Next week, Kara Zor-El, better known as Supergirl, gets her very first self-titled TV series. Airing on CBS, the series stars Melissa Benoist as the Kryptonian hero who protects Earth from super-villains and hostile aliens while dealing with personal drama, occasionally being painted badly by the media, and constant comparisons to her cousin, Superman.
Clark Kent, also known as Kal-El (his birth name) and Superman, debuted in Action Comics #1 in 1938, which kickstarted the Golden Age of Comics. Starting in Action Comics #60 in 1943, DC Comics occasionally put out stories teasing the idea of a female counterpart to the Man of Steel without committing to it. This 1943 story “Lois Lane: Superwoman” shows investigative journalist Lois Lane gaining identical abilities to Superman after he gives her a blood transfusion, only to then realize she’s just dreaming.
In 1951, Lois gains powers and becomes Superwoman for real in Action Comics #156. As Superwoman, she hides her dark hair underneath a blond wig. The powers wear off, but several other stories over the years feature Lois as temporarily superhuman.
That’s Superwoman, though. What about Supergirl? In 1949, our first tease of a character with that name occurred in issue #5 of Superboy, a series featuring Clark Kent’s adventures when he was a teenager living in Smallville, Kansas. In the story “Superboy Meets Supergirl!”, teenage Queen Lucy of the fictional Latin-American country Borgonia hides out in Smallville under the alias “Lucy Regent,” befriends Superboy, and then performs at an athletic festival in a fun “Supergirl” costume. Eventually, Lucy returns to Borgonia, leaving behind her costume and a wistful Clark Kent.
In 1956, DC Comics started the Silver Age of Comics, bringing back superheroes years after most of them had fallen out of favor and had their books canceled. This reboot began by introducing a new version of the Flash, with a different origin, costume and secret identity. In 1958, Superman joined the Silver Age by getting rebooted himself. His previous stories were largely dismissed, later said to have taken place in a parallel universe, and a new era began. That same year, DC decided to test whether readers were really interested in a female Kryptonian hero.
So in Superman #123, writer Otto Binder and artist Dick Sprang delivered the story “The Girl of Steel.” In it, Superman’s pal Jimmy Olsen considers how lonely the Man of Steel must be and wishes a lady counterpart into being thanks to a magic totem (the guy has a habit of encountering mystic forces and mutagenic agents). This Supergirl is all too happy to be Superman’s partner, but later winds up deathly ill. Rather than watch her die painfully, Jimmy wishes away this magically created construct. Overall, it’s a story that swings back and forth between being sweetly innocent and fairly disturbing. Seriously, did this Supergirl possess full sentience and free will or was she just programmed to be a great girlfriend? Moving on.
In 1959, a real Supergirl was introduced in Action Comics #252 when Superman stumbles onto a crashed spaceship and discovers teenage Kara Zor-El, who introduces herself as his cousin. Superman is surprised, as he believes he’s the “Last Son of Krypton,” it’s only survivor—apart from his dog Krypto and some terrorists who are imprisoned in the “twilight dimension” known as the Phantom Zone.
In flashback, we that when Krypton’s core goes nuclear and destroys the planet, one city survives due to a special protective dome. Like the rest of the planet’s debris, the ground beneath Argo City has turned into radioactive kryptonite and so lead shielding is put in place. Kara, daughter of Zor-El and Alura In-Ze, grows up knowing that her older cousin is living as a hero on Earth. When Kara’s about 15 years old, a meteor shower ruptures Argo City’s dome and its protective lead shielding. Her parents send her to her cousin, so that he, along with the super-powers Kryptonians gain from suns like the one Earth orbits, will keep her safe. It’s an origin story that reflects the unapologetic absurdity of DC’s Silver Age comics.
Superman thinks Kara needs to spend some time training and gaining experience before becoming a full-blown superhero, so he tells her that they have to keep the existence of a Supergirl secret. Kara then makes her home in an orphanage under the name Linda Lee, because hey, Clark Kent likes the single life and having a teenage cousin suddenly living with him is going to cramp his style. As Linda Lee, Kara hides her blond hair under a dark haired wig.
So we had a female counterpart to Superman but one who was very much in his shadow, acting primarily as his secret weapon rather than as a partner. Eventually, Linda Lee is adopted by a loving couple, Fred and Edna Danvers. In 1962, three years after Kara’s debut, Superman decides she’s learned enough to start her own heroic career and he announces to the people of Earth that they will now also be protected by his cousin, Supergirl.
By this time, Superman was a household name and even the most casual fan accepted certain aspects of his life as stable. But Supergirl was still growing up, still finding out what kind of hero she was. It seemed like anything could happen and she sometimes wondered if Earth was really the right place for her. Maybe she should live in the 30th century with her time traveling friends the Legion of Super-Heroes, particularly since she and LSH member Brainiac 5 had developed feelings for each other. Maybe she belonged somewhere else entirely. She enjoyed Earth and the friendships she made with Batgirl and others, but for her the loss of Kryptonian society was very real and recent, not something that happened in her infancy as with the adult Superman.
