Smallville (2001 to 2011) and the comics

[thecolorsblend]

I have noticed that Smallville takes a lot of heat from a lot of people for inventing it's own continuity. And while it is true that there are instances aplenty where the show did it's own thing, my contention is that it did so no more often (and, God knows, to no worse an outcome) than other Superman media. Even some of the show's more outlandish ideas draw more from the comics than one might expect.

Now, I am not arguing that the showrunners took every single one of their inspirations from every single one of the comics mentioned herein. Except for one thing, which is so clear that I continue to be shocked that I'm apparently the only one who's talking about it.

But even if all or most of this stuff wasn't intentional, it still works to the showrunners' benefit. If their inspiration came from the source material... well, who among us will criticize them for that? But if we suppose that the majority of these examples can be chalked up to coincidence, it still says a lot that the writers, producers and other creators were dialed in to the characters enough that their stories have so much in common with these comic books. There's no down side to this for them.

As a corollary, there also isn't any way to argue that Superman comics haven't done a lot of what Smallville did. Perhaps the context is different, perhaps the comic book idea is superior to the TV show (or vice versa) but, intentional or not, the similarities are real, many and varied.

As much as anything, this blabfest is intended to get a lot of stuff off my chest about the whining about the show I've heard from a certain segment of the fanbase I won't mention... but if you consider yourself part of Superman fandom, odds are very good that you've at least heard of the personalities I'm reacting to and the web pages where they can be found. There seems to be a strange double standard where Richard Donner, Bryan Singer, Paul Dini and other creators are given license to do basically anything they want, wholesale reinvent entire concepts and characters from the Superman mythos but Smallville gets burned in effigy if it so much as pokes a toe out of line with what the comics are perceived to be. I don't mind someone not liking Smallville. That's hardly a crime. But if this is to be a comparison about which adaptations are most like the comics (and thus which are most "valid"), let's apply the same standard to all adaptations. I'm not asking to be the guy who picks the criteria; I simply want the same criteria applied equally. We'll sort the "winners" and "losers" out after that.

-- Evil Version of Superman
Clark Luthor received a lukewarm greeting when promos for 10.10- Luthor. The one mitigating factor seems to be his alias of Ultra Man as even a lot of comic-illiterate fans recognize the name. In the Pre-Crisis DC universe, Earth 3 was effectively a mirror world of Earth 1. Earth 1's heroes were Earth 3's villains, Earth 1's villains were Earth 3's heroes, etc. So Clark Luthor adopting that moniker has helped somewhat.





Still, you're left with the fact that an alternate universe Kal-El is raised by a Luthor. But, believe it or not, the general concept of Kal-El being raised in a domain of evil and villainy isn't completely isolated to Smallville. In DC's 80 Page Giant #1 from 1964, there's a story about a duplicate of Earth 1's Superboy being raised by criminals. He eventually adopts the stunningly original, completely non-cheese name Super-Menace. Normally, you would want to consign this story to old, weird, goofy Silver Age Superman stories, except that, as with Clark Luthor, Super-Menace eventually sees the error of his ways and turns over a new leaf. Granted, Clark Luthor and Super-Menace meet very different fates but their journeys and subsequent revelations have a lot of similarities.





-- Evil Doppleganger
Smallville has taken a lot of crap for not having a strictly traditional depiction of Bizarro. The main problem as I see it is that the character was promoted as Bizarro. That's helpful for marquee value but I've never found it to be a very accurate description. When you realize that Smallville's Bizarro is something of a mashup of the comics book Bizarro, the sand creature from Denny O'Neil's Kryptonite Nevermore storyline and Smallville's showrunners taking their own creative license, the influences and even the character motives become clearer. It's not simply that Smallville's Bizarro loved Lana every bit as much as Clark. The issue is that he wanted to take over Clark's life lock, stock and barrel. I'm not aware of that ever being a motivation for most incarnations of Bizarro but that was the sand creature's ultimate agenda, which dovetails nicely with how Smallville presented Bizarro/the final Zoner.



