![Second Wind - [COLUMN] In The Third Season of My Adventures with Superman, the Man of Tomorrow Looks to the Future | by Darren Mooney — page 1](https://cdn35.lewdvault.com/images/lewdvault/106250352/221762/1.webp?secure=WhF_08Mto_fh18I-mSh79g==,1791298015)
Second Wind - [COLUMN] In The Third Season of My Adventures with Superman, the Man of Tomorrow Looks to the Future | by Darren Mooney
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Note: It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s spoilers for the third season of My Adventures with Superman, which wrapped up this weekend on Adult Swim! It was a pretty fun season, and a very novel interpretation of a classic (and familiar) Superman story. So beware jumping in: on my planet, this warning stands for spoilers. If you want to watch the season unspoiled, and haven’t had a chance, feel free to bookmark and come back.
One of the more refreshing aspects of My Adventures with Superman is the extent to which it feels like a Superman show with its eye on the future rather than the past.
Superman has been around for the better part of ninety years by this point. The character has accrued a lot of history. He has been imagined and reimagined countless times. Although his most famous nickname is undoubtedly “the Man of Steel”, he has also been known as “the Man of Tomorrow.” In theory, Superman should be forward looking. He is an aspirational figure rooted in science-fiction and progress, an embodiment of American optimism and exceptionalism.
However, unlike his contemporary Batman, who is often allowed to change and evolve with the times, Superman has spent the past couple of decades defined by nostalgia. Richard Donner’s Superman, for example, opens with the invocation of 1930s comic books and emulates the visual style of The Wizard of Oz. It is a clever way to tie the character back to his roots and is balanced somewhat by Donner’s embrace of “verisimilitude”, but it perhaps established a tone for the character.
If one were to pinpoint the moment when Superman became stuck in the past, 2006 is as good a year as any. That was the year that solidified Richard Donner’s Superman as the primary and defining adaptation of the character. It saw the release of Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut, reestablishing the director’s authorship of the sequel. Bryan Singer’s melancholic Superman Returns was a belated sequel and love letter to Donner’s Superman and Superman II, skipping everything since.
It was also the same year that Richard Donner, working with former assistant and co-writer Geoff Johns, kicked off a run on Action Comics that was in large part about the logistics of porting over the continuity of his films into the shared universe of the comics, beginning with the reintroduction of the character of General Zod based on the version played by Terence Stamp in Superman and Superman II. In 2006, it became clear that – for Superman – it was going to be 1978 forever.
It really can feel like Superman as a character and concept is trapped in ice, stuck frozen in a moment. So much of Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel was in conversation with Donner’s Superman II. James Gunn’s Superman could not be bothered to come up with its own original Superman theme song, instead recycling John Williams’ iconic score. It is impossible to imagine Christopher Nolan, Zack Snyder or Matt Reeves just reusing Danny Elfman’s Batman score. (Joss Whedon did.)
Even the Superman adaptations that were not so explicitly indebted to Richard Donner’s Superman were often infused with a deep sense of nostalgia. Superman & Lois is a four-season television series about Superman (Tyler Hoechlin) facing his own mortality and the inevitable passage of time. Zack Snyder’s epic Man of Steel saga is ultimately about Superman (Henry Cavill) becoming an icon and an iterative idea who passes the torch to a younger and more contemporary hero (Ray Fisher).
To be fair, there is something to be said for engaging with Superman as the character who codified the idea of the superhero and so is something of the standard-bearer for the archetype. Grant Morrison’s All-Star Superman might just be the single best Superman comic ever written, and it is a story about Superman facing his own inevitable death. There are mature and considered stories to be told using Superman as “the grand old man” of superhero storytelling.
Still, there is something exciting about My Adventures with Superman as a novel take on the Man of Tomorrow that looks boldly into the future. It is a series that bristles with youthful energy and enthusiasm. While it draws heavily from previous iterations of the character and mythology, including delightful in-jokes and sly references, it is not beholden to them in the way that so much Superman media can be. It mixes things up, pushing forward rather than looking backwards.
