Lois & Clark revisited
Talking to bohemiancachet the other day had reminded me of this, and so I went and rented the first season of Lois & Clark. I hadn't seen those episodes since they were originally broadcast, but I was always fond of the show, and I think it's probably my favourite incarnation of the Superman myth in terms of sheer fun and relaxation. Not the most fascinating or
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The first season of The Adventures of Superman (1952, B&W syndicated television show, USA) had a Clark Kent (George Reeves) and Lois Lane (Phyllis Coates) team-up that was interesting for its day. Phyllis Coates' Lois was not as sweet as the Lois portrayed by Noel Neill, and there was very, very little suggestion that she had romantic inclinations toward Superman. That first season Lois was all about her job, being the best, and she was shown to work well with Clark Kent who was also portrayed as a great reporter. Superman fans claim she was a bitchy Lois (to Clark), but I've watched the series for myself, and there are too many examples of Coates' Lois relying on Clark Kent to be her competent partner when the going got rough. For instance, when she thinks there's going to be trouble, she calls in to the Daily Planet and requests that Clark join her, insistent on it being Clark more than once as I recall.
The series has a very hard-line stance that none of the other characters could recognize George Reeves' Clark Kent as a glasses-wearing Superman, not even with a load of double-entendre joke lines from Clark for the audience at home, but the first season of The Adventures of Superman was an all-ages program, not a kiddie program. (The sponsor of the syndicated show demanded a change in that, iirc.)
George Reeves' Superman also enjoyed his abilities with zero angst about them. But he also enjoyed his life as Clark Kent in Metropolis, with friends and friendly contacts all over the episodes. That character was an adventurer-type.
Something you probably couldn't get your hands on would be the Ruby Spears cartoons from 1988. (No release yet of those on VHS or DVD, that I know of.) The Spears cartoons were a synthesis of Silver Age and post-COIE Superman, with adult Clark Kent being somewhat mild-mannered but not a doormat. That series also had Smallville-based segment to each show that was the same basic youth-of-Clark premise as Smallville but with 85% less dark childhood angst.
Lois & Clark was fun for the first two seasons in its focus on a budding romance, the first Superman television series to do so to that extent. Late Bronze Age and, of course, post-COIE comics were doing so as well, a break from the notion that such was impossible. Lois & Clark's third and fourth seasons were a mixed bag, but I don't know why. Maybe screenwriterly panic at how to keep a romance fresh to the audience once it was an every episode thing? The plotlines went bizarre, but I saw that happen for about four to five years in the comics when the writers seemed stuck on how to portray a married Superman without repelling readers (no template established and maintained from 1938, maybe).
And I will admit that I have seen and read too much Superman for me to think that Superman Returns is the best version that the year 2006 could produce. It's pretty, though, and does focus on emotion, romantic and paternal.
When you see Superman Returns, please do not try to reconcile it with Richard Donner's two Superman movies, even though the movie relies on at least the first one for an origin up to the debut in Metropolis, with one retcon of Clark's youth. Bryan Singer has already stated when questioned that he went AU on certain key points, even with claims that it is a later-day sequel. (It's a thematic sequel, basically, with the importing in of Marlon Brando as an actor.)
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