Even so, Smallville's Bizarro could be said to be an imperfect duplicate of Clark in that he is copied from Clark's DNA but is weakened by director exposure to sun light, energized by green Kryptonize and defeated by blue Kryptonite. Those all sound like classic traits of Bizarro to me.

-- Zod
Even now, there's a common misconception that Zod was created by Richard Donner for the movies and, no matter what, should be a SUPERMAN villain. But when you realize that Zod was created in the comics years before Superman: The Movie and that he first appeared in a Superboy comic book (Adventure Comics #283), his inclusion in Smallville becomes less objectionable.



True, Smallville set up a very direct rivalry between Clark and Zod (which was itself a product of the rivalry between Jor-El and Zod) where the comics largely didn't but if you're going to crucify Smallville for that, you need to be ready to do the same to Superman: The Movie and Superman II as well.

-- Costume
As with other things, Smallville has taken a fair amount of abuse for the pre-Superman costumes Clark wore through the run of the series. And to be fair, it is true that there is little or no precedent in the comics for Clark to wear a different outfit prior to becoming Superman. However, there is some history to the black outfit he wore through the ninth season. For starters, Jor-El wore a similar outfit during the trial of Zod, Non and Ursa at the beginning of Superman: The Movie. The implication is that Jor-El is acting as judge and, indeed, executioner in the trial. In fact, the director's cut of the film indicates that Jor-El, given his druthers, might've preferred real execution for the villains rather than eternal imprisonment in the Phantom Zone. So for the ninth season where Clark essentially becomes a Kryptonian vigilante, his all black wardrobe makes a lot of sense. Much different context, of course, but the idea behind the idea is logical.





Apart from that, Superman wore a similar outfit in Superman v2 #81 during the Reign of the Supermen arc and also in the TV series Lois & Clark.





So while the black outfit is hardly traditional Superman attire, it's not completely foreign either.

And no, I don't count The New 52 t-shirt/jeans pre-costume thing from Grant Morrison's run Action Comics as that isn't "precedent"; I've seen Smallville's fingerprints all over that decision since the day it was first announced. Smallville exerting influence over the comics isn't the same as the comics exerting influence over Smallville.

-- Powers
Smallville, particularly the first season, shows a Clark Kent that truly is a hybrid of what has been shown in the comics from the very beginning up through about 2000 or 2001.

In the pilot, we see a Clark with basically the Golden Age Superman's power levels (super speed, super strength and a reasonable amount of invulnerability), the Silver/Bronze Age Superboy's sense of responsibility and the Byrne Age young Clark's lack of a dual identity. In a very real sense, you can't draw a straight line to any single era of comic book lore for this particular iteration of Clark Kent since the influences vary so wildly. Even so, the whole enterprise rings true because it draws on so many different eras in the character's history.

Separately, one of Smallville's trademarks has been actually showing Clark moving faster than a speeding bullet in episodes too numerous to recount. This has long been assumed to be Smallville taking advantage of modern effects to demonstrate Clark's powers but that may not be entirely the case as Superman v1 #3 shows Superman moving faster than a speeding bullet from Superman's own point of view. It's not hard to imagine the trademark CG distortion and color trail the show employed substituting for the cruder motion lines drawn by Joe Shuster in that issue.



-- Smallville's proximity to Metropolis
Smallville has taken a lot of heat for situating Smallville so close to Metropolis. And to be fair, placing Metropolis in the state of Kansas is definitely unique to Smallville. However, fans have come to a pretty skewed understanding of the geography of the Superman universe. With Superman: The Movie, Donner established that Smallville is located in Kansas (while Metropolis is likely a surrogate for New York City). Beginning with John Byrne's Man of Steel reboot, that concept was canonized in the comics. Prior to that point, however, Smallville had come to be depicted as a suburb of Metropolis. The history of this is muddled at best but by about the 1970's, it was generally agreed upon that Smallville was in *VERY* close to proximity to Metropolis (as to the location of Metropolis, that's a completely different can of worms). This is made quite clear in The New Adventures of Superboy #13, where the Kent family will depart from Metropolis airport for a flight to California... which would hardly be logical if Smallville is located in Kansas while Metropolis is located somewhere on the east coast.



