Show creator Deborah Joy Levine looked to the relaunch of Superman comics after the Crisis on Infinite Earths event that had begun with John Byrne’s Man of Steel series: now, instead of treating Clark Kent as Superman’s disguise, Clark was being depicted as to who this actually was while Superman is the guise he uses to do acts of superheroics. Lois wasn’t just Clark’s rival reporter with a crush on Superman, they had developed into an actual romance with Lois and Clark, and eventually, she became Clark’s confidant. Furthermore, Jonathan and Martha Kent were no longer dead, but got to support Clark as he served the world as Superman, even having Martha design Superman’s costume. These would be incorporated into the show, Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, which would be broadcast Sunday nights on ABC.

Cast as Lois was Teri Hatcher, an actress who had had several small roles on television and had made a movie with Kevin Bacon. Hatcher’s Lois was a modern woman who understood sexism and having to work hard in her chosen field as well as having a love life.

Opposite her was Dean Cain as Clark Kent/Superman, an ex-football player turned actor of Japanese and Irish descent who’d also had several minor TV roles. Early fan buzz around the show was unkind to Cain, spotlighting his Japanese heritage and calling him “Sushiman.” However, when the show debuted, he proved himself up to the challenge of both being a romantic leading man and action star.

Let me get personal, Lois and Clark was my Superman show growing up. It ran for four seasons starting in 1993, starting on Sunday nights. (During the last season, the show got shifted and we didn’t keep up so much.) Teri Hatcher became the Lois Lane in my head so thoroughly, that when my family rented the first three Christopher Reeve Superman movies to watch one day, I couldn’t buy Margot Kidder as Lois. While I read several different eras of Superman comics afterward, this show was so critical in establishing the character and this world in my mind.

The show was released on DVD along with a lot of Superman media around 2006 to tie in with the release of Superman Returns, but when I was picking up Superman shows and movies to review, I noticed the show had been remastered for HD on streaming and figured it would only be a matter of time before it got a Blu-Ray release, and it finally happened this past July, and I’ve been revisiting the show, mostly for the first time since it aired. (I’d watched a couple episodes since.)

I feel like I did engage in a tradition that had come and gone since the original Superman radio serial, where Superman adventures were available on a free to access platform, from radio to the different TV series over the years. Kids didn’t just enjoy Superman adventures, they got to listen or watch with their families, friends, talk about them. It got to be a weekly event, one my family would often enjoy with a big bowl of air popped popcorn. It’s hard to argue that there’s currently a version of Superman like this with Superman and Lois being done, My Adventures with Superman taking so long between seasons, and the latest Superman movie being on pay to access platforms.

Lois and Clark debuted on September 12, 1993 with a feature length pilot episode featuring Clark Kent coming to Metropolis and trying to land a job with the Daily Planet. He gets in after writing a moving piece about a retired actress, he begins working with Lois, who he strikes up a rapport with as he begins to take in the influence Lex Luthor (John Shea) has in Metropolis. As Clark takes in where he can use his powers to help, he realizes he needs a costumed identity, and his parents help him design a costume to go into action as Superman as he makes his superhero debut saving a space station.

Throughout the first season, Clark and Lex Luthor vie for Lois’ affections, ending with Lois about to marry Lex in the finale when she decides at the altar not to, and when Luthor’s schemes are revealed, he jumps off a building, but Clark — recently weakened by kryptonite — is unable to rescue him. Shea would return as Lex, who was revealed to still be alive, but made guest appearances rather than be a regular.

Shea’s Lex Luthor was the first time the character was depicted as a business mogul rather than a criminal scientist, following how the character was reinterpreted for the comics post-Crisis on Infinite Earths. This new take made Luthor feel more realistic and more dangerous than simply being an out and out villain.

And of course, we had superhero adventures. Sometimes you got a villain from the comics, loosely adapted, more often regular criminals, evil inventors and strange cases. The show even remade the asteroid threatening Earth episode from George Reeves’ Adventures of Superman show. A recurring villain was the time-traveling Tempus, using a time machine invented by H.G. Wells, who would also appear as an ally to Clark and Lois.

In the supporting cast was Lane Smith as Perry White, looking like the character directly stepping out of the comic, but as he had a strong southern accent, they made him a big fan of Elvis Presley and saying “Great Shades of Elvis!” instead of “Great Caesar’s Ghost!”

Also in the Daily Planet newsroom was Tracy Scroggins as Cat Grant throughout Season 1. She offered a more unrestrained woman who was willing to flaunt her sexuality. Also in Season 1 was Michael Landes as Jimmy Olsen, offering a modern take on the character, older than usual, who even makes a signal watch only Superman can hear. He’s also a little forward, even flirting with Cat Grant. Both would not return for the rest of the show, with Cat disappearing entirely, while Jimmy was recast with the younger Justin Whalin, making a younger and more traditional take on the character. (In a Season 4 episode in which Jimmy has years of his life drained off, none other than Jack Larson played an aged version of Jimmy, reprising his role from the George Reeves series.)

Eddie Jones and K Callan frequently appeared as Jonathan and Martha Kent, who would have their own plotlines and often support Clark when he had problems or offer words of wisdom.

In the Season 2 finale, Clark proposed to Lois, with the Season 3 premiere revealing that Lois had realized he and Superman are the same person. They would get married in Season 3, only to reveal that Lois had been replaced with a clone. The actual Lois wound up with a case of amnesia while trying to get back to Clark and the clone tragically sacrifices herself to save Clark and Lois from another Lex Luthor scheme. The actual wedding would occur in early Season 4, timed to coincide with the characters getting married in the comics.

There were plans for a fifth season, but ABC decided to end the show after the fourth season wrapped up in June 1997, leaving it on a cliffhanger of Lois and Clark finding a baby on their doorstep.

In that way, I see Superman and Lois as a spiritual successor as it did pick up with having Lois and Clark as parents.

Lois and Clark was revolutionary as it was the first mainstream Superman adaptation on television or film to give Lois and Clark a full, unrestrained romance story. Even the subsequent Superman the Animated Series found itself unable to go there, with Lois and Clark beginning a proper relationship in the DCAU in later animated shows. This was mainstream acknowledgement that this relationship could evolve and change, and audiences would still show up for a Superman that evolved with the changing times and tastes, paving the way for further Superman adaptations to follow. The balance of a romantic angle and superhero action made it accessible for multiple audiences and ages.

I can’t seem to find much information about Lois and Clark getting syndicated and re-run over the years. It might have been, so I won’t say it wasn’t, but in the grand run of Superman shows, it feels as if it was eclipsed in the cultural landscape by Superman: The Animated Series and Smallville.

Teri Hatcher showed up as Lois’ late mother in a video message in an episode of Smallville, mirroring how Phyllis Coates (the original Lois Lane opposite George Reeves) showed up as Lois’ mother in the first season of Lois and Clark. Both Teri Hatcher and Dean Cain would return in the Supergirl TV show with Dean Cain as Jeremiah Danvers, Kara’s adoptive father who passes away during the second season. Teri Hatcher — following leading the hit ABC show Desperate Housewives — played Queen Rhea of Daxam, the mother of Mon-El during the second season.

As for Dean Cain’s social and political beliefs that he’s expressed in recent years, I will say that personally, I do not agree. (Some of them are oddly even at odds with storylines in the show.) That said, I had to put that aside to watch the show again because this evaluation was not about Dean Cain’s beliefs, but about the work as a whole.

Some parts of Lois and Clark didn’t age as well as others, some plot devices got very silly. But I think the positives outweigh the negative and this revolutionary piece of Superman media shouldn’t be overlooked.

The story of this Superman reboot was supposed to be grounded, set in a realistic world, more in line with the Dark Knight films rather than the Christopher Reeve movies. It would attempt to put Superman in a modern context, one that was feeling anxious after the attacks on Iraq and the housing market crash.

Warner Brothers also had an additional interest in making the film: the Jerry Siegel estate had sued for royalties with the judge ruling that Warner Brothers would not have to pay royalties for past Superman films, but if they didn’t have a Superman movie in production by 2011, the estate could sue for lost revenue on an unmade film.

The eventual pick for Superman was British actor Henry Cavill, who had featured in small roles in film, leading 2011’s Immortals as Theseus. He did havc to work out to build muscle for the role, but he was clearly a great pick, being tall, handsome, charming, and able to handle an American accent. He was also excited for the role, being something of a nerd himself.

Joining him would be Amy Adams as Lois Lane (oddly enough, she had appeared as a “meteor freak” in the first season of Smallville), making the second time Lois was depicted in live action with red hair (Noel Neill had dyed her hair red for the last season of The Adventures of Superman). Russell Crowe played Jor-El, Michael Shannon as General Zod, Kevin Costner as Jonathan Kent, Diane Lane as Martha Kent and Laurence Fishburne as Perry White, one of the first times the character would be depicted as African-American.

The story opens with the last days of Krypton, Jor-El and Lara having birthed their child Kal-El naturally instead of being artifically created like the other residents of the planet, hide a genetics codex inside their son before sending him off to Earth, out of the hands of General Zod, who kills Jor-El and is subsequently sent to the Phantom Zone. (The genetics codex was actually borrowed from 90s Aquaman lore.)

The movie non-linearly reveals Clark Kent growing up with the Kents before finding his way to the Arctic, where he finds a Kryptonian scout ship that Jor-El sent. During his time growing up, Jonathan Kent stresses that Clark doesn’t owe the world anything, admonishing him when he saves a bus load of his classmates from drowning for fear of people discovering Clark’s powers. Jonathan later dies during a tornado when he refuses to let Clark rescue him.

Cut with that plotline is Lois Lane going to an Arctic military base who are investigating the scout ship. When she meets Clark, she decides to keep his secret as he’s just begun his work as Superman, making for Lois knowing his secret from the jump.

However, Zod manages to break out of the Phantom Zone and looks to terraform Earth into a new Krypton, using the codex inside Clark to bring forth a new race of Kryptonians. It climaxes in a huge destructive battle that levels a lot of Metropolis (not helped by Zod’s world engine), ending with Superman snapping Zod’s neck when he attempts to murder a small family. With that, Superman informs the military to let him work unsupervised, but also begins a career at the Daily Planet as Clark Kent.

The movie opened for summer 2013, and met with mixed reactions from critics and the public. I can recall a critic disliking the film for its overly grainy look and desaturated colors as well as the violence. When I saw it with a friend, he video recorded our out of the theater reactions. He was positive, I thought Henry Cavill was attractive, but wondered how a sequel would ever happen as they’d had a huge, destructive climax, and how could a sequel top that?

