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Soaring into the limelight once again, the Man of Steel is back with a freshly starched cape, trademark red trunks and unbridled optimism in Warner Bros. Animation and DC’s new animated series, My Adventures with Superman. It premieres Thursday, July 6 on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim with two episodes at midnight and streams the following day on Max.
Jack Quaid of The Boys fame serves as the voice of Clark Kent/Superman, with Alice Lee voicing Lois Lane and Ishmel Sahid portraying young Jimmy Olsen. Sam Register (Teen Titans Go!) is aboard the heroic show as executive producer alongside co-executive producers Jake Wyatt (Invader Zim: Enter the Florpus) and Brendan Clogher (Voltron: Legendary Defender), and co-producer Josie Campbell (She-Ra and the Princesses of Power).
Daily Planet Scoop!
My Adventures with Superman lifts off as a serialized coming-of-age story centered around 20-somethings Clark Kent, fledgling journalist Lois Lane and shutterbug intern Jimmy Olsen as they explore career opportunities as an investigative reporting team on the Daily Planet.
“It’s sort of an economic choice to put it on Adult Swim, but it was made for a wide audience in mind so we wanted to entertain young adults and parents and their children,” showrunner Jake Wyatt tells Animation Magazine. “The idea was to make a show that would introduce a new generation of kids to Superman, Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen and let them have fun.”
While stepping into Superman’s 85-year history in global pop culture, Wyatt and his creative crew hoped to inject their own stamp into the well-trodden material with a simple early pitch.
“The big difference between all the Clark Kents you know and our Clark, is that he doesn’t get a magic crystal that Jor-El pops out of and explains everything to him,” he explains. “This is a Clark who has to figure out who he is, and his friends Lois and Jimmy are instrumental in figuring that out. The basic setup is Lois and Jimmy are super hungry to find out who this Superman is, and Clark can’t not help them. They’re all interns. Lois isn’t a famous reporter. Clark is not yet the Man of Steel. And they kind of create each other as they move through this first season.”
Having worked in the comic-book world, Wyatt’s familiarity with the art form’s language and history helped construct a basic storyline that remained true to Superman’s iconic mythology.
“My first Superman experience was the Christopher Reeve movie, but in middle school I got put in suspension a lot and that library had a collection of the Superman newspaper strips going back forever in black-and-white,” say Wyatt. “So, I read all of these and had this strong sense of who Superman was and we all knew who the famous villains were. And we’d all watched the Bruce Timm cartoon, and we’d all read the major Superman comics like Kingdom Come, Birthrights, Man of Steel and Superman: For All Seasons.”
Wyatt and co-runner Brendan Clogher thought they wanted to add Lex Luthor, but executive producer Sam Register shot it down knowing that character had been done to death. “When Josie [Campbell] came on board with the rest of the writers, she knew more about the DC universe than anyone I’ve ever met,” Wyatt says. “We threw it all on the table and genuinely picked the season one villains in part by asking, ‘What are the best toys?’ and ‘What can hurt Superman?’ because you get that recurring criticism about Superman that everything’s too easy for him.”
South Korea-based Studio Mir, known for their solid work on The Legend of Korra and Voltron: Legendary Defender, provided the brightly-hued animation duties for the new Superman series.
“Brendan is a Voltron alumnus. He’s worked with Studio Mir and also did work for them on Korra. I had never worked for them, but I worked with Studio Maven, an offshoot of Mir, on Invader Zim. We’re familiar with the Korean animation process and actually hired a couple of designers who worked on Voltron and had already worked with Studio Mir and knew the language. We were trying to make everything as Mir-friendly as we possibly could. Our art director created a set of brushes and tools and easy-to-follow style guides.”
Returning Superman to his science fiction roots was foremost in Wyatt’s vision for the show. “I love robots,” he admits. “I designed the spider robot in the Spider-Verse movies. When Superman was created it was not a superhero comic, it was science fiction. So, I set out to do future crazy sci-fi with Krypton and near-future, hard sci-fi on Earth, and try to make robots and spaceships feel real and tactile.”
Industry veteran Dou Hong (Invincible, Young Justice) led the character design team crafting the shape languages, costumes and colors for the project.
“A lot of the shows I’ve worked on already have a creative reference library to look at, so it’s relatively easy to adapt to the style and vibe of the show they’re trying to make,” Hong explains. “The Lois Lanes we’ve seen before wore skirts and they have the heels, and are still ready to go and still get into the action. Our Lois is wearing clothes that a lot of us girls would probably wear if we were going to be out there trying to search for the story. So, she’s wearing pants and athletic shoes but still has a business-centric crossover and a more modern, shorter hairstyle.”
In designing the specific look and costume for Superman, Hong honored previous adaptations of the Kryptonian savior, yet still allowed some personal touches to remain for the final concepts. “Especially for Superman and Batman and Wonder Woman, it’s hard to deviate from what people expect. Even with the controversy of Superman not having trunks, it already makes people very passionate. Because it’s an earlier incarnation, we were able to go back to the trunks. You can have the classic Superman outfit but then when you see Clark in his civilian wear, it’s a modern business casual look. A lot of people don’t realize that Clark Kent is the alter ego of Superman, not the other way around.”
Jimmy Loves Aliens
One of the new changes made to original canon was to reimagine Jimmy Olsen as Black, aligning him with DC Comics’ recent iterations of the timeless character.
“Once you make a change like that, we stick to it and we just try to see how we can take that classic Jimmy persona and meld it to a more modern interpretation,” adds Hong. “Our Jimmy is very joyful and he’s basically the glue that keeps this trio of Jimmy, Lois and Clark together. He’s really into aliens and that helps because even though Clark looks human, he’s actually an alien himself trying to fit into the modern world.”
Regarding surprises fans can anticipate as the series progresses, Hong is tight-lipped but does offer a few clues without upsetting the spoiler applecart. “One lady in particular has electricity powers that a lot of people are going to enjoy,” she hints. “And there’s a cool character who comes from an alternative dimension. That one wears a very distinctive hat which I think fans are going to love. From the beginning, we have to have a pretty healthy respect for the property and try to make sure that we don’t stray away too much from what makes these character who they are.”
“Superman represents hope and change for the future,” she concludes. “A better world for tomorrow. As long as we keep that there, the world around him will change, but he’ll always stay the same.”
My Adventures with Superman premieres on Adult Swim on July 9.
