Too Much like Clark Kent?

andyf wrote: Somebody posted on another message board that Supergirl's producers in fact really want to produce a Superman tv show and Supergirl is a type of surrogate for them.

Oh, I wonder who that was... (whistles innocently!)

Look, the distinction is clear: Superman is an alien from the dying planet of Kryprton who came to Earth as a orphaned child, where he inherited great powers which he uses to inspire hope and fight for truth and justice in the guise of a red and blue costumed superhero. When not fighting crime he blends into society by adopting the secret identity of a clumsy spectacle-wearing mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper, hiding the heroic costume underneath his rather conservative everyday clothes. Supergirl is an alien from the dying planet of Kryprton who came to Earth as a orphaned child, where she inherited great powers which she uses to inspire hope and fight for truth and justice in the guise of a red and blue costumed superhero. When not fighting crime she blends into society by adopting the secret identity of a clumsy spectacle-wearing mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper, hiding the heroic costume underneath her rather conservative everyday clothes.

Where's the confusion?

When the Supergirl show's producers said they were great fans of the Richard Donner (Chris Reeve) Superman movie(s) a lot of us rejoiced, because it seemed like we were going to get a break from the dark and gritty style of the DC films. What we didn't expect (at least, I didn't!) was that they'd basically copy large parts of the Donner/Reeve Superman format, right down to even making Kara Danvers a newspaper reporter. If you watch some of the Sarah Schechter interviews from SDCC 2015, she seems to hint that the EPs were initially a bit surprised when they first started on Supergirl -- like they didn't really understand what they were supposed to do with the character (recall the answers with the Ginger Rogers dancing-in-heels references?) I got the impression that they'd been given Supergirl, rather than asked for her.

When Supergirl started in comics in 1959 she was really just a basic knock-off of Superman. But by the time of the Bronze Age -- certainly from her Superman Family run onward -- she developed into a different character to her cousin. Kara was restless, and not entirely certain she wanted to a superhero. The 1970s stories, and 1980s Daring New Adventures run, deal with Kara's feelings of loneliness and of being a freak. She frequently tries to escape the influence of Supergirl on her life, but is always drawn back towards the costume, with the result that her personal life always suffers. The tv Kara, however, uses none of this. Tv Kara is basically Clark Kent, except younger and less experienced. Aside from the years of experience, the two characters are peas in a pod.

Since the show has been on air I've heard more than one fan who has discovered Supergirl through the tv show express surprise when they learn that the comicbook Supergirl actually has a rogues gallery of her own. Their surprise is justified: the show predominantly steals its characters and villains from the Superman canon, and ignores Supergirl's own list of characters. Lena Luthor is perhaps the only example of a Supergirl canon character that has been used in the tv show * (unless you count Reactron as a Supergirl villain.) There's no Lesla Lar, no Blackstarr, no Black Flame, no Shyla Kor-Onn (!!!!), no Dick Malverne (aside from a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo in the pilot, which was cut), no Philip Decker... Hell, not even a Brainiac 5.

* = Okay, technically Lena first appeared in a Lois Lane story -- Superman's Girl Friend Lois Lane #23 (Feb 61.)

Superman has a lot of followers out there, clearly more than Supergirl. And there's obviously an appetite for a lighter Donner-esque Superman from many quarters, not least from the fans of the old Smallville show. A lot of the Supergirl tv show fan web sites -- eg. KryptonSite and SG.tv -- are run (AFAIK) by ex-Smallville fans. So it was inevitable that when the Supergirl show decided to add Superman as a guest character, it would embolden Smallville and other Supes fans to pester for a Superman tv show. And indeed, this is what seems to have happened. So rather than satisfying the "where's Superman?" commentary, the guest appearance has ignited a campaign for a spin-off show.

Now, let's not get our knickers in a twist... it is entirely possible that DC won't let CW do a Superman tv show!

...or...

They might just look at the reaction to Supes' guest appearance and think that a Donner-esque Superman on tv might be a good idea right now (particularly as their movie Superman is struggling!) But here's the problem -- there's already a version of the Donner Superman on tv at the moment, it's called "Supergirl". So what do they do with the Supergirl show if the genuine article turns up on the same network and demands his clothes back..? Do they reinvent Superman so he isn't a mild-mannered reporter? Do they re-re-boot Supergirl to get rid of all the stuff she stole from Superman? Or do they just cancel Supergirl, and make her a guest in her cousin's series?


