Favorite TV Superman!

[superduperman]

What is your favorite TV version of Superman?

Adventures of Superman (1952)

Superboy (1988)

Lois & Clark (1993)

Smallville (2001)

Supergirl (2015)

I only selected live action versions for the sake of keeping things simple.

[Tuck]

There were two Superboys. (Although all I can really remember about that show was how godawful it was . . . and I have a vague recollection of Abe Vigoda being in an episode.)

[Last Son of Krypton]

Tyler Hoechlin's before he gets emasculated in Supergirl's season 2 finale.

[AquaLantern]

Haven't seen enough of Smallville so Supergirl for me.

[stephtanner]

It was hard to choose between Adventures, LnC, and Smallville. But I went with Dean Cain since I had a huge crush on him back in the 90s.

[Osiris-Rex]

George Reeves in the Adventures of Superman.

[sunofdarkchild]

Lois & Clark (1993) Dean Cain, easily. George Reeves is pretty good too, though.

[Miles To Go]

Lois and Clark has the most well rounded Super cast. Really loved it a lot. I think Smallville has the better Lois/Clark relationship though

[superduperman]

I have the first two seasons of Adventures of Superman on DVD and recently started watching them. Hence the inspiration for this thread! I like what I see so far. It's pretty good for the era in which it was made (taking into account lack of special effects and the fact that it was made for children in the 1950s). Some of the stories are actually kind of darker than some of the stuff they'd do today. Not having aliens or super-villains to use forced the writers to be creative. Which I like.

Superboy aired when I was a kid and I didn't get to see that many episodes of it. It aired at a wonky time. From what little of it I have seen it didn't have much in the way of a budget. From what I understand, some of the later seasons had some pretty good stories. Few years back I was able to find a few of them on YouTube. Not so much anymore. Would love to see it all the way through.

Lois & Clark seemed like it was poking fun of the source material to me. Then it went off the rails with the clone thing and the wedding and the last season was just unwatchable to me.

Smallville is probably my favorite on this list largely because 1) It's the only one I've seen all the way through so far and 2) they did a lot of things I thought were clever concepts with the Superman mythos. Like having him arrive during a meteor shower to cover for him. Of course they also went off the rails more than a few times as well. Making Lana an ancient witch and what not. It had it's back and forth moments. But it also introduced the first live action versions of the JSA and Green Arrow and that counts for a lot to me!

My only real hang up with Supergirl is that they seem to deliberately undermine Superman in order to make her look good. Which, being her show, I can kind of understand why they did that. They gave her all his villains and then to have her beat him in a fight seems a little over the top to me. Of course I'd like to chalk that last one up to him being mind controlled but what are you gonna do! The cape clips are a little distracting but this new trunkless era is going to inspire a lot of costume ideas. Not all of them good. He does a great Clark Kent! And the "S" is perfect! And he doesn't seem to have a problem with her being more powerful than him or anything so if he can live with it, so can I.

[Tuck]

Lois & Clark seemed like it was poking fun of the source material to me. Then it went off the rails with the clone thing and the wedding and the last season was just unwatchable to me.

Lois & Clark was the first television show the internet ruined. It was pitched as a Tracy and Hepburn style romantic comedy which was supposed to be a little more adult and was supposed to air in the 10 PM time slot.

It got pushed down into prime time and had to soften up a bit. You can see the difference between the pilot and the rest of the first season.

The first season was all over the map in quality, but you could see what it was they were going for in the good moments, and there was something to build there. But fans online started complaining that there wasn't enough Superman or enough action in a show that was specifically designed that way . . . and the show adjusted. But since it was never built around the idea of being a straight-up action superhero show, it got dumb in a hurry.

Anyway, I decided to go with Reeves, with Hoechlin(sp?) a close second.

[daBronzeBomma]

Tyler Hoechlin's before he gets emasculated in Supergirl's season 2 finale.

^This.

I hold the showrunners and writers of the S2 Finale responsible for the idiotic words Tyler Hoechlin had to recite as Superman. But in the S2 premiere eps, Tyler was great!

[Carabas]

Tyler Hoechlin's before he gets emasculated in Supergirl's season 2 finale.

^This.

I hold the showrunners and writers of the S2 Finale responsible for the idiotic words Tyler Hoechlin had to recite as Superman. But in the S2 premiere eps, Tyler was great!

Can we please not turn this thread into something that makes me wonder if I took a wrong turn and ended up on a red pill/MRA foru?

This is just creepy.

[superduperman]

^This.

I hold the showrunners and writers of the S2 Finale responsible for the idiotic words Tyler Hoechlin had to recite as Superman. But in the S2 premiere eps, Tyler was great!

Like I said, I'm kind of willing to overlook that on the grounds that it's her show and not his. If this had been a SuperMAN show and she still beat him than it would be kind of awkward. But you have to look at it through the prism of the character the show is about. She already got all his villains so it's obvious it's not about him at this point.

[Jim Kelly]

There's a big range of difference between all these shows. Which is probably a good thing. And I don't think I've watched all of the episodes for any of them (SUPERGIRL is still going and presumably Superman will appear again).

SUPERBOY was usually on Saturday mornings for me--so that's how I think of it, the same with SAVED BY THE BELL and EVEN STEVENS--so I tend to put all those series in the same compartment as SHAZAM!, THE SECRET OF ISIS and LANCELOT LINK SECRET CHIMP. I quite liked what I saw of the series and I think it was ahead of its time (note how X-FILES is very similar to it), but it wasn't a major network prime time TV show. I really liked Stacy Haiduk as Lana Lang and Sherman Howard as Lex Luthor. Plus this series got its own comic book, which I sometimes preferred to the in-continuity comic books.

SMALLVILLE was an outgrowth of other smalltown teen dramas like DAWSON'S CREEK, GILMORE GIRLS, BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER and ROSWELL. I watched a lot of the series in its early days, but lost interest when it went through the same development that hit DAWSON'S CREEK.

ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN predates my existence as a conscious human being and also predates all the innovations that came to the Superman comics in the '60s and thereafter. But it's clearly a classic that all the other TV shows are in some way reacting to. The actors on that show helped define Superman/Clark, Lois, Jimmy and Perry. It's practically carved in stone.

LOIS AND CLARK: THE NEW ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN is the only series that really inherited the legacy of he original Superman TV show. It was effective in mixing romantic comedy with action adventure. And I liked it better than the comic books at the time--even though it was supposed to be based on those comics. I eventually found myself flipping channels to watch THIRD ROCK FROM THE SUN on the other channel, but the first two seasons were really entertaining. And Teri Hatcher!

SUPERGIRL was a hard sell for me at first, but I now love it and the star, Melissa Benoist. But Superman is just a minor character in this series. There are like twenty other character that have had more important stories about them on the show.

[Francisco]

It has to be Dean Cane. His Clark was perfect and his Superman not too shabby.