As the 1970s came, comics were changing. Readers were now getting older but still collecting stories and wanted a bit more depth. Kara finally grew up a little bit, graduating from Stanhope University and getting a job on a TV news crew. But DC still wasn’t sure what to do with her and sometimes relied on gimmicks such as changing her costume to designs sent in by fans. During the 1970s, we also met Power Girl, an older and tougher version of Supergirl who inhabited a parallel universe where she lived under the cover identity Karen Starr and started her own tech company.
In the early 1980s, DC Comics struggled to keep some of its characters and titles relevant, particularly Superman and Supergirl. In 1984, a live-action Supergirl film came out starring 21-year-old Helen Slater as the lead. The movie has several fun moments and a good cast, but seems as if it were three scripts that were cut up and pasted together. Argo City’s destruction is now caused by Kara’s carelessness rather than a catastrophe she couldn’t have prevented, making her another version of Pandora (though she does save the city in the last minute of the film). When she arrives on Earth, she immediately adopts a cover identity as orphan Linda Lee, but it’s not clear why she’s doing this when she seems intent on returning to Argo after her mission. Her main enemy is a sorceress who isn’t terribly skilled in magic for most of the film and seems less concerned that Supergirl is a threat to her plans of world domination than she is angry that Linda Lee has stolen the affection of a handsome landscaper who drank a magic roofie. I’m not actually kidding.
Supergirl also isn’t terribly proactive until the end of the movie, and even then it’s arguable that she doesn’t get to be the full hero, she mainly acts on the information and insight of men around her. Despite all this, Helen Slater comes across very charmingly as Kara and you can see how she would have shined more greatly with a story that better served the character.
Two years later, DC Comics rebooted its superhero universe again at the end of a year-long crossover called Crisis on Infinite Earths. During that crossover, Kara died heroically defending her cousin from a menace capable of destroying all reality. But any fans she had were in for an even rougher surprise. After the reboot, the “Post-Crisis” DC Universe said that Kara didn’t exist and that Superman was now the only survivor of Krypton. No others were allowed.
It felt for some to add insult to injury, but in 1989 writer Alan Brennert, artist Dick Giordano and editor Mark Waid produced the story “Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot.” In it, the heroic ghost Boston Brand (known also as the Deadman) is frustrated by not being recognized for his efforts. A familiar blond woman named Kara appears and tells him, “We do it because it needs to be done. Because if we don’t, no one else will. And we do it even if no one knows what we’ve done. Even if no one knows we exist. Even if no one remembers we ever existed.”
Kara was gone, but DC attempted to create a non-Kryptonian Supergirl. First we got the artificial, shape-shifting life form Matrix, who had a different host of abilities and was very naive, almost desperate to find a purpose in life. In the 1990s, she got her own series under writer Peter David, who re-interpreted her as an angelic force and bonded her with a human named Linda Danvers. Later still, Matrix went away and Linda, now blessed with powers, became a new Supergirl for some years before her title was canceled and she was retired. There was another, shorter-lived Supergirl character who claimed to be Superman’s daughter from the future, but this turned out to be untrue.
Meanwhile, a version of Kara appeared in Superman: The Animated Series in 1998, becoming a recurring character. More and more, creators and fans believed the “no other Kryptonians” rule was holding back stories. Finally, the rule was dropped and Kara Zor-El was reintroduced into the Post-Crisis DC Universe in 2004. Reimagined by artist Michael Turner and writer Jeph Loeb, Kara is once again Superman’s cousin from Argo City, but now with a twist. She is actually Kal-El’s older cousin, sent when Krypton explodes so that she can be his guardian, protecting him while telling him about his heritage. But her ship’s warp drive is damaged and so she’s only been traveling at just under the speed of light during the entire journey, kept in suspended animation as her cousin grows up and establishes a life as Earth’s protector. Now, Kara is a teenager who has not only lost her home and her entire culture, but is told that the mission that could still give her life focus is already over.
This update truly cemented that Kara was her own person and not just in Superman’s shadow, someone who actually resented that others seemed to think she was his sidekick or apprentice. Sadly, a rotating roster of creators on her comic meant there wasn’t a lot of consistency of growth for a while. Not until writer Sterling Gates and Jamal Igle came along. Under their direction, Kara gained new popularity and stability, with an all-female supporting cast (not counting when her cousin would drop in). She gained an older sister/mentor in the form of Lana Lang, Clark’s best friend from home, and an enemy in the media, Cat Grant, who argues that someone like Supergirl is reckless and providing a bad role model for women. We got to explore what Kara thought of her culture and how different she was to her mother, whom she reunited with for a time before tragedy separated them again.
Recently, DC rebooted yet again, giving us a version of Kara similar to the 2004 model but more aggressive and distanced from her cousin. The new TV show, however, is very obviously taking a lot more notes from the still popular stories of Sterling Gates and Jamal Igle, which bizarrely have not been reprinted for a few years. When you watch the pilot episode, keep your ears open for a voice on a police scanner mentioning the street corner of “Gates and Igle.”
