I get a more "Vash the Stampede" vibe from this Superman.
Spoilers MY ADVENTURES WITH SUPERMAN Review Thread
- Thread starter Christopher
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I get a more "Vash the Stampede" vibe from this Superman.
Interesting episode this week. I wasn't crazy about the villain plot -- having Anthony Ivo become the Parasite is an odd twist, as is having the Parasite powers be tech-based like all the other villain stuff seems to be. And Ivo was just a bit too implausibly erratic and going full supervillain in front of an audience. Also, episode 4 feels too early to have a story about a villain capitalizing on envy of Superman's powers and developing a technology inspired by them.
But the Clark-Lois stuff was great. The way their relationship is developing is interesting, and when Lois and Clark both took off their jackets for the sewing scene, it got surprisingly sexy for what had been promoted as a kid-friendly take on Superman. But the big twist was the finale. It only took 4 episodes for Lois to figure out Clark was Superman. I was hoping they wouldn't drag out the secrecy, but I didn't expect it to come to a head this soon. I appreciated that Clark was on the verge of telling her the truth himself before he chickened out. I hope they don't do the cliche thing where Clark finds a way to convince Lois she's wrong. As I've been saying, Superman stories are better with Lois knowing the truth and being Clark's full partner.
Not sure whether I want them to bring Jimmy into the loop, though. I feel that if they're a three-person team, they should be honest with each other. But I don't really like this conspiracy-theorist version of Jimmy. That's not an endearing personality quirk, it's a pathological failure of reason. I'm not sure this guy should be trusted with a secret like Clark's.
Incidentally, I had no idea until just minutes ago (reading Entertainment Weekly's piece on next week's Star Trek: Strange New Worlds/Lower Decks crossover) that Jack Quaid was the son of Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan. I mean, I should've suspected it from his name. But I guess I'm reluctant to face the reality that actors who were young heroic/romantic leads in the movies I watched in high school and college are now old enough to have adult children following in their footsteps.
But the Clark-Lois stuff was great. The way their relationship is developing is interesting, and when Lois and Clark both took off their jackets for the sewing scene, it got surprisingly sexy for what had been promoted as a kid-friendly take on Superman. But the big twist was the finale. It only took 4 episodes for Lois to figure out Clark was Superman. I was hoping they wouldn't drag out the secrecy, but I didn't expect it to come to a head this soon. I appreciated that Clark was on the verge of telling her the truth himself before he chickened out. I hope they don't do the cliche thing where Clark finds a way to convince Lois she's wrong. As I've been saying, Superman stories are better with Lois knowing the truth and being Clark's full partner.
Not sure whether I want them to bring Jimmy into the loop, though. I feel that if they're a three-person team, they should be honest with each other. But I don't really like this conspiracy-theorist version of Jimmy. That's not an endearing personality quirk, it's a pathological failure of reason. I'm not sure this guy should be trusted with a secret like Clark's.
Incidentally, I had no idea until just minutes ago (reading Entertainment Weekly's piece on next week's Star Trek: Strange New Worlds/Lower Decks crossover) that Jack Quaid was the son of Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan. I mean, I should've suspected it from his name. But I guess I'm reluctant to face the reality that actors who were young heroic/romantic leads in the movies I watched in high school and college are now old enough to have adult children following in their footsteps.
I take it you don't watch the Boys @Christopher? Feels like it would be in your wheelhouse.
I'm surprised Lois worked it out so quickly. I'm sure Clark will just use his amnesia kiss so she forgets though. I wonder who that aLEX person could be? They certainly said his name enough for it to be a clue.
I'm surprised Lois worked it out so quickly. I'm sure Clark will just use his amnesia kiss so she forgets though. I wonder who that aLEX person could be? They certainly said his name enough for it to be a clue.
I gather it's a dark, cynical deconstruction of superheroes with a lot of violence, and that is very much not in my wheelhouse. I've seen more than enough of those. Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns came out nearly 40 years ago, but people still somehow think it's clever and daring to copy them.
Oh, good grief, don't talk about that awful thing so casually. That's an act of assault, a profound violation of Lois's consent and rights. Forcibly wiping her memory? That's going beyond gaslighting to outright mind control, and it's an abusive act. It would be horrible for any modern telling of a Superman story to replicate that ill-conceived, sexist plot device.
D'oh! I was wondering "Let's see, is there an existing character named Alex?" but I didn't see it. Maybe if they'd said "Alexander" I'd have gotten it.
Fairly good episode this week, as Lois deals with her realization last week and tries to get proof that Clark is Superman before confronting him. For a moment there, when Lois saw Clark hurt at the end, I was afraid they'd do the old Silver Age copout where Lois goes "Oh, Superman can't be hurt, so I must've been wrong about Clark being Superman." Mercifully, they let her be smarter than that, and she forced a confession Donner-Cut style, with more success than Margot Kidder's Lois had. (Though this is the second time in as many episodes that someone has forced Superman to save a person falling from a high building.) The way they finally had it out was rough, a serious setback in their relationship. I'm glad they didn't cop out of this.
I'm still not crazy about this version of Jimmy. A story about how he feels extraneous doesn't exactly make him feel like he serves a real purpose on the show, and "Jimmy is the same as Steve Lombard" is not a character insight that does much for me. Who cares about Steve Lombard?
And I'm still not loving that the recurring bad guys are Task Force X and Bishonen Deathstroke. It's also weird that these secretive conspirators would reveal themselves to Superman as holograms; with that kind of tech, it should've been easy enough to conceal their identities. I assume the general is Wade Eiling, or perhaps a version of Hardcastle from S:TAS. I didn't catch the end credits. Whoever he is, he was witness to some "Zero Day" that ties into Clark's memory flashes, something that he and Waller are trying to prevent a recurrence of, and which is evidently the source of their advanced tech.
