Thursday 23 January 2014

Superman And Smallville

The earliest Superman story was pre-World War II whereas the earliest Smallville TV episode is post-Cold War. Thus, two historical periods have elapsed between Action Comics no 1 and Smallville, Season 1, Episode 1. This Clark Kent can become that Superman only by time traveling, which is certainly not where the narrative is going!

Because of Smallville's contemporary setting, a decommissioned missile silo and a redundant nuclear air raid shelter are used in two of the novels.

Action Comics told us that SUPERMAN was destined to reshape the destiny of a world! (see image) However, every story in the series ends with the world still exactly as it had been before. Such a powerful "superman" would indeed change the world by his mere presence but, for that to happen in a comic strip, we had to wait until Miracleman was published in 1982.

I am currently rereading Miracleman and catching up with Smallville, two different but excellent conceptual sequels to that original Superman story.

No comments:

Post a Comment