The new TV show mixes Supergirl’s Silver Age origin with the 2004 story, as she arrives on Earth too late to guide her younger-but-now-older cousin and is then entrusted to the Danvers couple, played by Dean Cain and Helen Slater. She now goes by “Kara Danvers,” rather than giving herself a different first name, and has a big sister, Alex Danvers, played by Chyler Leigh. She’s not a teenager now, but a woman in her early twenties who is deciding finally not to run away from the great and very daunting destiny that seems to be part of her heritage. Calista Flockhart plays Cat Grant, who is now Kara’s boss and in charge of her own media empire rather than simply a columnist at the Daily Planet.
With all this in mind, there is a lot of potential for the new series to pick and choose the best parts of the Supergirl mythos. It’s already on the right track, with a pilot episode that focuses primarily on Kara’s decision to be proactive, despite the doubts of others, and on her relationship with other complex women. My own hope is that this inspires a whole new fanbase and galvanizes the elements that truly make the character work. I think it just might.
Alan Sizzler Kistler (@SizzlerKistler) is an actor and freelance writer, as well as the author of the New York Times Best Seller Doctor Who: A History. He is the creator and host of the podcast Crazy Sexy Geeks.
IT would’ve been easier to use the Matrix/Peter David Supergirl, then a rehash of Silver age crap
“the Danvers couple, played by Dean Cain and Helen Slater”
Oh, that’s a nice callback.
I saw the pilot and, well, it’s not very good. This is not a superhero show in the vein of Arrow or the Flash, much less Marvel’s shows like SHIELD or Daredevil. Kara, despite being an alien who arrived to Earth as a child in full use of reason, acts like a stereotypical shallow American teenager for some reason. The fight scenes are really lame and look like they chose Benoist for her looks and being likeable but didn’t pay attention to any sort of fight training or physicality. Plus, the tone is “superhero shows are goofy” and a bunch of dumb stuff happens, like Kara remarking that she’d never felt pain before (I guess she was invulnerable in Krypton too), or a secret government agency dismissing her help because she’s a girl and should go serve coffee to her boss or some such stupidity despite the fact that she’s a superpowered alien and they know it. Also, Jimmy Olsen is black in this show and insists on being called James because he’s a tall, cool, handsome, award-winning photographer (just like in the comic!), and they aren’t allowed to use the name Superman and refer to him as “your cousin” all the time. Man, maybe this will find its audience, but for me it sucked big time. It’s like Sex and the City had a child with Richard Donner’s Superman and it only inherited the bad parts of each. The show is more in the vein of the Gotham TV show, except even goofier, and with a paradoxical Girl Power message despite the fact that women characters are written pretty much as stereotypes obsessed with shallow stuff like clothes, dates and the like, even if they are alien superheroes, secret agents, or media magnates.
@1 but how could that ever play with a mainstream, non-comic geek audience? The origina they chose here for Supergirl is clear and easy to understand. Who wants to hear a bunch of gobbledegook about Crisis and pocket universes?
I’m fonder of the Helen Slater movie than you are, Alan. It’s unapologetically Silver-Age goofy, but I like it that Kara is motivated by the need to fix her own mistake, and I think she is fairly proactive. She’s the one who chooses to go to Earth, rather than being passively sent there like Kal-El. She’s actively searching for the Omegahedron, at least when she isn’t distracted by school and boys and such (but I can attribute that to the curiosity of an intelligent, inquisitive alien teenager discovering Earth for the first time). Most fictional heroes aren’t really protagonists in the strict sense of the characters whose choices drive the narrative; usually it’s the villain who’s the protagonist, setting things in motion, and the hero who’s technically the antagonist, reacting to prevent the villain from achieving their goals. But Supergirl is the protagonist of her film, since it’s her actions and choices that cause most of what happens in the story. Selene has her own goals, but they’re facilitated by her discovery of the artifact that came to her because of Kara’s mistake.
And I used to agree with you that it was silly that the film was built around a love triangle, which felt very sexist to me. But on revisiting the film, I realize that Selene was just using the love spell as a test run for the magic she intended to use to conquer the world. She didn’t really care about the guy; he was just a means to an end, and Supergirl was interfering with her plans. And Selene did prove to be a rather potent threat in the third act.
Mainly, though, Helen Slater was really good as Supergirl. The movie has quite a strong cast, aside from Hart Bochner, who was utterly dreadful and anti-charismatic as the “love” interest. And it has a great Jerry Goldsmith score too.
@3/jM1878: “Also, Jimmy Olsen is black in this show…”
So what? Jimmy Olsen is a redhead in the comics, but he’s almost always been brown-haired on TV and film. So there’s nothing new about screen Jimmy having more melanin than comics Jimmy.
Well, if he’s a tall good looking black guy who insists on being called James instead of Jimmy and is a respected award-winning journalistic photographer, well, he’s a completely different character. I thought it was clear from what I said, but hey, I guess we’re forbidden to even remark about race regardless of what was said.
The main issue is not that Jimmy is black, it’s that he’s older, and far more experienced and mature, guess they couldn’t envision a romance between two nerdy geeks. That’s wrong of me to assume the Jimmy from the show might not be a nerd, but I find their relationship creepy, because, ya, she does come across as a teenager.
I saw the pilot when it leaked, and it’s not half bad… but I hope it gets better as the season progresses.