Point being that the show placing the town of Smallville so close to Metropolis is no great innovation on their part.

As a sidenote, fans have also generally made too much of the distance between Smallville and Metropolis based on Chloe's dialogue from the third season episode Truth, where she implied that it would take several hours to drive from Smallville to Metropolis. That is not consistent with earlier presentations of Metropolis in relation to Smallville, where it could be seen from Smallville if one simply reached a high enough altitude.





-- Superman meets Superboy
In Homecoming, the 200th episode of the show, there is a memorable sequence where young Clark meets a version of himself from the future. They snip at each other a little before Future Clark announces he is about to leave the building to put down a nuclear reactor explosion set to occur on the other side of town in mere seconds and orders Young Clark to go to the roof to rescue Lois who is about to be in a helicopter crash.



Again, this has precedent in the comics as Superman v1 Annual #1 shows a story where Superman is infected by red Kryptonite, which brings Superboy into the modern day. Superman and Superboy bicker even more than Young Clark and Future Clark through out the story.



-- Red K
Speaking of red Kryptonite, the third season episode Whisper shows Clark being temporarily rendered blind after an accident with green Kryptonite. The New Adventures of Superboy show Superboy being temporarily rendered blind after being exposed to red Kryptonite. Interestingly, in both of those Clark must wear glasses before making a full recovery (which is used in the show as a wink to Clark's future and as tragic irony in the comic book to jeopardize his secret identity).





Apart from that, Red K had made only sporadic appearances in Superman comics at the time 2.04- Red was broadcast. It was generally known though that Red Kryptonite had a temporary but powerful wild card effect on Superman. In the comics, that is. On TV though, it transformed Clark into the worst version of himself. However, you could somewhat No Prize this by suggesting that all Red K seen in Smallville might've come from the same source and thus could potentially have the same influence on him each time but Red K samples from a different source could bring out different behaviors, mutations, characteristics or whatever else.

-- Meeting other heroes/characters
There are enough examples of Superboy meeting other DC universe superheroes that my text editor runneth over trying to fit them all in. Nevertheless, there are several notable examples of Superboy meeting characters from his future.


Jimmy Olsen (Superboy v1 #55)


Hal Jordan (New Adventures of Superboy #13)


Aquaman (Superboy v1 #171)


Carl Draper/Master Jailer (New Adventures of Superboy #18)


Lois Lane (Adventure Comics #261)

Given the above, the idea of meeting younger versions of Green Arrow, Bart Allen, Cyborg and other characters seems like a small matter.

-- Season 10/Legends
Smallville's tenth season could be a subject worthy of a column unto itself but as far as story elements are concerned though, the main influence I've noticed is the Legends miniseries from 1987.



The premise of Legends is fairly straight forward. Darkseid bets the Phantom Stranger that he can get mankind to turn against superheroes. Darkseid then sends a few of his minions to Earth to make trouble, pick fights and generally cause a little mayhem. Brimstone beats the snot out of the Justice League while Godfrey that incident and others like it to whip up anti-superhero hysteria.

Darkseid's campaign is so successful that President Reagan issues an executive order banning all superhero activity pending the resolution to this current crisis.



As Godfrey leads an assault on Washington to take over America first and, later, the world, superheroes defy the law and rescue President Reagan from an armed attack, which prompts him to repeal his executive order banning superheroes. Later, Godfrey's power over his followers is broken by Robin and a group of small children, who act as a buffer/human shield between the hordes and Godfrey's mind control.



Darkseid never really takes an active role in this storyline. He operates primarily from the shadows and mostly uses subordinates to carry out his orders. His plan was to deny mankind their heroes, little realizing that he would only prove how desperately mankind will always need heroes to cling on to and give them hope. Ultimately, that's where his true defeat originated.

