Tagged: Krypton

REVIEW: Superboy the Complete Second Season

D500Alexander and Ilya Salkind had sold Superman to the Golan-Globus Group/Cannon but wisely retained the rest of the family including Superboy. Thanks to Star Trek: The Next Generation pioneering first run syndication in 1987, the Salkinds realized the Teen of Steel would be perfect. Looking to produce this on the cheap, they set up shop in Florida, hired science fiction hack Fred Freiberger to produce and hired a slate of newcomers to fill the iconic roles of Clark Kent, Ma and Pa Kent, Lana Lang, Lex Luthor, et. al. The series debuted in 1988 with 25 episodes and was pretty laughable stuff. Freiberger was past his sell-by date and the Salkinds didn’t know how to handle the half-hour drama format.

Still, the ratings from the 95% of the country the series reached were strong enough to keep them going. However, changes needed to be made. Freiberger was shoved out and Salkind favorite Cary Bates stopped writing comics to become Executive Story Consultant with Mark Jones.  John Haymes Newton was asked to return the cape rather than give him a salary bump. Gerard Christopher, a more nuanced actor, became the last son of Krypton and thankfully had nice chemistry with Stacy Haiduk’s Lana. Also out was the character of TJ White with Andy McAlister the new comic relief. As performed by Ilan Mitchell-Smith, his scenes are cringe-worthy.

Superboy and Lana

As a result, the second season, out now from Warner Archive, is a far stronger, more satisfying collection of 26 episodes. Contained on three discs, this stripped down collection comes complete with bumpers and coming attractions but no other extra features. The transfers are nice and clean so with the series never having been rerun in the States, this is your chance to check it out.

1989-lazenby-01

Along with Bates, the team of Andy Helfer and Mike Carlin moved from vetting the scripts to writing more than a few. With Denny O’Neil also back for more and Bates penning a bunch, there was a definite stronger feeling to the stories and characters. With less than thirty minutes to tell a story using the regulars and guest stars, there’s very little in the way of depth or character development. As a result, the brilliant approach to Clark Kent slowly mastering his powers and coming to grips with his responsibility as seen in Smallville is all but absent here. Instead, the fully function hero is merely a younger version of Superman as he faces off with the adult’s rogues gallery including Metallo and Bizarro. Salkind and Bates teamed up for a pair of stories with Dracula while Bates plucked the Yellow Peri from Action Comics for a tale. O’Neill brought back Mr. Mxyzptlk and as portrayed by Michael J. Pollard, is more slacker than imp.

There’s a loose continuity episode to episode, beginning with season opener as Sherman Howard went bald as Luthor, replacing the previous season’s Scott Wells. His threat hangs over the beginning of the season and comes back later on while Dracula and others add a bit of spine to the stories. A highlight for this season is the appearance of Britt Ekland and George Lazenby, claiming to be Lara and Jor-El, still alive. This two-parter from Bates and Jones is emotionally compelling in ways many of the other episodes are not.

Given the Florida shooting, noteworthy guest performers were few and far between so beyond those two, Keye Luke and Gilbert Gottfried (as the mischievous Nick Knack) are as noteworthy as it gets.

The regulars all look too old for their college setting and Haiduk’s ‘80s hair does not age well but there’s a lot more charm the second time around and it’s well worth a look.

Mindy Newell: Four-Color Valentines

Newell Art 130211DC released Young Romance this week, using the title of one of the overlooked and (imho) underappreciated gems of comics history, the seminal romance comic that was created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby and was published from 1947 to 1975. I’m old enough to remember many of the stories contained within those pages; they were attuned to the morals of the times, and regularly told tales of unrequited love, of compromised love, and of love triumphant.

The characters were easily identifiable: there was the bad girl, the bad boy, the good girl, and the good boy.

The bad girl (think Betty Rizzo in Grease) smoke and/or drank, wore too much makeup and perfume, wore incredibly slinky dress that didn’t leave much to the imagination, preyed on other women’s men, and was quite free with her, uh, favors. Not that anything was ever shown except for kisses, but somehow Simon and Kirby – especially Kirby with his magnificent art – definitely got the message across of what followed that forbidden kiss off-panel, even to a young and innocent girl like me.

I always rooted for the bad girl.

