My Adventures with Superman Soars Thanks to Its Excellent Take on Clark Kent

Near the end of Kill Bill Volume 2, the film’s titular bad guy delivers a monologue that gets at the heart of his character. After incapacitating our heroine, the Bride (Uma Thurman), Bill takes the chance to mansplain about his favorite comic book hero, Superman. He rambles about how for most superheroes, like Bruce Wayne or Peter Parker, their crime fighting alias is an alter ego, a mask they literally put on, but for Superman, these roles are flipped: “Superman didn’t become Superman. Superman was born Superman. When Superman wakes up in the morning, he’s Superman. His alter ego is Clark Kent. His outfit with the big red “S,” that’s the blanket he was wrapped in as a baby when the Kents found him. Those are his clothes. What Kent wears—the glasses, the business suit—that’s the costume. That’s the costume Superman wears to blend in with us. Clark Kent is how Superman views us. And what are the characteristics of Clark Kent. He’s weak, he’s unsure of himself, he’s a coward. Clark Kent is Superman’s critique on the whole human race.”

Now, this spiel isn’t necessarily meant to be taken seriously; it’s the worldview of a violent sociopath who views kindness and compassion as character flaws, and as such, he sees Clark’s benevolence as a weakness. These words draw attention to Bill’s values and explain why he is offended that the Bride (who he is comparing to Superman) left the assassin’s life behind her.

However, despite Bill’s obvious misinterpretation of Superman as a character, his diatribe gets at an interesting question: which of these personas is the “main” one, and which is the alter ego? Although the villain is wrong about Superman looking down on humanity, there is a marked difference between Clark and Superman in most adaptations. As Clark, he’s an unassuming, mostly regular person (aside from his killer jawline) whose primary concerns are around work and family, while when he’s Superman, he’s a near-unstoppable being who battles inter-dimensional aliens during his lunch break.

Of course, most tellings don’t explicitly label a particular half as the “true” version of this character, but they do usually focus on one or the other, with the opposite role positioned as the alter ego. In many ensemble stories, especially ones centered on the Justice League, the focus is squarely on Superman and his Herculean heroics, while in many origin stories (or live-action series where they don’t want to spend too much on VFX), we get more Clark Kent and his interpersonal drama. Initially, My Adventures with Superman, the delightful animated series that recently wrapped its second season, seems squarely focused on Clark, with Superman as his secondary persona. However, as it goes on, the series delivers a more interesting and holistic take on the character, balancing both personal drama and world-ending threats as it rejects the idea that Clark and Superman are warring personas.

The story begins as our bright-eyed protagonist starts his new job as an intern for the Daily Planet, and throughout the first season, we watch as he comes into himself, both as a hero and a young adult. While a lot of the time, it feels like superhero origin stories are eager to “get through” the mundane so they can arrive at the fantastical, My Adventures with Superman chooses to put equal emphasis on both these facets, investing as much time in building up Clark’s emotional concerns, like his romantic relationship with Lois or worries about his heritage, as it spends building up the next big villain.

As for the more grounded moments, these scenes basically always land, in large part because the banter between our central trio of Clark (Jack Quaid), Jimmy (Ishmel Sahid), and Lois (Alice Lee) is consistently heartfelt and hilarious. Whether it’s the voice actors giving convincing line deliveries, the punchy dialogue, or their greater character arcs, the main cast is the core of the series’ success. On top of this, a great decision around these characters is that it doesn’t take long for Clark’s inner circle to discover that he’s Superman. This further breaks down the wall between the two versions of the character: since his friends know he’s Superman, they can frequently take part in his adventures. Clark acts the same around his buddies whether he’s wearing glasses or donning the cape, and while there’s still an abstract “Superman” to the general public, the blurring of these two figures in private erases the boundaries between the two narratively speaking. As a result, it feels like the show can much more freely maneuver between different modes, seamlessly jumping between big battles and relationship hiccups without these tonal switches feeling jarring.

