If there is one thing my friends can tell you about my television-watching habits, it is that I am terrible at finishing shows. I abandon them more than Netflix does and, when I do finish a series, I take far longer than most find reasonable to do so. So, when I tell you that I binged My Adventures with Superman, that should be the only review that you need. It was good and I finished it within a day.
Since this is a review, I have to be more detailed than that and talk about why I watched it all in a day. This review will not have a spoiler-free section, so you have been forewarned. The show is currently available on HBO Max and a second season is apparently finished and has a release date of “the time and the hour is not known” but it is coming soon.
The Review
MAWS, as the show is short-handed to, is an animated series developed by Jake Wyatt, Brendan Clougher, and Josie Campbell about the early adventures of Superman in Metropolis as he navigates understanding his identity and relationships with Lois Lane and Jimmy Olson. While it contains a take on the Man of Steel’s origin story, the show focuses more on being a Year One story, reminiscent of the 1978 movie and the Lois and Clark TV show.
My Origin Story with Superman
Starting a new take of any comic book character with an origin story is a risky move nowadays. With the torrential stream of superhero movies and shows, audiences have started to tire of the take and, for famous characters like Superman or Spider-Man, almost everyone already knows, or at least has an idea of, how the character got their start. We know that mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent is the paragon of truth and justice known as Superman. We know he was raised in Smallville by his adoptive parents, Johnathan and Martha Kent, after his biological parents sent him away to Earth to avoid the destruction of Krypton. We know that he is in a bit of a love triangle with his alter-ego and hotshot reporter and coworker at the Daily Planet, Lois Lane.
If you are going to retell an origin story as famous as Superman’s, then you need to have some conceit that is going to invest your audience because we already know that you’re going to retell how we got to the three-sentence blurb. My Adventures with Superman does this through an interesting use of animation and a refreshing take on the characters. Rather than have Lois Lane be an already established reporter, this version has her as a second-year intern at the Daily Planet who is tasked with training the new interns, Jimmy Olsen and Clark Kent, on “how to print copies and make coffee.” Clark is, of course, actually a super-powered alien raised by two farmers in Kansas, but he avoids using his powers and just wants to be a normal man.
The reluctant hero trope is a classic, but it works here. Superman is a paragon and there aren’t really a lot of ways to add internal conflict to the character without devolving into a Jesus metaphor or the grand tradition of the “what if Superman was EVIL” plotline. Sure, this angle is the same taken by Five For Fighting, but at least it shows that the writers understand who Superman is more than the Zack Snyder films did.
Clark’s attempts to avoid heroics is foiled when Lois drags the two interns to investigate a story of stolen technology against the wishes of Perry White, the Planet’s Editor-in-chief, and the thieves, led by Livewire, order a robot to attack the meddling reporters. Clark is swept aside in the first blast and returns in a disguise to defend his friends against the robots. Having learned that heroics are a hell of a drug, Clark returns home to investigate his past and become Superman. Meanwhile, Lois follows up on the robot story to learn more about Superman and triggers a fight between Livewire and Deadpool, I mean Deathstroke. Superman swoops in to save Lois and Jimmy and all is good until the next episode.
My Rising Action with Superman
From here, the show had a couple of angles it could take. After the second episode, it is obvious that Lois Lane is enamored with both Superman and Clark Kent and the sweet dramatic irony of this could be milked for hours of content in a torturous “will they, won’t they” that is honestly more boring than anything else. Instead, the creative team gave us two more episodes before Lois learns the truth where we are introduced to Intergang and Parasite, and the show’s myth arc is developed.
I absolutely loved the pacing of the first half of the series. Rather than dragging out any of the things I tend to find boring, the creative team lets elements, such as Superman discovering all of his powers and Lois learning Clark’s secret, play out and then resolve in favor of their larger arcs. By the end of episode 4, we have been introduced to the majority of the season’s antagonists and Lois has already pieced together that Superman and Clark Kent are the same person.
Episode 5 then takes a chance to explore how the interpersonal relationships between the show’s three main characters have changed. We focus on Clark’s feelings for Lois, Lois’s attempts to get Clark to confess that he is Superman, and Jimmy’s realization that he is the third wheel in their trio. While we get plot advances as Clark investigates the stolen technology even further and we find that all of the other users of the stolen technology have been kidnapped by Deadpool Deathstroke, this episode sets the personal stakes of the show. We aren’t dealing with the Superman of Man of Steel or the Christopher Reeves films. This is a story that is closer to Smallville and Lois and Clark.
At the end of episode 5, we are left with the perfect midpoint. Lois is hurt because Clark hid his identity from her while Clark is worried that Lois hates him because of this and comments she made in an earlier episode referring to Superman as “a liar.” And Jimmy? Well, he spent the entire episode excited about a camping trip he and his friends planned to try and locate Bigfoot but is stood up at the bus station by his friends. He goes to the woods alone and is kidnapped by a gorilla.
My Resolving Issues with Superman
In episode 6, Lois and Clark reunite because, despite the strain in their relationship, neither of them can find Jimmy. This episode also expands the myth arc, revealing that Task Force X was formed after something called “Zero Day” and that the gorilla who kidnapped Jimmy is Monsieur Mallah and his life partner, the Brain. But, at its heart, this is an episode about the trio’s friendship and allows Clark and Lois a chance to be vulnerable with one another.