The bad boy (think Johnny Strabler in The Wild One) smoke and/or drank, rode a Harley or drove a wicked muscle car with fins, wore a leather jacket with a one-size-too-small undershirts and jeans, had a ducktail and a comb, dropped out of high school and worked at the gas station, and was always hot for the good girl.

I always wanted the bad boy.

The good girl was a secretary or a librarian or a nurse or a high school senior or a college freshman. She wore modest clothes and flats, pink lipstick, no jewelry except for her grandmother’s pearls, and never smoked or drank.

She was so boring.

The good boy was a doctor or a lawyer or an engineer or the BMOC (big man on campus) or the high school football team’s star quarterback. He wore a suit and tie or chinos and a windbreaker, never showed body hair, and always obeyed the speed limit in a Chevrolet or Oldsmobile – definitely your father’s car – and above all respected the good girl and would safely see her to the door after a date and say good night with a chaste kiss, saving “the act” for the marriage bed.

No thanks.

My preference for the “little bit of naughty” also made me veer towards those characters in the superhero world, caped and non-, that I imagined had some, uh, good times, when not saving the world.

I think Adam Strange’s relationship with Alanna moved quite quickly into intimacy, even before they were married. After all, Adam could not control when the Zeta-beam would either take him to the planet Rann or return him to Earth, so there was no time like the present, right? Though I do hope that that damn Zeta-beam didn’t snatch Adam away right at wrong time, if you know what I mean, for Alanna’s sake.

Certainly Sun Boy, a.k.a. Dirk Morgana, was an out-and-out roué: check out a little story called Triangle in Legion Of Super-Heroes #320, February 1985, a tale I dialogued over Paul Levitz’s plot, with artwork by penciler Dan Jurgens, inker Karl Kessel, letterer Adam Kubert, and colorist Shelly Eiber. But I always had a thing for Rokk Krin, a.k.a. Cosmic Boy. Maybe it was the black hair and the blue eyes, but there was just something about Rokk – I knew he was not above stopping by the 30th century’s version of the Bada Bing or hitting on the boss’s wife. And succeeding.

I know the newest couple in comicdom is Kal-El of Krypton and Diana of Themiscrya, but the pairing of these two, the classic “good boy” and “good girl” of DC, just doesn’t float my boat, y’know. Now Diana’s mother, Hippolyta… that’s a woman whom I suspect walked a bit on the wicked side in her youth. She just too worldly just knows life, with all its ups and downs, triumphs and tragedies, too well. It’s in the way she holds herself, the way she talks, the way she rules.

Lana Lang may have started as a “good girl” in Smallville, but I think once she left home she had some fun. Getting over Superman throwing her over for Lois, she let the “bad girl” come out in college, cutting classes, never missing a beer bash, smoking the ganja, and saying yes to whoever asked. As an adult she may be the “sadder-but-wiser-girl,” but damn, the woman knew how to party.

And of course there’s Selena Kyle, who brings home the bacon and fries it up in a pan. Hey, the lady knows what she wants. I’d like to see her paired up with Wolverine, the “bad boy” of comics. Hard-drinkin’, hard smokin’ Logan hooking up with Catwoman.

Oh, yeah

TUESDAY MORNING: Emily S. Whitten

TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Michael Davis

 

 

Mindy Newell: Mirror Images

Throwing my $0.02 in on Martha Thomases’s column last week concerning big boobs, ‘roidal musculature, and body image…

Readers of this column know very well my love of Kara Zor-el, i.e. Supergirl, as she was portrayed during the Silver Age. Debuting in Action Comics #252 (May 1959), Kara’s look was designed by Al Plastino with her continuing adventures drawn by her quintessential artist, Jim Mooney for the next ten years. I was 5-going-on 6 in May of 1959, and Kara, depicted as a healthy young girl just entering adolescence, was athletic and slim, but not overly muscular, and especially not overly endowed in her chest area. It wasn’t just her powers or her ability to be Superman’s secret weapon that captured my imagination – I wanted to be like her when I grew up. Yes, I had dark hair and brown eyes and I was born in Brooklyn and not in Argo City, the last surviving city of the planet Krypton, but she was a role model for me in that I wanted to grow up to be athletic and slim and strong and capable.

In other words, Kara gave me a healthy sense of my body and what it could be.