R5

five_red wrote:
Look, the distinction is clear: Superman is an alien from the dying planet of Kryprton who came to Earth as a orphaned child, where he inherited great powers which he uses to inspire hope and fight for truth and justice in the guise of a red and blue costumed superhero. When not fighting crime he blends into society by adopting the secret identity of a clumsy spectacle-wearing mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper, hiding the heroic costume underneath his rather conservative everyday clothes. Supergirl is an alien from the dying planet of Kryprton who came to Earth as a orphaned child, where she inherited great powers which she uses to inspire hope and fight for truth and justice in the guise of a red and blue costumed superhero. When not fighting crime she blends into society by adopting the secret identity of a clumsy spectacle-wearing mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper, hiding the heroic costume underneath her rather conservative everyday clothes.

Where's the confusion?

In my opinion, the producers kinda painted her with the Superman brush at the beginning, setting her up as a 12 year old raised and grown up as a now 20-something superheroine. Part of Supergirl's makeup, not to mention her primary differentiation from Clark, is the fact that Clark was raised here as an infant and grew up adjusting to his superpowers and hiding his true identity. He is, for all intents and purposes, an "Earthling" with superpowers. Supergirl -- at least in a few comic incarnations -- was suddenly thrust into superpowered stardom AS A TEENAGER with the reminder that everyone she loved just died! Combining these aspects makes Supergirl much more of a wildcard -- as well as different from Superman in that she is a true alien refugee --- and creates a lot more angst with her trying to fit in. To me, the show might have looked significantly different -- and made her look and act a little different from SM --- had they not fast-forwarded 12 years where she is now more well-adjusted and used to Earth, her powers, and how to hide them.......just like her cousin.

Of course, the show runners didn't help differentiate them any more by making him a guest star on the show....

ElF

Some great commentary on the differences between the cousins, and what they could bring to a TV show about each of them. It is, I believe, a missed opportunity to give us an outsider looking in.

I also think comics are being painfully slow to keep up with the world changing around us. And this is despite DC and Marvel's relentless commitment to the status quo so that the world of their comics looks mostly like the world outside our window. With Superman (and by extension the superman-esque Supergirl we're watching) that trips them up badly in two ways.

First, journalists have entirely lost their gravitas. We now use the word to describe media mouthpieces that deliver agendas more than noble investigators ferreting out secrets that need to be brought to the light of public scrutiny. Journalist has gone from 'not so super-powered hero of the people' to 'so what? You got a blog, too?' and trying to leverage that as sign of the character's intrinsic nobility as both hero and in their secret identity just falls flat.

Second, the age of the secret identity has come and gone. Unless the character can outright morph into another appearance, the idea the government or even an interested fan with a smart phone can't figure out who you really are is untenable. In hours for the government, in no more than a few weeks as a private citizen. Welcome to the information age. There's stories to be told about privacy and public service in anonymity, but they're a lot more complex than slipping on a domino mask or a pair of glasses. While Christopher Reeves delivered a viscerally compelling performance that sold glasses and a shift in posture as a disguise in a way the comics had never achieved, Google-faces is not so easily misled.

Original link: Why CW doesn’t need a spin-off Superman tv show


Why CW doesn’t need a spin-off Superman tv show

When Superman finally appeared at the start of season two of CW’s Supergirl , it inevitably got many fan sites and bloggers wondering about the possibility of a spin-off series featuring the Big Blue Boy Scout himself [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. Undoubtedly many commentators seems to find Tyler Hoechlin’s more upbeat interpretation of the character to be a relief from the dark and brooding Superman delivered recently by Henry Cavill on the silver screen.

I’d like to argue here that we don’t need an upbeat Superman series on The CW network, for the simple reason that it would be redundant: we already have a tv Superman – he’s called “Supergirl”!

Let me explain…

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Kara ‘Kal-El’..?

When Supergirl’s executive producers were interviewed at SDCC 2015 and other press events prior to the show’s launch they often mentioned how inspired they were by the tone and spirit of the classic Richard Donner (and Richard Lester) Superman movies starring Christopher Reeve [1, 2]. But little could anyone have suspected just how much of an ever-increasing debt the CBS/CW Supergirl would end up owing to that iconic Bronze Age interpretation of the Man of Steel.