@8 Yeah, if the only change was that he’s black I couldn’t care less. It just seems weird to change practically everything about the character. I mean, there’s just no way that you would recognize him as Jimmy Olsen if they hadn’t explicitly said he was, and even then I’d be tempted to assume he was a different character with the same name if they’d not specified that he was in fact a photographer that used to work at the Daily Planet and is friends with Superman. Not only is his ethnicity different, but his looks don’t bring the character to mind because, well, he’s a different age, has a different personality, and well, even a completely different aesthetic as far as visual design is concerned.
The show is actually set in Metropolis? How will they explain Superman’s constant failure to show up for the crisis/villain of the week? It’s a big enough problem in one movie where there is a world threatening danger and the Avengers don’t show up (e.g. Dark World); Marvel seems to basically ignore the problem. What is DC going to do when Superman is missing for 22 weeks/22 villains/22 crises? He’s off fighting even bigger problems? While she gets the junior bad guys? Or if this is set in the movie continuity where much of the reaction to Superman is hate/fear, why does Supergirl not face the same thing? Because she looks cute in a miniskirt and thigh boots?
It’s going to really be hard to ignore the absence of Superman after a while.
@8, @10
The time frame here may be relevant. How long after Clark landed on Earth did Kara? I never watched MOS but Wikipedia helpfully tells me that Clark/Supes is 33 years old and takes his job at the Daily Planet at the end of the movie. So does Supergirl take place 1 year after the battle of Manhattan, or 5 years, or 10 years? Maybe Kara’s ship lands after the battle, and this takes place a few years later, so Clark and Jimmy have worked together for a long time, and Jimmy grew up and got good at his job.
@11 No, it’s set someplace else and Jimmy Olsen moves there for a new job, which happens to be in the same company where Kara works, because of some reasons I won’t spoil. Superman is not there because he’s supposedly letting Kara do her own thing there without getting in the way and establish herself as a legit hero in her own right, which kind of makes sense. However, they set up the villains of the show as a huge threat that would logically imply that Superman would step up to take them on. As I said, it has some huge plot-holes and the cutesy-goofy vibe and cheesy take on superheroes is kind of jarring at times.
@12 I don’t think that the show is supposed to be in continuity with the latest movie, because that would mean Clark is forty-something and that doesn’t sound right. They do show Kara arriving at Earth as a kid when Superman is already an established hero, so the show is several years later when she’s grown up. Maybe you’re right and this version of Jimmy grew up, lost the nerdiness and became good at his job. Still, it’s weird to change a well-established character so much.
@7/jm1978: The point is that this is an older Jimmy. He was Superman’s teenage cub-reporter pal years ago, but now he’s grown up and become a successful journalist in his own right. That’s not a completely different character, it’s just the same character later in life.
Why aren’t you raising the same objections about the changes to Cat Grant? She’s not a reporter at the Daily Planet, she’s a multimedia magnate. How is that not a completely different character? Then there’s Hank Henshaw, David Harewood’s character. In the comics, he was the Cyborg Superman, not the head of a secret government agency defending Earth from aliens. Changing characters is something adaptations are allowed to do.
@14: No, the series is definitely not in continuity with Man of Steel. The trailer makes it clear that Krypton looks entirely different. None of DC’s current TV productions are in the same continuity as the movies (except, apparently, for the Krypton prequel that David Goyer is developing for Syfy), because the TV and movie divisions are separate parts of Warner Bros., and the movie people don’t want to be constrained by what the TV shows are doing.
Chris, you just like arguing for the sake of it. I just gave my opinion (it’s also allowed, you know). Black, older, professional, model-looking Jimmy Olsen is a dramatic change to an iconic character and, unless they specifically make it a plot point that he grew up and became cool or something, then we’re just extrapolating stuff in order to justify what they did in the show, which is lazy storytelling.
Cat Grant and Cyborg Superman are not iconic characters unlike Jimmy Olsen, and if I’d said something about them, you’d still be arguing because “it’s allowed” to change characters and I’d be sexist or something for criticizing Cat Grant for being a mogul instead of a reporter, just like you implied racism by zeroing in on my comment about Jimmy being black.
Of course it’s allowed to change characters, otherwise there wouldn’t be any point in making an adaptation. However, I’m within my right to say I don’t like this specific change, or this specific adaptation, especially when I clearly explained why. I’m not a fan of “change for change’s sake.” Comic book characters, especially iconic ones, work because they’re mostly changeless. If you like this Supergirl show, that’s cool, by all means enjoy it.
I don’t care that Jimmy’s black, but I agree that the character’s personality and look (besides the ethnicity; this one is a hunk that looks like a fashion model) are nothing like the comic book character.
Superman staying offscreen shouldn’t be an issue, because comics- especially before annual crossover events- acted like the titular super was the only super.
Few were in a real city, too. Where are Metropolis, Gotham City, Coast City, Central City, Keystone City, and the rest?
Marvel is worse. There are so many in NYC, but I would think that if Doc Ock was knocking Spidey into walls that somebody else would show up.
The whole Matrix/angel/Pocket Universe stuff is a complicated tangle that lacks the elegant simplicity of the original concept. And which would totally baffle the average TV watcher.