A few years ago I was riding on the PATH train into New York City when an ad caught my eye, partly because I knew the doctor who was advertising on the placard and partly because of what he was advertising: a labioplasty. This is a plastic surgery procedure for altering shape of the labia majora and labia minora. Yes, as an operating room nurse, I have participated in these procedures, and I do remember one patient whose labia majora was “overly endowed” to the point that it was embarrassing to her when she wore a swimsuit.

I’m not talking about that type of legitimate need. But 99.9% of these women who underwent the procedure did it for purely “cosmetic” reasons. Of course I couldn’t say this out loud, but what I was thinking was “are you fucking kidding me?” (Honestly, girlfriends, have you ever fretted about the anatomy of your labia majora or labia minora?) Apparently these women believed there was something wrong with their natural formation – meaning that it wasn’t “perfect.” I always had a suspicion that these women caught their men looking at the Playmate of the Month or the Penthouse Pet of the Month and felt inadequate. But, although of course I couldn’t ask them, I also wondered if their men had complained. I doubt it. (Guys, do you fret about the shape of your woman’s labia majora or labia minora?) At least I’ve never had a man break up with me – so far as I know – because of that particular part of my anatomy.

But most girls don’t read comics, you’ll say, and if they do, it’s Betty and Veronica or manga comics. Well, first of all, I don’t believe that’s so true anymore. Like football, I think the fastest growing segment of the comics audience are girls and women. I’d like to think that most adult women are grown-up enough to understand that comics are fantasies, and that they are capable of ignoring the bubble breasts, wasp waists, and lengthy legs of female super-heroines (if the writing and story is good, of course) without going into hyperventilation and toxic shock about their own anatomy.

But young girls, even if they don’t read super-heroes, are exposed to it when they visit their local comic book emporium. And exposure is 9/10ths of the law when it comes to thoughts about body image and self-respect and self-actualization.

Martha is right about comics being a small part of the media culture’s obsession with how women should look. But some companies are doing it right – Dove ran a very successful campaign featuring women whose body types ranged from svelte to chunky. And More magazine ran a feature a few years ago on Jamie Leigh Curtis with pictures of Ms. Curtis au natural – no makeup, no Photoshopping, no special lighting, no Spanx or body tape to hide or pull up sagging body parts. And by the way, it was Ms. Curtis’ idea to photo shoot herself as she is in “real life.”

It was part of an issue whose entire focus was accepting yourself.

Accepting yourself. It sounds so easy.

But it’s so hard. After all, we can’t all look like Wonder Woman, unless your name happens to be Lynda Carter.

But it’s worth every minute of sweat and every tear that’s shed.

Damn it, I gained a pound.

TUESDAY MORNING: Emily S. Whitten

TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Michael Davis

 

Martha Thomases: The Future Is All Right

Martha Thomases: The Future Is All Right

The electricity, heat, hot water, Internet and phone service all work today. Even my elevator works. Doing without is last week’s news.

This week’s news is the election. As I write this, people are voting. We won’t have results until tonight at the earliest. Since I’ve voted already, I’m going to try to ignore the media until the polls close. There’s nothing more I can do, and that is frustrating. I want to do everything, and I can’t. If you are a spiritual person, pray for me.

For the last few years, my Republican brother-in-law has been telling me that the problem with the economy (and Obama’s presidency) is “uncertainty.” Because job-creators don’t know what Obama will do, they hesitate to expand, to hire more people, because what if they make the wrong choice? As someone who started a business (albeit in 1979), I can report that I never knew what was going to happen, nor did I expect to. It was my responsibility to make things happen.

According to Aaron Ross Sorkin in The New York Times, the election won’t make any difference in solving this problem, even if things go my brother-in-law’s way.

What will the future bring? We don’t know. When I was a kid, I thought the future meant I’d have a jetpack, or a flying (electric) car, and my clothes would have those pads on the shoulders like everyone wore on Krypton and the Legion of Super-Heroes. My apartment would clean itself. I thought we’d get our meals in pill form. I thought we’d wear Dick Tracy two-way radios.

Instead, we’re still dependent on fossil fuels. That’s bad. We don’t have pills for dinner. That’s good. I couldn’t have predicted the local food movement, but I’m really happy because now I can tell the difference among 15 different kinds of apples.

Then there are the things I didn’t even think about to form a prediction. Gay marriage became legal instead of marriage fading away as an institution. Instead of working a George Jetson three-hour work week, we expect employees to put in 50 hours or more. I don’t have a robot maid, but I could have a robot vacuum cleaner if I wanted. I could have a robot dog. I carry around more computing power in my pocket than there was on the entire Star Ship Enterprise. That’s dazzling, even if I use a lot of it to send photos of my cat.

