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Sergio Saavedra
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| Posted: 04 February 2018 at 3:36pm | IP Logged | 1
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My understanding is that George Reeves' Clark was written the way he was because Reeves knew he'd be spending most of his onscreen time as Clark, and he did not want to be portraying a timid coward the majority of the time. ========================= Clark-Superman also knows he's spending most of his time as Clark... ;-)
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Wallace Sellars
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| Posted: 04 February 2018 at 5:15pm | IP Logged | 2
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Well, the Fleischer films depicted Superman as flying in 1941, and the comics
followed suit two years later. By contrast, the Reeves series first depicted
Clark Kent as not being cowardly in 1951, but it wasn't until 35 years later that
John Byrne altered the comics to match. So in one case, we have a relatively
minor change in the nature of the character's powers made in other media and
shortly thereafter adopted by the comics. In the other case, we have a
significantly off-model portrayal of a character in other media, which is
ignored by the comics during the entire TV series' run but then is incorporated
into the comics several decades later by a fan of the TV series. I don't see
those things as being very analogous.
My understanding is that George Reeves' Clark was written the way he was
because Reeves knew he'd be spending most of his onscreen time as Clark,
and he did not want to be portraying a timid coward the majority of the time.
---
Spider-Man's organic webbing crossed over to the comics after the
second Spider-Man movie in which they appeared. In the comics, Peter
Parker was transformed into a giant spider that in turn became a cocoon from
which emerged new Peter. This new Peter had organic web shooters,
something that lasted a relatively short time.
Plus, we're talking about Superman, so...
How old was the baby from Krypton when the Kents pulled him out of that
rocket (or, if you prefer, adopted him from the orphanage)? The Kents named
him Clark that day, not Superman, and though the child hailed from another
planet, he would go on to live the life of a Smallville resident until moving to
Metropolis and adopted the crimefighting guise of Superman over two
decades later.
Whether Clark Kent combs his hair back and stoops a bit or pretends to
be a bit clumsy or cowardly in order to keep people from learning that he is
fighting crime as a costumed superhero, the man who works as a reporter and
seeks to have a relationship with Lois Lane is his primary self. If Superman
were the true identity, he could eschew companionship, and just go sit on a
mountain top to listen for trouble or criss cross the globe 24 hours a day
seeking wrongs to right.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
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| Posted: 04 February 2018 at 5:34pm | IP Logged | 3
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How old was the baby from Krypton when the Kents pulled him out of that rocket (or, if you prefer, adopted him from the orphanage)? The Kents named him Clark that day, not Superman, and though the child hailed from another planet, he would go on to live the life of a Smallville resident until moving to Metropolis and adopted the crimefighting guise of Superman over two decades later. ••• It's so complex! In the earliest version, the baby was literally a newborn when Jor-L (yes) placed him in the rocket. He was found by a passing motorist (who looked a lot like Dr. Occult!) and taken to an orphanage, where he was named "Clark Kent" and lived until he was old enough to strike out on his own! He subsequently invented Superman.
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Jason Czeskleba
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| Posted: 05 February 2018 at 2:36am | IP Logged | 4
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Wallace Sellars wrote:
Whether Clark Kent combs his hair back and stoops a bit or pretends to be a bit clumsy or cowardly in order to keep people from learning that he is fighting crime as a costumed superhero, the man who works as a reporter and seeks to have a relationship with Lois Lane is his primary self. If Superman
were the true identity, he could eschew companionship, and just go sit on a mountain top to listen for trouble or criss cross the globe 24 hours a day seeking wrongs to right. |
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In the very first Superman story, it is established that when he goes by the name of "Superman" he demonstrates his true personality and shows his true abilities. When he goes by the name "Clark Kent" he pretends to be timid and cowardly, acts weaker and clumsier than he really is, and conceals his true abilities. Regardless of what you extrapolate about his childhood or earlier life, it is clear that at the point in time when we meet the character, he is using the name Superman for his true self and is using the name Clark Kent for his disguised persona. Superman isn't his job title, it's the name he has chosen to represent his true self, much like Robert Zimmerman chose the name Bob Dylan.
