Clark Kent, the Human Element

                I suppose I should begin this post with a bit of a disclaimer: I have never been particularly fond of Superman. I always thought that he was extremely ineffective for how vastly overpowered he was. Perhaps this is what drew me to his alter ego, Clark Kent. Far from the indestructability of Superman, Clark Kent is a mild mannered reporter for the Daily Planet who repeatedly allows himself to be bossed around. Clark has always, in my mind, been a far more relatable character. It was for this reason that I immediately noticed the infrequency of his appearances in The Superman Chronicles. In the early comics, Clark Kent rarely ever makes an appearance, and when he does, it seems to function only to establish the basis of the plot. Perhaps Superman did not yet have enough of an audience to warrant a deeper storyline involving the identity crisis between Clarke Kent and Superman, but I found myself wishing for more of an interaction between the two.

                My desire for more of Clark Kent, however, may be shaped by the current trend in Superman movies and television shows. Students in their high school and college years have grown up in an age where superheroes have dominated the media. One longstanding example is Smallville, a ten season long television series about Clark Kent as a teenager, which my first cousin once removed, Kelly Souders, worked on as a writer and executive producer. This was a show that fascinated me for a long time, and was one of the few times I have ever enjoyed Superman as a hero. In Smallville, Clark Kent isn’t the one-dimensional character I always found him to be. He had flaws, worries, insecurities, friends. He felt far more human than the alien from Krypton ever had before. This was also why I enjoyed the first 30 minutes of the 2013 film Man of Steel as much as I did. Clark is depicted as a kid who is torn between two lives; the life of an average human and the life of Kal-El, a Kryptonian with god-like capabilities under a yellow sun. He wrestles with his emotions, struggling to keep his powers hidden from the world while simultaneously attempting to do the right thing. Though he is not from this world, it is his human struggles that make him a relatable and engaging Superhero in my eyes, a dimension which I believe he lacks in the initial comics.