Superboy Season 2

[davejames]

Lots of cool Superboy (and Bizarro) pics on this site:
http://www.superboytheater.net/apps/photos/album?albumid=8782037&pagesize=60&page=1

Also interesting to read that they used an early form of "wire removal" on the show. I thought that didn't come about til much later.

 

[Christopher]

Nope, I remember that digital wire removal was used in Back to the Future Part II in the hoverboard sequences (where they removed not only wires, but in some shots a metal pipe that was supporting the hoverboard from below/forward). That was in 1989, contemporaneous with the Superboy series. Wikipedia says that ILM was using wire removal as early as Howard the Duck, of all things, in 1986.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Superboy had a lot less money to throw around than Zemeckis.

That's like saying that Robot Chicken can do everything Avatar did just because the technology exists.

 

[Dick Whitman]

True but the Salkinds had the same team doing the wirework that did it for them on the Superman films. So even though they did not have a big budget they had a lot of experience and knew tricks how to pull of the illusion of flight.

 

[Dick Whitman]

Here is a video that shows a lot of the flying effects, including scenes from the 3rd and 4th season. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MbjdcVkwSs

 

[Christopher]

Superboy had a lot less money to throw around than Zemeckis.

That's like saying that Robot Chicken can do everything Avatar did just because the technology exists.

It's not like wire removal is hard or expensive if you have a computer and the right software. It's just a matter of programming the computer to recognize wires and automatically smudge/clone the background over them. Or you can do it by hand with a Photoshop-like program if you have the time.

 

[tomswift2002]

About Luthor: They actually did explain the difference in appearance between the first and second versions of the character, didn't they?

It was explained in the first episode that Luthor had plastic surgery so that he would look like the billionaire owner of another corporation, so that he could kill that billionaire, take his place and united Lexcorp and the other company into one. Apparently he even had acid poured on his fingers.

 

[Dick Whitman]

Its weird though. That is never really mention again. Presumably Luthor is financing his later crimes and inventions from the money he stole from Warren Eckworth. But he was captured and sentenced to death for killing Eckworth. You would think that the authorities have learned of Luthor's theft of that money and froze his account.

Also in the alternate dimensions Lex still looks like Sherman Howard even though he would have never had reason to have plastic surgery.

My strained rationalization is that Eckworth was related to Lex Luthor. A later episode reveals that Lex killed his parents when he was growing up. BUT in a first season episode Lex mentions he has a wealthy father! Maybe Eckworth had an affair with Lex's mother. So there was a bit of resemblance between the two. Lex would have looked like a lot Eckworth as he aged naturally anyways. So with slight modifications, gaining weight, adding wrinkles he was able to briefly pull it off.

 

[davejames]

Well they don't exactly explain why Superboy looks different either, so I don't really see what the big deal is.

 

[Dick Whitman]

Correct normally a show would just do a recast without explanation. But they wrote Lex's change in appearance into the show. I am guessing because Sherman Howard was so much older than Scott Wells. But as time when on they never refer to it again.

 

[Christopher]

Which is fine with me. Wells's version of Luthor was lame and best forgotten. Howard's was one of the best screen Luthors ever.

 

[therealsb63]

I loved Gerard Christopher as "Superboy"...though it defied credibility that someone that looked like him would EVER be called SuperBOY.

It was a rights issue, as I recall. The Salkinds had sold the rights to Superman and his associated characters to Cannon Films by that point, but they retained the rights to Superboy and his associated characters (which includes the Kents and Lex Luthor as well as Lana -- in fact, it was in the Superboy comics that Luthor and the Kents gained their first names). So they pretty much had to call him Superboy no matter how old he got. It's weird that Superman and Superboy are separate entities from a licensing standpoint, but they are.

Back in the early days, a lot of Superman canon ws established by the radio show and the original Kirk Alyn serials...the Kents were known as Eben and Martha. The same names were used (in fact, much of the original dialogue was used) in the first episode of the George Reeves tv series.

I'd read at one point that the Salkynds had hoped to reacquire the Superman rights, and they planned for Gerard Christopher to succeed Christopher Reeve as Superman eventually when the Supoerboy series had run it's course.

IMHO Christopher weas a far better Superboy than John Haymes Newton, and Stacy Haiduk was a really good Lana Lang. I'd take the Superboy series over Smallville any day, but then, I'm pretty old school when it comes to Superman...

 

[Gotham Central]

I loved Gerard Christopher as "Superboy"...though it defied credibility that someone that looked like him would EVER be called SuperBOY.

It was a rights issue, as I recall. The Salkinds had sold the rights to Superman and his associated characters to Cannon Films by that point, but they retained the rights to Superboy and his associated characters (which includes the Kents and Lex Luthor as well as Lana -- in fact, it was in the Superboy comics that Luthor and the Kents gained their first names). So they pretty much had to call him Superboy no matter how old he got. It's weird that Superman and Superboy are separate entities from a licensing standpoint, but they are.

