All-Star Superman vs Smallville: What Makes the Man of Steel?

after binging all 10 seasons of smallville after 3 months, i decided to reread all-star superman. it seemed fitting, the synthesis of all superman origins followed by the synthesis of all superman history? smallville was very much building up and playing with the platonic idea of superman that exists in our heads thanks to the 78 film, the fleischer cartoons, and the vast library of comics. the allusions to other adaptations were more apparent like when clark saves lois from a helicopter like in 78, but the tie-ins to the comics were more subtle with various elements from the show being taken from all of superman’s history to create an origin for the definitive capital S Superman. all-star, on the other hand, plays with the same concept of the platonic superman but places him at the very end of his career as he reflects on his crazy life filled with insane adventures. the 2 stories share the exact same skeleton. the major theme of both is how superman faces his destiny in the face of never-ending loneliness, but while smallville superman has to learn that his friendships and romance with lois are key to him living the most legendary life in the history of the world, all-star superman has to learn that his friendships and romance have been key to his life all this time and he has to stop running away from them.

when i was reading all-star, i tried to view the events of the comic as though they were happening to the cast of smallville, and i very quickly learned that that approach doesn’t really work with the comic at all. all-star superman is a legacy sequel to the very specific superman of the silver age in the 50s and 60s. this superman has been through everything- hundreds upon hundreds of adventures spanning decades and decades as a baby, as a boy, and as a man, with his superdog, his best pal, and his girl friend. and yet, he hasn’t let anyone truly into his heart. despite the decades of adventures, not a soul knows his secret identity as clark kent and he spends the majority of his time alone at the fortress to soak in his culture and only allowing himself to love lois and jimmy from afar either with his disguise or in complete isolation. superman is his true self, and he has spent so long running away from any meaningful relationships as that true self, that at the end, all he can do is continue to run away. when lex luthor’s final plan succeeds in poisoning his cells, he pours himself into his work more than ever before. people post this page in isolation as a powerful and hopeful superman moment, but it ignores the actual depth that goes into it. it’s still an incredible moment, but the page before had superman essentially tell lois that a relationship between them is impossible. superman in this story is deeply terrified of his true self and is constantly running away. even in the comics final moments where he and lois finally say they love each other, he’s still running away, but this time in the ultimate act of good and self-sacrifice. 

smallville could not be more different. if the platonic Superman’s isolation is taken to its extreme at the end of all-star, it becomes the thing smallville is trying to subvert. it, much more explicitly than all-star, takes the version of superman we all know and fleshes every aspect of his life and fills it with real, deep, human relationships  that make sense and we could easily see existing in a real super-powered world. smallville clark still has the never-ending fear of loneliness and a longing within him, but the series is about how he tries to fill that longing with various relationships. he gets scared when things with lana and lex go south, but he’s left with lois and jimmy at the end of it to teach him that it’s truly okay to share your real self with people. it still builds to the cartoon version of superman who goes on crazy world-bending adventures every day, but it’s accompanied by the rich relationships that he had to spend 10 years accepting.

and yet, both versions end up saying the exact same things about the character despite being so different. they both say that with the power of love and friendship, it is possible for someone to do something extraordinary. really, both stories end with clark beginning a new life and being reborn, whether into an extraordinary life or leaving it and its effects on the world behind. together, they tell the same story of a boy entering stage left and a man leaving stage right. at the end of smallville, we know clark’s journey can’t actually be done because of all the adventures ahead, and in all-star, we know superman’s journey can’t possibly be finished because of his new role saving the world forever by constantly working in the core of the sun. the difference is how big the limelight is and how the world reacts to his presence.