However, despite blending these personas, there is still tension between Clark and Superman, as one of the character’s biggest concerns throughout the first season is that he’s terrified of his powers and that he may have been sent to Earth as an alien invader. Eventually, after repeatedly grappling with these issues, he investigates the spaceship buried in his parents’ backyard, where he talks with a hologram of his birth father and more fully accepts his abilities and the good they can bring. Superman, or more specifically, Kal-El, isn’t an identity to be feared; it’s something to be embraced.

But while Clark is no longer afraid of himself in the second season, he becomes increasingly self-conscious that others might be, and the situation isn’t exactly helped by Lex Luthor and Amanda Waller’s xenophobic scheme to drive public opinion against our hero. Clark even begins to think that his closest friends, Lois and Jimmy, might also buy into this rhetoric, isolating him further. It’s a conflict that perfectly captures how the series balances the two halves of this character; while it’s obviously bad that Waller is mobilizing a spec ops division to take Superman down, it’s equally—if not more—concerning that Clark and his buddies are on shaky terms.

Eventually, he feels so alone that he activates a deep space beacon to meet his long-lost cousin, Kara, despite the dangers this could bring. When Kara arrives waving the Kryptonian battle flag, Clark learns the truth about his planet: they were conquerors whose downfall was orchestrated by their own imperialistic machinations. The last Kryptonians are Clark, who obviously disagrees with these methods, Kara, who at least initially believes in this imperial project, and Brainiac, a military computer orchestrating the “revival” of this culture through conquest.

During their ensuing struggles, Brainiac places Clark in a simulation to play on his anxieties about how others perceive him. Our protagonist sees false memories of Lois rejecting him because he’s an alien, further accentuating the hurt from their breakup. Later, Brainiac wipes most of Clark’s memory and places him in virtual reality as the villain puppeteers his body to perform the very thing Clark fears most: hurting others.

However, one of the most challenging things for Clark to grapple with doesn’t come from Brainiac, but from Kara. Clark shows Kara his memories, and he comes to a moment when his dad instructs him to hold back while playing catch to avoid injuring people. “My parents taught me everything I know about love and family, about what matters,” Clark says to Kara. She retorts, “They taught you how to hide. This was a lesson in how to stifle your true self. Did anyone on that planet even care for the real you?” The argument that Clark is a “false” persona defined by human weakness sounds remarkably similar to Bill’s worldview, but the part that stings is that Clark is forced to suppress part of himself to fit in out of fear of persecution. This line, which sums up his recent worries, lands as hard as any punch he takes this season, and only lands in a show this tied up in its protagonist’s headspace.

But of course, in the end, we see that there are people on Earth who care about the real Clark. In a delightful pair of final episodes, Clark’s friends rescue him, making him realize how much he means to them, alien ancestry and all. Their compassion eventually breaks through to Kara as well, who, after learning that Brainiac has been deceiving her, teams up to stop him. As Kara hangs out at the Kent family home after this battle, we see that Clark has finally found another superpowered person he can relate to (and play catch with). Although many in the outside world may still be afraid of him, his cousin and friends are on his side, accepting Clark as well as Superman.

At no point did it feel like Clark had to throw away his human frailty and “become” Superman to save the day; instead, both seasons are about him balancing and embracing both these identities, as the concerns of one half bleed into the other. Whether he’s dealing with relationship problems or saving the world, this version of Clark Kent always feels like a full, interesting character instead of two incomplete sketches, which helps make My Adventures with Superman one of the best takes on this iconic superhero we’ve seen in a long time.

Elijah Gonzalez is an assistant Games and TV Editor for Paste Magazine. In addition to playing and watching the latest on the small screen, he also loves film, creating large lists of media he’ll probably never actually get to, and dreaming of the day he finally gets through all the Like a Dragon games. You can follow him on Twitter @eli_gonzalez11.

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