“Who is Supergirl?”
“Supergirl’s kid cousin from Krypton.”
“Okay, got it.”
As opposed to:
“Well, she’s actually a protoplasmic artificial life form from a Pocket Universe created after the Crisis on the Infinite Earths, who eventually kinda, sorta becomes half-human, half-angel, and who just happens to call herself Supergirl and wear a big “S” on her chest because . . . reasons.”
“Huh? Could you repeat that? My eyes started glazing over by the end of the first sentence . . ..”
@16/jm1978 and 17/lordmagnusen: Jimmy Olsen being cool is not a new thing. He was created for the radio series to be a character that the show’s young audience could identify with. Nobody could hope to be Superman, but every kid could hope to be Superman’s Pal, so Jimmy was meant to be an aspirational figure for America’s kids, someone who represented their interests and attitudes. The behavior that seems hokey to us now was cool for the 1940s and ’50s. It was mainly Jack Larson on the ’50s TV series and Mark McClure in the Reeve movies who created the idea of Jimmy as a lovable doofus. In radio and the Silver Age comics, Jimmy was an intrepid adventurer who led an incredible life, frequently traveling to other planets or gaining weird superpowers or discovering magic potions and talismans. If you’ve read Grant Morrison’s All-Star Superman, it pretty much sums up how successful a reporter Jimmy was in his Silver Age heyday. After all, he was a wish-fulfillment character for young readers, someone who got to have all the incredible adventures they dreamed of.
So really, this cool, successful version of Jimmy is not that revisionist at all. If anything, it’s a more direct extrapolation from the character’s comics history than the most famous screen versions have been.
Plus, we have had cool, good-looking versions of Jimmy Olsen on TV before — Michael Landes on Lois and Clark, Aaron Ashmore on Smallville. It has never been a requirement for Jimmy Olsen to be nerdy or nebbishy.
So, according to you they changed him so much this time that he actually became more like the original version. Hard to argue with that logic. Hell, for someone who knows so much about comic books and their adaptations you seem to miss the point of what’s been discussed too much that it’s hard to think it’s not on purpose.
Hi, all–let’s keep the discussion grounded in the article and the works being discussed, not in more personal disagreements. Thanks.
I kind of liked this one, when it came out.
I’m going to have to disagree with you, Chris. Yes, Jimmy doesn’t need to be a dorky nerd, but to me, this version doesn’t even ring true to the Silver Age weird adventure guy. That’s just my opinion, though.
@24/lordmagnusen: Neither did Michael Landes’s Jimmy in Lois and Clark. He retained the part of Jimmy’s character that was about being a low-tier cub reporter trying to prove himself worthy, but he was also a cool, funny, streetwise Jimmy and was one of the most charismatic actors in the cast. There’s nothing wrong with reinventing a character in an adaptation.
Heck, look at Felicity Smoak on Arrow. The only things she has in common with her comics counterpart are her name and her association with computers; in every other respect, she’s a totally new character. But she was the breakout character of the show, and a more faithful interpretation would not have worked a fraction as well (nor even been possible, since the original Felicity was an antagonist for Firestorm, and that character was only added to the Arrowverse last year).
I mean, really, why does a Supergirl show need a Jimmy who’s just like the one who’s a supporting member of Superman’s cast? That doesn’t make sense. This is a different show with different situations and character dynamics, so it makes sense for Olsen to play a different role, to take advantage of the opportunity to let the character grow into something new. If you’ve seen the leaked pilot or the extended trailer that was released months ago, then you know what role James Olsen will play in the series, and it’s one that makes sense in the context of a story about a novice Supergirl starting out in a world where Superman has already been an established presence for a dozen years. In that time frame, it makes perfect sense that Jimmy would’ve already grown out of the copyboy/cub reporter role and be further along in his career. It would be silly for him not to have done so. Think of this as a sequel/spinoff to the Superman saga as we know it. This is the next phase in Olsen’s life after that.
@25: for the same reason they have a Jimmy Olson at all. He’s there to have a recognizable character from the Superman mythos. Having him both look and act completely differently negates all that. You can do one or the other, but not both.
All of the other changes to Jimmy’s appearance involved keeping at least some of the most recognizable parts of his character. This one doesn’t. He might as well be someone else.
If you’re going to radically change his appearance, then you need to make him act like Jimmy Olson. But this character doesn’t.
Your in-universe explanation is irrelevant. The audience isn’t in-universe. And it is the audience who need to recognize the character as Jimmy Olson. Not just a character that seems to share the same name.
(Hell, the same thing happened in Smallville. It’s why we later found out that their James Olson was actually Jimmy Olson’s older brother.)
@26/trlkly: First off, again about the looks: Screen Jimmy has never looked like comics Jimmy. Comics Jimmy is a freckle-faced redhead. The only red-haired actor who’s ever played the role in live action was Tommy Bond in the 1948 and 1950 serials, and they were in black and white. Looks are beside the point. We have decades’ worth of history of actors who don’t look like the character they’re based on. Eartha Kitt didn’t look like Catwoman. Marlon Brando didn’t look anything like Jor-El. Michael Keaton didn’t look anything like Bruce Wayne. Hugh Jackman doesn’t look at all like Wolverine. Paul Newman didn’t look a damn thing like Butch Cassidy. Anthony Hopkins didn’t look like Richard Nixon. Looks are only an exclusive priority if you’re casting a model. If you’re casting an actor, talent and personality are more important.
