Originally Posted by
Jim Kelly
I've been reading Dashell Hammett lately and he actually worked as a private detective before writing about them. I think he romanticizes the profession, making the P.I. a popular leading character. But it's likely that it was a lot of boredom most of the time. And not glamourous.
Likewise, most newspaper reporters have rather unromantic jobs. It's just that in the 20th century, the masses bought newspapers on a daily basis, so the reporter became an easy character to romanticize.
Already by the '70s, so many people were getting their news from TV, that the TV reporter now became a worthwhile character for glamourous adventures.
It's fiction. And most people understand that. It doesn't mean that all actual test pilots, CSIs, corporate executives, museum curators, florists, university professors or teachers lead such romantic existences.
Beyond Clark himself, it was really the expansion of the cast of characters in the '70s that impressed me.
There were the other people that worked at WGBS and the Planet, in addition to Clark, Lana, Steve, Jimmy and Lois--whether it was the pilot of the Flying Newsroom, the guy who worked in the paper's "morgue," Josh Coyle producing the evening newscast and nursing an ulcer, Miss Conway, Johnny Nevada, Roy Raymond, Lola Barnett, Gregory Reed and so on.
And then there were all the neighbours at 344 Clinton Street--Nathan Warbow, those psychic twins, the mysterious Mister X--and friends of Superman, like Captain Strong, Vartox, Dr. Jenet Klyburn. Plus other characters like Kaye Daye, Barbara Gordon, Dr. Albert Michaels, Roger Corben, Dr. Peter Silverstone, Billy Anders, Jonathan Ross, Inspector Henderson. And the villains--Terra Man, the Galactic Golem, the Atomic Skull, Blackrock, Intergang, the 100, etc.
When we lost the WGBS continuity, all of that went with it. Only a few scraps of continuity (mostly attached to Jack Kirby) survived at all.