Before delving deep into an analysis of the tv show elements stolen from Superman, it is necessary to first discount the bleeding obvious. Both characters are, of course, superhero crime fighters from Krypton, both share the same super powers, and both wear similar styled costumes hidden beneath their everyday alter ego clothes. That’s no surprise, given that Supergirl began life as a gender swapped spin-off (a distaff counterpart) of her big cousin. As such, these similarities can be entirely forgiven.

In the comics and other media, that’s largely where the super-similarities between cousins end. The tv show goes much much further, however.

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Let’s start with the basics: on the tv show Kara Danvers dresses in a very conservative, ‘preppy’, fashion and adopts a pair of glasses as a disguise, exactly like her cousin (but entirely unlike her comicbook counterpart.) Kara hides behind a somewhat introverted and clumsy persona, exactly like her cousin (but entirely unlike her comicbook counterpart.) And Kara is a reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper, exactly like her cousin (but, again, entirely unlike her comicbook counterpart.)

The similarities become even more blatant when specifically considering the Chris Reeve Superman movies: Kara’s mother was a high ranking judge on Krypton who sentenced criminals to the Phantom Zone, exactly like movie Kal-El’s father, and Kara is able to seek advice about her adventures on Earth from an artificially intelligent hologram of her late mother, just as Kal-El did with a hologram of his father, Jor-El.

None of these ideas appear in any Supergirl incarnation prior to the tv show, they are all lifted from Superman.

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So, the tv Kara Danvers owes more to Clark Kent in terms of her manner and dress sense than she does to Linda Lee, or any inheritor of the Supergirl title over the 55+ years of the character’s existence in comicbooks, and her Krypton family looks suspiciously like a gender-reversed version of the Donner Superman.

The only substantive difference between the tv Supergirl and Bronze Age Superman is that Kara is portrayed as being a novice who is still learning – but one has to reasonably ask how long she can remain a newbie if the series rolls into a third or fourth season? Kara will have to be an incredibly slow learner who never really achieves competence, or she’ll quickly become indistinguishable from her cousin.

“Is she friend or foe?”

It is sometimes said that Supergirl doesn’t have a rich rogues gallery of foes she can call her own. This is only partially true. While it must be acknowledged that most of Kara’s more notable enemies in recent times have indeed been commandeered from the canon of other DC heroes, if one reaches back far enough one can find both friends and enemies that are uniquely Kara’s.

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Step forward evil Kandorian scientist Lesla-Lar, fellow Kandor escapee Zora (aka Black Flame), the deranged and power-hungry Shyla Kor-Onn, and the Nazi super villain Blackstarr – four female foes who all debuted in Supergirl adventures and made repeat appearances thereafter.

Okay, so while it is true that Supergirl’s rogues gallery isn’t exactly overflowing with the most dastardly of evil doers, it is odd that the tv show has totally ignored the few genuine Supergirl specific foes that do exist, particularly as they are mostly female. The closest the tv show has strayed to a uniquely Supergirl villain is Reactron, who began life in a two issue tale inside the pages of The Daring New Adventures of Supergirl (1983.)

Kara’s supporting cast of friends is likewise largely drawn from her cousin’s canon. Cat Grant, Jimmy (James) Olsen, Lucy Lane, Winslow Schott, Maxwell Lord, Hank Henshaw, etc. etc. – even Eve Teschmacher from the Chris Reeve movies gets a revamp on the show. True, Alex Danvers hasn’t been lifted from the pages of any Superman comic; but she hasn’t been lifted from a Supergirl comic either.

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Okay, yes, it is also true that Supergirl doesn’t have an extensive cast of supporting characters to call her own, but what few friends she has acquired over the decades have largely been ignored by the tv series. The only uniquely Supergirl characters to appear thus far have been Lena Luthor, and kara’s parents, Zor-El, and Alura. Should Kara’s adopted parents be included on that list too? Maybe, if one overlooks the identity change. Dick Malverne possibly also qualifies, even though his appearance in the pilot apparently ended up on the cutting room floor. (Don’t blink, and you might see him in the flashback footage of Manhunter.)