Second, once again: The whole point of the show is that it takes place later than the conventional Superman narrative. Jimmy’s cub-reporter years are behind him, and there’s a valid story reason to include him as someone who has a past with Superman. He wouldn’t work as well in the same role if it were a decade earlier and he were still a cub reporter. It makes no sense to dismiss a story choice when you haven’t yet seen the story and don’t know the reasons for it. From what I’ve seen, it seems to me that there’s a very good reason for making this an older James Olsen. It has to be someone who has a history with Superman, who’s gained his trust over the years and is part of his inner circle, and it needs to be a male character who’s a potential romantic interest for Kara, so it can’t be Lois or Perry. An older version of Jimmy, one who still has that character’s history but has grown into a new phase of his life, is the only person that could fill that role in the series.
In the Sterling Gates era Supergirl, Jimmy had two solo one shots released, both using the name Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen using the exact type font as the classic Silver Age book. Jimmy is a total bad ass in both of these books (and good looking, for a comic book character, just not Bruce Wayne/Dick Grayson good looking, more like Wally West/Tim Drake good looks), riding a motorcycle, rescuing someone from a burning image (image link picture related), investigating a wide scale government cover-up/conspiracy, etc.
It’s fair to say that elements of who Jimmy is, inherently (heck, he’s Superman’s PAL) are missing here. I don’t necessarily have a problem with tall, good looking or older (well – a bit to the extent that the actress does come across as a teenager in some of the bumpers/trailers/advertising for the show, IF they are meant to be love interests) and I certainly don’t have a problem with him being African American. If we can have a President of the US also be a black Kyptonian (yes, that is, in fact a comic book thing, and not really a MODERN thing, either), or a vampiric Batman in the DCU, the race of a character really has no bearing. But Jimmy can be handsome, older, black and be recognizably the intrepid reporter/friend of Superman. To the extent that this character is that, I’m fully on board. Otherwise, there’s no reason the character in this show couldn’t have been Ron Troupe (except Ron isn’t a photographer in the comics – but apparently those characterization aren’t important factors here).
I have to agree that this seems like wanting to use the recognition of the name without anything else, which can be problematic or not so much. For example, so far, I’m OK with the Jay Garrick we’re getting in The Flash, although on multiple levels he’s not really recognizable as Jay. But I’m probably far more annoyed that Barry’s speed force powers were granted by a manufactured particle accelerator accident that also created the majority of the meta humans in Flash TV land.
The Flash show (and presumably also true of Arrow, don’t know, don’t watch) was never meant to be a true-to-the-source-material live action interpretation. They are certainly using any number of elements, Easter eggs, etc. I’m totally fine with that as well, if it’s a good show.
From the comments folks made about the pilot (I would agree that Kara should have felt pain at least once while on Kandor as a pre-teen, irrespective of how advanced a society it was; children play, they have accidents), it sounds like Supergirl will have many, (although hopefully be spared the CW romance curse, given the different network) of the flaws and good notes from the Flash. So I would be totally fine with giving it a few breaks, at the start.
As two other observations: I was pleased to see Tor do this piece (as well as The Flash/multiverse piece) and hope to see more such explorations in the future on the site, so good job in that regard. I also hope the site will, if not review it regularly, do a EAP type analysis of the first batch of episodes by the end of November. Finally, irrespective of how characters are used and portrayed, and how true they may or may not be to their comic book counterparts, from the advertising (which, of course, has inherent bias from CBS’ promotional department), it appears like this will be a good forum for giving young girls a superhero they can more closely identify with – hopefully. the actual portrayal will be closer to say the Wonder Woman from the DCAU Justice League/Justice League Unlimited than say the Lois Lane from 1950’s era Superman’s Girlfriend.
@28/_FDS: “Otherwise, there’s no reason the character in this show couldn’t have been Ron Troupe (except Ron isn’t a photographer in the comics – but apparently those characterization aren’t important factors here).”
Well, except that Ron Troupe is pretty much the poster boy for a token black character who has no reason to exist other than being “the black guy.” That’s exactly the wrong way to handle inclusion. The right way is the way it’s already done routinely in this century — to cast the right actor for the part regardless of race. Michael Clark Duncan as Kingpin, Dania Ramirez as Callisto, Alessandro Juliani as Smallville‘s Emil Hamilton (after Joe Morton played an earlier Professor Hamilton on the show), Phil Morris as Smallville‘s Martian Manhunter, Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, Laurence Fishburne as Perry White, Idris Elba as Heimdall, Vondie Curtis-Hall as Ben Urich, Candice Patton as Iris West, Chloe Bennet as Daisy Johnson, etc. This is an everyday thing now.