It doesn't take very much imagination then to draw a few parallels between that story and the broader arc of season 10. Some nuances are different. The TV show outlawed heroes by means of a new law rather than an executive order, it was repealed in a referendum before Clark becomes Superman, Clark defeats Darkseid's avatar and it was Superman who broke Darkseid's power over mankind rather than Robin breaking Godfrey's power.

Even so, the similarities are too many and varied to write off as coincidences. Even the concluding chapters of both Smallville season 10 and Legends are both titled "Finale"! Particularly, the seeds of Darkseid's defeat are very similar in both stories.

There has been some criticism of this season in general and the finale in particular for not doing a battle royale between Superman and Darkseid. However, not only is Darkseid's presentation in this season fairly consistent with Legends but it's also pretty true to how the character was often portrayed for several years in the comics. His characterization as a brawler is a relatively recent thing. Originally, he worked from the shadows, used avatars and minions to do his bidding while Darkseid himself primarily dealt in conspiracies and secret schemes.



The obvious inspiration here is Darkseid's original portrayal as a schemer rather than a front and center baddie, which is perfect for a TV show working with a limited budget.



This is not to say Darkseid isn't powerful. Obviously he is. In The Great Darkness Saga (Legion of Superheroes v2 290-294), his mere projection is powerful enough to beat the snot out of the entire Legion of Superheroes -- which, lest we forget, included Mon-El, Superboy and Supergirl in all their Pre-Crisis glory at the time. That's ridiculously powerful! But Darkseid originally considered physical combat beneath the dignity of a god, hence his reliance upon lieutenants to do the fighting and dirty work for him. But the fact that he is capable of manifesting avatars and astral projections was a clear influence on his depiction in season 10.

This is not to say that Smallville didn't somewhat innovate with the character. To my knowledge, he's never shown the ability to possess people as he was shown to do with Gilbert Godfrey in 10.03- Supergirl, raise people from the dead or care much about peoples' souls. Even so, his portrayal in the show is a lot closer to his original characterization than a lot of more recent fare.

Anyway. There's a lot more that could have been mentioned but I decided this is a good sample.

[Silver Nemesis]

That was awesome colors! Thanks for posting this. We've had comic-to-movie analyses before, but this is the first time anyone's been man enough to tackle an entire TV show, let alone one that ran for ten seasons. I hope we'll be seeing more of this in the future.

I like to think I've got a decent knowledge of the Superman comics. But to be honest, a lot of this stuff was new to me. For example, I didn't know that Lois had visited Smallville during Clark's Superboy-era. I was one of the people who criticised the show's writers for including her at that stage, but it seems the concept had its basis in the comics all along.

I'd quite like to read that 'Legends' story arc now too. I've only seen bits of season 10, but I'm tempted to watch the whole thing before Man of Steel comes out. If I do, I'll first try and track down some of the comics mentioned in this article and give them a read.

[thecolorsblend]

That was awesome colors! Thanks for posting this.

I was inspired by the master.

We've had comic-to-movie analyses before, but this is the first time anyone's been man enough to tackle an entire TV show, let alone one that ran for ten seasons. I hope we'll be seeing more of this in the future.

As I said in PM, that part kicked me in the junk because there's so much stuff there. But I figured this thing can be updated and extended in the future.

I like to think I've got a decent knowledge of the Superman comics. But to be honest, a lot of this stuff was new to me. For example, I didn't know that Lois had visited Smallville during Clark's Superboy-era. I was one of the people who criticised the show's writers for including her at that stage, but it seems the concept had its basis in the comics all along.

She popped up a few times, actually. She wasn't a supporting character like she was on the show but there's a surprising amount of precedent for her to pop up in Superboy's life.

I'd quite like to read that 'Legends' story arc now too. I've only seen bits of season 10, but I'm tempted to watch the whole thing before Man of Steel comes out. If I do, I'll first try and track down some of the comics mentioned in this article and give them a read.