Back in the early days, a lot of Superman canon ws established by the radio show and the original Kirk Alyn serials...the Kents were known as Eben and Martha. The same names were used (in fact, much of the original dialogue was used) in the first episode of the George Reeves tv series.

I'd read at one point that the Salkynds had hoped to reacquire the Superman rights, and they planned for Gerard Christopher to succeed Christopher Reeve as Superman eventually when the Supoerboy series had run it's course.

IMHO Christopher weas a far better Superboy than John Haymes Newton, and Stacy Haiduk was a really good Lana Lang. I'd take the Superboy series over Smallville any day, but then, I'm pretty old school when it comes to Superman...

Its funny you should mention their plans for Gerard Christopher. Obviously they failed to get the rights back. The next television iteration of Superman would be Lois & Clark. As the story goes, Christopher auditioned for that show and the producers really liked him, but did not go with him precisely because he had just played Superboy.

 

[therealsb63]

I wish I'd saved a link to the site where I read that a couple years ago. It seems the Salkynds had a whole master plan for the life of the Superboy series, how it would end, and how it would continue into a new run of Superman movies with Gerard Christopher as Superman.

 

[Dick Whitman]

I have read about all the Salkinds' ideas. But that is what they were, just ideas. Christopher Reeve was always going to be there first choice for any new Superman movie. Only if he turned them down would they have moved on to someone else. It never got to the point of being ready to go into production. The Salkinds reputation was damaged tremendously with their 1992 Christopher Columbus movie. Its an impossible to know What-If, but if Christopher Reeve never had his accident would he have done another Superman movie? I think so. Sure he would have been older, but he would have been much younger than some of the older actors returning to iconic roles we have seen in recent years. We likely would have gotten a film a lot sooner than Superman Returns, probably a "Death of Superman" adaptation without all the baggage of having to reinvent the character that prevented all the various attempts during the 90s.

Following the Death of Superman comic, Wizard Magazine had a special issue about Superman. There was a section on the history of tv shows and movies. Plus potential future ones. I was 12 when I bought it. It was hard for me to wrap my mind around the idea of there maybe being a new Superman movie plus maybe Superboy tv movies plus the first mention I remember about a show focusing on on the private lives of Lois Lane and Clark Kent. I assumed all these things would happen but of course only Lois & Clark did.

Oh and in that article it mentioned that Perry White would be played by a black actor in L&C. A recent book about Superman's history revealed that was producer Deborah Joy Levine's original intention. She wanted to cast James Earl Jones as Perry. He had expressed interest in the offer but DC Comics thought it was going against tradition. Of course Jones did finally appear on the show in a guest role as the new owner of the Daily Planet, Franklin Stern. Shows how much times have changed, now Lawrence Fishburne is playing Perry White.

 

[Christopher]

Oh and in that article it mentioned that Perry White would be played by a black actor in L&C. A recent book about Superman's history revealed that was producer Deborah Joy Levine's original intention. She wanted to cast James Earl Jones as Perry. He had expressed interest in the offer but DC Comics thought it was going against tradition.

Which is an odd contradiction, considering that they cast a half-Japanese actor as Clark/Superman. Not to mention that it was after Tim Burton had cast Billy Dee Williams as Harvey Dent in Batman -- and decades after Eartha Kitt had played Catwoman.

Still, it's hard to imagine James Earl Jones saying "Great shades of Elvis!" Although maybe the character would've been written differently for him.

 

[Takeru]

Superboy was a great show, I remember watching it every day after school here in Germany in the early 90s, it was my introduction to Superman and led to a lot of confusion when I saw the first movie later and was angry that they had replaced Lana with this Lois woman who wasn't very nice to Clark.
I only started liking Lois when I saw Lois & Clark, Teri Hatcher was great, I never warmed up to Margot Kidder's Lois.

Sadly Superboy was never repeated, the episode I remember the most was set in a parallel universe, Superboy was evil and ruled the world and that world's Lana was a suicide bomber who blew him and herself up with a kryptonite bomb strapped to her chest. I loved how badass she was, they'd never do an episode like that today.

 

[therealsb63]

Superboy was a great show, I remember watching it every day after school here in Germany in the early 90s, it was my introduction to Superman and led to a lot of confusion when I saw the first movie later and was angry that they had replaced Lana with this Lois woman who wasn't very nice to Clark.
I only started liking Lois when I saw Lois & Clark, Teri Hatcher was great, I never warmed up to Margot Kidder's Lois.

Sadly Superboy was never repeated, the episode I remember the most was set in a parallel universe, Superboy was evil and ruled the world and that world's Lana was a suicide bomber who blew him and herself up with a kryptonite bomb strapped to her chest. I loved how badass she was, they'd never do an episode like that today.

I was never a big Kidder-as-Lois fan either. Noelle Neill remains my favorite.

And I may be one of the few people who actually liked Kate Bosworth as Lois.