This is a key thematic concern within the show’s third season. The third season of My Adventures with Superman is quite literally about the future in the most direct manner possible. Both the third and fifth episodes feature glimpses into alternate futures, treating them as possibilities in flux rather than concrete objects that exist permanently. Across the season, two different versions of Conner Kent (Darren Criss) travel back in time to try to save Superman (Jack Quaid).
The central conflict in this third season is defined as a battle over the form of the future. The season is a loose adaptation of the classic comic book event Reign of the Supermen, a story about a number of potential replacements for the Man of Steel. There is a sense in which Superman is perhaps being confronted with his own obsolescence, his own future. This is a recurring preoccupation, both literally and figuratively.
Figuratively, the first of these replacements to emerge is the cybernetic superhero Hank Henshaw (Max Mittelman), who sees Superman as an existential threat to mankind. For Henshaw, replacing Superman is “about taking back humanity’s future.” His resentment of Superman is rooted in a sense of lost personal potential. “You took that world from me,” he rants at the Man of Steel. “You took my future. And now I’m going to take yours.” He moans, “I was supposed to be the future.”
However, as the season progresses, this idea becomes more abstracted. One of the big recurring tensions across the season is Superman’s efforts to forge a future with his partner Lois Lane (Alice Lee). Superman imagines the pair owning a farm together and having children. That idea is literalized by the arrival of Conner, their son from the future. Like Henshaw, Lois is terrified by the prospect of a changing future. “I’m scared to lose what we have now,” Lois admits in a moment of vulnerability. She even gets a musical number in the middle of the season articulating her fears.
Children are a recurring fixation within the season, in ways both large and small. Superman spends a fancy gala babysitting the children of his boss, Perry White (Darrell Brown). The Chief Stewart at the Fortress of Solitude (Michael Emerson) talks about Rao, the star above Krypton that was known as “the living sun”, explaining that it lives on in his descendants. “He is dead,” the artificial intelligence explains. “But many children survive him – and one powers this fortress even now.”
The season’s primary villain is the Eradicator (Steve Blum), reimagined as a rogue project created by Lex Luthor (Max Mittelman, again). The Eradicator is as much Luthor’s child as Conner is the son of Superman and Lois. This is barely subtext. “My father fears that which he cannot control,” the Eradicator explains of his motivations. “I am that fear.” There is a sense in which these children are a physical manifestation of an individual’s conceptualization of the future.
There is, through all of this, a very strong idea of the future as something worth fighting for. My Adventures with Superman suggests that Superman is a hero in large part because he is constantly fighting not for some imagined nostalgic past, but to realize the best potential future. The form of that future might change and shift from moment to moment, but the important thing is not to give up on it. The future might seem dark and dystopian, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be better.
Crucial to this argument is the understanding that change and evolution are necessary parts of life, and that they apply to Superman himself. His cousin Kara (Kiana Madeira) spends the season trying to wrestle with her own shady past as an instrument of the villain Brainiac (Michael Emerson, again), but eventually comes to realize that she does not have to be solely defined by who she was before. She can shape her own identity.
“I am not one thing,” she explains when confronted with a number of fractured reflections. “We are all creatures of change. We can become anything.” She elaborates, “We decide who we are everyday. There is no one true path. The future is ours to shape.” This is a fundamentally optimistic and hopeful understanding of the world, a belief that the future is shaped by individual choices and that just because things are a particular way at the moment does not mean that they must always be.
In this context, it is perhaps worth acknowledging that My Adventures with Superman adapts Reign of the Superman while mostly skipping over The Death of Superman, a well-known comic book event previously adapted by both Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice and Superman & Lois. Though the season’s fifth episode is titled “The Death of Superman”, the hero survives his battle with Henshaw. He is merely depowered. Superman does not have to die for the future to come to pass.
This is an idea that is not just reflected in the narrative themes of My Adventures with Superman, but also in its style and its storytelling. The show draws on the rich history of the Man of Steel, but it refuses to be rigidly defined by expectations of what a Superman show should look or sound like. It is not attempting to recreate Richard Donner’s take on Superman. It is not leaning on nostalgia for the John Williams’ theme. Instead, it forges its own path boldly forwards.
