Wouldn't everybody who knew Clark in Smallville know that he's Superman?

[Buried Alien]

In the Richard Donner SUPERMAN movies, the Post-COIE John Byrne SUPERMAN comics, the SMALLVILLE TV series, and the DCEU, Clark Kent was not portrayed as having grown up wearing glasses when he lived in Smallville. It was only after he decided that he would become Superman that he adopted the glasses that would help to disguise his identity.

That being the case, wouldn't EVERYBODY in Smallville who knew Clark well recognize him as Superman? They see and hear Superman on TV when he appears before the media, and they see his photo in the newspapers. Even without the costume, those who knew Clark well would absolutely identify him as Superman. The glasses, etc., might fool those who never knew Clark in Smallville, but shouldn't fool his Smallville associates.

Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)

[Nick Miller]

That’s what the glasses are for......

[seismic-2]

Nobody looks like their photo from their high school yearbook. Folks in Smallville remember just a teen-age kid, who only kind of resembles the guy in the blue leotard with the red underwear on the outside, but not all that much.

[Powerboy]

In the Richard Donner SUPERMAN movies, the Post-COIE John Byrne SUPERMAN comics, the SMALLVILLE TV series, and the DCEU, Clark Kent was not portrayed as having grown up wearing glasses when he lived in Smallville. It was only after he decided that he would become Superman that he adopted the glasses that would help to disguise his identity.

That being the case, wouldn't EVERYBODY in Smallville who knew Clark well recognize him as Superman? They see and hear Superman on TV when he appears before the media, and they see his photo in the newspapers. Even with the costume, those who knew Clark well would absolutely identify him as Superman. The glasses, etc., might fool those who never knew Clark in Smallville, but shouldn't fool his Smallville associates.

Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)

For the Donner movies, that is true. Of course, taking into consideration the stuff he did like the Amnesia Kiss, maybe he just telepathically prevented anyone from making the connection.

For the John Byrne Superman, it was established that he was always blurring his face as Superman and, presumably, altering his voice.

For Smallville, we never actually see him as Superman except in a CGI scene at the end of the last episode so we don't know what he does to disguise his face.

In the current movies, or at least MoS, I had the feeling half of Smallville knew who he really was and they weren't talking because he had saved their lives or, in the case of the parents, had saved their children's lives (which really subtly undercuts Jonathan Kent's fears about how *all* people would react to him).

[Thor-Ul]

The amnesia kiss? You mean he kissed everybody in Smallville???

[Jackalope89]

The amnesia kiss? You mean he kissed everybody in Smallville???

Especially Lexy.

[Powerboy]

The amnesia kiss? You mean he kissed everybody in Smallville???

Yes, at super speed.

There's another one to add to the mix. In "The Adventures of Superman", in the episode, "Panic in the Sky", there is a scene where Clark Kent is talking to Jimmy Olsen. During the scene, Clark takes off his glasses and Jimmy looks right at him without them. According to an interview with Jack Larson (Jimmy), he protested the scene because the whole premise was that people didn't realize Clark was Superman because he always wore glasses as Clark. But George Reeves suggested he not look for trouble by making an issue of it.

[superduperman]

The new movies more or less admit the bulk of the town was in on the secret. One of the mothers of the kids she saved point blank said it wasn't the first time he did something like it. In the Donner movies, keep in mind he went away to train for something like a decade before re-emerging and looked nothing like his teenage self. Smallville is problematic because not only do people know what Clark looked like as a kid but he also went around without glasses even after he became a reporter. The one that gets me is the pre-Crisis Superman. He started wearing glasses only after he started his Superboy career so one day Clark doesn't wear glasses and the next day a kid looking just like Clark in long underwear shows up with super-powers and Clark is wearing glasses. The Johns origin kind of got around this by having Superboy be more of an urban myth. The going away for a few years solution seems to be the best solution. The new Earth One books kind of went around this by not having anyone in town know him. He went out of his way to keep a low profile his entire childhood. TAS is also somewhat problematic but we also know very little about his childhood or how much time passed between his learning the truth about his origins and his debut as Superman.

[Adekis]

This is why I prefer versions of the story where he wore glasses as a kid. Read an L&C fan fic that proposed that it was like a self-imposed limitation, suggested by his parents. When he wears his glasses, he doesn't use his powers, and he wears them whenever he leaves the farm or someone comes to visit. By the time he's old enough to use more discretion than that, he's just used to wearing glasses all the time anyway.

I think it fits in with most versions of the backstory where he wears glasses as a kid.

[Jon Clark]

This is why I prefer versions of the story where he wore glasses as a kid. Read an L&C fan fic that proposed that it was like a self-imposed limitation, suggested by his parents. When he wears his glasses, he doesn't use his powers, and he wears them whenever he leaves the farm or someone comes to visit. By the time he's old enough to use more discretion than that, he's just used to wearing glasses all the time anyway.

