Much of the season is spent humanizing Clark, and this only makes him more sympathetic. When he encounters that same artificial intelligence as an adult, it continues to speak to him in a language he doesn't know. It's handwaved away or just not considered.Īnd so we meet a grown Superman who really has no idea who he is. Other versions of Superman take a similar path or often just gloss over the information-it seems to almost be an inborn talent or something not necessary to address. It's possible that the Jor-El of Adventures had a similar plan for his son, but it never came to pass after Clark re-buried the ship and stuck his metaphorical head into the sand. There, a hologram of Jor-El spends literally over a decade educating Clark on everything he needs to know about his background and his abilities. In 1978's Superman, Clark finds a green crystal after Jonathan Kent's death that leads him to the Arctic and acts as a seed for the character's iconic Fortress of Solitude. As viewers who use subtitles, we get the translation for who we can assume is Jor-El, the biological father of Kal-El/Clark Kent. It wasn't until after he graduated college that Clark Kent embraced his special abilities and powers and, even then, much of his actual heritage remains a mystery to him even as the first season came to an end.Īs he begins to explore it, though, on three separate occasions Clark comes up against a hologram of a man in Kryptonian armor and cape, with the House of El "S" symbol on his chest, and long flowing white hair. He didn't embrace his powers right away, and in fact ran away from them. When he discovered his powers as a child, he was as scared as he was excited-especially when the ship that brought him to Earth lit up and a big, scary holographic man appeared out of it. This Man of Steel who viewers get to know in My Adventures With Superman is pretty different from the Supermen we tend to think of. He came to the United States as an infant, adopted from a faraway place to be raised in America by American-born parents who have no real way to help him connect to his original culture and lineage. Superman's experience will be familiar to many. In those cases, the child likely speaks English not just out in the world, but at home as well, with the whole family adopting as many Western customs as they can, leaving their history back in their home country. In another, though, the parents come to America with the hope of their child integrating completely so that they can have the best chance at advancement and not be seen as token diversity hire or something like that. They're a Western person with a Western accent to match while they're out at school, but at home (whether that's just their home or their whole community) they speak the native language of the adults around them. In one, the new character grows up in two worlds. There's a whole spectrum of reality between the best-known versions of growing up in an immigrant family in the Western world though. That said, Superman's status an an immigrant is so closely tied to the character throughout history, making it powerful and accessible. It's important to note that everyone who immigrates to the United States (or elsewhere, really) has their own story, and no superhero story is going to match up perfectly, so this shouldn't be seen as a replacement for telling those stories. Now, My Adventures with Superman has found some important new ways to explore this idea. He has always been an immigrant, even when stories handled that aspect differently-think of Red Son, when Superman's pod crashed into Russia instead of America, or Flashpoint, when he was kept underground as a lifelong prisoner of the government. History has shown that any number of changes can be made to the Superman character-his outfit, his skin color, where he crash-landed, what year he arrived on Earth-but he always begins life as a boy from Krypton who crash-landed onto Earth. This story even sticks with Supes in his latest iteration: Adult Swim's My Adventures with Superman. He was born on the planet Krypton, sent via spaceship to Earth as the planet collapsed beneath his parents' feet. Clark Kent looks and sounds like an all-American guy, but he wasn't born in the United States. Throughout all of this, though, one of the stories that has stuck with the Man of Steel is that of the immigrant. He's been a standard bearer for American ideals, a universal symbol of American pop culture, and the other side of the long-lived argument about who would win between Batman and Superman. Superman, having passed his 85th birthday this June, has meant a lot of things to a lot of people over the years.
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