2016 brought the follow up, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.

And not only did it introduce Ben Affleck as Batman/Bruce Wayne, but it introduced Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman, Ezra Miller as Barry Allen/The Flash, Jason Momoa as Aquaman, Ray Fisher as Cyborg and Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor. Warner Brothers was going to build a superhero movie universe on it, similar to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with movies based on all of the included superheroes and more announced to be in development if not in production. (A movie based on Cyborg would never see fruition, though.)

The movie reveals that during the destruction in Metropolis in Man of Steel, Bruce Wayne lost a building full of employees, causing him to mistrust Superman, which sets him to look into how he could take Clark down.

In the present, Lois is on the trail of a story, connecting terrorist activity to LexCorp while Superman is forced to answer for the destruction in Metropolis, only for Lex Luthor to have secretly planted a bomb that blows up the court hearing in Washington DC after he manages to acquire kryptonite, Zod’s body and the Kryptonian scout ship.

Diana Prince (Wonder Woman) gets Bruce Wayne to decode some data she stole from LexCorp and in decoding it, he discovers the existence of metahumans. Feeling sure that Superman is a threat, Bruce steals kryptonite from LexCorp and prepares to fight Superman. When Superman discovers Lex has his mother hostage and she’ll be killed unless he kills Batman, he tries to confront Batman, only to be assaulted, kryptonite giving Batman an edge in a drawn out battle. When Batman is finally about to kill Superman with a kryptonite spear, Superman begs him to save his mother, a twist that Martha Kent shares a first name with Bruce’s late mother.

This twist convinces Batman to spare Superman and rescue Martha on his own. Superman confronts Lex again, who unleashes Doomsday, a monster made from Zod’s body. Batman, Wonder Woman and Superman join forces before Superman delivers a fatal blow to Doomsday with the kryptonite spear, but is impaled by Doomsday himself.

The film closes with Superman’s funeral and Bruce and Diana setting out to track down the other metahumans. Plus a tease of dirt on Superman’s coffin levitating, suggesting he’s not as dead as he seemed to be.

Reaction to this film was split. The plot was messy, but the high intensity action was immersive in the theater. Some people loved it, others weren’t sure how to feel about it or outright disliked it.

A big part was how the film seemed to miss what made the characters tick. Batman is seen as willing to kill, breaking what had become a longtime rule of his. If Superman Returns had made Superman a lonely god, this film went full steam ahead with making Superman hover over a flood-stranded family on a roof reaching for him, after making a rescue at a Day of the Dead festival, he refuses to interact directly with people. When his court hearing ends in an explosion, he stands looking sullen and unmoved despite all the death around him. This wasn’t your dad’s Superman or Batman, and was that a good thing? This is to say nothing of how Lex Luthor acts quirky and crazy despite having a master plan. (I’ve compared him to Tommy Wiseau, the actor/director of the cult classic The Room.)

Not to mention, these movies had a habit of killing fan favorite characters. In Man of Steel, Professor Hamilton sacrifices himself to stop the world engine. (Noble, at least.) Batman v Superman introduces a CIA agent revealed in the home video extended cut to be Jimmy Olsen, who’s working with Lois only to be swiftly killed by terrorists. (As a fan of the character, I maintain it wasn’t actually Jimmy because he’s not a friend of Superman’s, but CIA Jimmy isn’t actually a bad idea, they just wasted it.) Mercy Graves, Lex Luthor’s assistant introduced in Superman: The Animated Series, is among the dead from the court hearing. And Batman is revealed to be mourning the loss of Robin at the hands of the Joker, and Snyder in interviews said this was meant to be Dick Grayson, the original Robin. (And yet, Warner Brothers had announced a Nightwing film?)

Warner Brothers had a Justice League film helmed by Snyder underway for a 2017 release. However, the underperformance of Batman v Superman led Warner Brothers to get cold feet and wanting to take more a hand in the film. Snyder wound up stepping away after the loss of his daughter to suicide. Warner Brother brought in The Avengers director Joss Whedon to finish the film, who got it in under 2 hours. The movie outright flopped, though a dedicated fanbase lobbied for Snyder’s version to be released, which would happen in 2021 as an HBO Max streaming debut.

Both versions essentially have the same plot: Bruce and Diana join forces to find the metahumans they discovered in Batman v Superman: Aquaman, the Flash and Cyborg. However, Steppenwolf — one of Darkseid’s minions from Apokolips — has arrived on Earth to find the Mother Boxes to help Darkseid conquer Earth. Finding out about what the Mother Boxes can do, the newly formed Justice League uses one to revive Superman, who at first lashes out violently, but Lois helps him remember who he is before he helps the League defeat Steppenwolf.

Many claim Snyder’s version, which takes more time to introduce the other members of the League (Wonder Woman had been a billion dollar success earlier in 2017), is the better version, while pointing out Whedon’s more juvenile humor in his cut. Further still, Ray Fisher brought allegations that Whedon had acted inappropriately while filming reshoots for his cut. This was joined by other accounts that led to Whedon losing his influence in Hollywood.

While Man of Steel and Batman v Superman had turned profits, they hadn’t fared as well as the studio hoped and now, Justice League had flopped. All plans for further Justice League sequels were scrapped, and a Man of Steel sequel floundered in development hell for years. A Batman film starring Ben Affleck was eventually cancelled and shifted to a new continuity starring Robert Pattinson. Other movies set in the universe would be released through 2023 to varying levels of success or failure, but many didn’t see big box office returns, though some were directly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Cavill’s Superman would appear in a last minute cameo in the 2019 film Shazam!, though only seen from the neck down, played by a body double with no dialogue. Cavill would finally return in a tease in the credits of Black Adam, a 2022 movie based on the Shazam! villain, starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Johnson had pitched a plan for the DC movies featuring Black Adam, but the movie wasn’t tracking well, and by the time the movie opened, they were already planning a reboot of the DC movie universe.

Personally, I was of the opinion that Cavill should get a chance to play a more traditional Superman under different creatives, but by this time, he’d featured in other projects, which boosted his star power, meaning that if Warner Brothers wanted him back, they would need to pay him more to return to a role that hadn’t been a major return on investment, and that frankly just doesn’t fly in Hollywood.

Cavill’s Superman has fans who enjoyed the darker, more serious take on the character. But given the box office, it seems they are a vocal minority, and while their fandom isn’t nothing, that’s not enough for a studio to bank on.

While Warner Brothers has moved on, Man of Steel, Batman v Superman and Justice League (both versions) are still readily available. Stories and movie franchises (or at least, certain incarnations of them) aren’t valuable because they last forever, but because of what they mean to audiences.

After settling the rights to Superman with the Salkinds, Warner Brothers was looking into making a new Superman movie, including a Tim Burton-helmed movie that would star Nicholas Cage. After that fell through, director McG started working on a project titled Superman: Flyby that had a number of actors try out for the role, including future Superman actor Henry Cavill and later Superman voice actor (and doing live action in a Japanese car commercial) Matt Bomer, but the project still didn’t get off the ground. (Matt Bomer would later play Larry Trainor/Negative Man in the HBO Max series Doom Patrol and voice Barry Allen/The Flash in a series of direct to video animated DC movies.)

Probably the biggest movie that got Superman Returns going was not a DC movie, but a Marvel film, 20th Century Fox’s X-Men and its sequel X2: X-Men United, directed by Bryan Singer, with Richard Donner’s wife, Lauren Schuler Donner, serving as producer. The films were very successful, and are often credited with the revival of superhero films that is still being felt today. When Singer had an idea for a Superman film that involved him coming back from outer space after five years, he shared it with the Donners who gave him positive feedback. In June 2004, Warner Brother officially approached Singer about getting a new Superman underway.

As said, the intention was for the new movie to be a continuation of the Christopher Reeve films, mainly just the first two. Taking over the role of Superman was the immensely likeable Brandon Routh, who definitely had the looks. Hailing from Iowa, Routh had a widwestern charm perfect for the role as well and previously had appeared on a number of television shows. (A friend even told me Routh worked as a bartender in Hollywood and had dressed as Superman for a Halloween party.)

Kate Bosworth would be cast as Lois Lane, Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor, Sam Huntington as Jimmy Olsen, Frank Langella as Perry White, with James Marsden as Richard White, Perry’s son and Lois’ fiancé. Parker Posey appears as Kitty Kowalski, Luthor’s new henchwoman. Eva Marie Saint appears briefly as Martha Kent. To clearly tie the film to the Christopher Reeve films, footage and audio of Marlon Brando as Jor-El was used along with CGI to recreate him as a hologram in the Fortress of Solitude. Noel Neill (the original Lois Lane from the original Superman movie serials and most of the run of The Adventures of Superman TV series) appears in the opening moments as a dying widow who Lex Luthor married only to have her will her fortune to him. Jack Larson (Jimmy Olsen from The Adventures of Superman TV series) appears as a bartender.

Now, I want to remind you, this movie came out in 2006, the same year as X-Men: The Last Stand (the final movie of the original planned trilogy, the first without Singer). Superhero movies were very much back with the world being two movies deep into Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy, Daredevil and Fantastic Four had come out from Fox, Blade had enjoyed a film trilogy and was heading for a TV spinoff, and the previous year, Christopher Nolan had released Batman Begins. If the world was ready for a new Superman movie, it was definitely at this point.

The plot is that Superman went to space when the remains of Krypton were spotted, a trip that took him five years. He returns to find a world that has moved on without him, Lois Lane even winning a Pulitzer Prize for an article “Why the World Doesn’t Need Superman.” Lois is engaged to Richard White and has a young son, Jason.

After Superman makes his big return while saving a failed space shuttle launch and saving a plane it was launching from, the world seems ready for him to come back. He even reunites with Lois, who wants to put Superman solely in her past.

Meanwhile, Lex Luthor has another scheme: using Kryptonian technology to grow a new landmass from kryptonite that will flood a good portion of the United States. When his tests cause blackouts, Lois investigates, getting her into trouble when she and Jason wind up on a yacht Luthor owns. This ends up in a revelation that Jason is actually Superman’s illegitimate son.

Superman has to rescue Lois, Jason and Richard (who attempted to save Lois and Jason himself as he’s a pilot with a small sea plane), but they save Superman after Luthor stabs him with a Kryptonite shard on his new landmass. Superman then has to launch the landmass into space, despite it being kryptonite at the core, landing him in a coma that he eventually awakens from after Lois and Jason visit him.

Nothing about the story is bad, per se, but it’s just played so slowly and without much humor or fun. The color grading is desaturated to a point where Superman’s red cape looks more like brown.

