

At least he didn’t shove a bomb down someone’s crotch.  I’m looking at you Batman Returns.

So, when we go back to Man of Steel, did he have that many options?  When you get down to brass tacks, Superman’s options are painfully limited.  He had been struggling in his fight with Zod and just now got the upper hand, mainly because Clark has spent literally his whole life avoiding physical confrontation.  Never learned how to fight because 1) He’s been invulnerable to physical harm his entire life, and 2) One punch would destroy any human opponent.  Now he’s faced with a guy who has powers that match his own and has the skills to pay the bills in a knock down drag out fight.  Zod was genetically engineered as a warrior.  Clark grew up on a farm.  He’s not going to win this one in a straight on brawl, and was lucky to get the upper hand when he did.

We’re going to look at options on what he could have done and how, unfortunately, they couldn’t work.

1)      Clark could have put his hand over Zod’s eyes:  And then what?  Hold his head indefinitely?   Who’s to say his Zod’s heat vision wouldn’t have charbroiled Superman’s hand?  We know from the comics that Kryptonians can adjust the intensity of the heat vision, and Zod looked like he was going full blast.

2)      Clark could have delivered a coordinated strike to the base of Zod’s skull and knocked him out:  How?  When would Clark have had cause to learn that bit of information?  When would that have made sense to his character?  Again, grew up on a farm, spent most of his adult life looking for answers about where he came from, working odd jobs.  Further, lets say, for argument’s sake, that he did pick up that bit of info on his travels.  The split second he moved one of his hands to deliver this strike, Zod would break the hold and the fight would have been on again.

3)      He could have captured him:  And put him where?  The Phantom Zone generator was destroyed with the ship.  Even if it was intact, and Clark has the super smarts to fix it he would still need time.  Where do you put him in the mean time?  What holding facility on the planet is adequate to hold Zod?  The only reason the military “captured” Superman is because Superman turned himself in and willingly stayed. 

The fact is, the writers painted Superman in a corner.  I can appreciate the choice to kill Zod because he was a clear and immediate threat to the public at large and there were literally no other immediate and adequate options available.  Further, at least this time Superman killed someone and showed some level of remorse over the issue.

Thanks for reading.