We don’t know what’s going to happen in the future. That’s what makes life interesting.

SATURDAY: Marc Alan Fishman

 

Dennis O’Neil: Krypton and the End Times

From the totally unauthorized history of the late, great planet Krypton.

dedicated to Sandy

Fer-El waited until the building stopped shaking, stepped around a slab of plaster that had fallen from the ceiling, and entered the senator’s office. He crossed to the desk and, without waiting for an invitation, slouched into a chair.

Senator Ban-El brushed plaster dust from his shoulder and asked, “Did you feel it?”

“Didn’t feel a thing,” Fer-El answered. “Building didn’t shake, not a bit, and even if it did, that’s happened before. Plenty of times. But enough of that. I bring good news. I just topped off our coffers. Put another four billion in your campaign fund. No problem with the election now.”

The windows rattled and a picture fell from the wall.

“Did you feel that?” the senator asked.

“Nope. Feel what? Say, you haven’t been listening to that Jor-El buzzard, have you?”

“He spoke to the combined chambers this morning. Said there’s still time. We can fabricate a substitute for –”

“And you bothered to stay awake? Banny, I’m gonna tell you once more plenty of what you already know. That Jor-El…not just him, all those so-called scientists with their ‘facts’ and ‘data’ – all wishy washy sissies. Not a real Kryptonian man in the lot! What is it they say again?”

“We’ve exhausted the planet’s supply of dragonbreath and without it there’s nothing anchoring us to the space-time continuum.”

“All lies. There’s plenty more dragonbreath where that came from.”

“All the dragons died out five million years ago.”

“Piddykrunch! I believe I saw a dragon on my way down here. And anyway, our beloved Krypton’s only about four hundred years old. That’s in The Scrolls and you know what else’s in The Scrolls? Nothing bad’s ever gonna happen long as we obey the Rules handed down by our beloved senators –”

I’m a senator,” the senator protested.

“See? My point exactly. Proves that nothing bad can happen or you couldn’t do it. See how simple it is? And anyway, it’s all happened before and nothing bad came of it then.”

“A continent crumbled and forty million people died.”

“You believe that?”

“My mother was one of the forty million.”

“See! Your mother was and Jor-El’s mother wasn’t. That’s in The Scrolls , too, if you know how to look for it. I’m a little disappointed. I shouldn’t have to tell you this stuff. Maybe I can find another home for my four billion.”

Senator Ban-El half rose from his chair and said, “No no no. I didn’t mean anything.”

The senator sank down and sat on the floor. His chair had vanished. Then the floor suddenly wasn’t there and as the senator fell, he heard Fer-El screaming, “It’s happened before.”

RECOMMENDED VIEWING/LISTENING: Masterpieces of the Imaginative Mind, presented by The Teaching Company and taught by Professor Eric S. Rabkin. Note: These Teaching Company courses are generally offered in two formats, audio and video.

FRIDAY: Martha Thomases

 

SDCC: 2012 Scribe Award Winners

In case you weren’t following our Twitter feed on Friday (and why weren’t you?) you missed the winners of the International Association of Media Tie-In Writer’s annual Scribe Awards ceremony, held Friday night at Comic-Con in San Diego.

[[[Kevin J. Anderson]]] was awarded this year’s Grandmaster award for remarkable achievements in the tie-in field, which include more than one hundred novels, adding up to over 20 million books in print in thirty languages. His work includes the Star Wars “[[[Jedi Academy]]]” books, three internationally bestselling [[[X-Files]]] novels, the Superman novels The Last Days of Krypton and Enemies & Allies, many novelizations ([[[Sky Captain And The World of Tomorrow]]], [[[League of Extraordinary Gentlemen]]], etc.) and ten globally bestselling [[[Dune]]] novels he has co-authored with Brian Herbert.

But he wasn’t alone accepting honors on Friday. [[[Cowboys & Aliens]]] by Joan D. Vinge was the winner for Best Adaptation, [[[Dungeons & Dragons — Forgotten Realms: Brimstone Angels]]] by Erin M. Evans took the prize for Best Speculative Original Novel, [[[Mike Hammer: Kiss Her Goodbye]]] by Max Allan Collins & Mickey Spillane won for Best Original Novel, [[[Thunderbirds: Extreme Hazard]]] by Joan Marie Yerba was honored for Best Young Adult Novel, and [[[Mike Hammer: Encore for Murder]]] by Max Allan Collins & Mickey Spillane won the Best Audio award.