It feels like the movie wants to frame Superman as a “lonely god,” or even a Jesus metaphor (something we’ll be coming back to). When he falls back to earth near the end, he even strikes a pose similar to Christ on the cross.

It also runs at a very relaxed pace, with a running time of two hours and thirty-four minutes. With all this, the movie actually gets boring, probably the biggest crime you can commit in a Superman film.

I take especial issue with the take of making the movie a follow up to the Christopher Reeve movies. At the time the movie came out, it had been nineteen years since the last Reeve film, Reeve had died a couple years ago, we’d had FIVE different TV versions of Superman since (the Superboy TV series, two Superman animated series and most of the DCAU, Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman and Smallville was running), if there was going to be a new Superman movie, it should just be a new Superman continuity, in line with the new generation of superhero movies. After all, all of the roles had been recast, so expecting it to be a selling point that it followed on from the Reeve films was folly.

And the cast isn’t bad, especially Brandon Routh, who’s so likeable that we wanted the movie to be better. When the movie didn’t perform well enough (despite being 2006’s ninth highest-grossing film) for a sequel to be made, it was a disappointment for fans because we wanted Brandon Routh to get another shot.

But somehow, he did.

In the article I wrote about Superman and Lois, I talked about the Arrowverse on the CW network, Routh joined the franchise in the show Arrow’s third season as tech icon Ray Palmer, getting to play another DC hero as he becomes the Atom in the next season of Arrow and the spinoff DC’s Legends of Tomorrow.

During the 2019–2020 Arrowverse crossover event Crisis on Infinite Earths, Routh got to play double duty as Ray and another version of Superman alongside Tyler Hoechlin who had sadly lost his friends at the Daily Planet during a terrorist attack, leaving Clark to pick up the pieces as the new editor in chief but still operating as Superman. If this is or isn’t the same Superman from Superman Returns can be debated, but in any case, it gave Routh an opportunity to revisit the role at last. (He wears a black and red insignia based on the Kingdom Come comic book event.)

The team of heroes operating during Crisis identifies this Superman as the Paragon of Truth and after fighting the other Superman, he joins them. He’s sent to the last remaining universe, and then the Vanishing Point when the last universe falls to the Anti-Monitor, but Lex Luthor (Jon Cryer) uses the Book of Destiny to replace that last Superman with himself.

However, the final moments of the Crisis event shows the multiverse restored, including Routh’s Superman flying a lap around his Earth (wearing a yellow and red insignia), paying tribute to the endings of the Christopher Reeve films.

Brandon Routh deserved to have a more established run as Superman, even if they’d switched him to direct to video animated Superman movies. Sadly, studio politics prevented it. But he’s a fine actor who did a great job with what he got, and he continues to embody the ideals of Superman.

The popularity that the film gave Batman led to the development of Batman: The Animated Series, led by Bruce Timm and Eric Radomski, with animation writers Paul Dini and Mitch Brian also helping develop the series.

Instead of being tied to the movie, Batman was its own continuity, creating surprisingly mature takes on the cast of characters, including reinventing characters like Mr. Freeze with a new origin that would be adopted into the comics’ continuity. It was also where the character Harley Quinn would debut, quickly becoming a fan favorite who would cross into other media as well as the comics.

After the success of Batman: The Animated Series, the creators were asked to then turn their hand to Superman. It took some time to figure out their approach, but they went for an animation style similar to Batman, but used brighter colored scenes, with some visual inspiration from the Max Fleischer cartoons of the 1940s, often mixing modern and throwback designs to create what would hopefully be a timeless look for the series.

Rather than go directly with the continuity that was currently running in the comic books (this was post-Crisis on Infinite Earths, with a more sci-fi take on Superman as well as Clark Kent becoming the real person while Superman was his hero persona who had Lois Lane as a confidant and love interest), the creators went with their own continuity taking reference from all eras of the comics, as well as creating their own. Brainiac — for example — is an artificial intelligence from Krypton that betrayed Jor-El in lying to him on how much time Krypton had left, saving itself by sending itself out to space, eventually becoming the villain Superman will face one day.

Actor Tim Daly would take on voicing Superman with actress Dana Delaney voicing Lois Lane, David Kaufman as Jimmy Olsen and Clancy Brown as Lex Luthor, a take on the character that many fans cite as a favorite. Brown’s Luthor was a businessman who had his hands in developing tech and cloning and bioengineering to create threats that Superman would have to tackle.

The series kicked off on September 6, 1996 on the TV network The WB, with the first three episodes as a story called “The Last Son of Krypton,” the first episode depicting the final days of Krypton, including Brainiac’s betrayal of Jor-El and how Kal-El was sent to Earth. Even though it was network television animation, the tone was very serious, the extermination of an entire planet treated as no joke.

The second episode featured Clark Kent growing up in Smallville, learning to use his powers and discovering his origin. So episode 3 had him begin his career in Metropolis as Superman, meeting Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, Perry White and foiling a terrorist plot by John Corben (who would become the recurring villain Metallo in subsequent episodes), who stole a robotic suit Lex Luthor had made.

So yes, we had Superman reimagined through the eyes of Bruce Timm, but a little limited in scope. Like Batman: The Animated Series, the series was light on continuity, precluding the creators from bringing in the Lois and Clark romance. There would be continuity, mainly in recurring villains, the series really reveled in bring them to the screen, from Mxyzptlk to Parasite to original creation Livewire, and also characters like Lobo.

The series also brought in Darkseid, adapting Jack Kirby’s Fourth World mythos to an animated series. Darkseid would feature in many storylines, including double length episodes, such as the series finale in which Darkseid manage to convince Superman that he is his father and have him attack Earth, ending the show with Superman needing to rebuild his image as their trusted protector. There were plans for more episodes, but the show was cancelled.

However, episodes of the series featured other DC heroes such as the Flash, Green Lantern, and even a special three-part story featuring Batman, properly crossing over at last.

And so, the follow up, airing on Cartoon Network, began, Justice League, in which Superman, Batman and other DC heroes would face threats, including further plots by Darkseid, Lex Luthor and other Superman villains. Lois would be revealed to be dating Clark, but as the series was focusing on the group as a whole, there was less time for the show to zoom in on continuing Superman’s story. Even less when the next series Justice League Unlimited brought in even more DC characters, with much of the superhero universe open for appearing.

So, Batman: The Animated Series, Superman: The Animated Series, Justice League, Justice League Unlimited as well as Static Shock, Batman Beyond and The Zeta Project, the movie Batman: Mask of the Phantasm and a number of direct to video movies form what fans call the DC Animated Universe (DCAU), which is often considered a gold standard for keeping a mature tone but making the stories approachable for all audiences.

And with this, by giving Superman different threats, we got to see different sides to Superman and his supporting cast. Featured was police detective Dan Turpin (who is sadly killed by Darkseid), and also Metropolis Police’s Special Crimes Unit captain Maggie Sawyer, who, while not specifically mentioned, is shown with her girlfriend in one episode, confirming that she’s a lesbian in this continuity as well. (TV censors and all, it was a “if you know the character from the comics, you know who this is” moment, but if you didn’t, you could assume the woman might be a relative or close friend.)

Because of the crossing over with different heroes, while Batman launched the DCAU, it becoming a universe really became a thing with Superman, as well as being a solid Superman series on its own. The DCAU would set a template (and even a visual style) that later series like Batman: The Brave and the Bold and Young Justice would either follow or take notes from.

Superheroes sharing a universe happened very close after they started in comics with the Justice Society of America debuting in 1940, a mere two years after the launch of Superman. The heroes crossing over would open up new avenues for storytelling as well as cross-promote each other’s titles. A kid who enjoyed Jay Garrick as the Flash might pick up a story with the Justice Society and get introduced to a new favorite in Alan Scott’s Green Lantern or Hawkman. Over in Timely Comics (later Marvel), characters would be referenced in each other’s stories or even make cameos.

In the Silver Age of Comics, the Justice Society concept would be reworked as the Justice League of America, adding Superman and Batman to the mix at last and using the current iterations of DC’s biggest heroes. The success of the Justice League would get the publisher at Marvel to ask writer Stan Lee to create a superhero team as well, leading to him to create The Fantastic Four, which became a hit and soon led to other new Marvel heroes and reviving older heroes for the current day, eventually teaming up some of their characters as The Avengers. As many of the Marvel heroes would be in New York, they would often cameo in each other’s books. DC enjoyed their own crossovers, even doing other Justice League teams and creating more teams like the Teen Titans.

And so, as the two companies became the big two sources for superhero comics, they’d also be adapted to cartoons and live action projects on television and film. But they would very rarely crossover in live action, with only the first two TV movies of an Incredible Hulk series revival having different heroes meet up. As animation rights could be a different story, crossovers there would be more common.

Over at Marvel Studios — at the time, a branch of Marvel Entertainment that worked with how movie studios adapted their properties for film — one Kevin Feige thought the shared universe approach of the comics should really be brought over to film, but had trouble selling studios on the idea of working with each other to create it. So, when some of the film rights to Marvel characters began to revert to Marvel Studios, he was part of a charge to have Marvel self-produce films based on their characters, releasing them through distribution partners. While some of the early films floundered, 2012’s The Avengers lit Hollywood on fire when it quickly earned over a billion dollars in profit. Now, everyone wanted a shared universe of their own.

Meanwhile, Warner Brothers (the owner of the DC brand) had attempted a DC movie universe with a canceled Justice League movie, and 2011’s Green Lantern had meant to kick one off (the lone remnant is Amanda Waller appearing in the film), but after a bad box office and other canceled concepts for it, Warner Brothers decided to see how Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel performed before deciding to make it the first in a shared universe of DC films.

While a shared universe was born and eventually led to a Justice League movie (I’ll get back to this in another entry), as time went on, the DC movies floundered with no real creative leadership behind the entire franchise and a few real disappointments soured general audiences on the brand with the shared universe fizzling out.

Over on television, the CW network wound up being a home to a more successful series of interconnected shows nicknamed “The Arrowverse,” all based on DC characters with almost annual crossover events. However, as the network changed hands, the Arrowverse eventually concluded.

Enter director James Gunn and producer Peter Safran. Safran had worked on several DC movies before, and James Gunn had directed the Guardians of the Galaxy movie trilogy for Marvel Studios, as well as a film based on The Suicide Squad for Warner Brothers, which spunoff into the streaming series Peacemaker starring John Cena.

The two would be allowed to run a division of Warner Brothers called DC Studios, overseeing projects based on DC Comics, including a new shared universe, which they decided would incorporate film as well as both live action and animated television projects as well as video games.

