My Adventures with Superman
Entry updated 2 October 2023. Tagged: TV.
US animated tv series (2023-current). Warner Bros. Animation, DC Studios, Studio Mir. Based on the DC Comics characters created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. Series developed by Jake Wyatt. Directed by Jen Bennett, Diana Huh and Christina Manrique. Writers include Aman Adumer, Josie Campbell, Brendan Clogher and Cynthia Furey. Voice cast include Darrell Brown, David Errigo Jr, Zehra Fazal, Joel de la Fuente, Jake Green, Jesse Inocalla, Alice Lee, Jack Quaid, Ishmel Sahid and André Sogliuzzo. Ten 22-minute episodes. Colour.
In the Near Future, friends Clark Kent (Quaid) and photographer and Jimmy Olsen (Sahid) are starting their first day at the City of Metropolis's newspaper The Daily Planet. Another intern, Lois Lane (Lee) is assigned to show them the ropes: "how to scan things and make coffee". But Lois is ambitious, dragging Clark and Jimmy along when she follows a lead about stolen military Technology despite instructions from editor Perry White (Brown) not to do so. Supervillain Livewire (Fazal), who organized the theft, duly sets giant killer Robots on the trio: Clark manages to stop them without being recognized. At the end of the adventure the three consider themselves a team – and Lois vows to get an interview with the mysterious "superman" who saved them. Livewire ends up captured – and tortured – by the Government agency Task Force X ("We're the good guys"), but she had already made the stolen technology available to others, including some petty criminals and Ivo (Green), a tech billionaire who builds himself Powered Armour. We also learn that the leader of Task Force X, The General (Fuente), wants Superman dead.
Clark has known about his Superpowers since he was a child: they worry him as he wants to be normal (see Identity), but owing to his compassionate nature means cannot stop himself using them to help others. The Spaceship he arrived in is buried in his parent's fields; its technology is clearly related to Task Force X's. A projection (which seems to be self-aware – see AI) tries to communicate with him, but neither understands the other's language – though a hologram seems to show the familiar origin story. It then gives him a costume.
The trio meet Scientists Monsieur Mallah (Sogliuzzo), an Uplifted gorilla, and his partner the Brain (Inocalla), a Cyborg, who – met with hostility in this world – have built a Black Hole to create a Wormhole to other, hopefully more friendly, Dimensions. Unfortunately the disruption it causes to the Multiverse allows Mister Mxyzptlk (Errigo) to escape the League of Lois Lanes – other dimensions' Loises who teamed up to found the Interdimensional Peace Keeping Force. Chaos ensues, whilst Lois learns other dimensions have their own Superman, and not all of them are good. "Our" Superman ends up captured by The General, who considers him part of an Alien Invasion force, a follow-up to one that briefly appeared 22 years ago, before suddenly vanishing – but leaving some of its technology behind. Superman escapes, defeats Ivo – now essentially a giant Mecha loose in Metropolis – but frets that he might be no more than a living Weapon.
Matters become more complicated when Clark has Thanksgiving at his parent's house and meets Lois's father, who turns out to be The General. Circumstances then lead to another portal being opened, with a spaceship about to pass through it, before Superman uses kryptonite to destroy both. Informed of this, the leader of the invaders declares his intent to conquer Earth.
My Adventures with Superman's first season often references the DC Extended Universe, laying in many potential story points for future episodes. A potential plot irritant is disposed of early on, with Lois realizing Clark is Superman by the end of episode 4, whilst Jimmy works it out immediately. Jimmy is a conspiracy theorist (see Paranoia, though his belief in aliens turns out to be justified) who tends to be sidelined as the series focuses on the Lois/Clark romance: this gets going pretty quickly and, whilst there's some hiccups over Clark's secrecy and Lois's learning about the evil Supermen, the pair are going steady by the end of season one. Though the coincidence of The General also being Lois's father is a little difficult to swallow, this is otherwise a very good romantic comedy adventure series, with likeable leads. Showing a marked Anime influence – Mister Mxyzptlk's redesign in particular – this is the first animated series centred on Superman since Superman: The Animated Series (1996-2000). [SP]
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