This show’s version of Lois is different than other versions we have seen of the character. Firstly, she is half-Korean, likely a nod to the show’s animators, Studio Mir. While this aspect of the character is not explored, it makes her visually distinct from earlier iterations and I hope will allow for the show to explore further the themes of immigration and assimilation that are inherent in the character of Superman. Lois’s dedication to uncovering the truth is given further depth as we learn that being a military brat is also deeply intrinsic to her character. It’s an established piece of lore that her father is General Lane, but I don’t recall this being one of her motivators. This version of Lois has a strained relationship with General Lane, and it is largely because of his secrecy and lies that she dedicated herself to journalism.
And it is why she is so hurt that Clark wouldn’t share his secret with her. In a beautiful moment, she asks him if he also lied about his feelings for her. This allows Clark to open up and be vulnerable. He wants to be a normal man and he truly likes Lois. But, when she talked about hating Superman for being a liar in episode 3, he didn’t want to share that part of himself for fear it would mean she would also hate him.
My tying threads together with Superman
The rest of the season builds from here. We get an obligatory Mr. Mxyzptlk episode where we are introduced to the League of Lois Lanes and find that, in this multiverse, most Supermen end up going the Injustice/Justice Lords route. We then get a major two-parter where, in the first part, the Suicide Squad Task Force X captures Superman while Vicki Vale uses Lois and Jimmy to write a smear-piece that changes public opinion on Superman. In the thrilling conclusion, Superman learns that Zero Day was an apparent Kryptonian Invasion, we get a repeat of the battle in Superman: Man of Tomorrow, and The General decides that Superman probably isn’t the harbinger of the next invasion. From here, loose ends are tied up in the finale.
The Kent family is hosting Thanksgiving and, although she is mostly estranged from her father, invites him to join them. The couple arrives early and soon enough the doorbell rings to reveal that Lois’s father is actually the Vulture the General. After some hijinks where nobody tells the truth to each other, Jimmy Olsen is the voice of reason and forces Clark to tell Lois that her father is the General who captured him in the last episode and makes Lois reveal that the footage she stole from the League of Lois Lanes of the Injustice and Justice Lords Superman going on a rampage. It turns out the floppy disk memory sphere is powered by Kryptonite, this causes Clark’s bassinet spaceship to awaken and attack Smallville, General Lane has PTSD from Zero Day and tries to attack the ship, and Superman does an Iron Man to stop the ship.
In the last scene before the credits, a robot credited as Brainiac in the sub-titles informs someone credited as “Kryptonian Warrior” that there is a new rebellious planet called Earth to conquer, and the Warrior says that the planet will “kneel” before him. This is a convoluted way of saying that next season, we will get to see General Zod and Brainiac attempt to invade Earth.
My feelings on the characters with Superman
As you can probably tell from my summary, I am far more interested in how My Adventures with Superman handles the relationship of the main trio than I am in the myth arc. While it was engaging to watch and a unique take on the mythos, the characters are really what made this show great. Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen are developed in a refreshing way that simultaneously stays true to their core characterization. I haven’t searched for it, but I am sure that there are some calling DC Studios “woke” for giving them a race lift. If anything, I think that the creative team didn’t do enough with this change. Superman is the perfect immigrant allegory and while the show does rely on that angle somewhat, they missed the opportunity to use a half-Korean Lois Lane and a Black Jimmy Olsen to explore this even further.
A story with minority characters doesn’t have to be a story about being a minority in America, but this isn’t any story. This is a Superman story! Superman was created by two men who were the children of Jewish immigrants during a time where antisemitism in America and abroad was at a decades-long fever pitch. At a time when racial prejudice and inti-immigration sentiments in America are at a high, anyone using the Superman IP has a duty to use the IP to explore the themes of immigration and assimilation that are inherent to the character. By not using these versions of Lane and Olsen to further amplify these themes, the creative team is doing its audience and the brand a disservice.
That being said, most writers don’t know what to do with Superman as a character because he is a genuinely good person, and they don’t know how to handle his powers. This creative team understands that helping people is the core of the character and allows Superman to just be a good person without trying to be edgy for the sake of “realism.” And, they use the tropes of a Shonen anime to allow Clark to develop and explore his powers in an interesting way. My hope is that they can continue to do this in such a way that avoids power creep and leads to a satisfying narrative arc.
My final take on My Adventures with Superman with Superman
Before I give a number of astronomical bodies corresponding to the Likert scale, I want to take a moment to praise the animation! Studio Mir has a talented team that has been steadily producing quality animation since 2010. I’m no expert on animation, but their work on My Adventures with Superman is some of the cleanest animation of the past year and makes me beyond excited to see their work on X-Men ’97 on Wednesday. Additionally, I absolutely loved the visual references to Neon Genesis Evangelion.
I enjoyed My Adventures with Superman and think it is a refreshing take on Superman after the past decade of the Synder-verse’s take on the character and the Super-Jesus of the DC Animated Movie Universe. The relationship of the main trio drives the heart of the series and, along with the bright art style, proves that you can have drama in a Superman adaptation without sacrificing the core of the characters in favor of edginess or a ham-fisted Jesus metaphor.
Overall Rating:
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