And the first film in this shared universe would of course be Superman. If they couldn’t handle DC’s flagship superhero, the brand for anything but comics would generally be dead. James Gunn had written the screenplay and eventually took on directing duties himself.

Taking on the role of Superman would be actor David Corenswet. Just like Christopher Reeve, he attended Juilliard and had been acting since high school, with photos of him in school productions of Little Shop of Horrors, The Wizard of Oz, Hairspray and more showing up online. He had led a sketch comedy webseries Moe and Jerryweather on YouTube before, among other roles, appearing in Netflix’s The Politician and Hollywood, both shows produced by Ryan Murphy, eventually moving to theaters in the period piece slasher Pearl and appearing in Twisters as the mercenary Scott, who’s helping an uncle buy land for cheap after the owners lose their homes in a tornado.

Corenswet had previously expressed interest in the role of Superman when a throwaway line in The Politician compared his appearance to the character and fans agreed, but he more recently clarified that during that interview, he didn’t actually mean he wanted the role, simply that it’d be a great opportunity but not likely to happen. But lo and behold, he got the role, beating out the far more established British actor Nicholas Hoult, who was instead cast as a villainous Lex Luthor.

Filling in the classic core cast was Rachel Brosnahan — star of The Marvelous Ms. Maisel — as Lois Lane, Skyler Gisondo as Jimmy Olsen and Wendell Pierce as Perry White. Additional Daily Planet staff included Beck Bennett as Steve Lombard, Mikaela Hoover as Cat Grant and Christopher McDonald as Ron Troupe. Pruitt Taylor Vince and Neva Howell play Jonathan and Martha Kent, who are both still alive in this continuity.

Setting up a shared universe, the movie also introduces the Justice Gang, which includes Nathan Fillion as Guy Gardner/Green Lantern, Edi Gathegi as Michael Holt/Mister Terrific and Isabela Merced as Hawkgirl. Anthony Carrigan also appears as Rex Mason/Metamorpho, the Element Man. Maria Gabriela de Farla plays Angela Spica/The Engineer, a metahuman who works for Lex Luthor. Sara Sampaio plays Eve Teschmacher, Lex Luthor’s seemingly ditzy assistant and girlfriend who has a crush on Jimmy Olsen.

There are absolutely no slackers in this cast. Everyone has a great feel for who their character is and plays them perfectly, from David Corenswet’s friendly and likeable Clark/Superman/Kal-El to the villainous Lex from Nicholas Hoult, to the no-nonsense Lois from Rachel Brosnahan to the wonderfully arrogant and cocky Guy Gardner from Nathan Fillion.

Gunn eschews rehashing Superman’s origin in detail, referring to the fact that he’s from a now extinct planet and was sent to Earth by his Kryptonian parents as an infant and raised by the Kents. He instead begins three years into Superman’s career, Clark and his friends are already friends and he’s been dating Lois for about three months with her being already aware of Clark’s dual identity.

The original title for the film was Superman: Legacy before being shortened to just Superman. And that becomes clear as to why because the major plot is Lex Luthor trying to discredit Superman. After using the Engineer and Ultraman (a masked superpowered metahuman) to get access to the Fortress of Solitude, Lex gets hold of a holographic video message for Superman from his Kryptonian parents and manages to restore a previously unseen second part, instructing him to rule over the primitive people of Earth without mercy and reproducing with as many women as possible. The revelation — which Lex makes public, of course — makes Clark question who he actually is.

A loveable addition to Superman in live action is Krypto, a white mutt wearing a red cape. Outside of the comics, Krypto had been relegated to animated projects and the DC Universe/HBO Max/Max series Titans. Seeing the dog appear in the first trailer let us know this take would unapologetically lean into the comic book zaniness DC is either famous or infamous for, depending on your view.

And yes, the movie has Lex Luthor making use of a “pocket universe” that he uses to imprison his enemies as well as other things. These weird sci-fi trappings are part of what makes DC so unforgettable and loveable and instead of leaning away to feel “more grounded” or to feel “realistic,” they actually do it. Because we’re in a world where people can fly, whether through super powers, wings they happen to have, tech they’ve invented or a nearly magic ring they’ve been entrusted with, what about this says “gritty” or “realistic?”

The important thing is the heart of the characters and letting the zaniness not overwhelm the emotional beats. Clark has conversations with Lois about his standing in the world. Later, Jonathan Kent has a little talk with him. It might not feel like a lot of character development, but the point is Superman understanding where his values came from as a child of two worlds. And honestly, compared to the Christopher Reeve films, seeing as it skips the origin, it’s about the same amount you get there, maybe even more.

A lot has been made of how the movie makes a point of Superman’s standing on the world stage as he prevents a war between two countries, with people wanting it to comment on current events, and while that might be fitting, I’d also like to point out “When have we not had countries fighting like this?” Even now, there’s two real world conflicts it could be compared to. And unfortunately for us, we don’t have a Superman to intervene and demand we try to coexist peacefully.

The new Superman from James Gunn is a refreshing take on the superhero genre and a promising start of the new DCU. I’m looking forward to more!

Before we get to the actor, I want to talk about the producers, Alexander and Ilya Salkind, a father-son duo who were part of a trend in the 60s and 70s that ran into the 80s, independent producers who took on high concept projects that would have lush production values, who both worked with and outside the traditional studio systems. Part of the Salkinds’ output was the two part adaptation of The Three Musketeers: The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers, two movies with a huge cast of greats and great production values. They filmed them back to back to maintain continuity and so they could release them a year apart. And while the first Musketeers movie was coming out, they were looking to their next project: Superman.

Reportedly, negotiations with DC Comics took awhile and were very difficult, but afterward, it was time to get a script together, get a director and a cast. The script was originally written by The Godfather scribe Mario Puzo, but was revised to make it more compact and lighter by other writers. They finally got director Richard Donner to take on the film, who brought in Tom Mankiewicz to do another pass on the script.

The plan was not to do a Superman movie, but film one and a sequel back to back, like the Salkinds had done with the Musketeers films. Having cast Marlon Brando as Jor-El — Superman’s father from Krypton — and Gene Hackman as Lex Luthor, it was determined to get their scenes done first as they would likely soon be busy with other projects.

But they needed a Superman, and there were several actors approached and considered. But the role went to Juillard trained newcomer Christopher Reeve after trying out over 200 other unknown actors. The producers had rejected Reeve before, feeling he was too young and thin to play Superman, but the casting director kept suggesting him and finally, he met with the Salkinds and Richard Donner and was given the script the next day, going on a training regimen guided by none other than David Prowse, who was the man who actually physically played Darth Vader in the original Star Wars films.

Margot Kidder was cast as Lois Lane, she was a woman from a small town who’d been fascinated by Bye, Bye, Birdie and had gotten the acting bug and set on becoming an accomplished actress, despite battling bipolar disorder throughout her life. Former child star Jackie Cooper played Perry White. Marc McClure was Jimmy Olsen.

The movie would need to do several effects to have Superman realistically fly. Today, many of the effects seem dated, but still manage to look great, using a variety of tricks, with Christopher Reeve having experience hang gliding helping him know how to hold his body.

Eventually, they ended production on the films with 75% of Superman II completed, deciding that if the first film was a success, they would complete the sequel. John Williams was hired to score the film, creating the iconic “Superman Theme,” which has basically been inseparable for the character ever since. While he didn’t return for the sequels, the theme would be reused and offer inspiration for the other scores.

Superman opened in Christmas 1978 to huge success.

The film opens on Krypton as Jor-El is the final vote sending General Zod (Terrence Stamp) and two of his henchmen to the Phantom Zone. Jor-El then stresses that Krypton is doomed, but the rest of the Science Council rejects his claim, so Jor-El sets to send his infant son Kal-El to Earth to save him as Krypton finally explodes.

The infant Kal-El is found and adopted by Jonathan and Martha Kent, who name him Clark and provide him with a kind and loving upbringing before Jonathan dies of a heart attack. Finding a crystal from the ship that brought him to Earth, Clark goes to the Arctic and the crystal creates the Fortress of Solitude, where a hologram of Jor-El spends twelve years teaching Clark. (Not a fan of that time skip, but it was done to explain how Jeff East’s young Clark is replaced by Reeve.)

And so, Superman gets into action, Clark getting a job at the Daily Planet, and catching the attention of Lex Luthor, who figures out where to find Kryptonite as he plans to create explosions on the coast of California, wiping out a lot of the state and killing millions.

Superman (often titled Superman: The Movie) is often held up as the gold standard for superhero movies and especially Superman movies. But I have criticisms. The Krypton sequence is a bit drawn out with the Science Council looking to retaliate against Jor-El for acting on his research by launching Kal-El to Earth. The Kansas flashbacks do help build the character, but it takes quite some time to get to Superman in action, which is what a lot of the audience wants to see. (Recall that Kirk Alyn and George Reeves’ takes got there in 20 minutes.)

The ending of the film is just about unsalvageable. Superman manages to stop California from collapse, saving several people, but he was unable to save Lois, who he’d romanced earlier, from being killed in an avalanche. He flies around the earth at super speed to turn back time so he can rescue her. He then takes Lex Luthor and his henchman Otis to prison.

Superman II followed in 1981 (it opened in Australia in late 1980, but didn’t open in the US until summer 1981). During the pickups and reshoots to complete the film, Richard Donner left the project, replaced by Richard Lester (who’d assisted on the first film uncredited and directed the Musketeers films), so much of the story was rewritten and many new scenes filmed. In 2006, Warner Brothers released “The Richard Donner Cut,” restoring the film to Donner’s original intent as best as could be done with Donner’s approval, but I’m going off of the theatrical cut for my piece here.

The film sees General Zod and his henchmen escape the Phantom Zone, using their Superman-like powers to take control of Earth. Unfortunately, Clark was developing his relationship with Lois, deciding to give up his powers for her after she learns his identity. However, he does manage to regain his powers and take down Zod and his gang, with Lex Luthor popping up again, trying to curry favor with Zod.

Lois is unable to deal with everything she’s learned and in the final moments, Clark erases her memory of it with a kiss. Given that Superman canon has evolved to where Lois is now usually Clark’s wife or love interest and is fully aware of his identity, it feels like they could’ve gotten past this easily by just letting them have it no longer be a secret between them, but that wasn’t where Superman was back at that point. Even though work on Superman III was already underway (and even teased in the end credits), they needed to restore the status quo.

Before we move on, let’s look at the performances.