The IAMTW (*I Am* a *T*ie-In *W*riter) is dedicated to enhancing the professional and public image of tie-in writers, working with the media to review tie-in novels and publicize their authors, and providing a forum for tie-in writers to share information, support one another, and discuss issues relating to their field.

Michael Davis: The Avengers … Or The Anatomy Of The Bitch Slap.

Mickey Mouse just bitch slapped Scooby Doo. Donald Duck just put his foot up Shaggy’s butt. Goofy just cold cocked Velma.

Disney just kicked Warner Bros’ ass.

Marvel just told DC “fuck the New 52!”

This all happened the moment The Avengers movie opened.

The Avengers is the best superhero movie ever made.

E.V.E.R!

Yes, this is just my opinion but consider this: I’ve had my problems with DC Comics but I’m a huge fan of the DC universe. I’ve always considered Superman The Movie the best superhero movie ever. I thought that because Superman works on so many different levels and it still holds up decades later. Superman The Movie is over 30 years old and it still works. It was made without the crazy shit that exists now in special effects and it still works.

In the movie, that mofo caught a helicopter in 1979 without CGI, without Industrial, Light and Magic, and it still works.

You get that? That mofo (Superman to those unhip out there) caught a helicopter without the 2012 computer magic that exists today and I was all in!

What does that mean really? It means a good superhero movie is not just about guys or girls in tights who fly and have lots of fights throughout the film.

Superman The Movie remade the character but kept the original story intact. The story was the story of Superman that everyone knew before they went into the theater to see it, yet it was also new. That’s hard to do.

I’ll say that again. That’s hard to do.

Don’t think so? Did you see The Punisher movie when the Punisher was not even in his costume? Did you see the Captain America movie when Cap walked from the North Pole? Those were horrible movies to be sure but Hollywood gets it right sometimes and still screws some of the comic book mythos for no reason. That’s no reason except some guy in the room with juice gives a “note” that he thinks is a good idea and the other monkeys in the room agree.

For instance, take what I consider a great superhero movie, Batman. That’s the 1989 version – but yes I still love the 1966 version! For some reason known only to whothefuckever came up with it they made the Joker the killer of Bruce Wayne’s parents.

I bet if the same guy worked on Superman he would have said, I have an idea! Let’s make Superman from Compton instead of Krypton!”

Hollywood seems to think they know better than the people and the industry that created the property and that’s why doing a superhero film that respects the source material is so hard.

Just ask Alan Moore.

I’m lucky enough (or badass enough if you happen to be a pretty girl impressed by this type of bullshit) to work in Hollywood. If some studio wanted to make a movie out of one of my creations I would most likely let them do what they want even if they disagreed with my vision of my creation.

Why?

Because what I do is not art, it’s entertainment.

So as a writer who has three books coming out between late 2012 and mid-2013 (if the Earth is still here) I can say without hesitation: Hollywood, take my work and make it a movie. If you want my input, great! If not, then write me a big check and spell my name right in the credits.

As a writer I have to be smart about the way the business of entertainment works. I have to play the game. That said, I will not roll over like a little bitch if you want do something so stupid like making Static Shock a white kid (that was a suggestion by a studio executive) or you tell me some dumb 1950s shit like black superheroes don’t sell. Yeah, that happened as well.

So I will bend but I won’t break when confronted with real world scenarios when it comes to being a writer.

But as a fan? As a fan I won’t stand for any shit that does not fit my view of what a great superhero movie is and first and foremost is respect the source material!

The Avengers movie not only sticks to the comics, it adds to the brand.

Not easy to do.

Marvel Studios and Disney produced a superhero movie that rabid geek fan boys can take a girl and even if that girl hates all things geek she will love this movie.

Result? Possible tapping of some ass.

I’m watching The Avengers in 3-D. Live action IMAX 3-D. The Avengers!!! I’m watching the Hulk, Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, The Black Widow and Hawkeye and they are the characters I know and love. This is what I want as a fan-this is what all comic book fans wants from their superhero movies.

That’s why, for my money, this is the best superhero movie ever done.