nothing conveys the parallels between the 2 different stories than clark’s relationships with lex and lois. the 2 most important LLs of superman’s life play the same roles in smallville and all-star despite taking place in opposite halves of his career. broadly, smallville is about all the important people in clark’s life learning about his secret identity and how it affects their relationships with him as he becomes superman. all-star does the same, but its about the choice to finally open up about his secret, mostly to lois, before he faces his destiny. lex in all-star is not mentioned to be friends with superman, although it’s unclear if it’s because they never were or if this version of luthor has liked clark since they were kids, but only hated superboy. either way, all-star lex doesn’t know his identity, and the story is about how his inability to reflect on himself will cause him to never find out the secret. smallville has lex and clark be true brothers growing up and turns the moment of lex finding out clark’s secret as the culmination of his 7 season arc of turning to hatred inside due to his inability to reflect inwards. in both versions, lex hates superman because of an ever-present void in himself that he blames superman for creating. smallville lets us see the intense void within lex instilled into him by his cold and ruthless father and his attempts to escape from his shadow, and how he blames superman for it when kal backs away from lex as lex pushes further into being evil. but is the evil truly because of the way he was raised? or is that just what he tells us? can he ever reflect inward? all-star takes this complex idea of lex and adds the one thing the smallville couldn’t: clark kent. or rather, the disguise that clark puts on to have some sort of a normal life in between super heroics. it takes the void that lex has within him and says that the humanity and genuine relationships that clark forms is exactly what he’s missing, and exactly what superman could never be capable of. in both versions, this creates a star-crossed vibe to their dynamic, which gives their relationship a homoerotic subtext at times, like if lex ever knew the truth early enough on in their lives, he would never become evil and they could truly be more than brothers. the weirdness of the age gap early in smallville adds a new layer to the dynamic that only existed between the lines in the silver age. but by the time they both learn the secret, its too late and his villainy has taken him over and the side of him that could be clark’s friend. all-star conveys this dynamic by using lex almost finding out as the central crux of his character and letting the reader imagine the backstory in their head, while smallville is directly showing us that exact backstory. essentially, smallville says in 7.5 seasons what all-star says in 3 issues by relying on different amounts of the audiences knowledge of their backstory and alluding the various previous incarnations of superman that the reader might be aware of. 

if clark kent is what would fill the void in lex’s heart, it’s lois who fills the void in clark’s heart. lex’s loneliness due to his intelligence (and baldness) was reaffirmed by his dad, but clark’s loneliness was refuted by the kents giving him love and support. this makes clark open to relationships in a way lex couldn’t be, partly due to his desirability as a billionaire, and partly because of his own distrustfulness. this is another thing lex blames clark for, and it’s what makes clark capable of much more good, the power of love. clark and lois are essentially perfect in the show. it covers the entire growth of a real life relationship, from the strange encounter to the awkward loser friends, to just normal friends, to the classic love triangle, to an amazing identity reveal and subsequent marriage, and it does all this while keeping the very core of the classic dynamic blossom into the full blown superman antics we expect while still being fully rooted in the real characters that have developed over the years. we get to see lois’ entire life and how her upbringing as a general's daughter left her without any clear direction since she couldn’t learn to take orders and join the force, and how her relationship with her cousin's friends drew her to being a reporter. the show goes to great lengths to tie lois to superman’s evolution in a way that feels natural both as an origin and on its own. it recontextualizes the classic superman status quo as a bit superman isn’t doing on his own for himself and the audience, but something he does with lois to live some sense of a normal life while they both do the best that they can to help people. they very much are a supercouple in that sense. both stories are about superman completely embracing his relationships with lois, smallville is about how he comes to that decision in his adult life, while all-star says it is his final decision before saving the world. 

both stories serve as perfect examples as to why, when done right, lois, lex, and jimmy both knowing and not knowing his secret identity can be really good. we see the slow evolution as all 3 learn it in smallville and it serves as the culmination of their arcs before moving on to their spot in the shows combined synthesis of the superman mythos. all-star uses them not knowing to highlight superman’s isolation and how he uses clark kent to experience both a normal relationship with each of them as a friend, coworker, and reporter, while their true relationships with him as superman are drastically different. it’s sad because we know they truly love eachother in some way, but they will never live their normal lives as clark because superman is too important. and smallville does this exact same thing! there are episodes where clark loses his powers and one where he forgets he has them and lois has to snap him out of it, its a real great character analysis of why clark kent and superman are necessary for eachother, and how lois brings out the best in both of them, letting clark be the best version of himself he could be. lois. lois’ never ending quest for truth and knowledge collides perfectly with the man of tomorrow who constantly brings up new and impossible things for her to discover. she is the bridge between clark’s human identity and kryptonian heritage, even if he doesn’t know it yet. again, all-star is about exploring this after the fact and how it informs supermans life after the credits roll. while smallville does the same, but in a way that’s about preventing the extreme loneliness in its version of the entire superman life so that the events of all-star could never happen. they both turn the entire superman story into something that could be told as a bedtime story to children while also giving it an incredible amount of depth, because all the bedtime stories actually happened to these real characters.