There’s a reason why Christopher Reeve is often regarded as the best Superman: he looks like Superman, he’s charming, kind, and powerful when he needs to be, and can effortlessly go from the sweet and bumbling Clark Kent to the strong and confident Superman, a scene in the first film famously even having Clark considering confiding in Lois and we see Reeve’s body language completely change. Reeve was a Superman you wanted to see more of.

Margot Kidder, I will admit, I had trouble coming around to her as Lois when I first saw the film as to me, Lois was Teri Hatcher in Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman with a stylish short haircut for the 90s. But Kidder was Lois in the late 70s and the 80s. While definitely not glamorous, we do get why Superman likes her as she’s in awe of him and connects to his kindness: even though she doesn’t (permanently) know who he is, she sees him. Sadly, the movies don’t have much time to have an office rivalry between Clark and Lois as we sometimes saw in the Kirk Alyn serials and the George Reeves series.

Jackie Cooper’s Perry White gets to be a fun addition and a good lead for the Daily Planet gang. Marc McClure’s Jimmy Olsen, sadly, doesn’t get a lot of time to shine. Superman does rescue him in the first film when he’s photographing a dam that Lex Luthor sabotages. Afterward, he’s often just seen around the Daily Planet offices. I did note that in the first film, Jimmy appears in his classic, almost Jack Larson Jimmy outfit in his first appearance (sweater vest, bowtie, suit jacket), and then later appears in modern clothing. But in his subsequent appearances, he’s back to the classic look.

That brings us to Gene Hackman’s Lex Luthor. This is a more comedic Lex Luthor than what we saw in Superman vs. Atom Man, and also a less sci-fi Luthor, who manages to find Kryptonite and basically wants to do a real estate scheme. Hackman does a lot of physical comedy and being a pompous, arrogant take on Lex. In deleted scenes, he even has a pit of wild animals who reduce a whole side of beef to bones in seconds, that he also tries to feed his henchwoman to when she relents and sets Superman free from a Kryptonite trap. This is a great performance, but if your tastes were set by Atom Man and Michael Rosenbaum, you might be a little underwhelmed by this take on Lex Luthor. In any case, some humor kept the proceedings a little light.

Onto Superman III, released in 1983. Early plans would’ve brought in Supergirl and Brainiac, but the whole plan was deemed too expensive and plans shifted. The final film was directed by Richard Lester.

The unemployed Gus Gorman (comedian Richard Pryor) gets a job programming computers for Webscoe Industries, getting the attention of his employer, Ross Webster (Robert Vaughn) when he attempts to skim off all the missing partial cents from payroll, getting himself an $85,000 check. Instead of firing or pursuing legal action, Webster puts him to work attempting to get more industries under his control, making him one of the most wealthy people in the world. Just when he attempts to use a satellite to destroy coffee crops in Colombia, Superman gets involved and foils the scheme, making Webster want to kill Superman.

Meanwhile, Clark Kent has gone home to Smallville for a high school reunion, initially accompanied by Jimmy Olsen, who gets injured while attempting to photograph a chemical plant fire that Superman manages to douse. Clark is reunited with Lana Lang (Annette O’Toole), his high school sweetheart, who’s dealing with a nasty ex-husband who she has a son with. Lana’s plotline sees her decide to move to Metropolis where she joins the Daily Planet crew as Perry White’s secretary, potentially making a love triangle for future films. (Didn’t pan out.)

Attempting to synthesize kryptonite, Gus fills in tar for an unknown element of kryptonite, the resulting stone, when presented to Superman, makes the hero turn into a super-jerk who doesn’t care about anything, straightening the Leaning Tower of Pisa, blowing out the Olympic torch, and is easily convinced into causing an oil spill to help Webster corner the market on oil.

Things come to a head when Lana’s son tries to remind Superman of who he used to be, causing Superman to split into two entities: the un-heroic Superman and Clark Kent, representing his good side. Ultimately, Clark overpowers Superman, the two merging back into the familiar hero who attempts to undo the damage he recently caused.

Webster creates a supercomputer for Gus kept in a cave, but when it powers on (draining power from across many cities), it comes to life and transforms Webster’s sister into a cyborg as well as using energy beams to defend itself when Superman gets involved. Using some acid from the chemical plant, Superman manages to destroy it, leaving Webster and his associates to the authorities while he tries to set Gus on an honest path.

There were fun ideas in Superman III, but the Lana Lang plot really doesn’t pay off. While Richard Pryor was a great standup comedian, his Gus Gorman isn’t really that funny, more awkward. Plus, the standard trope of 80s movies treating computers as magical, soon to be self-aware tech that wants to destroy us. This isn’t The Terminator. There’s also extended gag sequences that are just about slapstick that feel at odds with the world we saw in the first two films.

So, while the Salkinds figured out what to do for a fourth Superman film, they used their options on other Superman characters to create their fourth and final film in the franchise: Supergirl for 1984, directed by Jeannot Szwarc, who’d previously directed Christopher Reeve in the sci-fi romance Somewhere in Time.

The movie opens on Argo City, a slice of Krypton kept alive in an dimension called Innerspace, kept in place by a magical orb called the Omegahedron, but when it gets sent through space to Earth, Kara Zor-El (Helen Slater) goes off to recover it, becoming Supergirl on Earth.

The Omegahedron is found by a woman named Selena (Faye Dunaway) who is practicing witchcraft and recognizes it can help her gain power, using it to eventually seduce a young man named Ethan (Hart Bochner) and take over the local town of Midvale.

Meanwhile, Kara disguises herself as Linda Lee, enrolling in a girls’ boarding school in Midvale, where she becomes roommates with Lucy Lane (Maureen Teefy), Lois Lane’s sister, who has a crush on Jimmy Olsen (who comes to visit). Kara takes a liking to Ethan herself before realizing Selena has the Omegahedron.

During the big fight, Kara is sent to the Phantom Zone, where her Argo City friend Zaltar (Peter O’Toole) has exiled himself for being careless with the Omegahedron and sacrifices himself to help her escape. When Selena attempts to destroy Kara with a demon, Kara manages to get the demon to turn on Selena, before trapping them all in a mirror. Taking the Omegahedron, Kara returns to Argo City.

Supergirl was messy. The specifics of Argo City (at least, in the international cut of the movie I watched) aren’t made clear, which makes us ask “Why do they need the Omegahedron?” Also unclear is why Kara receives a female version of the Superman outfit upon arriving on Earth, or how she knows about Clark Kent. (Christopher Reeve was asked to be in the film, but declined. A Superman promo photo appears in the film.) It’s also frustrating that seemingly, Argo City needs the Omegahedron to keep its people alive, but Kara takes on a secret identity and wastes time at a girls school when her people need her to get this done quick.

Also, it’s never clear as to what witchcraft in this universe is. Selena’s home has a spooky vibe, but also seemingly has a Halloween hall of horrors, complete with giant fake spiders? As for magic existing, I mean, some of Clark’s transitions to Superman in the films are basically magic, Zod was able to suspend people in mid air with a beam from his hands, these movies gave us magic anyway, so why not have a witch as the villain?

Supergirl was a bomb, barely making only a third of its production budget in the box office. In response, the Salkinds licensed their Superman film rights to Cannon Films and got to work with Jeannot Szwarc on Santa Claus: The Movie for 1985. (I had to mention that somewhere with the Salkinds.)

Cannon Films was a big producer of films that came out in the 80s, some of which became cult classics (including a line of live action fairy tale adaptations, which became syndicated TV fodder), others wound up being forgotten. In 1987 alone, Superman IV: The Quest for Peace was just one of 33 films they released, based on a Wikipedia listing of their films.

Christopher Reeve had tried to distance himself from the role of Superman to do other projects, showing off more range, but the Cold War and nuclear arms race worries of the 80s inspired him to work with Cannon Films on the story of the new film with director Sidney J. Furie and writers Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal. (He also got an increased salary.)

While preparing to sell the Kent farm back in Smallville, Clark finds a Kryptonian energy module from the ship that brought him to Earth, a recording voiced by his mother informing it that he can use the energy in it only once. Back in Metropolis, The Daily Planet has been taken over by a tabloid publisher, who puts his daughter Lacy Warfield (Mariel Hemingway) in charge of the paper.

Inspired by a schoolboy’s letter, Superman realizes the threat of nuclear war and takes it upon himself to dispose of Earth’s nuclear weapons, much to the dismay of the manufacturers of said weapons.

Meanwhile, Lenny Luthor (Jon Cryer) breaks his uncle Lex Luthor out of jail, following him in a plot to steal a strand of Superman’s hair to create Nuclear Man, a nuclear-powered super foe who is only active in sunlight. It doesn’t take long for Superman to run across Nuclear Man and coming to blows (involving tearing down large chunks of the Great Wall of China and Superman somehow restoring them almost instantly), but when Superman is injured by Nuclear Man’s claws, he’s forced to use the energy module to restore himself and finally take out Nuclear Man.

The film, continuity wise, is not a bad follow up to the first two films. The return to the Kent farm is nice and also, upon kissing Lois, her memory of learning Superman’s identity in Superman II is restored. (It’s undone minutes later.) There’s also an extensive gag sequence in which Lucy and Lois double date Clark Kent and Superman, forcing him to find ways to swap between the two identities.

While the effects are cheaper this time around and the action is a bit goofier, they don’t really feel that out of place for what the franchise had established.

The film only made a little double of its $17 million budget back, but it wasn’t enough to get a fifth Superman film underway. The Salkinds, who still had other rights to Superman characters, began a Superboy TV series that ran for four seasons before the Salkinds sold the rights to Warner Brothers, who would eventually pick up the rights to all the films as well.

In 1995, Christopher Reeve had a significant head injury while falling off of a horse that had refused to make a jump, leaving him a paraplegic. This, of course, ended any chance of him returning to the character of Superman. He would use his new way of life for activism in support of looking for treatments for the paralyzed, as well as finding ways to continue his Hollywood career, both as an actor and director, including appearing as the original character Dr. Virgil Swann on two episodes of Smallville before his death in late 2004. A documentary about his life titled Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story was released last year and is highly recommended for those who want to know more.

Margot Kidder and Marc McClure also had guest spots on Smallville, McClure also appearing on the DC Comics-based one season sitcom Powerless in 2017. Terrence Stamp would voice the artificial intelligence version of Jor-El in Smallville. Helen Slater appeared in Smallville as Lara, Clark’s Kryptonian mother, and the Supergirl television series beginning in 2015 as Mrs. Danvers, Kara’s adopted mother. Jon Cryer would also appear on Supergirl as Lex Luthor. Annette O’Toole would become a mainstay on Smallville as Martha Kent.