Warner Bros. can’t even get the goddamn Justice League movie made.

That’s why Tony Stark just made Bruce Wayne his bitch.

TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Emily S. Whitten Gets The Scent!

WEDNESDAY MORNING: Mike Gold Gets Nancy, Good!

 

MIKE GOLD: Truth, Justice, and the American Way

Well, I suppose it was inevitable.

After all, the American Nazis objected to Heimdall being played by a black man in last year’s Thor movie. To swing 180 degrees in the opposite direction, many Asian groups objected to the casting of a European in the role of a Eurasian in the play Miss Saigon. They felt that the part should have gone to an Asian and not to a Eur.

There are numerous examples of this, and some attracted justifiable outrage. I’m not too certain about the Miss Saigon thing: the character is Eurasian but Asians are woefully underrepresented on western stages. The Thor thing is just completely stupid: Heimdall is Asgardian and not Teutonic, and the American Nazis are assholes.

Several thousand white actors have been cast as American Indians in several hundred (at least) motion pictures, and that’s simply wrong. We should have grown out of that, yet for the past several years I’ve been involved in a comics project that stars an American Indian lead but has been “unsellable” to Hollywood because they “can’t find” an acceptable American Indian actor. Besides, there are none who could carry a movie.

So I’m not surprised to see the beginnings of … let’s say discomfort … at the casting of a British actor in the lead role of this summer’s Man of Steel. Truth, Justice, and the American Way, right? Superman lives in Metropolis, which is in or near Kansas, and you can’t get more American than that, right? Hollywood is pushing its internationalist agenda down our throats again, right?

Well, no. That’s not right. Superman is not American, he’s Kryptonian. Clark Kent is American, but he’s not the guy referred to in the title Man of Steel. Clark Kent is a disguise. Kal-El is Superman, and he wasn’t born here.

In fact, he’s an illegal immigrant.

I don’t get bent out of shape over characters not being portrayed by actors of the same nationality or race. It’s called “acting.” Look it up in the dictionary. Should only white people be cast as characters originally conceived as white people? Tell that to Jeffrey Wright. James Bond wasn’t born in Scotland, but Sean Connery was. Johnny Depp is playing Tonto, and that’s just too weird to be right or wrong.

And Kabuki? Hello – men playing all the female roles? Orson Welles cast himself in the lead role in Othello and then he cast black actors in all the other roles in Shakespeare’s ditty, and then they performed Othello in Harlem!

Acting!

The fault of extremist thinking on both sides is that people jump at the symptoms and ignore the issues. The real issue is the underrepresentation of minorities in our media, and that’s an issue that is slowly being addressed. Should we never make a Charlie Chan movie ever again because white actors had played the Hawaiian detective, most notably a performer from Sweden. But nobody complains about the current incarnation of Hawaii 5-O even though the two Hawaiian detectives in that show are played by actors of Korean descent.

Grow up and let actors act. And let’s level the casting stage. Right now.

THURSDAY: Dennis O’Neil

 

MARTHA THOMASES: Superman Family Values

As we gird our collective loins for another presidential election season, we become accustomed to another iteration of praise for “family values.” It is a phrase that has different meanings to people of different political persuasions. To Democrats, it means a living wage and a financial safety net for the poor, the old and the infirm. To Republicans, it means no gay marriage, no sex outside marriage, and no abortion.

For me, neither viewpoint is adequate. I strive for Superman Family values.

As a woman of a certain age, I remember a comic book series dedicated solely to the Superman family. It had stories about Superman, of course, but also Supergirl, my favorite character, and Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane and Krypto. At 60¢ (not the standard 15¢ or 20¢), this was a big, fat comic book, good for a whole afternoon.

I learned a lot about family from those books, and not just how to get some extra change from my parents.

Superman grew up with loving, principled parents in the Kents. He lived on a farm where everyone had chores that contributed to the family fortunes. He knew he was adopted, so he knew his parents really wanted him. However, since he was Kryptonian, he had powers and abilities far beyond those of his friends and classmates. His parents taught him to value his differences, but not use them to draw attention to himself for personal gain. His gifts were best appreciated when he used then to help his community.

Years later, Superman discovered he had a teenage cousin, Supergirl. He didn’t know anything about her, yet he immediately accepted her and loved her.