It dares to imagine a version of Superman who is truly a Man of Tomorrow.
Note: It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s spoilers for the third season of My Adventures with Superman, which wrapped up this weekend on Adult Swim! It was a pretty fun season, and a very novel interpretation of a classic (and familiar) Superman story. So beware jumping in: on my planet, this warning stands for spoilers. If you want to watch the season unspoiled, and haven’t had a chance, feel free to bookmark and come back.
One of the more refreshing aspects of My Adventures with Superman is the extent to which it feels like a Superman show with its eye on the future rather than the past.
Superman has been around for the better part of ninety years by this point. The character has accrued a lot of history. He has been imagined and reimagined countless times. Although his most famous nickname is undoubtedly “the Man of Steel”, he has also been known as “the Man of Tomorrow.” In theory, Superman should be forward looking. He is an aspirational figure rooted in science-fiction and progress, an embodiment of American optimism and exceptionalism.
However, unlike his contemporary Batman, who is often allowed to change and evolve with the times, Superman has spent the past couple of decades defined by nostalgia. Richard Donner’s Superman, for example, opens with the invocation of 1930s comic books and emulates the visual style of The Wizard of Oz. It is a clever way to tie the character back to his roots and is balanced somewhat by Donner’s embrace of “verisimilitude”, but it perhaps established a tone for the character.
If one were to pinpoint the moment when Superman became stuck in the past, 2006 is as good a year as any. That was the year that solidified Richard Donner’s Superman as the primary and defining adaptation of the character. It saw the release of Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut, reestablishing the director’s authorship of the sequel. Bryan Singer’s melancholic Superman Returns was a belated sequel and love letter to Donner’s Superman and Superman II, skipping everything since.
It was also the same year that Richard Donner, working with former assistant and co-writer Geoff Johns, kicked off a run on Action Comics that was in large part about the logistics of porting over the continuity of his films into the shared universe of the comics, beginning with the reintroduction of the character of General Zod based on the version played by Terence Stamp in Superman and Superman II. In 2006, it became clear that – for Superman – it was going to be 1978 forever.
It really can feel like Superman as a character and concept is trapped in ice, stuck frozen in a moment. So much of Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel was in conversation with Donner’s Superman II. James Gunn’s Superman could not be bothered to come up with its own original Superman theme song, instead recycling John Williams’ iconic score. It is impossible to imagine Christopher Nolan, Zack Snyder or Matt Reeves just reusing Danny Elfman’s Batman score. (Joss Whedon did.)
Even the Superman adaptations that were not so explicitly indebted to Richard Donner’s Superman were often infused with a deep sense of nostalgia. Superman & Lois is a four-season television series about Superman (Tyler Hoechlin) facing his own mortality and the inevitable passage of time. Zack Snyder’s epic Man of Steel saga is ultimately about Superman (Henry Cavill) becoming an icon and an iterative idea who passes the torch to a younger and more contemporary hero (Ray Fisher).
To be fair, there is something to be said for engaging with Superman as the character who codified the idea of the superhero and so is something of the standard-bearer for the archetype. Grant Morrison’s All-Star Superman might just be the single best Superman comic ever written, and it is a story about Superman facing his own inevitable death. There are mature and considered stories to be told using Superman as “the grand old man” of superhero storytelling.
Still, there is something exciting about My Adventures with Superman as a novel take on the Man of Tomorrow that looks boldly into the future. It is a series that bristles with youthful energy and enthusiasm. While it draws heavily from previous iterations of the character and mythology, including delightful in-jokes and sly references, it is not beholden to them in the way that so much Superman media can be. It mixes things up, pushing forward rather than looking backwards.
This is a key thematic concern within the show’s third season. The third season of My Adventures with Superman is quite literally about the future in the most direct manner possible. Both the third and fifth episodes feature glimpses into alternate futures, treating them as possibilities in flux rather than concrete objects that exist permanently. Across the season, two different versions of Conner Kent (Darren Criss) travel back in time to try to save Superman (Jack Quaid).