The fact is that Lena is the only Supergirl supporting character on the show who contributes more than occasional cameos or one-off guest appearances. While all-too-many of the other regulars are Superman supporting characters, or characters closely associated with Supes.

(Yes, yes, yes! Technically Lena Thorul – aka Lena Luthor – first appeared in a short tale inside the pages of Lois Lane #23, but she’s usually counted as a Supergirl supporting character by most fans!)

Missing the plot

Even if the proliferation of Superman cast characters on the CW show can be explained away by the scarcity of characters in Supergirl’s own friends and foe gallery, surely after 55+ years of adventures the show’s creative team could find a few classic Kara Zor-El plot lines to poach for use on the series?

But, regrettably, here again the show largely steals from Kara’s big cousin.

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The most obvious example is For the Girl Who Has Everything, taken directly from a well known Superman tale, but there’s also a few more subtle examples. In Falling Kara is poisoned by exposure to some synthetic Kryptonite manufactured on Earth, turning her into an evil version of herself. Sound familiar? It should do, as it’s one of the sub-plots of the Superman III movie. In the pilot, and throughout the first season, Kara is menaced by Phantom Zone escapees who seek revenge on her because she is the offspring of the judge who banished them to their prison. Sound familiar? It will do if you’re at all familiar with the main plot from Superman II.

Most of the episodes, of course, feature original story lines, but it is interesting that when the show does choose to pay homage to stories and plots from yesteryear, it is from the Superman storybook it often steals, rather than Kara’s own adventures.

Conclusion: “Superman with boobs”

But so what? Does any of this actually matter?

Supergirl has always suffered from an image problem, typified by the (alleged) reasoning behind her erasure from history in Crisis on Infinite Earths. Dick Giordano (Vice President and Executive Editor at the time) is claimed to have nicknamed Supergirl as “Superman with boobs”, and apparently he was not the only one at DC who shared those sentiments.

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Although Kara has had many loyal fans over the years who revel in how different she is to her cousin – including DC insiders – to the uneducated or casual observer she is nothing more than a cheap knock-off of DC’s most famous intellectual property. People who don’t really know the character and her history jump to conclusions, and the conclusions they jump to are often woefully inaccurate (to the chagrin of true Supergirl fans [1].)

(Okay, to be sure, the Helen Slater movie didn’t exactly help the character’s image! But at least Slater’s Supergirl wasn’t just Chris Reeve in a skirt.)

Kara Zor-El is different to Kal-El because she is a character formed in the run up to the Silver Age. Supergirl is what Superman would have been like if he’d been created closer to the Merry Marvel Age of fractured and dysfunctional superheroes.

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Her cousin still bears the fingerprints of being forged in a conservative war-torn era: good was good and bad was bad (with no middle ground), school teachers and police officers were always to be trusted, and heroes never doubted themselves. But Kara was a product of a more nuanced and complicated time. Authority figures were sometimes corrupt, villains could sometimes have good reasons behind their misguided actions, and heroes were allowed to doubt and fail.

Kal-El is a superhero who adopts the identity of a normal person; Kara Zor-El is a normal person who adopts the identity of a superhero. The former is classic Golden Age, the latter is trademark Silver Age. And that’s why it is important that Supergirl is not treated as just Superman with boobs!

By serving up a tepid version of the Donner Superman, Greg Berlanti and company are reinforcing the simple (and unjustified!) gender-swap rip-off stereotype that the character has fought so long and hard to overcome. And with each new episode, rather than grow out from the shadow of her big cousin, the show seems to make Kara ever more like a Big Blue Girl Scout.

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It would be wrong to suggest that the tv show completely ignores previous Maids of Might – Kara’s delayed arrival on Earth echos modern chronologies and her adopted surname (Danvers) is a reference to her Silver Age origins – but aside from these occasional nods to the print lore the structure and furniture of the Benoist Supergirl are firmly copied from Superman (most specifically the Chris Reeve Superman) rather than being interpretations of any ‘Supergirl’ that fans have seen in the pages of any comicbook.

So, in conclusion, all that is left to be said is to reaffirm that we don’t need a CW Superman show because ‘Supergirl’ is – in all but name – Superman with boobs..!