I have been enjoying My Adventures With Superman as an IP for the Man of Steel. Somehow the show walks a fine line between whimsy and drama. The character pieces inject some anime fun and imagery which keep an upbeat feel to everything.
Not that everything is rosy, especially in this season. We are seeing why the Lois/Sam relationship is strained. We are still seeing Superman dealing with his feelings of isolation and loneliness.
I am sure that last part will be dealt with or at least riffed on with the appearance of Supergirl in the show. We have seen the angry images of Kara in some previews. We know she is out there. But we haven't met her yet.
When you show me an angry Supergirl, I worry. There have been too many instances where Supergirl has been utilized by evil forces for my tastes. There have been too many times where she has been held back as a hero to make Superman better. And this last episode 'Two Lanes Diverged' made me nervous.
Lex Luthor has taken a much bigger role in this season and now is proclaiming 'The Superman Problem' to the media.
When you show me an angry Supergirl, I worry. There have been too many instances where Supergirl has been utilized by evil forces for my tastes. There have been too many times where she has been held back as a hero to make Superman better. And this last episode 'Two Lanes Diverged' made me nervous.
Superman is an alien. Superman is incredibly powerful. Superman could force his will on Earthlings. Superman is dangerous. Superman cannot be trusted.
If Superman can't be trusted ...
At this STAR Labs conference, Superman aids Lois and Sam Lane who are under attack by The Atomic Skull and Deathstroke. Of course, the place gets demolished.
Somehow Lex turns the tables stating that Superman easily cut through STAR's cutting edge defensive tech. That means Superman could, at any time, take over.
You would hope that video footage of super-villains destroying most of the terrain would be available. But nope.
And now the first of two worries.
One, wouldn't an easy way for Lex to 'prove' his theories be to mind-control or manipulate Supergirl into looking like a villain, someone not to trust?
Doesn't this seem like an easy way to push forward the Lex plot at Supergirl's expense?
Later in the episode, feeling more alone than ever given what happened with Lex and misunderstanding something he overhears Lois say, he activates the beacon to find Kara.
The next thing we see is the masked and rather dangerous appearing Kryptonian from Season 1.
And so the second worry.
What if Supergirl is this masked person? What if she is actually evil in this universe and needs to be taken out by Superman? What if she is a villain?
I just want Supergirl to have some agency, be her own character, and be a hero (at least in training). But this story could easily make her an antagonist.
I am trusting Josie Campbell to do the right thing.
But I have been burned before as a Supergirl fan.
We shall see.
So the trailer for the next episode actually shows a kind of sweet (and short!) Kara (looking like Andriod 18!) encountering Jimmy Olson and asking about her cousin. I think we may get some angry Kara, but I am a bit confident it will be better than you fear. I hope.
ReplyDeletePredictions are that that masked Kryptonian is likely a Lara Lor-Van construct, under the control of the old Braniac system Krypton used in its war machine.
I’m just sick of stories in which Krypton is aggressive and Superman and Supergirl’s loved ones are lunatics.
ReplyDeleteThis spoiler free review presents a very interesting take on what will happen with Kara: https://www.supermanhomepage.com/my-adventures-with-superman-season-2-episode-5-most-eligible-superman-spoiler-free-review/. Notably, one of this series' most significant departures from most other representations of Superman is its assertion that Jimmy both knew Clark well before joining the Daily Planet, and that he also knew before almost anybody else that Clark isn't human. Now, it seems that on top of this considerable reimagination of Jimmy that the series is going to set him up so that he and Kara have a relationship that's a clear counterpart to the one between Clark and Lois.
ReplyDeleteIf that's the case, I wholly applaud it. Jimmy has long been the most underutilized character in the Superman cannon relative to his narrative potential. When writers genuinely appreciate him as a character who's capable of being a legitimately interesting and compelling character in his own right, they also generally demonstrate that they have a truly good grasp of Clark's world beyond himself and are therefore capable of writing good Superman stories that make the people and situations around him as well as he himself compelling to read about. This series has already done that with Jimmy by transforming him from a sidekick to a partner. If it can top that by using him as a vehicle to see how a Kryptonian woman and a human man could build an intimate relationship, this could end up being one of the best takes on Superman in a while. I am therefore optimistic that contrary to other indicators, Kara and her relationship with other characters will ultimately become a strong point of this series.
A Kara/Jimmy relationship could be interesting. There was an imaginary story in the Silver Age in which they were married.
ReplyDeleteA Kara/Jimmy relationship almost happened in a season two episode of Superman: The Animated Series.
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