Have at it. The 10th season is a pretty good watch, especially in retrospect. I think almost every episode nudges Clark a little bit closer to the cape. Not sure if you saw the finale, but if you haven't, there's a really good moment between Clark and a supporting character in the barn at almost exactly the halfway point of the episode just before Martha arrives in the barn. You'll know it when you see it. Apart from getting me a little choked up each time, it's just a really good scene on a cinematic level.

Anyway...

[Silver Nemesis]

Well you've inspired me to try tackling some other TV shows. I found the idea too daunting at first, but I think this approach – breaking the shows down into sections and doing a few pieces at a time – is the right way to go about doing it. The number of references in this first instalment alone is already comparable to the number in a feature length movie. So I'm eager to see how many more parallels you can come up with in future instalments.

The only downside is that this 'Comics Film and TV' board is only viewable to veteran site members. Considering the popularity of Superman at the moment, and especially Smallville, a feature like would be great for attracting fresh interest towards the site.

Not sure if you saw the finale, but if you haven't, there's a really good moment between Clark and a supporting character in the barn at almost exactly the halfway point of the episode just before Martha arrives in the barn. You'll know it when you see it. Apart from getting me a little choked up each time, it's just a really good scene on a cinematic level.

I did see the finale, but unfortunately I hadn't seen the rest of the season. So I didn't really know what was going. But even so, I found that scene in the barn, and the following scene in the Fortress, quite moving. And I've always been a casual Smallville fan. The diehard fans – the ones who stuck with the show for the full ten year run – must have found it even more powerful.

[Paul (ral)]

Should I change the visibility of the other boards?

[Silver Nemesis]

I'm not sure. You've got enough on your plate with the site upgrade without having to reorganise the boards. And besides, I quite like the idea of a "members only" section for veteran site members. But it does seem like a pity not to share a thread like this with a wider readership. Maybe we should just move some of these comic analysis threads onto the comic boards.

What does everyone else think?

[thecolorsblend]

Well you've inspired me to try tackling some other TV shows. I found the idea too daunting at first, but I think this approach – breaking the shows down into sections and doing a few pieces at a time – is the right way to go about doing it.

My approach was to pick a subject and then compare TV vs. comic. For whatever that's worth.

The number of references in this first instalment alone is already comparable to the number in a feature length movie. So I'm eager to see how many more parallels you can come up with in future instalments.

We'll see if people like this one.

The only downside is that this 'Comics Film and TV' board is only viewable to veteran site members. Considering the popularity of Superman at the moment, and especially Smallville, a feature like would be great for attracting fresh interest towards the site.

I'm not sure. You've got enough on your plate with the site upgrade without having to reorganise the boards. And besides, I quite like the idea of a "members only" section for veteran site members. But it does seem like a pity not to share a thread like this with a wider readership. Maybe we should just move some of these comic analysis threads onto the comic boards.

What does everyone else think?

Didn't realize this was veterans-only. Mmm. Well, if the idea is to give comic book/media comparison threads as much attention as possible, maybe moving the relevant threads to some generally accessible area is the way to go. No need to reinvent the wheel and reset access for everyone; just move the threads some place else. Or whatever's easiest for Paul, really.

[Azrael]

Should I change the visibility of the other boards?

I'm not sure. You've got enough on your plate with the site upgrade without having to reorganise the boards. And besides, I quite like the idea of a "members only" section for veteran site members. But it does seem like a pity not to share a thread like this with a wider readership. Maybe we should just move some of these comic analysis threads onto the comic boards.

What does everyone else think?

Having Movies, Comic Film & TV and Other Comics as invisible to non-members is maybe unnecessary.

[Paul (ral)]

I agree. It's no work to move board permissions.

I do want to keep some boards member only. Some of us like to be able to share stuff that perhaps we don't want lurkers to see.

[thecolorsblend]

-- Adventure Comics #258
Superboy meets young Green Arrow. Granted, it's not quite in the mode that Smallville ran with but (A) that's not how stories were told at the time and (B) it's the principle of the thing.