None of the portrayals of Superman that I've EVER seen have portrayed him as being clumsy, uncoordinated, and borderline stupid during his childhood or his "normal life" before he reveals himself as Superman, yet that's exactly how he behaves as the adult Clark Kent, employee of the Daily Planet, in all of those same portrayals. That's why I called his Clark Kent identity an act. It isn't in any way reflective of who he actually is as a person, just as Bruce Wayne's playboy image isn't at all reflective of who HE actually is as a person.
That depends. In the pre-Crisis (pre-1986) comics, and in the Reeve movies, Superman was who he really was and the nebbishy, bumbling Clark Kent was a constructed persona he built as a disguise. But when John Byrne rebooted the character in '86, he reasoned that Kal-El would've grown from infancy thinking of himself as Clark Kent, so that should be his core persona. So in the post-Crisis version, Clark was the real person (and was no longer portrayed as bumbling and timid) and Superman was a role he created for himself. This is the angle
Lois and Clark took, since it came out in the post-Byrne era.
(Then there are things like the '40s radio and '50s TV versions, where Lois and others frequently described Clark as timid and weak, even though his characterization was often quite bold and intrepid, a crusading investigative reporter rather than an affable klutz. So his timidity was more an informed trait than an actual one.)
The way Kara behaves when she's not flying around, however, DOES accurately reflect who she is as a person.
No way -- it's just the opposite of that. It's a persona she's spent the last 12 years building in order to
hide who she is and what she can do. It's the shell she's retreated into as a pretense of normality and conformity. When she came out of that shell and used her powers, she felt more like herself than she had in over a decade. Supergirl is the real her, the protector that she was sent to Earth to be.
Clark acts like a bumbling nerd as an adult in Lois and Clark, Superman the Animated Series, Man of Steel, Superman Returns, John Byrne's Man of Steel miniseries, Superman Secret Origins, and Superman: Earth One but is shown to not be that way earlier in his life in each of those, so I stand by my statement.
That is an incredibly wrong statement. I've just been rewatching
Lois and Clark, and there's nothing remotely bumbling or nerdy about its Clark Kent. He was the romantic lead, the great-looking guy that Cat Grant was eagerly pursuing and Lois was attracted to despite herself. He was the cool guy that Jimmy Olsen looked up to. In
Superman: TAS, there was no trace of bumbling -- as with George Reeves, Clark was a crusading reporter with a no-nonsense manner. (Tim Daly actually gave Clark a deeper voice than Superman.) Both were following the lead of Byrne, who made Clark the object of Lois's affections rather than Superman.
Superman Returns doesn't count, since it's basically a big-budget Richard Donner fan film, resurrecting the Bronze Age version of Superman decades after the fact. And
Man of Steel gave us maybe 30 seconds of Clark in his bespectacled reporter persona, so it's too early to tell what approach they'll take.
