The Smallville Chronicles by Lincoln Geraghty

Author:Lincoln Geraghty [Geraghty, Lincoln]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
Published: 2011-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Part Two

Audiences and Metatexts

Playing Superman. Picture courtesy of Van Norris.

chapter five

Smallville: Superhero Mythos and Intellectual Property Regimes

Ian Gordon

On October 16, 2001, Smallville debuted on the WB, a network owned by the Time Warner Corporation. The WB was a fledgling network that focused on the teen young adult market and was at various times the home to such teen-focused series as Dawson’s Creek (1998–2003), Roswell (1999–2002), Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–2003), and Gilmore Girls (2000–2007). Smallville, too, aimed at that teen market. The series set in the mythical Kansas hometown of Clark Kent/Superman contained the basic features of the Superman story, such as his parents having sent him as an infant in a spaceship to escape the doomed planet Krypton, Martha and Jonathan Kent finding him in the ship, and his super strength and speed. Some other aspects of the series came from the Superboy comics, the adventures of Superman as a teenager. For instance, just as in the Superboy comic book and the Superman movies, Lana Lang was Clark Kent/Superman’s initial love interest. And, as in the Superboy comic books, Clark and Lex Luthor were friends and Lex was not predestined for evil. But in Smallville, Clark Kent did not don the familiar Superman suit, nor in general did he fly. The conceit of the series, at least in the first few seasons, was that Clark’s powers were only just developing and that he, like a pubescent boy, was trying hard to adjust to the changes in his body. Although the series underplayed the superhero aspect of the character, the press nonetheless described Smallville variously as “Superboy redux,” a “teenage Superman series,” and “a teen friendly update of the Superboy saga.” As this latter article suggested, it was a series “located just a mile or so upstream from Dawson’s Creek.” The series, then, was both a teen angst–filled drama and part of the Superman mythology.1

Smallville is the third live television series of Superman. The first series in the 1950s, The Adventures of Superman (1952–1958), began as something akin to a hard-boiled detective series with Superman cracking the jaws of criminals, but after the first season the producers lightened the tone somewhat for a younger audience. That show ran for six seasons, although from the third season on only thirteen episodes, and not the usual twenty-six, were produced. Deborah Joy LeVine, the producer of the 1990s series Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman (1993–1997), originally conceived of it as a light action-romance series along the lines of the Bruce Willis–Cybil Sheppard series Moonlighting (1985–1989). For various reasons, she soon had to add more action and somewhat less romance, muddying the focus of the series and losing some of its broad demographic appeal. As a result, the series only lasted four seasons. These two series and the film versions of Superman showed that the potential audience for a seventy-year-old comic book character is large and diverse, stretching from current comic book fan boys to those with a passing interest in the character.

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