Tagged: Clark Kent

Happy Birthday: Clark Kent

  • News
  • June 25, 2008

On June 18 (pre-Crisis version), a tiny spaceship crashed in a field outside Smallville, Kansas. Jonathan and Martha Kent happened by and discovered the spaceship—and its black-haired, blue-eyed infant occupant.

They took the baby in and decided to raise him as their own. One week later, on June 25, the adoption was made official and “Clark Kent” was born.

The last son of Krypton would keep that name, and his humble mortal identity, even after he grew up and came into his full powers as the Man of Steel, the mighty Superman.

 

Happy Birthday: Insect Queen

Lana Lang was one of teenaged Clark Kent’s closest friends, and Superboy’s biggest fan—he was romantically interested in her as well, and she was sometimes referred to as “Superboy’s girlfriend.”

Lana was a normal human girl with no powers of her own—until one May 16th when she rescued an insectoid alien from a fallen tree. The grateful alien gave Lana a biogenetic ring that allowed her to gain the power and partial form of any insect or arachnid, though she could only duplicate a particular form once a day.

The newly empowered Lana decided to try her hand at superheroism and donned a costume to become Insect Queen.

Lana eventually became a reserve member of the Legion of Super-Heroes, but got tired of her double life and began using her ring more sparingly.

Danny Fingeroth on ‘Disguised As Clark Kent’

  • News
  • February 11, 2008

disguisedasclarkkent-2176487Former Spider-Man Group Editor Danny Fingeroth has a new book out titled Disguised As Clark Kent: Jews, Comics, and the Creation of the Superhero, in which he examines the "cultural origins of the superhero" with special attention to the way Jewish creators and their experiences influenced the early years of the industry.

Over at CBR, Fingeroth explains how the book came about and provides a few examples of the Jewish influence in comics that forms the basis for the book:

“My favorite involves Marvel’s Mighty Thor, who I’d never seen in a Jewish light before. And why would I, or anyone? He’s a Norse deity! But in his early stories, covering the first several years of the character’s existence, a recurring subplot–that eventually became a main plot–was Thor’s love for his alter ego Dr. Blake’s nurse, Jane Foster. Odin, ruler of the Norse Gods, and Thor’s father, forbade him to marry her because she was a mortal and he was an immortal god.”

Fingeroth noted there are often prohibitions in Jewish and other ethnic communities against marrying outside the group, and that the modern tension of breaking away from this system can be seen in the story of Marvel’s thunder god.  “Stan Lee and Jack Kirby could arguably be interpreted as having been using Thor and Jane to work out their own feelings about the taboos around intermarriage they had grown up with,” Fingeroth said. “I’m not saying they did this consciously–just the opposite. But in retrospect, I found it fascinating and worthwhile to discuss that kind of topic in ‘Disguised as Clark Kent.’”

 

Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny, by Dennis O’Neil

  • News
  • November 6, 2007

Before we get to this week’s official topic, a continuation of our discussion of how superheroes have been evolving, I’d like to remind you all that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. I’m sure all you fans of the late 19th century biologist Ernst Haeckel – and I know you’re legion – remember that this means that the development of an organism exactly mirrors the evolutionary development of the species.

Okay, now that that’s settled…consider any given story genre the organism and storytelling as a whole the species. The first stories, maybe told around campfires, were not long on characterization. According to some anthropologists, they were basically religious, an effort to give an identity to the forces that shaped people’s lives, the forces they were already acknowledging, maybe, with rituals. Not much characterization in these yarns. They were more about what happened – some deity decides to create the world – than the nuances of the protagonists’ personalities. As storytelling evolved, from an element of religion to entertainment, the characters began to have personalities, sort of, until by the time Homer smote ‘is bloomin’ lyre the good guys and bad guys were acting for reasons peculiar to who they were. And by the time of Greek drama, which, again, was part of religious festivals, they were pretty individualized.

Shoot forward about 2,500 years…Along came comic book superheroes (as opposed to all the other kinds of superdoers, who are a bit outside our boundaries, though I’m sure they’re very nice) and…well, they weren’t quite as uncharacterized as those campfire deities. But we do find ontogeny-recapitulating phylogeny, sort of. Clark Kent was, after all, “mild mannered” and Lois Lane was ambitious, but the stories were plot driven – the stuff was more about what the heroes did rather than why they did it. (Batman comes close to being an exception; a few issues into his initial run in Detective Comics, writer Bill Finger actually motivated him. But unless there are a lot of stories I haven’t read, the emphasis on what makes Bruce Wayne tick came later.)

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TV REVIEW: Jekyll

bbcjekyll-9178210What if the story of Jekyll and Hyde were based on a real person, a true case? And what if there were someone alive in the present day that had the same horrible curse?

This is the premise of the new BBC mini-series Jekyll, premiering this Saturday at 8 PM on BBC America. The series was envisioned by producer Jeffrey Taylor and Steven Moffat, creator of the British comedy Coupling and writer of several episodes of the new Doctor Who series (such as “[[[The Girl In The Fireplace]]]” and “[[[The Empty Child]]]”). Steven Moffat handles the writing for all episodes.

The six episode mini-series features Doctor Tom Jackman, a man who doesn’t know who his parents were, having been found as an abandoned baby in a railway station. For the past several months, Dr. Jackman has been having black-outs during which another force is inexplicably inhabiting his body. Along with this darker personality that seems to lack any morals, there is a physical change. Jackman’s alter ego is actually younger, thinner, two inches taller, and has borderline superhuman strength and speed. Jackman soon finds out that the famous story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was based on a real person who lived and died in the 19th century. Now Jackman struggles to keep his life in control and his family safe, a family he prays that his own “Mr. Hyde” will never find out about lest he decide to attack them.

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Supergirl To Fly In Smallville

  • News
  • June 14, 2007

Well, it turns out Clark Kent won’t be the first flying Kryptonian to inhabit the Smallville teevee series. According to TV Guide, the show’s producers are casting about to fill the role of Kara, who will appear in about half of this coming season’s shows. They hope to show the new actress off at the San Diego Comic Con.

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