Superman Month – How Smallville’s super-teen kept the Man of Steel’s memory alive

Superman is a character with a long and varied history and the upcoming Man of Steel movie has provided commentators with the perfect opportunity to dig up his every incarnation. However, one version of the Superman mythology appears to have been largely ignored by mainstream media: the long-running origin series Smallville.

And in spite of sometimes being the silliest show on television, it’s time to give it some credit.

Airing for ten years on the WB network and then the CW, Smallville has been the life-force behind keeping Superman in the public eye. Though such an iconic character is never going to completely fade from the zeitgeist, Smallville was crucial in making sure that Superman wasn’t left behind in 1987.

Tom Welling played a teenage Clark Kent in the series, portraying the future super-stud as a rather more naive and vulnerable character than previous versions. Smallville tracked his path from being an awkward freshman through to being a marginally-less awkward journalist at The Daily Planet.

As with most superhero origin stories, Smallville had to offset the fact that we all know how the story ends. It did this by sidestepping traditional canon in favour of refreshing characters and story-lines  Lex Luthor began as an adolescent Clark’s friend, his baldness as a result of Clark’s entry to earth, while Lois Lane turned out to be the cousin of Chloe Sullivan, Clark’s non-canon best friend.

A criticism often levelled at Superman is that his invincibility limits what writers can do with his character. Smallvilleprovided the perfect answer to this apparent narrative conundrum: rather than simply portraying his perfection, it explored Clark’s journey to discovering his powers and his fate.

This journey was great and often hilarious; only on Smallvillewould we have had a whole episode dedicated to how Clark’s sexual awakening triggers his heat vision. It also made Superman’s invincibility a non-issue; Clark’s struggle is very rarely simply about his physical strength. Instead, Smallville chose to focus on how he psychologically grapples with his humanity or lack of it which, to me, is far more intriguing than any meagre fist fight.

Much like its lead character, Smallville went through several phases. The four early seasons sit comfortably as a high school drama with a healthy dose of the ‘weird and unexplained’ – see Season Four’s ‘Spell’ and Season Five’s ‘Thirst’ for two particularly… imaginative episodes. Seasons Five, Six and Seven awkwardly negotiate a transition into college and cover the increasingly-dull romantic tussles of Clark, Lana and Lex. Finally, Seasons Eight, Nine and Ten see Smallville finally become a show about Superman, following Clark as he begins to work at The Daily Planet and to develop a fledgling superhero persona, the rather limply-named ‘Red Blue Blur’.

Though at times this extended run made Smallville feel a bit too delayed, it is the reason why Clark’s final push into becoming (*spoiler*) Superman in the final episode means so much. It was truly a moving moment for Clark to finally don the cape and tights, not just because he was finally Superman, but because we had watched his decade-long journey of self-discovery and this was its triumphant conclusion.