In the new age of superhero media being released almost constantly (and on demand easily), it can be easy to forget that there was a time when it was actually pretty rare, until a pair of producers decided to bring Superman back to the big screen. Yes, the quality of the films suffered as the series continued, but it paved the way for more superhero adaptations on the big screen.

According to an obituary for Kirk Alyn, he felt he wouldn’t get serious acting work after playing Superman and when he was offered to take the role again, he turned it down.

So the new Superman would have a new cast. Actor George Reeves, a southern born gentleman who’d had several small roles before graduating to bigger roles in films (including a small role in Gone With the Wind), took on the role of Superman. He also had misgivings about his career prospects with taking on the role of Superman, and while he remained professional, he made it no secret to his friends and family that he didn’t enjoy being stuck in the role, regularly burning his costume after each season.

Accomplished actress Phyllis Coates took on the role of Lois Lane, a headstrong reporter who is both coworker and rival to Reeves’ Clark Kent.

In an unusual operation, the “pilot” for the series wasn’t the first episode, but a 58 minute feature film released to theaters titled Superman and the Mole Men in 1951. Taking place in a small southern town near an oil rig, Clark Kent and Lois Lane arrive to investigate strange occurrences around the drilling site, discovering an underground race of people, played by little people wearing bald caps that gave them the appearance of large heads and hair on their hands. The appearance of these strange men causes a panic in the community. When one of the “Mole Men” is shot, Superman attempts to convince the people not to antagonize them further, and further has to convince the Mole Men not to antagonize the people on the surface. At the end, the Mole Men return with their injured comrade to their home, blowing up the oil rig to seal off their home, Lois commenting that clearly the Mole Men just want to be left alone.

The film was attempt to use a sci-fi concept to argue against antagonizing different people, with the concept being that if we cannot peacefully coexist, we should simply leave each other alone, a moral that might not quite have aged that well.

Clark Kent/Superman and Lois Lane were the only members of the Superman cast of characters to appear in the film, the rest joining for the television show.

In 1952, Kelloggs came onboard to help fund the television show as they had previously sponsored the radio series, which had wrapped production the previous year. And so, The Adventures of Superman was underway again, this time for television.

In writing this entry, instead of watching the entire series, I turned to a list of the thirteen best episodes of the series from the website The 13th Dimension and decided to watch those in addition to Superman and the Mole Men and the show’s first two episodes as well as other episodes that caught my fancy.

The show ran for six seasons: the first two were filmed in black and white with 26 episodes each. The last four were filmed in color with 13 episodes each. (When the series was released on DVD by Warner Brothers, the color seasons were combined two to a package, making a total of four volumes, which they kept on the recent complete series reissue package.)

Other regulars included John Hamilton as Perry White, Robert Shayne as Inspector Henderson (a character who largely fell out of popularity but was basically the regular characters’ police contact) and Jack Larson as Jimmy Olsen.

Reeves’ Clark Kent is described “mild-mannered,” but can often be a hard-edged investigator, with some episodes having him rely more on investigative prowess rather than becoming Superman, only doing it when absolutely necessary. As the show continued, particularly into the color episodes, there was a little more focus on Superman’s feats, even though the effects to depict them were primitive.

I had previously noted how attractively Lois dressed in the serials, but in the series, she has short, curly hair (similar to how she appeared in the comic books of the time) and is far more conservatively styled, which oddly enough, it was reported that Phyllis Coates actually often wore her personal wardrobe as Lois as there wasn’t much budget to costume her.

Lois is still Clark’s workplace rival and coworker, depending on the story, and ultimately takes a romantic interest in Superman.

After the first season, Phyllis Coates left the series as she hadn’t been contracted further and wanted to explore other opportunities. Noel Neill, who had played Lois in the serials, returned to the role, though did follow what Coates’ had established, being styled very similarly to Coates’ Lois at the start. As the show continued, Neill’s Lois was allowed to evolve. In the final season, her hair was dyed red for some reason. (As the show was often still broadcast in black and white and most people didn’t have color television sets, this look wouldn’t be notable to most audiences.)

Perry White would often be involved with stories, even going out and investigating with his reporters, sometimes giving Superman a third coworker to get out of scrapes.

Jack Larson, a young actor who had been looking for his big break, took the role of Jimmy Olsen with his agent believing the show wouldn’t last more than its first season. His Jimmy is adventurous, bold, inquisitive and sometimes even led plots himself. The second episode of the series even features him noticing strange activity around the home of his extended family and trying to figure on what’s going on before calling on his friend Clark to help out.

Larson’s portrayal made the character so popular that it inspired one of my favorite bits of extended Superman media: the comic book series Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen, which ran from the 50s to the late 70s, when it would be renamed The Superman Family, folding in the later series Superman’s Girlfriend, Lois Lane and the Supergirl comic book. The series would bit by bit expand on Jimmy’s backstory as well as wildly reimagining him for the different pop culture periods the book existed in. (Jimmy’s nickname “Mr. Action” came from the Bronze Age when they attempted to give Jimmy a more action-oriented approach.) Legendary comics artist Jack Kirby even had a brief run on the book, in which he introduced his legendary Fourth World and the New Gods, including Darkseid, to the DC Universe. The comics would also give Jimmy strange transformations and superpowers, such as his recurring superhero persona Elastic Lad, who even got to join the Legion of Super-Heroes as an honorary member.

Something that audiences back in the 1950s and likely many years later didn’t know was that Jack Larson was actually gay. Being a gay man myself, this knowledge added a little extra subtext to his Jimmy, in addition to him being the young member of the Daily Planet crew, feeling like he has to really show he deserves to be there, and having a good friend in the hunky Superman doesn’t hurt, either.

Anyway, yes, many episodes featured the Daily Planet crew figuring out some mystery that often had a crime behind it. Comics villains like Lex Luthor didn’t show up. I suppose it was cheaper to just costume standard dress gangsters and scientists.

One of the first season’s episodes, “The Stolen Costume,” features a crook breaking into Clark Kent’s apartment and finding the Superman costume hanging in a secret closet, but he’s shot by a police officer, only managing to get to a fellow crook’s hideout where he turns over the costume and informs them where he got it before dying. They assume that Clark is Superman and try to use it to blackmail him with it. However, the hard-edged Clark has been investigating the theft himself and takes the two crooks who have his costume to a cabin on a mountaintop, leaving them there, promising to bring them supplies. However, they attempt to escape, only to lose their footing and fall to their deaths. It’s surprisingly grim for a superhero show that had families in mind for the audience.

Given the technical limitations for television in the 1950s, when the show attempted to do sci-fi plots, they had to resort to crude effects or have spectacle happen offscreen. In Season 2, a large meteor is getting close to the Earth and Superman has to use a bomb to break it up, but an element in the meteor causes him to have amnesia, with him only recovering his memory in time to break up a smaller fragment threatening Metropolis.

In Season 3’s opening episode, a scientist’s experiment sends the Daily Planet crew and some crooks back in time to the Stone Age, with Clark highly considering revealing his secret identity to keep his friends safe, but luckily, they manage to return to their time before that’s needed.=

A Season 2 episode brought in Kryptonite, forcing Lois and Jimmy to find a way to dispose of the rock (sealing it in a lead pipe) so Superman can recover. It would recur as a potential threat to Superman, though not often.

Episodes even had Jimmy take over as Editor of the Daily Planet for a day and Lois and Superman marrying before revealing it’s a dream Lois is having.

One of the final episodes, “The Perils of Superman,” has a masked criminal inspired by film serials put Clark, Lois, Perry White and Jimmy in deadly traps before Superman is able to save them. (Clark is actually dipped into acid, emerging as Superman after the villain leaves.) While Superman foils the plot, the villain is actually still at large, vowing revenge, leaving its own cliffhanger that would never be resolved.

The show only further cemented Superman as an icon, and was the landmark live action version until the Christopher Reeve films began in 1978. George Reeves even appeared as himself (but referred to only as “Superman”) in an episode of I Love Lucy, in which Lucy tries to disguise herself as Superman for her son’s birthday party, getting herself into her own cliffhanger on the side of her apartment building.

There was talks of further episodes of the show, but it was never to be as George Reeves was somehow shot in his home, with it never being clear as to if this was a suicide (despite the success, he had trouble being seen as a serious actor) or a murder. With Reeves’ death, it was impossible to continue the show. This is the beginning of the urban legend called “The Superman Curse,” in which major actors playing Superman have faced some sort of misfortune or career stagnation.

Jack Larson was approached to continue the show as Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen, with Reeves’ Superman appearing in stock footage and played by a body double when needed, but Larson felt the idea was disrespectful to Reeves and even called it “necrophilia.”

A pitch and several episodes of a The Adventures of Superboy television series were created, that might have acted as a prequel to the George Reeves show, but it never got produced beyond a pilot that was released as a bonus in the complete series home video releases of Smallville.

While the cast did have trouble getting away from their Superman characters, Larson himself being typecast as naïve young men, Noel Neill and Jack Larson wound up embracing the legacy of the show rather than trying to distance themselves from it. I already wrote of Neill’s cameo in Superman: The Movie. (Larson is credited as being a passenger on the train.) They would also appear in the 1980s Superboy television series, Larson would play an prematurely aged Jimmy in an episode of Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, and they would both play small roles in 2006’s Superman Returns as well as doing several interviews and appearances at fan conventions as well as taking part in Superman-related home video bonus features from a Jimmy Olsen roundtable for a Smallville season to audio commentaries for The Adventures of Superman. Phyllis Coates appeared as Lois’ mother in Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.

I don’t normally say much about availability, but as of yet, George Reeves’ run as Superman is only on DVD and digital video in standard definition, and only for purchase at that. The show was available on the DC Universe app when it launched and contained DC Comics video content as well as a comics archive, but after the video portion closed, the show has not been available on any streamers, subscription or otherwise.

With this piece extolling how important the show was to Superman as an enduring piece of pop culture, I’d like to say that if it is possible, the show should be made available in high definition and made available on streaming so people can see what the show was for themselves without needing to commit to buying a DVD (the original releases of the show were released during Warner Home Video’s infamous “disc rot” era, making them unplayable, but a complete series set was recently released) or a digital copy.

Movie serials were often action and adventure stories, with each chapter running for fifteen to twenty minutes, often ending with a cliffhanger or an unresolved problem so audiences would feel compelled to come back the next week to see the next chapter. Each serial would run for twelve to fifteen episodes or so.

