Yeah. I loved that the Superman/Lois/Clark love triangle was completely flipped - Lois loved Clark and Superman wasn’t even a factor. Wonderful. Also nice to see a Jor-El who is thoroughly admirable.
Yeah. There’s even an issue in which a Little Leaguer saves Supes
http://supermanica.superman.nu/index.php/Little_Leaguer
I’ve read that story! Decades ago. Most likely in a re-print - I don’t think I have any comics that old. I still remember his mermaid friend, Lori Lemaris, from that story. For whatever reason, she really stuck with me. To the best of my recollection, that’s the only time I’ve ever read a story with her in it. I still remember being a bit befuddled when I first read it that Superman had a friend who was a mermaid, who I had never heard of before, and who never seemed to be mentioned again.
The panel where Superman mentally reviews all the "L.L."s in his life also includes Luma Lynai (I have no idea who that is), Linda Lee (Supergirl’s secret identity at the time), and Lighting Lad of the Legion of Super Heroes.
Apparently, she was Superwoman in a couple Silver Age stories.
And this sidetrack into "L.L."s brought something interesting to my attention, of which I had no previous knowledge:
She was a Silver Age enemy of Supergirl - and was from the Kryptonian city of Kandor.
So, the name Leslie Larr (Morgan Edge’s assistant) is probably just a deep dive Easter egg with no particular significance. Or…Leslie Larr might be Lesla-Lar, and might actually be a Kryptonian, and that might be why she wasn’t affected by the nega-bomb that negated all of the transferred Kryptonian consciousnesses.
And then ducked into a phone booth to change back into Clark.
We need “like” buttons around here.
Yeah, I spotted the phone booth when he first walked past it, and was disappointed he didn’t use it for changing into Superman - and delighted that he used it changing back.
She was a superwoman on another planet that Kara tried to fix Superman up with. And she looked like a grown-up version of Kara. And I’m annoyed that this information is even in my brain.
Oh, yeah, I think I read that story, in which Superman tells Kara that he’d be delighted to marry her, but Krypton has an unbreakable custom prohibiting marrying a first cousin.
Don’t forget Lori Lemaris, the mermaid.
Yep. And to change into Superman, we got him running towards the camera, opening his shirt to reveal the “S”. So we got visual quotes of both of his iconic cinematic transformation sequences.
In addition to that, as noted upthread, we got the holding up the car from the cover of Action Comics. Were there any other iconic visual quotes?
In dialogue, of course we got Lois Lane, and Perry White, and The Daily Planet. We also got shout-outs for Steve Lombard and Jimmy Olsen (I was a little disappointed no one mentioned Cat Grant). Were there any other shoutouts?
The white supremacist arsonist sort of referenced the “Superman Smashes the Klan” storyline. In the recent comics limited series which re-imagines the storyline (which I cannot recommend highly enough), Superman has run-in a very similar villain early on in the story.
Were there any other iconic storylines or characters referenced?
I…didn’t? That’s the whole first paragraph of my post?
Say, what’s the origin of Tag’s powers, now - he didn’t get recruited to go through the Eridicator. Seems like his origin must be a bit different than the rest (and his powerset was purely speed, too), but it’s not really clear.
There was a mysterious “yellow phosphorescence” in the explosion that Jordan set off with his heat vision that enveloped Tag. That apparently had something to do with X-Kryptonite.
The show did not clearly explain this at all, but I think what happened was:
There just happened to be an X-Kryptonite deposit near the surface close to the bonfire, or X-Kryptonite somehow got into the bonfire (X-Kryptonite leached into the roots of the trees used for the wood in the fire?), and Jordan’s heat vision detonated it. Tag was bathed in X-Kryptonite particles and/or radiation. From that, he gained a Kryptonian super power (super-speed), which he couldn’t control. He may have also gotten fragments of a Kryptonian consciousness, which wasn’t intact enough to overwrite his consciousness, but did cause his behavior to become increasingly erratic and out of character.
I think.
(BTW, in the category of obvious things I missed, his name is “Tag”, and he has super-speed. So he can run around and tag people.)
Umm…
I’ll go stand over here, in the Corner of Shame, thinking about what I’ve done wrong.
The Action Comics car was just repeating what we already saw in the Pilot episode. We also got to see again the Fleischer suit as well his admitting that his mom made it.
I think that moment exemplifies exactly why I like Tyler Hoechlin’s portrayal of Superman so much. That line, “Thanks, my mom made it!” could have come off just sooooo cheezy, but Tyler actually makes it work. It just conveys the awe shucks, “I really am just a farmboy” feeling that you’re supposed to get from Superman and his “Truth, Justice and the American Way” stuff. Superman really is proud that his mom made him his uniform, just as proud of that as he is of saving the kid from being crushed by the falling car.
That he can also pull off the “You shot me with Kryptonite Bullets? Oh, now I’m pissed!” scene from several episodes ago and make you believe both of them is just incredible.
Yeah. The dichotomy of him being both the clean-cut farmboy as corny as Kansas in springtime and of being the terrifying demigod is the key to Superman’s character, and to how people react to him (Lois sees Clark, who she can’t be afraid of, the General sees Kal-El, the existential threat who might be useful today, but must always be regarded as a potential target - and Lex is incapable of seeing anyone with more power than him as being willing to forgo exploiting that power to the hilt)
I think that may be the best summation I’ve ever seen of how people see Superman. And “as corny as Kansas in springtime” is just…ironically, I have no words to describe just how perfect that is.
Glad you liked it. Annoyingly, I misquoted the line from “A Wonderful Guy” (South Pacific) inadvertently - it’s “as corny as Kansas in August”.