When he grew up and moved on to his adult life, Superman, like the rest of us, assembled a family of sorts, of people he chose. Most of this family came from the people with whom he worked, Perry White a surrogate father, Jimmy Olsen like a little brother. Bruce Wayne was his best friend, a peer who understood what it meant to live life with secrets.

I have to believe that Superman would favor the rights of immigrants, since he is one. I have to believe that a man who has roamed the various universes and seen thousands of different societies would develop respect for people with different beliefs than his, and different ways of defining family.

As a member of the Legion of Super-Heroes, Superman had good friends who were in romantic relationships that were not only not conventionally heterosexual, but often between two different species. If this bothered him, we never saw his discomfort in the comics. He accepted his friends as they presented themselves.

Is Superman political? I have always imagined him to be a New Deal Democrat, or what the GOP today calls a “socialist.” At the same time, I don’t see him as an activist, nor even all that partisan. As Clark Kent, he votes, he serves jury duty when summoned, and he pays his taxes.

To him, family is a joy and a refuge. It isn’t something for politicians to use to bludgeon each other and score points.

SATURDAY: Marc Alan Fishman

MINDY NEWELL: “Superman? He Must Be Jewish!”

“I am a stranger in a strange land.”

As Superman zooms down into the torrent of Niagara Falls to save that dumb kid who is falling into the torrential waters of Niagara Falls, we hear an off-screen female voice – whom I’ve always imagined as Rob Reiner’s mother – saying:

“He must be Jewish.”

It’s a throw-away line, a bit of Yiddishkeit humor, in a movie (Superman II) about a comic book hero whose underlying themes are – you can say – chock full of Jewish mysticism and Jewish angst and Jewish hope and Jewish dissimilation and Jewish fatalism.

Think about it.

Facing annihilation as their world is torn apart by cataclysmic forces, loving parents rocket their child away in hope of their child finding refuge on an alien planet.

Facing annihilation as their world was torn apart by cataclysmic forces, loving Jewish parents in Hitler’s Europe spirited their children away into the hoped refuge of alien, Christian homes.

The child is raised in the Christian faith of his “foster” parents, Jonathan and Martha Kent of Smallville, Kansas, who do their best to keep the child’s true background a secret for fear that he would be taken away from them by the government and “studied” – or worse.

The Jewish children who survive the Holocaust learn the prayers and rites of the religion of their “foster” parents – Catholic, Protestant, or Muslim. All do whatever they can to keep the children’s true background a secret in fear of brutal, usually fatal, Nazi reprisals.

As an adult, the child uses his Earth name – Clark Kent – and religion as his “secret identity,” though he has learned that his true name is Kal-el, and that he is last survivor of the planet Krypton.

The Kryptonian “Kal-El” is close to the Hebrew קלאל, which can be interpreted as the “voice of God. The last name “Kent” is an Americanization of the name “Cohen,” and “Cohen” is a transcription of the Hebrew כֹּהֵן, or “kohen,” which means “priest.” Kohens were the priests in the Temple of Solomon in biblical Jerusalem – the last remaining remnant of which is still standing today, known as the Wailing Wall.

He is publicly known as Superman, a hero capable of God-like powers who uses those powers for the good of humanity.

“El” means “of God,” or just plain “God” in Hebrew, and is part of the names of the angels Michael, Gabriel and Ariel, who look human, but are agents of God who are capable of flying and performing great deeds of good through the use of their superhuman powers.

The schlemiel Clark Kent – schlemiel being Yiddish for an inept, clumsy, hopeless bungler – falls for the self-assured, brilliant, famous, respected and beautiful Lois Lane, but she only has eyes for Superman.

Jewish men are traditionally said to yearn for the forbidden shiksa – a non-Jewish woman – who represent the self-assured, respected women who belong to a world that is alien to Jews. These women traditionally ignore them in favor of the Don Drapers of the world.

So did Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster purposely create a Jewish superhero? The traditional answer is, of course, no. Siegel himself said he based the visual aspects of Superman on Douglas Fairbanks and Clark Kent on Harold Lloyd. But did he know that Fairbanks was actually born Douglas Elton Thomas Ullman, and was Jewish? Did he know that Harold Lloyd was the son of a Welshman and not Jewish? I doubt it, on both counts. But the subconscious does its own thing. To coin a phrase:

“Who knows what dreams lurk in the hearts of men?”

Or you can call it Jewish mysticism.

TUESDAY: Michael Davis