Sound a little familiar? This was clearly the forerunner of serialized storytelling in visuals that would move to television, with an overarching story with several smaller adventures within, a format that continues to this day.

Comic book superheroes were considered and eventually made their live action debut in film serials. The Adventures of Captain Marvel— a character that DC Comics now owns as Shazam! — was not only the first time a comic book character was depicted in live action, but the first to make it to the big screen, beating out the Fleischer Superman cartoons by six months. Captain America, Batman and later Blackhawk would also get the film serial treatment.

Superman’s film serial treatment came from Columbia Pictures (now owned by Sony, though the Superman serials are now owned by Warner Brothers as a court ruling put all Superman movies and films under their roof) under low budget producer Sam Katzman, who attempted to keep things under budget by filming as little as possible.

The rights for Superman had been a hot commodity for years, and it might’ve been made instead of Captain Marvel if Paramount hadn’t snagged the rights for the Fleischer cartoons.

The press for the first Superman serial claimed that no actor was suitable enough to play Superman and so Superman himself would be playing the character. Marketing posters and the credits don’t list who played the role, though the posters did list a name not in the cast list in the credits: Kirk Alyn.

Kirk Alyn was born as John Feggo Jr., his parents having immigrated from Austria-Hungary and he grew up in New Jersey, getting his showbiz start as a chorus member in Broadway musicals before getting cast in bit parts and low budget productions. When he tested for Superman, he was nearly turned down because he was sporting a goatee for a role he was currently in. But, showing off his physique and carrying a woman up a flight of stairs convinced the studio that he could pull off the role. He was 37 when he was cast.

The 1948 Superman serial proved popular. The first episode tells the story of Superman’s origin, complete with Jor-El confronting the science council of Krypton before being dismissed, sending his son off in a rocket to escape the destruction.

As Clark Kent goes off to Metropolis, he runs into Daily Planet reporters Lois Lane (Noel Neill) and Jimmy Olsen (Tommy Bond). This leads him to join the newspaper himself, getting the latest on the crime ring run by the Spider Lady (Carol Forman), who is intent on getting a destructive ray.

While the effects are very cheap looking, the serial tells a good story with a fantastic cast giving a great performance.

The big question would be how would they have Superman fly? It had only been attempted before in Captain Marvel using a lightweight dummy double of the star and a few trick flying shots.

There had been attempts to get Kirk Alyn flying by having him and his cape held up by wires, but the producer was dissatisfied with the look. Instead, Superman would suddenly become an animated character when he flew. (The rocket from Krypton is also animated in flight and anyone who Superman might be carrying is also animated.)

While that might look a little silly, I had to reflect that we basically do the same thing these days when we use CG doubles for quick shots of superheroes in flight. In the sequel, they had closeup shots of Superman in flight (simulated through an off-screen wind machine), though still had animated flying scenes.

The first Superman serial did pack the action in with several scenes of Lois, Jimmy and Clark investigating the Spider Lady’s gang and getting into several scrapes. In the final chapter, the villain ups the ante when she turns her newly acquired “reducer ray” onto the jail, where Lois is questioning some of her men. Aware of the Spider Lady’s plot, Superman arrives in time to save Lois, but the Spider Lady’s men aren’t so lucky, perishing in the attack. She shows no remorse for her actions, making her a truly cold and cruel villain.

In contrast, Alyn plays two characters, the heroic, cocky and likeable Superman and the warmer, gentler and good natured Clark Kent who has a slight bumbling air to him. While they are the same person, Alyn makes the performances different and it’s a joy to see him play both, as he even masters the line “This is a job for Superman!” with his voice going deeper mid sentence.

This was the first time actors portrayed Superman’s supporting cast both with voice and with body. Noel Neill plays Clark’s office rival Lois, who is ready to do anything to get the biggest scoop, even getting into danger. While she works with Clark, she can sometimes try to put him at a disadvantage, such as one instance where she and Jimmy grab the Daily Planet press car that Clark was going to use, letting him drive her own slower car. She’s also always wearing fashionable and stylish (for the time) clothing, suggesting that she knows that she is an attractive woman, but she doesn’t flaunt her sexuality to get her ahead.

Noel Neill herself was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota and had become popular as a model and actress, starring in popular low budget films before becoming Lois Lane in the Superman series.

Jimmy Olsen is played by Tommy Bond, a former child actor who had featured in Hal Roach’s Our Gang/The Little Rascals shorts. Bond played Jimmy after the character was integrated into the comics, but before he had a lot of attention. He plays Jimmy as smart, but also getting into trouble, and tough, though not as strong as Superman. He’s fiercely loyal to Lois and friendly to Clark and we can see the seeds of him being a close associate with Superman. While Jimmy has been portrayed by many actors over the years, Bond’s Jimmy is one of the best.

Pierre Watkin plays the first live action Perry White, who takes phone calls and barks orders but is also willing to listen to Clark, Superman and Lois when they have ideas.

The serial was successful enough to warrant a sequel, Atom Man vs. Superman in 1950. And before you think, “Who the heck is Atom Man?” It’s Lex Luthor. This was the first time the character appeared outside the comics, played by Lyle Talbot.

In the serial, Luthor has developed ways to send matter across space, essentially teleporting them around, which he uses to effectively operate a crime ring as his men can disappear at will. He uses a lead-lined mask when he confronts Superman and his allies to disguise his identity.

In a strange bit of creative foreshadowing, Luthor creates synthetic Kryptonite, which would return in later Superman adaptations. Also, he can teleport men he finds that he can’t trust to a space he calls The Empty Doom, where they seemingly exist as helpless ghosts. He even sends Superman there during the events of the serial, Superman managing to message Lois by manipulating her typewriter. This is a forerunner to the Phantom Zone, which was not yet part of Superman lore.

The serials did make Kirk Alyn famous, but that fame didn’t translate to more success. He was reportedly offered the role of Superman when a live action Superman show came to television, but for whatever reason didn’t take it. He had bit parts in television and film afterward, but did also star in the afore mentioned Blackhawk serial.

Tommy Bond did have a few more small roles, but largely left Hollywood behind shortly after the second Superman serial.

Noel Neill, however, became famous as Lois, not just because of the serials. In a couple years, The Adventures of Superman began as a television series, and while Neill wasn’t part of the first season, the actress playing Lois left after the first season and Neill replaced her, staying for the remaining five seasons.

In the famous film Superman: The Movie in 1978, a very young Lois Lane (as revealed in extended versions of the film) spots Clark running alongside the train she’s in. She tells her parents about it, who comically dismiss it as her imagination. But her parents were played by none other than Kirk Alyn and Noel Neill. Neill would also cameo in the Superboy television series and the 2006 film Superman Returns.

Despite the cheap filmmaking and animated flight scenes, the Superman movie serials made their mark on the Superman franchise. An actor could embody Superman in live action. You could depict comic book action with special effects and photography and have a great time. Without Kirk Alyn’s tenure as Superman, we wouldn’t have the later versions.

Many comic book fans know that the character Superman debuted in Action Comics #1 in April, 1938, created by Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel. In January 1939, the character would cross over into newspapers for a comic strip and then get his own comic book that summer, the first time a superhero had a solo comic book of their own.

The character was eye-catching, wearing a costume featuring alternating blue and red with a yellow shield on his chest, his exploits as told in the comics felt timely, dealing with issues readers felt close to, Superman going after domestic abusers and crime rings. (Supervillains would arrive eventually.) His super strength, speed, invulnerability and ability to jump high or great distances set him apart from detective and police characters in other stories.

Digging into the character’s backstory, we learn that Superman is actually an alien from a now-extinct planet, hence why he’s different from ordinary humans. He was raised on Earth and just wants to use his powers to help humanity.

You might have noticed some of my choices in wording there, at the start, Superman didn’t fly, he just jumped, and the details of Krypton and its destruction had yet to be filled in.

This article is not here to talk about how Superman’s origin changed, if you want to read more on that fun topic, DC Comics has a blog about it right here.

Stories often evolve in retellings, and one of the big first ones for the character was The Adventures of Superman, a radio serial debuting on February 12, 1940, where it would run until March 1, 1951.

The opening episode was based on the comics lore as Jor-El of the distant planet Krypton warns of an upcoming disaster that will destroy the planet, urging the leaders to build spacecraft so they might escape. Being dismissed, Jor-El is only able to send his infant son away from Krypton.

However, the radio show made a significant change that didn’t stick: instead of having an infant land on Earth, by the time the craft lands, he’s grown to maturity inside it, quickly using his powers to help a man and his son out of a predicament. These are Superman’s first friends who suggest he use a secret identity to more effectively fight crime, and also suggest the name Clark Kent.

Clark goes to the offices of The Daily Planet to become a reporter, editor Perry White saying he can have a job if he can break the story of railroad highjacking in another state. Not only is Clark able to make the deadline, he gets a scoop as he, as Superman, is able to stop the highjacking.

The radio show did make a change to Superman’s powers that made things a little easier: instead of jumping, they had him fly. In one of the earliest episodes as Clark prepares to take off, he monologues four words that would become associated with him in pop culture, even if they quickly fell out of use: “Up, up and away!”

The radio show was the origin of another classic saying as each episode would open with the narrator saying “Superman!” The flying sound effect would play, then you’d hear people shout: “Up in the sky! Look!” “It’s a bird!” “It’s a plane!” “It’s Superman!”

Then the narrator would continue: “Yes, it’s Superman — strange visitor from the planet Krypton who came to Earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men. Superman, who can leap tall buildings in a single bound, race a speeding bullet to its target, bend steel in his bare hands, and who, disguised as Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for a great Metropolitan newspaper, fights a never-ending battle for truth and justice.”

The radio show is surprisingly where many pieces of Superman lore and Superman characters were introduced or were developed into named characters for the first time. The editor of the Daily Planet was named Perry White (Julian Noa) for the first time. The comics had shown an office boy working at the newspaper, in the radio show, he was introduced as Jimmy Olsen (Jackie Kelk), who confides in Clark about how his mother’s candy shop is being targeted by a racketeer’s protection scheme before becoming a recurring character who’d be incorporated and adapted into the comics and other media.

Most importantly, this is where kryptonite was introduced, the mysterious element that would weaken and potentially kill Superman, finally causing a potential threat to the otherwise invulnerable hero.

Today, we might dismiss what a radio show meant, but it was the first time almost anyone could enjoy Superman stories. Kids would need money to buy a comic book. A newspaper would also cost money. But anyone with access to a radio could listen in without paying more money.

And who was the voice of Superman in the radio show? One Bud Collyer. He was a Manhattan born law student who found broadcasting paid better than being a law clerk, giving a mature, heroic voice to Superman as well as providing a more demure Clark Kent.