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Michael Roberts
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| Posted: 05 February 2018 at 4:22am | IP Logged | 5
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And that change sprang logically from another change JB made, which was the notion that Clark did not develop power until adulthood approached. In the original conception, Superman had powers from the moment he arrived on earth, and (presumably) concealed them. So the Clark Kent he presented to the world was not his true self, from the beginning. Whereas JB's Clark Kent grew up as a normal human.
----
I'd argue that the change sprang logically from the introduction of Superboy, and it just took 40 odd years for someone to have it make sense. Once you show a teenaged Clark growing up in Smallville, being parented by the Kents, and having high school friends and love interests, the idea that "Clark Kent" is the disguise becomes illogical, regardless whether he was hiding powers or not.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
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| Posted: 05 February 2018 at 6:46am | IP Logged | 6
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In the very first Superman story, it is established that when he goes by the name of "Superman" he demonstrates his true personality and shows his true abilities. When he goes by the name "Clark Kent" he pretends to be timid and cowardly, acts weaker and clumsier than he really is, and conceals his true abilities. Regardless of what you extrapolate about his childhood or earlier life, it is clear that at the point in time when we meet the character, he is using the name Superman for his true self and is using the name Clark Kent for his disguised persona. Superman isn't his job title, it's the name he has chosen to represent his true self, much like Robert Zimmerman chose the name Bob Dylan. •• That's a pretty schizo interpretation. There is no firmly established date for when Clark adopted the role of Superman, but let's say he was 25 years old. So, pre-Superboy, he'd spent 18 years or so being Clark Kent, be that living with the Kents, or in an orphanage. Then he set off wandering the world, still as Clark Kent. Coming home, he decided he needed some kind of symbolic presence, a role to play when using his powers publicly, and basically fighting for Truth, Justice and the American Way. He realized, too, that he needed a civilian identity thru which he could monitor the state of the world, and learn quickly where he was needed.* Seigel and Shuster, setting all this up, "borrowed" extensively from other sources. Doc Savage played a big part in the shaping of Superman. Philip Wylie's GLADIATOR provided a large part of the framework. And Zorro gave them the timid alter ego. But the important point is that, while the real Clark and Superman had the same personalities (again, pre-Superboy) the timid Clark AND Superman were both roles Clark adopted. -------------------------- * This was the original version, who lacked the degree of super powers to do it without help. He needed to be able to keep an eye on the news reports coming in to the Daily Planet as he was not yet able to destroy alien races by listening hard (to borrow a complaint from Denny O'Neil).
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
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| Posted: 05 February 2018 at 6:49am | IP Logged | 7
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I know the Reeves series is liked by many, but in regard to Clark's personality it's an example of Hollywood being unfaithful to the source material, in a manner similar to Raimi's organic web-shooters.•• George Reeve's Clark Kent being more no-nonsense than the Clark we knew from the comics is lightyears from the deeply fundamental changes wrought by the organic web-shooters. For one thing, a less timid Clark does not pile on a small mountain of unanswered questions. Reeves' Clark could merely represent moments from the character's life that were not often seen in the comics. Organic web-shooters create a different character.
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Michael Penn
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| Posted: 05 February 2018 at 6:59am | IP Logged | 8
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I know the Reeves series is liked by many, but in regard to Clark's personality it's an example of Hollywood being unfaithful to the source material, in a manner similar to Raimi's organic web-shooters.
—
A more apt comparison would be the way other media showed Superman flying instead of jumping, and the change was later seen in comic books.
***
Giving Spider-Man organic web-shooters is like, in reverse, taking away Superman's natural vision-powers and having him use a special glasses instead.
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Michael Penn
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| Posted: 05 February 2018 at 7:10am | IP Logged | 9
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Organic web-shooters create a different character.
*** This by JB leads to an important distinction: a different interpretation is not of necessity a different character. Are Suave Reeve-Kent and Timid Reeves-Kent really different characters or just different interpretations?
