My “Last” Adventure With Superman: The Scene That Ruined It For Me

I tried, folks. After the two-parter I tried for the sake of Superman. Not just my love of Superman but because Superman was the only thing they had gotten right. Lois was different but close. Jimmy was different on two levels. Perry was closer than Laurence Fishburne’s performance but still different. Slade…was a pretty boy now while Livewire was not Livewire. There was some interesting mystery with the Kryptonian stuff but for the most part I could go over this, showing the difference between a good show (which I could make defenses for) and a good adaptation (which this clearly is not).

Then I try to watch the next episode and made it less than five minutes in before the destruction continued. Someone (as of this writing) actually put the full scene up on YouTube so I can show you the full thing, the moment when My Adventures Of Superman was proving that in fact they WERE putting their characters into the story rather than trying to do a proper take on Superman and his cast of characters. I’ll show you the scene, and then break down why it was this moment that convinced me they just didn’t care.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7eaHw7R8_k

Let’s just follow the mistakes as they come.

1. Steve Lombard, usually a sports reporter at the Daily Planet, throws a baseball around but is a regular reporter, part of three assigned to Superman. A…sports reporter. I’m old and not up on the popular sports reporters of 2023 (I don’t follow sports) but I don’t see ABC News sending Howard Cosell to investigate the sudden superhero appearance! (Look him up, kids. He’s a fascinating bit of sports reporting history that I even I as a non-sports follower know of.) He’s a jerk, which is technically accurate, but while Lombard today isn’t as charming as his pre-Crisis counterpart this isn’t his flavor of obnoxious. I’m not sure we want that given he’s a bit of chauvinist with his better days behind him and a practical joker, especially in the show allegedly made for kids originally, but clearly the anime-ish influences used in this show made him the wrong kind of goofball.
2. Cat Grant, were she a real person, would probably hate her portrayal here. Yeah, she was the gossip columnist in the early years, before DC decided Toyman should be a child murderer and killed her son and the character started to mature, but this Cat comes off as the stereotype of gossip columnists. I’m not impressed with her. That seems to be all there is to her and it’s annoying…which may be the point but previous portrayal of Cat were always interesting, even in the CBS/CW Supergirl series where she became a likeable form of girlboss, at least in the CBS season.
3. Ron Troupe was the go-to for me to show that instead of blackwashing another redhead they could have just elevated him to a more important cast member. Well, they kind of did…by making him a black girl named Ronnie who’s annoyed with the white people’s nonsense (or at least Steve and Cat as she doesn’t come off here as an activist reporter) trying to be a voice of reason. So they completely change his character because they wanted a girl who wasn’t Cat. I guess this trio is also supposed to be a bad reflection of the main trio of the series (Clark/Steve, Lois/Cat, Jimmy/Ronnie) but the original versions were likable. Even Ronnie at best seems to be trying to placate our trio. “We’re taking your research rather than let you continue what you’re already doing, but we’ll totally mention you in the article despite taking your byline when it came to the article you already did about this Superman, even naming him.” I’m supposed to believe that?
4. And who told them to take the “murder board” with all the Superman research? Perry White, or this show’s version of him. Instead of seeing the potential at getting such a scoop, giving them credit in the article, and having the supposedly seasoned reporters work with the people who clearly already are doing a better job figuring out Superman existed and covered his first public appearance, he basically shuts them out because they’re interns. That’s not Perry White, that’s J. Jonah Jameson! Perry can be gruff but I don’t see him wasting potential talent. Now if Lois does get her interview, and I didn’t finish watching the episode, it goes up on Jimmy’s website which will probably shoot his subscriber count way up given that Superman is news, and the Daily Planet loses the biggest scoop of the year. Perry isn’t that stupid, and wants to create new reporters rather than chase them off. If it were me and I got the Superman story I’d tell Perry to shove his job sideways because he clearly isn’t going to give them a chance to be more than interns, find a rival who would give me proper credit, and have the biggest scoop of the year on my resume rather than lose it to two losers and a pandering angry lady.
5. What really lost me, though, was the news reporter, and a bit of research made her even worse. Hit replay if the video is still working and just look at Bethany Snow’s design. Not only does it not match the Bethany from the comics, that’s because she looks more like Lois Lane than Lois Lane does! That’s when I stopped watching because I wanted to see something with my breakfast that wasn’t going to make me angry.
6. Then while putting this article together I decide to see if they made her up or if she’s an actual DC character. She is, but she has little if any tie to Superman and Metropolis. She was originally a Teen Titans antagonist who was working for Brother Blood to promote his church and when the Titans went up against him she tried to ruin their reputation. In the New 52 the pre-Crisis character was brought back to host the meta news segment “Channel 52”, meant to update readers on what was coming from DC Comics at the time because Dan DiDio was more obsessed with the number 52 than the rest of DC has been. Someone at this show looked up the name of a DC TV news reporter and just slapped her in there. She could have been Summer Gleason from Gotham City at that point.
7. Also, both the pre-Crisis and New 52 versions of Bethany are redheads. I may have to revisit that idea that they aren’t trying to eliminate redheads in Hollywood because the evidence is contradicting my previous statement about it being a coincidence due to how few redheads there are in fiction. Maybe they really are being targeted.

I stopped watching but I had planned to go back and finish it as well as watch the next episode, if only to review them for this site. Superman is my favorite superhero and he was the only thing they got right, despite his blushing a bit more than previous versions. Now I just have to give up. I think dannphan summed up the problems nicely, including stuff I brought up in my previous articles on the show.

I wanted to give the show a chance but this proves how little they care about writing a show about Superman and his friends. Instead they’re slapping names onto their characters to tell THEIR story rather than an alternate version of Superman’s story. I’ve seen many different takes. The old Fleischer shorts, the Filmation series, the Ruby-Spears and DCAU shows that I recommend over this take (the Ruby-Spears show needs more love, frankly). The DCAU version was also Superman’s early years and did a great job dealing with the human side of Superman and his relationship with Lois while the Ruby-Spears show had plenty of action, had to combine elements of the pre and post-Crisis takes on Superman as they were kind of caught in the middle of the change in comic continuity (caring about the source material…how novel), and the “Superman Family Album” segments were better takes on pre-Superman Clark than some other versions I could mention.

So go watch those instead for Superman. This show may have the rare appearance of a straight tomboy and some good action but that’s all it has going for it. It might be a fun show…but it isn’t a Superman show. It’s someone else’s show with a cheap Superman paint job, and any longtime Superman fan can see the paint chips. Bet they’re lead, too. I might try to keep up with the Kryptonian tech and the ship in the field just to see what they do with it but as far as watching the episodes regularly? I already took it off the DVR. I’ll use that time to watch a REAL Superman cartoon with the real Superman, Clark Kent, Lois Lane, and Jimmy Olsen.