While Collyer left the radio show in its last couple years (to be replaced by Michael Fitzmaurice), it was not the only time he played the characters.

As the radio show was picking up steam, Paramount Pictures was interested in bringing Superman to the big screen. So they turned to Fleischer Studios, an animation outfit who’d recently stunned audiences with their animated feature film adaptation of Gulliver’s Travels and were looking to get underway with another feature.

Brothers Max and Dave Fleischer weren’t interested in taking on another high-profile project and when Paramount tried to hire them to animate Superman, they said the cartoons would cost about $100,000 (over a million and a half adjusted for inflation today) per short, hoping that Paramount would withdraw.

Instead, Paramount negotiated for $50,000 per short and the Fleischer series was underway.

Collyer and Joan Alexander reprised their roles of Superman and Lois Lane from the radio show, creating a unified voice for the character between mediums.

The cartoons opened with a narration adapted from the radio show, which would later be adopted by it in 1945: “Faster than a speeding bullet. More powerful than a locomotive. Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.”
“Look! Up in the sky!”
“It’s a bird!”
“It’s a plane!”
“It’s Superman!”

The Fleischer Superman cartoons are a favorite of fans of traditional animation for their high production values. Animating realistic humans was more time consuming and work than stylized cartoon characters. (Gulliver’s Travels had a fairly realistic Gulliver while the people of Lilliput were goofy little cartoon characters.) So, the entire world of the cartoons had to have an air of realism. The animation is very smooth and impressive.

While the radio show was the first time Superman had flight as part of his powers, the Fleischer Studios got permission to have him fly, simplifying the visuals over him jumping great distances, a change that would soon be adopted into the comics (though there were various bits of art over the years that suggested flight).

The series would see Superman in action against natural disasters and mad scientists. One cartoon had a giant dinosaur frozen in a block of ice thaw out and run rampant around Metropolis, predating Godzilla and the Jurassic Park franchise as the monster even tries to eat Lois before Superman saves her. The final one under the Fleischers had a gorilla break loose at a circus and Superman has to get it back under control.

Often the cartoons end with a newspaper report on the action being shown with a character — usually Lois — commenting that it’s thanks to Superman that everything ended well. Clark then looks towards the camera and winks, as if he knows the audience is aware of his dual identity and will keep the secret. This was later adopted into the comics to end stories that it fit with, including Alan Moore’s “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?,” which offered a possible “ending” to Superman’s adventures.

After the ninth cartoon, Max and Dave Fleischer left their studio, which was reorganized into Famous Studios, and the Superman cartoons would continue for eight more entries. With this, the quality of the animation was reduced and instead of sci-fi, Superman is usually fighting Nazis or the Japanese, making these propaganda pieces for the US during World War II. Lee Royce and Barbara Willock replaced Collyer and Alexander as Superman and Lois. The cartoons are still commonly collectively titled “The Fleischer Cartoons,” while some say “Fleischer/Famous Studios” to be more accurate.

Still, the Fleischer cartoons have their place, even inspiring later adaptations such as Superman: The Animated Series in the 1990s. Despite only being seventeen cartoons, the enduring popularity of the character, the Fleischer cartoons often aired on television.

And speaking of television cartoons, it was there that Collyer would have his third and final term as Superman.

Filmation was one of the animation studios attempting to dominate the television markets in the 1960s to the 1980s, including Fat Albert, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, She-Ra: Princess of Power, and cartoons based on Archie Comics, including the first Sabrina the Teenage Witch cartoon. To make them under budget, the studio used various camera tricks and reused animation, animating only the mouths and sometimes having nearly static images onscreen.

After his longtime run as Superman, Collyer had found success as a television game show host on Break the Bank, Winner Take All, Beat the Clock, To Tell the Truth, Talent Jackpot, On Your Way and Number Please.

But when Filmation picked up the rights to DC Comics characters, they began The New Adventures of Superman in 1966, a series of six minute cartoons, similar to the Fleischer cartoons in which Superman would get into action against some villain. These would be paired with an Adventures of Superboy cartoon for their first season with other DC heroes joining in future seasons with the programming block changing names.

Collyer and Joan Alexander returned as Superman and Lois Lane, with Jack Grimes, the second voice of Jimmy Olsen from the radio show, reprising his character. Collyer would voice Superman until his death in 1969.

The stories were so-so, decent animated superhero fare for late 1960s television. The animation was cheap, with the above noted shortcuts to keep the budget down. One shot of Clark walking away was achieved by framing the action above his waist and only properly animating his mouth as the character almost bounced as he moved to the right of the screen against the background.

I don’t want to talk too negatively, but after enjoying the Fleischer cartoons, the Filmation cartoons were a huge step down. Still, they have their place in Superman history, setting the stage for greater DC animated properties such as Super Friends and Bruce Timm’s DC Animated Universe.

So, thanks Bud, for voicing Superman for all that time.

Smallville ran on the WB network, which, over time, merged with UPN to become The CW. After a decade of a superhero show featured on the network, as well as Warner Brothers — the company with built-in media rights to the DC Universe — being a co-owner of the network, the network decided to get another show going.

That’s how we got Arrow, which was a grounded, modern take on DC’s Green Arrow. But during the second season, a character named Barry Allen appeared for a two-episode stint before spinning off into his own show, The Flash, began the next season. These two shows would also see some of their secondary characters spinoff into DC’s Legends of Tomorrow. A similarly styled show, Supergirl, began on CBS before moving to The CW for its future seasons. The “Arrowverse,” as the interconnected series of shows was labelled, also had a Batwoman show added, and retroactively brought a one-season Constantine show and an otherwise unconnected Black Lightning show into continuity with cameos and the crossover event “Crisis on Infinite Earths,” which merged Supergirl and Black Lightning’s earths with the world of the other shows. (Supergirl had previously interacted with the main “Arrowverse” through multiverse travel.)

Supergirl set out to be the story of Supergirl and during its first season, only sparingly used Superman, with a double playing him with his face unseen. As they moved to The CW with Season 2, the debut two-parter brought in Superman proper with Tyler Hoechlin taking the role of Clark Kent/Superman. And fans were impressed with how friendly and funny he could be as he embodied the strong but kind warmth of Superman.

Tyler’s Superman returned for crossover events and cameos on Supergirl, eventually being joined by Elizabeth Tulloch as Lois Lane, with the pair having a child in the “Crisis on Infinite Earths” crossover, who became twins when their world was merged with the “Arrowverse.”

The initial plan was that Superman & Lois, the new show for The CW debuting in February 2021, would be part of the Arrowverse. However, after the COVID-19 pandemic prevented a direct crossover and the other shows on The CW were winding down, this new Superman TV show would be retroactively confirmed to be in a separate universe of its own.

So, basically, all of that preamble about the other CW shows isn’t necessary to know to actually sit down and enjoy the show, but Supergirl and the larger Arrowverse is where Hoechlin and Tulloch showed they were great choices for the characters and won audiences over before beginning their own show.

Superman & Lois opens with a flashback montage of Superman’s career in Metropolis and how he met Lois. This leads to the present, in which Clark and Lois are leaving The Daily Planet in Metropolis as Martha Kent dies. Lois and Clark and their teenage sons Jonathan (Jordan Elsass, who would leave the show after two seasons to be replaced with Michael Bishop) and Jordan (Alex Garfin) to begin a new life in Smallville, Superman moving his base of operations from the big city back to a small town.

This angle gave us a Superman show unlike all the others: The Adventures of Superman, Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman and the animated Superman shows gave us standard Superman adventures, Smallville gave us a Clark who was becoming Superman, Superman & Lois, however, was a show about a family. It never forgot that Jordan and Jonathan were their own characters, handling moving to a new town for them, Jordan being the one to develop superpowers, and the boys having crushes and girlfriends and dealing with their own personal drama.

Superman & Lois’ strength was finding an angle that had never been done in live action with Superman before: depicting him as a father, and Tyler Hoechlin, who isn’t even forty years old as of this writing, pulled it off masterfully. His chemistry with Elizabeth Tulloch, who held a commanding presence as a Lois who’s been through a lot and is also raising kids, was absolutely perfect. They didn’t need to hug and kiss every moment, just the way they’d sit with each other and quietly interact sold me that they were a couple.

The show also balanced superhero plots with its take on Morgan Edge (Adam Rayner) being revealed to be a fellow Kryptonian survivor who wants to raise Krypton again by making humans into Kryptonians. Season 2 dealt with a counter-Earth that a cult is trying to merge with Earth, and it’s from this alternate world that we get the show’s rather sympathetic take on Bizarro.

In Season 3, Lois believes she’s pregnant, but discovers she has breast cancer and undergoes treatment to get it under control. This gets Clark and Lois involved in unraveling an Intergang plot, leading up to Lex Luthor (Michael Kudlitz) being released from prison, swearing revenge on Superman and Lois for imprisoning him, creating a unique take on Doomsday, which is the big plot for the reduced Season 4, the final season.

Season 4 sees Doomsday seemingly kill Superman until a noble sacrifice manages to revive him, but with reduced capacity for his powers as Lex Luthor threatens the Kents. Jonathan’s superpowers also manifest during the season, and a major twist never before seen in live action Superman media happens during the season.

The show also featured a cast around Smallville, including a successful take on John Henry Irons/Steel (Wole Parks), his daughter (Tayler Buck) and Lana Lang (Emmanuelle Chriqui). While they were secondary characters, they never felt pointless.

Even though it was a CW show, the production also managed to look good. Ultimately, you know some elements are composite shots, some are CG, but they weren’t distracting. It was easy to not think about it in the moment thanks to the good storytelling.

Superman & Lois remembered that it needed to tell good stories first and foremost and I feel it succeeded. As Lois battles cancer, it managed to remind us that Superman can save you from a burning building or a crashing plane or a traffic accident, but he can’t magically cure cancer. All he can do is be a good husband for Lois as she undergoes treatment. (One of my favorite moments is Clark sitting down and sticking his tongue out at Lois as she prepares for treatment and she scowls and returns the gesture, the air between them letting us know that this is their love language.)

It also managed to find strength in not being a slave to the source material. A couple characters get merged together in ways that make sense, but is not what happened in the comic book stories. Just because it’s the way it was done in the comics doesn’t mean it’s the only way the stories or the characters can be done.

I really encourage fans of Superman to not sleep on Superman & Lois despite the reputation that might surround superhero shows for The CW or network television. If anything, it elevated what could be done with the genre and deserves recognition.