And by the way, Jimmy was originally a copyboy turned cub reporter, not a photographer. I’m not sure where the idea that he was a photographer came from. Probably the Kirk Alyn serials, since Google turns up a couple of photos of Tommy Bond’s Jimmy holding a camera.
“hopefully. the actual portrayal will be closer to say the Wonder Woman from the DCAU Justice League/Justice League Unlimited than say the Lois Lane from 1950’s era Superman’s Girlfriend.”
Honestly, I wasn’t happy with that version of Wonder Woman. She was too tough, cold, and aggressive, based on a simplistically masculine assumption of what female strength means. Wonder Woman’s creator, William Moulton Marston, understood that compassion and kindness are sources of great strength, that the ability to fight does not define true power or worth. When George Perez reinvented her post-Crisis, he made her a diplomat and teacher as well as a champion. A lot of modern Wonder Woman writers ignore that and just make her a warrior-woman stereotype, which is missing a lot of what defines her. I think we need more heroes of both sexes who embody compassion over aggression. Barry Allen is one, and I’d like Kara to be another.
the “no other Kryptonians” rule was a really good idea, it made Superman a unique character, it was one of the many reason Crisis on Infinite Earths happened.
I just don’t like the adaptation they did of Jimmy, and I’m entitled to my own opinion. Does it ruin the show for me? No. I long ago learned to enjoy these things as adaptations, and if it’s entertaining beyond the pilot (which I enjoyed), I’ll keep on watching.
You know, I’m remembering how up in arms the Superman fan base was twenty-odd years ago when Lois and Clark reinvented Lex Luthor as a younger, debonair, good-looking romantic figure with a full head of hair. How can he be Lex Luthor if he isn’t a stocky, middle-aged bald guy? But the change made sense in the context of the series’ approach, since it made Luthor a romantic rival for Clark as well as an enemy for Superman; and John Shea made it work pretty well, all in all.
Of course, L&C also changed Perry White into a Southerner who was an obsessive Elvis fan and actually preferred to be called “Chief,” and I’ve mentioned how it initially changed Jimmy into a more cool and streetwise figure than the version familiar from the Jack Larson and Mark McClure portrayals, although that was abandoned after season one. Those changes also worked fairly well. On the other hand, it took Cat Grant, who in the comics was a single mother and recovering alcoholic, and reduced her to a one-note comic-relief nymphomaniac. At the time, I thought she was hot, but having just revisited the first season recently, I’m struck by how utterly awful and useless her character was, almost never allowed to grow beyond caricature or contribute more than comic relief to a story. Fortunately she was dropped after one season. The Supergirl version of Cat is bound to be an improvement.
Yes, Supergirl Cat Grant is at least useful, if anything.
CLB, there was a Planet photographer essentially (given publication schedules and other lead time) concurrent to the radio show who looks, just about, the way Jimmy was initially portrayed, just named Joey (and not very much in the model tall, good looks department, either). There’s also a lot of talk about an unnamed background character being Jimmy prior to the radio show but that’s mostly speculation. Yes, he was an intern – a copy boy to be precise – at first and then became a journalist — including being a photojournalist, as the camera was an excuse to join Lois and Clark. In early (1940’s episodes) Lois is often having to take her own snapshots for her “scoops” but this ended before the war did and Jimmy was a definite photographer (photojournalist) if you will.
In the example I mentioned above, which was essentially a prequel to the New Krypton saga co-written by Gates, Jimmy is definitely investigating a conspiracy and very little of that was photography, so he definitely has his journalism credentials (as also shown in All Star Superman).
Troupe isn’t the best name to have inserted there but this Cat Grant is also not recognizable to the 1980s Cat or the current iteration (which is probably where they got some of these media mogul ideas). I could have said Steve Lombard but he was also a pastiche cartoon character that was not really fleshed out. My point was specifically Ron and that he was black, but that any name associated with Supes could have been used (save Lois and, probably, Perry White), and it makes sense that if she’s a competitor, that Catco would move their headquarters to a different city (that looks just like LA!) versus Metropolis, but otherwise, it didn’t have to be Jimmy if it wasn’t going to be, well, Jimmy.
@34/_FDS: But he’s not supposed to be “Jimmy.” He’s supposed to be what comes next in Olsen’s life. Having seen the pilot now, I can say with confidence that the whole point of the character is about the contrast between our expectations about “Jimmy Olsen” and the reality of what he’s subsequently grown up to become. The boy has become a man. In a series whose core theme is empowerment and fulfilling potential, that seems to me like a perfect fit.
The fact is, people change. The original conception of Jimmy Olsen was as a copyboy, a teenager who would become Superman’s pal and be an audience identification figure for young listeners and readers. But teenagers grow up. Adolescence is a fleeting phase, not an end in itself but the foundation for adulthood. There’s nothing wrong with acknowledging that fact, with taking a character known for being a child or a teenager and choosing to explore the next phase in that character’s life, to see what they grew up to become. That’s how Robin became Nightwing. That’s how Bucky became the Winter Soldier. The change from what they used to be, the contrast between who they were and who they’ve now become, is the whole point. That’s a dynamic worth exploring. Characters should be allowed to change and grow, because people change and grow. Is it wrong that Batman Beyond made Barbara Gordon the police commissioner, or that The Legend of Korra changed Katara from a teenager to an elderly woman, or that Star Wars Rebels has changed Ahsoka Tano from a young student to a wise mentor? James Olsen here is a lot like Ahsoka — the apprentice to one generation of hero, now grown into the mentor for the next generation of hero.