i think the biggest depth given to a “bedtime” story is the one who got away, lana lang. this is where the biggest difference is between the 2 books, but i think the little that lana plays in all-star is reflected greatly in smallville. lana in the silver age as a cartoon character was more a mix of antagonist and love interest, with her always trying to discover superboys identity and clark never revealing it, no matter how close she gets. it becomes an obsession that parallels with silver age lex’s obsession with superman in a much more heterosexual way. the show translates this into lana and clark having an intense and constant mistrust of each other despite the love they feel, starting with the childish habit of abandoning her to help others while lying about it, and we watch as that behavior gets increasingly internalized in clark and lana’s reaction to run away grows within her. most people disliked how lana stuck around after the first 4 seasons, but i actually appreciate how long she’s there to represent the doomed and childish romance he yearns for before fully committing to lois, just thinking of how doomed the relationship was as an outsider was very compelling to me. this leads to the unfortunate side effect of lana not feeling like a real character, and more fodder to pad the romantic drama, bc she was never really a complex character like lois and jimmy were even in the silver age. all of lana’s non romance subplots feel so weak because they feel like fodder to get us to care about the romance, which depending on who you are, makes the romance weaker or makes lana’s personal life very uninteresting by comparison. i also love the ending to the relationship, it gives clark reason to hate lex by fully killing the chilldish dream he had with lana. and it makes clark realize that some things just randomly end and can never be reconciled. but again, the issue is only thinking about how lana affects clark and not lana as a character. did you know she found her biological father for 5 episodes in season 2 and then he never showed up or was mentioned again. and of course there’s jason and the fact that she is haunted by her french witch ancestor from the 1600s who was sentenced to witchcraft by searching for, discovering, and using ancient kryptonian technology. this is something so extremely silly and sincerely that it could be taken right from all-star, but all-star has lana already know his secret identity along with pete, who in the comics is white and never moved, always protecting clark’s secret. it basically implies that clark is already about to move on since lana knows but hasn’t told him, but he’s ready enough for his fathers death to deliver the final punch that leads to complete maturity and moving to metropolis. that decision is labored over in smallville for 7.5 seasons, but it is merely implied from a roughly 3 page scene with lana and pete in all-star. 

while smallville beats all-star for lana, jimmy is done far better in the comic than the show, despite both being good. jimmy has grown to be associated with the superman’s best pal series which he starred in during the silver age. his series was the height of the silliness, with constant wacky alien powers and pullbait on the cover. all-star explores this crazy life that jimmy lives and comments on how jimmy is still supermans best pal despite everything they go through. its a very healthy platonic male relationship, something that can only be portrayed in cartoons for some reason. so its no surprise that grant morrison, an openly transgender individual, would take this friendship and take it to its natural queer endpoint, while still remaining great platonic friends despite jimmy being lgbt. its a massive step to taking the things that the comics code would never allow and turning it into an actual adult element of an adult story about these characters as real people. because yeah, the kinda guy who would go on all these crazy adventures and made sure to always only marry gorilla queens instead of kings, would probably be a little bit gay on the inside. while lois was allowed to grow past the silver age, jimmy remained stuck there in the minds of many people, as he wouldn’t have much room in the bronze age for evolution because writers wanted to dissociate superman with the childish vibe by leaving jimmy largely behind all together rather than updating him. smallville almost understands how jimmy's character should’ve evolved since the silver age, but it cheaps out at the last minute. like the other characters, it treats jimmy learning clark’s identity as the culmination of his arc and the final step in their friendship becoming true best friendship, which is exactly how it should be. but unfortunately the show is too committed to the classic status quo when jimmy is a kid, so they have jimmy die before he can fully be superman’s best pal so he can be replaced with a much younger kid, which was really stupid considering the “kid” jimmy was still played by the same guy 2 years older in the finale. so what was the point of leaving him out for seasons 9 and 10?? it just completely ignores the creative potential in this version of jimmy as he grows and matures alongside the main cast and its extremely frustrating. smallville jimmy still goes on crazy adventures like getting to be james bond for a day, but it gets spoiled when he gets killed by doomsday instead of chloe. it’s just a big shame the jimmy-clark dynamic never got to actually grow, unlike all-star which had all that development happen off panel and the comic works by riffing on it. 