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Eric Sofer
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| Posted: 05 February 2018 at 7:30am | IP Logged | 10
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ITEM: Giving Spider-Man organic web shooters changes the character dramatically; not only does it give him a power that he's never possessed, but it's organically incorrect (well, yeah, the guy who can lift a car, jump fifty feet in the air, and land on a wall and cling to it... :) As has often been noted, spiders issue webbing from their abdomen, not their forelimbs.
Also, I'm pretty sure that while spiders wrap up their prey pretty quickly, they can't project their webbing so hard or so far, in general.
It also takes away the aspect that Peter Parker was a GENIUS who created his web shooters and spider signal, and was able to figure out how he got his powers, how to modify his webbing to make it more efficient, etc. We know he's a genius right from the start; he gets a microscope as a gift, which had to be PLENTY expensive, and wasn't an arbitrary gift.
This modification also fouled up the comics something awful, because they had to do a re-origin, and a spider totem, and couldn't we please have the clone saga back instead?
ITEM: Clark Kent did start acting a little more courageously in comics in the 70s. Sometimes it was because he had lost his powers, or the one storyline where he was being convinced that he was a mutant, rather than a Kryptonian. But even so... he gained a little backbone. He started dating Lois, he stood up to Morgan Edge every now and again, and WGBS probably wouldn't have put a perennial nebbish or coward on the air as the anchor of their evening news (and later, as the producer of the news.) The stories were also helped when there was less cause for Clark to have to protect his secret identity; Lois and Lana both laid off the "Clark has to be Superman" kick, which really was pretty tired at the time.
ITEM: The whole secret identity being the opposite personality got kinda wearisome eventually. I think Doug Moench made the ultimate mockery of it in an issue of World's Finest where a woman figures out that Batman is Bruce Wayne, because they are almost exact opposites in personality!
ITEM: From the time that I could understand how personalities work, I figured that Kal-El simply should have two aspects; Clark Kent and Superman, the champion of Earth. The parts that were never overemphasized (so I thought) were where Superman was the Kryptonian on Earth. He and Supergirl occasionally appeared in Kandor for special events, or acknowledged Kryptonian celebrations (e.g., "Truth Day"). But I'd always thought that Kal-El was Clark when he needed to be, and Superman when he needed to be; but in either role, a human and Terran citizen. He didn't have an apartment in Kandor; he didn't spend leisure time there (note that in a couple of stories when Superman has free time, his first choice was never to go spend time with the old gang in Kandor); he didn't use Kandorian doctors, eat in Kandorian restaurants, etc.
I concluded that it was just that neither Clark nor Superman was the "base" identity; he just acted one way sometimes and another way other times. And, being super, he adjusted to it just fine.
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Robert Bradley
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| Posted: 05 February 2018 at 7:39am | IP Logged | 11
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I think it's pretty simple - Clark Kent/Kal-El is his true identity, but upon coming to Metropolis he altered his appearance/public personality (as Clark Kent) in order to differentiate himself from Superman. As Superman he is allowed to act like he naturally would as Clark Kent if there was no need to hide his identity, and using the Superman name further helps in hiding his identity.
Reeve did a masterful job portraying this in the scene right before his flight with Lois in the first movie when he removes his glasses and straightens his posture while she is in the other room at her apartment.
Clark Kent identity + Superman personality = the real Clark Kent/Superman.
Edited by Robert Bradley on 05 February 2018 at 7:40am
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Wallace Sellars
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| Posted: 05 February 2018 at 8:01am | IP Logged | 12
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George Reeve's Clark Kent being more no-nonsense than the Clark we knew
from the comics is lightyears from the deeply fundamental changes wrought
by the organic web-shooters. For one thing, a less timid Clark does not pile on
a small mountain of unanswered questions. Reeves' Clark could merely
represent moments from the character's life that were not often seen in the
comics. Organic web-shooters create a different character.
---
Thanks for saying what I was trying to express a lot better than I did!
Giving Spider-Man organic web-shooters is like, in reverse, taking away
Superman's natural vision-powers and having him use a special glasses
instead.
---
Ha!
ITEM: Clark Kent did start acting a little more courageously in comics in the
70s.
---
He wasn't exactly a shrinking violet in the old radio serials either!
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