You’re a regular office worker born with the ability to “see” how dangerous a person is with a number scale of 1-10 above their heads. A toddler would be a 1, while a skilled soldier with a firearm may score a 7. Today, you notice the reserved new guy at the office measures a 10.
You decide it’s best to find out what you can about this person. Cautiously, you approach his desk. He’s a handsome man, tall, but with a disarming smile. How could such a friendly guy with such cute, dorky glasses be dangerous?
You extend your hand. “I noticed you’re new here. What’s your name?”
He shakes your hand warmly. His gaze is piercing, as if he’s looking right through you. “The name’s Clark,” he says. “So, how long have you worked for the Daily Planet?”
This one wins.
It’s been a few weeks, and one of Clark’s friends shows up. She’s pretty and all, enough muscle that she must work out. First thought would be that she should be maybe a 6.
Clark’s introducing her around. “This is my good friend, Diana, she’s in from out of town.”
You blink, and take a step back in fear. You’ve never seen an 11 before.
in superman adventures #19, there’s a villain named multi-face who can convincingly disguise himself as anyone, even tricking dna tests and x-ray vision. Superman initially can’t stop him
and the only reason he gets caught is because multiface decides to disguise himself as, of all people, CLARK KENT i’m screaming
Superman’s sheer anger over Billy Batson’s situation is a sight to behold. Batman and Robin get away with it because he knows it’s the world’s best internship and that Bruce is willing to put out all the stops to protect him. But Billy? He doesn’t have anyone looking out for him. And that pisses off Superman more than anything.
Seriously, Clark’s face here
He is ready to kick the ass of whoever put this boy in this situation SO HARD
Next page he really lets the Wizard Shazam have it.
Shit, son. I might have to buy this book for those last two panels alone.
When Superman is written well he is an amazing goddamned character.
these few pages are some of my favourite in comic book history. So good. For anyone wondering what the next few pages look like, here you go:
This is a bigger deal than some of you might think, because Superman is one of the heroes in the DC Universe who keeps his secret identity pretty damn secret, because as probably the most powerful and influential person on earth, a lot of people do not wish him well – and would jump at the chance to hold people dear to him as leverage.
Yet, he trusts this poor, scared little kid. To comfort him, and entrust him with his biggest secret – just as Billy did for him.
I still think it’s hilarious that the reason nobody ever figures out Superman’s secret identity or where he lives or what he does when he’s not saving the planet, is because he already told them all the Kryptonian stuff that can’t be tied to any of his human friends or family. I guarantee you the in-universe wikipedia article on Superman lists his name as Kal-El and the “personal life” section says that he lives full-time at his private fortress of solitude at the north pole. Nobody in the world looks at Clark Kent and thinks “oh my god, maybe he’s superman!” for the same reason nobody ever starts to suspect that their coworker who looks KINDA like Barack Obama is actually secretly Barack Obama – They know who Barack Obama is and know what he does and they know their coworker Greg is Greg and not Barack Obama. They have no reason to assume Barack Obama secretly moonlights as Greg The IT Guy at their workplace even though they’ve never seen Greg and Obama in the same place. At best, “Greg is secretly Obama” would be a running joke at the office, and the same is true at the Daily Planet. “Kal-El of Krypton, who lives in a CRYSTAL PALACE at the NORTH POLE and whose dayjob is SUPERMAN, sometimes puts on a suit and pretends to be a clumsy reporter and lives in a one-bedroom walkup in Metropolis” is a ridiculous concept to anyone who doesn’t already know it’s true
[From Max Landis’ amazing “American Alien” series about Superman.]
SO GOOD
SCREAM 👏🏻 IT 👏🏻 TO 👏🏻 THE 👏🏻 BACK 👏🏻 SO EVERYONE 👏🏻 CAN 👏🏻 HEAR
His shit eating grin in the last one sells it
I love the idea of Clark Kent turning up to every office Halloween party in an ill-fitting Superman costume from Target.
Still one of my favorite clips from Superman: The Animated Series.
This has gotten bigger since I last saw it ant that’s FANTASTIC
Henry Cavill literally once stood in Time Square, in a superman t-shirt, under a giant poster of himself and no one recognised him, even though he was actively trying to be recognised.
I’ve never seen this post but it just became my favorite post on the internet
Wanna know the kicker?
In the first chapter of JLA’s “Divided We Fall Arc” both Clark and Bruce reveal their civilian identities to the rest of the League. This is post “Tower of Babel” where nobody but Clark still trusts Batman, and in order to start building trust again, Clark urges Bruce to unmask himself to the rest of the team because Bruce obviously knows who everyone else is. Bruce agrees on one condition, Clark has to “unmask” himself as well.
When the big reveal goes down, Kyle Rayner says it best re: Clark being Superman:
“He doesn’t…wear a mask. I never even…thought he had a…day job…”
That’s right, the canon reason why nobody makes the connection between Superman and Clark Kent is because nobody thinks that Superman HAS a civilian identity.
Also, with a really good actor, Clark Kenting is entirely possible, as Christopher Reeve demonstrates in the 1978 Superman film.