I think it fits in with most versions of the backstory where he wears glasses as a kid.

I actually give Johns credit (assuming it hadn't appeared earlier) for the idea of the glasses limiting his powers. I'd even take it further. One of the old visual clues that Clark was using X-Ray vision was him adjusting his glasses. So I'd establish that the glasses not only prevented heat vision, but also blocked his x-ray vision (and maybe his telescopic and microscopic as well). So Clark wearing the glasses from his early days would be separate from his dual ID- it'd just be part of his life while he developed control of the powers.

A possibly better alternative might be establishing that the death of the Kents was an event that took out most of Smallville leaving anyone (except Lana) who knew Clark's secret moot.

[Jim Kelly]

I thought the glasses being some way for young Clark to control his vision powers was an idea that existed long before Geoff Johns was at DC. I know it's something I thought about decades ago and I can't be that smart. If it wasn't an official part of continuity, I'm sure it was an idea that was floating around in the fan-o-sphere.

Last week, I was watching an episode from the first season of the ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN, where a group of criminals give the Daily Planet staff a truth serum that puts them in a hypnotic state, in an effort to learn Superman's secret identity. At one point, the big boss thinks that Superman could be Lois Lane because the Man of Steel has the compassion of a woman. In her hypnotic state, Lois sees the truth that Clark Kent is Superman. Which leads me to think that everyone is blinded to Superman's true identity--a mass hypnosis that clouds people's minds. The drug allows Lois to overcome this mental block.

[seismic-2]

The mini-series Superman: American Alien is an especially nice treatment of the "becoming Superman" story, in which Smallville residents do in fact know of Clark's abilities.

[Sacred Knight]

If he's taught from a very early age to mask certain things, it helps with the suspension of disbelief a little bit. Never completely, but somewhat. It was A LOT harder to buy when the MOS origin was in play since he was just a regular kid so masked absolutely nothing. I remember this bothering me a lot as a kid reading the post-Zero Hour stories featuring Conduit like the initial 0 issues and Death of Clark Kent. Those stories featured a lot of flashbacks, and there was virtually nothing about that Clark Kent, an already muscle-bulging jock who was awesome at absolutely everything that didn't scream Superman (equally hilarious was that all of a sudden he had long hair as a teen as well). It was a stickler in that era, and one reason its good that take on the early years of Clark's life are out.

However, with all that said, I never have been and never would be opposed to the idea that a lot of Smallville does indeed know he is Superman, and have known for a long time what he is, or at the very least just that he has strange powers. I think it would be an interesting take, that this small, unassuming town not only knew this gigantic secret but kept it and kept it well. I like to imagine Smallville as a town rife with the strange and having many secrets in its own right to keep, like a Twin Peaks. And Clark is just another one of them, but its a positive secret they're protective of. As seismic pointed out there are some folks within the town outside of Jonathan and Martha who knows he has powers in American Alien, and it worked quite well I thought.

[Adekis]

I thought the glasses being some way for young Clark to control his vision powers was an idea that existed long before Geoff Johns was at DC. I know it's something I thought about decades ago and I can't be that smart. If it wasn't an official part of continuity, I'm sure it was an idea that was floating around in the fan-o-sphere.

It's from the Silver Age, the idea that his glasses are made from his spaceship.

I meant more in terms of a mental block than a physical one though- he knows that when he's wearing his glasses, it's time not to use his powers. At all. Obviously this applies to a pretty young kid Clark, and implies that he's got at the very least greater strength than a normal child, rather than the Byrne "he gets his powers as an older teen" thing.

[Jon Clark]

It's from the Silver Age, the idea that his glasses are made from his spaceship.

I meant more in terms of a mental block than a physical one though- he knows that when he's wearing his glasses, it's time not to use his powers. At all. Obviously this applies to a pretty young kid Clark, and implies that he's got at the very least greater strength than a normal child, rather than the Byrne "he gets his powers as an older teen" thing.

I remember the Silver-Age take but that was more of a "why don't his glasses melt when he uses heat vision" explanation than anything else. I don't recall anything prior to Johns having it that the glasses actually blocked the heat vision though,

And I was aware that you were going with the "glasses as a string around the finger approach" where it was just a reminder to Clark to keep his physical feats in the "normal" range. I personally find the Johns' approach of the glasses actually serving a more pro-active approach better just because it would explain why glasses were chosen rather than some other item to be a reminder.

And personally I always assumed even under Byrne that Clark was superhuman throughout his life- just that the power level before maturity was still in the human range. So while he might not be able to lift a quarter ton, he could at an early age lift some things that weighed half as much as himself. So the Kents would have been careful that Clark wasn't seen easily tossing 10lb potato sacks at age 8 or pulling an injured horse/cow out of a ditch single-handed at age 14.