Superman — A Comic Book Legend in Film and Television0

Written by Nishanthini Ganesan

The brain­child of Jerry Siegel (October 1914 — January 1996) and Joe Shuster (July 1914 – July 1992), Superman first appeared in DC’s Action Comics #1 in June 1938. The expla­na­tion for Superman’s pow­ers begins with Superman being the sole-survivor of the planet, Krypton. In a com­plex series of events, the young Superman finds him­self on Earth, where he is adopted by local farm­ers Jonathan and Martha Kent, and named Clark. Th super­hu­man abil­i­ties of the young Clark are kept hid­den until a much later age, after which he begins to use them to fight evil.

Superman pos­sesses an extremely-good sense of hear­ing as he is able to hear sounds too faint for the ordi­nary human ear. Blessed with a body that has unpar­al­leled super­hu­man strength, Superman also pos­sesses eyes that enable him to have ‘tele­scopic’, ‘micro­scopic’, and ‘x-ray’ vision. He also pos­sesses ‘heat-vision’, enabling him to gen­er­ate heat within objects just by sight alone. Superman is able to think, move and react at super­hu­man speeds, along with defy­ing grav­ity by tak­ing flight, mak­ing him the clas­sic superhero.

Little did Siegel and Shuster know that the char­ac­ter they had cre­ated would become the most universally-recognised super­hero, por­trayed in count­less films and on television.

In the early 1940s, Paramount Pictures pro­duced a series of sev­en­teen ani­mated short films, all in Technicolor, based on the char­ac­ter of Superman. The first of these car­toons was released on September 26, 1941 which lasted for 10 min­utes and 22 sec­onds. It was titled Superman and it tells the story of how Superman stops a mad sci­en­tist from destroy­ing a city.

The last of these car­toons was titled Secret Agent and was released on July 30, 1943.

Superman was first pre­sented in a live-action film by Columbia Pictures, which released Superman (1948), a 15-part ser­ial star­ring Kirk Alyn in the title role. The series was well-received, prompt­ing a sec­ond ser­ial, also con­sist­ing of 15-parts, Atom Man vs. Superman (1950). Kirk Alyn reprised his role as Superman.

1951 saw the release of the first full-length Superman fea­ture film, Superman and The Mole Men (1951). Directed by Lee Sholem, the film starred George Reeves as Superman and Phyllis Coates as Lois Lane, Superman’s love-interest. Both Reeves and Coates reprised their roles in the first sea­son of Adventures of Superman (1952), after which Coates left the series and was replaced by Noël Neill.

When Adventures of Superman was filmed in black and white, George Reeves’s actual cos­tume for Superman was made in brown, which replaced red, and grey, which replaced blue. This would serve to pro­vide a bet­ter con­trast for Superman’s cos­tume on-screen. The cos­tume was then changed back to the iconic red and blue for the first time, when the series began to be filmed in colour in 1955.

In 1978, another the­atri­cal ver­sion of Superman was released. This was fol­lowed by Superman II (1980), Superman III (1983) and finally Superman IV: The Quest For Peace (1987).

On September 6, 1996, Warner Bros. Animation, the same com­pany that pro­duced Batman: The Animated Series (TV Series 1992–1995), pre­miered Superman: The Animated Series (TV Series 1996–2000) on The WB Television Network. Tim Daly voiced for Superman. Set in a mod­ern, urban land­scape, Superman: The Animated Series was seen as a fresh take on the orig­i­nal comic-book leg­end. The series also re-introduced many of Superman’s ene­mies from the Superman Rogues Gallery, includ­ing Darkseid, Parasite and Jax-Ur.

Superman: The Animated Series series ran for 54 episodes until it was finally dis­con­tin­ued in 2000. Re-runs of the series, how­ever, con­tinue to be shown up till present-day.

After the con­clu­sion of Superman: The Animated Series, Warner Bros. Animation fea­tured Superman along­side other DC char­ac­ters such as Batman and the Green Lantern in Justice League (TV Series 2001–2006).

On October 16, 2011, the series Smallville (TV Series 2001–2011) charmed audi­ences with its own por­trayal of Superman. With Tom Welling as Superman, the pilot episode became the highest-rated debut for The WB Television Network. Smallville went on for 10 sea­sons, con­clud­ing on May 13, 2011.

While Smallville con­tin­ued to grow its fan base world­wide, the char­ac­ter of Superman returned to the big-screen in Superman Returns (2006), nine­teen years after the last Superman film. Directed by critically-acclaimed film­maker Bryan Singer, Superman Returns was a sequel to the events of Superman II and saw Brandon Routh play­ing the role of the title character.

Seven years on, the char­ac­ter of Superman will be brought to life in yet another film adap­ta­tion, Man of Steel, that is set for release in Singapore on June 13, 2013. Man of Steel stars Henry Cavill as Superman. Russel Crowe also joins the cast as Jor-El, a sci­en­tist on the planet Krypton and the bio­log­i­cal father of Superman.

Almost a cen­tury after its debut, Superman has become, and con­tin­ues to be, an icon of DC comics. The legacy of Superman will endure just as it has done for so long, inspir­ing legions of audi­ences through his por­tray­als in film and tele­vi­sion. For the fans of Superman who wish to see more of their hero, it is safe to say that there will always be a new Superman film set for pre-production just around the cor­ner, or in the case of Man of Steel, wait­ing to be released.

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