Incidentally, it seems the "Alex" character that people suspect of being Lex Luthor was voiced by Max Mittelman, who's voiced Jimmy Olsen in several animated productions including The Death of Superman/Reign of the Supermen and Justice League Action, and played Superman & Ted Kord in DC Super Hero Girls. If he is playing Luthor, that puts him alongside Josh Keaton in the very small club of actors who've gone from playing a superhero to playing their arch-nemesis (as Keaton was Peter Parker in The Spectacular Spider-Man and Norman Osborn in Marvel's Spider-Man, which featured Mittelman as Harry Osborn).
I'm still not crazy about this version of Jimmy. A story about how he feels extraneous doesn't exactly make him feel like he serves a real purpose on the show, and "Jimmy is the same as Steve Lombard" is not a character insight that does much for me. Who cares about Steve Lombard?
And I'm still not loving that the recurring bad guys are Task Force X and Bishonen Deathstroke. It's also weird that these secretive conspirators would reveal themselves to Superman as holograms; with that kind of tech, it should've been easy enough to conceal their identities. I assume the general is Wade Eiling, or perhaps a version of Hardcastle from S:TAS. I didn't catch the end credits. Whoever he is, he was witness to some "Zero Day" that ties into Clark's memory flashes, something that he and Waller are trying to prevent a recurrence of, and which is evidently the source of their advanced tech.
Incidentally, it seems the "Alex" character that people suspect of being Lex Luthor was voiced by Max Mittelman, who's voiced Jimmy Olsen in several animated productions including The Death of Superman/Reign of the Supermen and Justice League Action, and played Superman & Ted Kord in DC Super Hero Girls. If he is playing Luthor, that puts him alongside Josh Keaton in the very small club of actors who've gone from playing a superhero to playing their arch-nemesis (as Keaton was Peter Parker in The Spectacular Spider-Man and Norman Osborn in Marvel's Spider-Man, which featured Mittelman as Harry Osborn).
I'm really enjoying this show. It's a refreshing sort of "if we were creating these characters now" take.
In the comics, Intergang's tech came from Darkseid. However, I'm thinking it's somehow derived from Kryptonian tech here, especially as Clark mentions it seems familiar.
In the comics, Intergang's tech came from Darkseid. However, I'm thinking it's somehow derived from Kryptonian tech here, especially as Clark mentions it seems familiar.
I assume that was General Lane that give Slade and Waller orders. Can't think who else it could be.
They could be going with the Earth One version with Krypton being destroyed by an alien race and the tech here is from them.
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Ooh, cool thought!
The flashbacks Clark got from Jor-El showed Krypton being destroyed in a war rather than through a natural disaster. I've figured from the start that the invaders were probably from Apokolips. So it probably is still Darkseid's tech.
Oh, yeah. Makes sense, since the general and Lois are both Asian-American here. It didn't occur to me that they could be related, since I figured they were just making the cast more diverse in general.
It didn't even occur to me the general could be Lane!
Maybe I've gotten too used to Superman & Lois portraying Sam Lane as Superman's ally, instead of his traditional role of an antagonist. Although this version seems like an antagonist who has the potential to become an ally, at least more so than Waller does.
As I don't read the comics, is Steve Lombard a recurring character in them, or was he created specifically for this animated series? If the latter, I have a weird hunch. Lois tries to move a box labeled for Lombard and we see it's a set of dumbbells. She can't even budge the box. Clark, of course, lifts it with ease. But when he tosses the box, distracted by more important matters, it lands upon a filing cabinet, and partially crushes it! Why would Lombard have weights no normal human could lift? Is he possibly not quite human? He did create a series of rebuttal videos refuting Olson's theories. As silly as they may seem in another setting, several of them allude to distinct aspects of the DC universe. Maybe Lombard realizes Jimmy is getting too close to some truths. At the conclusion of the episode, Olson is abducted by a gorilla. Might that primate be from "Ape City" (Grod's stomping grounds) and disguising himself as seemingly bombastic sports reporter?
If, on the other hand, Steve Lombard is from the comics and simply a side character used for office banter, well, color me stupid.
If, on the other hand, Steve Lombard is from the comics and simply a side character used for office banter, well, color me stupid.
He's a comic character dating back to the seventies when Clark was switched to being a TV reporter/presenter. Lombard was the sports guy at WGBS where Clark worked. He remained with the series ever since shifting to a newspaper reporter when Clark did likewise.
There's no reason to assume the weights are exceptionally heavy, because Clark tossed the box in an arc and it landed hard. Naturally something dropped from a height is going to do more damage than if it's just placed gently.
Steve Lombard was created by Cary Bates & Curt Swan in 1973 to be Clark's workplace foil, a dumb jock picking on the mild-mannered nerd, although Clark used his superpowers to see Steve's pranks coming and ensure that they backfired on Steve. Basically he was the Flash Thompson to Clark's Peter Parker, though he was inspired more by Ted Baxter from The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
This is, surprisingly, the first Superman TV series to feature Steve, though a "Lombard" was name-dropped twice in season 1 of Superman & Lois. He also appeared in a Young Justice episode and had a cameo in DC Super Hero Girls. He was part of the Planet staff in Man of Steel and several direct-to-video animated movies.
And IIRC based loosely on Joe Namath.
They are? I didn't get that at all.
^ I've only seen the first one or two episodes but apparently Lois is confirmed not just to be Asian but Korean specifically.
https://twitter.com/CozyJamble/status/1682612609466658816
https://twitter.com/CozyJamble/status/1682612609466658816
It's quite clear to me from the character design and the casting (Alice Lee is Korean-American, Joel de la Fuente is Filipino-American), and that terrific Asian-influenced jacket Lois wore to Ivo's event reinforced it.
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