In the Racks and Stacks series, Cody discusses the comic books he has been reading.
This week, a visit to Smallville.
Peter Roth, the president of Warner Bros. Television back in the day, had first tried to get a Superboy TV series - about a young Clark Kent, before he became Superman - onto the air in 1979. That didn’t happen, but not even the fact that a Superboy show did end up running for four seasons and 100 episodes, beginning in 1988 and wrapping up in 1992, could deter Roth from wanting to be involved with his own “young Clark” series. His dream finally came true in the early 2000s, when writing duo Alfred Gough and Miles Millar were hired to craft their own “Superboy” idea, resulting in the TV series Smallville.
Gough and Millar’s approach was to tell a grounded story about a teenage Clark, holding off on the suit and the flying for as long as possible. Their take on the Superman story moved the concept up to then-modern day. The pilot episode begins in October of 1989, when the Kansas town of Smallville is struck by a devastating meteor shower that makes a mess of the place – and from the wreckage emerges a small boy, who is taken in by farmers Jonathan and Martha Kent. The Kents name their adopted son Clark... and over the years, they realize that he is gifted with incredible strength and speed, gifts that Jonathan encourages him to hide from the world as much as possible for his own safety.
Clark’s abilities only become more powerful, and more varied, as he makes his way through his teens – and around that time, it also becomes clear that the meteor rocks that fell all over town are having a strange effect on the people and things they come in contact with. The first season of Smallville premiered on October 16 2001 – and by the time it reached episode 21, the season finale, Clark had crossed paths with a whole lot of meteor-powered villains: a half man/half insect, a pyrokinetic, a shapeshifter, a freezing person who has to absorb the heat (and life force) of others, an elderly killer who regains his youth, a girl who feeds on people’s fat, an invisible person, a mind controller, someone who absorbs Clark’s abilities, criminals who can walk through walls, flowers that take away inhibitions, a man with a deadly touch, a queen bee, a telekinetic, and more. That season went all-in on the “villain of the week” approach.
Around the time that Smallville season 2 started airing in September of 2002, DC Comics published a 64-page Smallville comic book / magazine hybrid. The idea was that it would give fans of the show an introduction to the world of comics, while also satisfying comic fans’ demands that there be a Smallville comic book.
Up front, we get what is basically a comic book version of a Smallville “villain of the week” episode. Written by Mark Verheiden (a comic book writer who was also on the Smallville writing staff), with artwork from the team of Roy Allan Martinez, Trish Mulvill, Digital Chameleon, and Comicraft, the story is called Raptor.
The Smallville High science teacher takes his class (which includes Clark and his crush Lana Lang) on a field trip to a University of Kansas paleological excavation site – which also happens to be on property owned by Clark’s billionaire friend Lex Luthor. Another student on the field trip is Greg Fox, who has an unhealthy interest in explosives and a grudge against Luthor because his father recently lost his job at a Luthor-owned company. Greg attempts to toss an M80 firecracker at Luthor, but fumbles and drops it next to a crate of blasting caps… and some meteor rocks. The resulting explosion sends meteor shrapnel into Greg’s body – and since raptor bones have been found in the area, this causes Greg to start mutating into a human-raptor creature.
By the end of the story, Clark is fighting a raptor-man, which the first season of Smallville would not have had the budget to properly bring to the screen. Making this a perfect story to receive the comic book treatment.
That’s the main event, but it’s followed by a short story called Exile and the Kingdom, written by Michael Green (also a writer on the show) and featuring the art of John Paul Leon, Melissa Edwards, and John E. Workman. This was meant to give us a glimpse “inside the mind of Lex Luthor” and confirms that, as of this point in his life, he’s still trying to do the right thing, despite his unscrupulous father Lionel always trying to get him to join the dark side.
Then we get the magazine section of the book, which gives a behind-the-scenes look at the TV series and features interviews with the likes of Gough, Millar, and cast members Michael Rosenbaum, Tom Welling, and Kristin Kreuk. It wraps up with a short recap of the events of Smallville season 1, getting readers ready for season 2.
I’m currently watching my way through Smallville for the first time, and it was fun to see the show’s versions of the characters in the pages of a comic book. The Raptor story plays out exactly like an episode of Smallville would (which makes sense, given the shared writer), so this publication basically serves as a “bonus episode” of the show.
This sold well enough that DC Comics went on to publish an on-going Smallville comic book series for a while, but that wasn’t nearly as successful as the TV show. The comic book came to an end after just twelve issues, while Smallville ran for ten seasons of twenty-plus episodes.
Note: Marvel Comics will not be covered in Racks and Stacks articles, as they have their own article series.
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