then there’s the ocs of smallville that didn’t make it into all-star, like chloe, tess mercer, and the various villains, both season long arcs and monsters of the week. chloe is sorta fine but also really irritating, especially when she’s the one who sticks around instead of jimmy after he dies. she’s very annoying and sorta interesting sometimes but man she really is the worst part of the show. lana haters will prolly get me for saying this but its true. tess is cool, an interesting spin on miss tessmacher, mercy graves, and lena luthor that represents the ever present possibility of lex’s redemption to clark, while still being a very good character in her own right and having to grapple with everything that comes with the luthor name, both as a CEO and her family tree. season 8 and 9 have doomsday and zod as the big villains respectively, and i think both versions are really good. people seem to not like season 8 as much, with davis being very annoying to them. i get this, but i find this version of doomsday very compelling. doomsday was created in the comics in the 90s for the sole purpose of killing superman, one might say that was his destiny. smallville davis has to deal with this destiny in the exact same way clark does, but turning the secret identity into a jekyll-and-hyde-esque weakness instead of clark’s greatest strength. zod is also very compelling, i like how he’s 20 years younger than the “traditional” zod and he also has to face his destiny. the conflict of the kandorians to assimilate or not is also very compelling, because we know how superman is going to assimilate and why he wants that for his other kryptonian siblings, and why zod thinks that’s a bit silly thanks to his military background, which silently contrasts against lois’ quite well. unfortunately almost all of the villains of the week are oc’s, so there’s little cool exploration of them like parasite in all-star. except toyman, who is awesome. basically, the oc’s let the writers use character dynamics with characters that’d otherwise be off limits with lois, jimmy, and mercy. 

also, its weird how kara isn’t in all-star. i mean, if the 3 decades of worlds finest comics were only worthy of a brief mention of the superman/batman relationship, i guess supergirl isn’t relevant enough to play any part in superman’s final story. smallville kara is quite good, she plays the role kara usually does in clark’s journey while also building up to her classic standalone adventures like in the silver age. i could talk at length about supergirl but i’m going to spare you all, so just know that she really should’ve been in all-star in some way. i guess the implication is that she died or is in the future? but its impossible to know. its cool how kara gets an episode in seasons 8, 9, and 10 to indicate that she’s going through the supergirl evolution off-screen, from being linda lee to having adventures in the future with the legion. 

essentially, smallville explores the 2 gaping holes in lex and clark’s life, and its a journey for clark to find the people who fit into that void, while lex blames clark for when nothing can fill it due to his own selfish actions. all-star does much the same, while having all the key moments in the supermythos like the clois identity reveal be final conclusions to supermans ultimate arc of letting people get close to him, even if briefly. i think the 2 stories are the best attempts to explore the entirety of the supermythos in a way that lets the audience fill in the blanks with our assumptions about the characters, while also letting the very real characterization of them take center stage. they’re both about superman shedding his lonely exterior at vastly different parts in his life. smallville explores him learning everything as a boy, while all-star has him learn it at the end of his manhood, a necessary step for him to sacrifice himself to become the ultimate symbol of fighting for earth, as he literally becomes something people have to look up to. the creators have very similar views on superman, but morrison & quitely take their ideas to the absolute limit, while gough, millar, and everyone who worked on smallville take the idea and apply it to the superman we all know. both portray a perfect evolution of superman both as a character and as a cultural icon.

also, they were releasing at the same time which is really funny.