There was actually a story where a scientist at Lexcorp developed a computer program to analyse all available evidence and work out who Superman is
It figured out he was Clark…and Lex fired the scientist for wasting company resources because he COULDN’T BELIEVE that Superman would ever “Pretend” to be human because it would mean pretending to be “Weak”
90% of Superman’s disguise is everyone else doing the work for him
the best secret identity of all.
watch that clip, christopher reeve is amazing. he actually gets two inches taller just from posture when he takes off his glasses.
“villain attempts to go back in time to kill superman as a small child, gets shot in the face by ma kent, who buries him behind the barn with the others” would probably have niche appeal as a comic but i don’t care, i want it
The first time a man from the future showed up at Martha Kent’s house, Clark Kent was two years old.
According to his birth certificate, anyway. She just kind of accepted that the details were a little fudged. Relativity, and all.
Maybe the stranger would have succeeded in whatever it was he wanted to do, except that he really did just show up. Appeared, like a ghost made flesh, right in the backyard. Clark, thank goodness, was out in the fields with Jonathan. He couldn’t bear to be alone, that boy, and they could never bear to leave him.
Which left Martha free to shoot the ghostly intruder in the face.
Martha had not always considered herself a shoot first, ask questions later sort of a person. But that was before she found a baby in a spaceship where her corn was supposed to be.
They’d switch off, Jonathan and her, who got Clark and who got the shotgun. Martha got the shotgun more often than not. Guns made her husband uncomfortable. She was hardly a fan, but she’d always been a terrible pacifist. Too determined to defend herself.
The sight of all that blood and brain and bone was still nauseating. She compartmentalized, told herself it was no different from slaughtering a cow; didn’t think about riot gear or tear gas or the friends she’d lost or all the things she’d moved away from when her heart couldn’t take it any longer. This was different. This was her son.
She prodded the corpse with her foot. It remained a corpse. A real nasty looking corpse, all big and burly and holding a gun much too large. She didn’t like making assumptions based on appearances, but she didn’t imagine he’d been coming for anything nice. She bent down to search his pockets, found a metal wallet and flipped it open.
Born 2018.
Well, hell. Wasn’t that just a kick in the pants?
Probably she ought to have been a bit more unsettled than she was. But she’d been waiting two years for someone to show up on her doorstep, men in black or UFOs or something. Hell, she’d half expected her sweet little boy to hatch into something worse.
Just because she brought home space babies didn’t mean she was a damn fool.
Jonathan had rejoined her in long strides, was holding Clark in such a way that he couldn’t see the corpse on the ground. “Well, shit,” he said.
“Eyup,” Martha agreed.
“Don’t look government.”
“Nope.”
“We burying him?”
“I’ll bury him,” Martha said, standing up. “You get Clark inside and read him a book or something. I don’t want him seeing any of this, getting him messed up in the head.”
“You sure? Looks heavy.”
“That’s why we have a wheelbarrow. I’ll stick him out behind the barn, might as well keep all our secrets in one place.”
Martha had a long time to think as she dug a time traveler’s grave. There were a lot of reasons someone might travel back in time trying to kill her kid. The first was her instinct as a mother, which was: he was a fucking asshole. Who killed a kid? Fucking assholes, that was who.
Now, it was also possible that her sweet little boy grew up to be some kind of space Hitler. She didn’t think she’d raise that kind of a kid, but she didn’t suppose there was any parent who set out to raise a Hitler.
Still didn’t sit right with her. She didn’t much like the idea of killing baby Hitler, either.
This is the funniest superman gag I have ever seen.
That’s actually really sweet. I know a lot of people who wear that shirt, or the Wonder Woman shirt, to feel more confident and brave, or just to cheer themselves up, in our world. In the world of DC, where Superman is real? You bet people would be doing that.
i wear my captain america shirt when i need to feel brave, and my deadpool shirt when i need to laugh at haters. i would absolutely still do that if they were real.
I still think it’s hilarious that the reason nobody ever figures out Superman’s secret identity or where he lives or what he does when he’s not saving the planet, is because he already told them all the Kryptonian stuff that can’t be tied to any of his human friends or family. I guarantee you the in-universe wikipedia article on Superman lists his name as Kal-El and the “personal life” section says that he lives full-time at his private fortress of solitude at the north pole. Nobody in the world looks at Clark Kent and thinks “oh my god, maybe he’s superman!” for the same reason nobody ever starts to suspect that their coworker who looks KINDA like Barack Obama is actually secretly Barack Obama – They know who Barack Obama is and know what he does and they know their coworker Greg is Greg and not Barack Obama. They have no reason to assume Barack Obama secretly moonlights as Greg The IT Guy at their workplace even though they’ve never seen Greg and Obama in the same place. At best, “Greg is secretly Obama” would be a running joke at the office, and the same is true at the Daily Planet. “Kal-El of Krypton, who lives in a CRYSTAL PALACE at the NORTH POLE and whose dayjob is SUPERMAN, sometimes puts on a suit and pretends to be a clumsy reporter and lives in a one-bedroom walkup in Metropolis” is a ridiculous concept to anyone who doesn’t already know it’s true
[From Max Landis’ amazing “American Alien” series about Superman.]
just moving along like everyone else 