The central conflict in this third season is defined as a battle over the form of the future. The season is a loose adaptation of the classic comic book event Reign of the Supermen, a story about a number of potential replacements for the Man of Steel. There is a sense in which Superman is perhaps being confronted with his own obsolescence, his own future. This is a recurring preoccupation, both literally and figuratively.
Figuratively, the first of these replacements to emerge is the cybernetic superhero Hank Henshaw (Max Mittelman), who sees Superman as an existential threat to mankind. For Henshaw, replacing Superman is “about taking back humanity’s future.” His resentment of Superman is rooted in a sense of lost personal potential. “You took that world from me,” he rants at the Man of Steel. “You took my future. And now I’m going to take yours.” He moans, “I was supposed to be the future.”
However, as the season progresses, this idea becomes more abstracted. One of the big recurring tensions across the season is Superman’s efforts to forge a future with his partner Lois Lane (Alice Lee). Superman imagines the pair owning a farm together and having children. That idea is literalized by the arrival of Conner, their son from the future. Like Henshaw, Lois is terrified by the prospect of a changing future. “I’m scared to lose what we have now,” Lois admits in a moment of vulnerability. She even gets a musical number in the middle of the season articulating her fears.
Children are a recurring fixation within the season, in ways both large and small. Superman spends a fancy gala babysitting the children of his boss, Perry White (Darrell Brown). The Chief Stewart at the Fortress of Solitude (Michael Emerson) talks about Rao, the star above Krypton that was known as “the living sun”, explaining that it lives on in his descendants. “He is dead,” the artificial intelligence explains. “But many children survive him – and one powers this fortress even now.”
The season’s primary villain is the Eradicator (Steve Blum), reimagined as a rogue project created by Lex Luthor (Max Mittelman, again). The Eradicator is as much Luthor’s child as Conner is the son of Superman and Lois. This is barely subtext. “My father fears that which he cannot control,” the Eradicator explains of his motivations. “I am that fear.” There is a sense in which these children are a physical manifestation of an individual’s conceptualization of the future.
There is, through all of this, a very strong idea of the future as something worth fighting for. My Adventures with Superman suggests that Superman is a hero in large part because he is constantly fighting not for some imagined nostalgic past, but to realize the best potential future. The form of that future might change and shift from moment to moment, but the important thing is not to give up on it. The future might seem dark and dystopian, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be better.
Crucial to this argument is the understanding that change and evolution are necessary parts of life, and that they apply to Superman himself. His cousin Kara (Kiana Madeira) spends the season trying to wrestle with her own shady past as an instrument of the villain Brainiac (Michael Emerson, again), but eventually comes to realize that she does not have to be solely defined by who she was before. She can shape her own identity.
“I am not one thing,” she explains when confronted with a number of fractured reflections. “We are all creatures of change. We can become anything.” She elaborates, “We decide who we are everyday. There is no one true path. The future is ours to shape.” This is a fundamentally optimistic and hopeful understanding of the world, a belief that the future is shaped by individual choices and that just because things are a particular way at the moment does not mean that they must always be.
In this context, it is perhaps worth acknowledging that My Adventures with Superman adapts Reign of the Superman while mostly skipping over The Death of Superman, a well-known comic book event previously adapted by both Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice and Superman & Lois. Though the season’s fifth episode is titled “The Death of Superman”, the hero survives his battle with Henshaw. He is merely depowered. Superman does not have to die for the future to come to pass.
This is an idea that is not just reflected in the narrative themes of My Adventures with Superman, but also in its style and its storytelling. The show draws on the rich history of the Man of Steel, but it refuses to be rigidly defined by expectations of what a Superman show should look or sound like. It is not attempting to recreate Richard Donner’s take on Superman. It is not leaning on nostalgia for the John Williams’ theme. Instead, it forges its own path boldly forwards.
It dares to imagine a version of Superman who is truly a Man of Tomorrow.
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