I wholeheartedly agree with you on those points, Chris. It’s just that me, in particular, wish they could have done that with James Olsen without turning him into a fashion model hunk (I’m okay with them changing his ethnicity, or rather, I don’t care). It’s just a matter of personal preference.
To me the most annoying thing about the pilot (which I kind of watched by accident) was how ridiculously stereotypical and cliché the characters/relationships were (I have pretty much zero opinion on the Jimmy Olsen thing as I don’t really follow the franchise at all. My firs thought was, ‘oh, I guess Jimmy grew up. Okay then).
I’m a woman professional who works at a company headed by a female CEO and I’m totally, totally sick of the whole ‘successful/powerful women are fashionable/catty/rich bitches/etc’ and all the other professional women are their coffee fetching cute/ditzy lackeys.
Also, the friendzone guy, ffs! Why is he even in the show? And why would Kara trust him when he’s a total creeper?
@36/lordmagnusen: Well, the show needed a romantic interest for Kara. And I don’t think they were considering the opinions of heterosexual male viewers when they cast the role. There are already plenty of superhero shows geared toward male audiences; I have no problem with there being an alternative.
@37/lisamarie: It seemed to me that the reason Kara chose to trust Winn with her secret was because Alex reacted so badly. As she said outright, she needed someone to be excited for her rather than critical. Maybe it will turn out to be a mistake that she turned to him, but I can see why she did.
As for him being a “creeper,” I think it’s more of a boyish crush than anything genuinely threatening. Also, Kara’s in kind of a unique and enviable position, in that she’s a young woman who is in absolutely no danger of being victimized by any male predator. (Well, other than through psychological means like voyeurism or online harassment.) So she’d probably have less reason to be on her guard about such things.
Oh, I’m fully aware that this is not a show targeted to me. I’m fine with that. I can still express my opinions on it, though, while not condemning it for not conforming to them.
And re: Winslow… well, he’s named like a supervillain, so I don’t harbor much hope of him not being a creep.
@39/lordmagnusen: Spoiler-ish alert: It was announced the other day that Winn’s father, Winslow Schott, Sr., will be appearing as the Toyman, played by Henry Czerny.
Oh, then I hope Winn doesn’t suffer the fate Tommy Merlyn did on Arrow.
His name is Winn? Hahaha. I actually was marginally confused for a split second and wondering why we were talking about Kai Winn, because that would be kind of funny.
I completely understand the in story reasons for it, I just think it fell flat. And to be sure, when I say ‘creeper’, I don’t necessarily mean ‘psycho rapist stalker’ who is a physical threat to her. Just that he seems to be one of those Nice Guys who is going to spend the show pining for her in cliché and predictable ways (or who knows, maybe it will take a dark twist, but in that case I hope we’re not expected to feel sorry for him because he was an unrequited love object) instead of accepting that she’s just Not That Into Him. (Example – cliché assumption that she must be a lesbian because she’s not into him).
No joke, the first character I thought of when he showed up is that guy in Zoolander who fawns over Matilda, except not played for laughs.
Hah, no, his name is Winslow; apparently some have taken to nicknaming him Winn.
I can see how Winn could come off as creepy as written, but I think they did a good job casting an actor who comes off as harmless and friendly even with the obsessive-crush angle and the fondness for skimpy heroine costumes. Often the secret to good casting is to find an actor whose personality can offset the potentially problematical aspects of a character. (When they auditioned for the Skipper on Gilligan’s Island, they wrote a test scene where he really piles the abuse onto Gilligan, and Alan Hale, Jr. proved to be the only actor who could keep it feeling comedic rather than crossing the line into something darker.)
And, yes, Winn is how he’s known in-series, although of course it’s short for Winslow Schott, Jr. “Apparently some have taken to nicknaming him?” No. That’s how he’s always been identified in all of the promotional material for the show, as Winslow “Winn” Schott.
I just watched the episode again, and I find myself getting distracted by how National City is so obviously Los Angeles, with that big cylindrical skyscraper so prominent in the skyline. But then, Superman: The Movie unapologetically showed off New York City landmarks like the Statue of Liberty while claiming to be set in Metropolis.
Ah, my bad. I hadn’t seen any of the promotional materials, and I saw the pilot months ago.
@CLB I think you make a good point regarding casting.
Actually, I was thinking back on this and why this particular character in particular bugs me, and I realized it was because he kind of reminded me of all the things I hated about Bashir’s character, hahahahaha. I guess I’m just not into the obsessive crush as a plot/characterization device.
You do realize that type of person exists, right? :)
Yes, and when I was growing up I found them offputting then too :) To be clear – I was not the type of girl who had scores of suitors but there were a handful and some of them were overbearing in that same way (there were others that I was able to maintain perfectly healthy friendships with). The reason my husband is my husband is because he was NOT :)
I hope he also has other qualities. :)