Review: My Adventures with Superman “You Will Believe a Man Can Lie”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Clark is ready to ask Lois out so they can start dating, while Lois becomes nigh-obsessed with getting Clark to confess he is Superman, and Jimmy starts feeling lost as his two friends begin pulling away from him. While he gets taken on an impromptu assignment with sports reporter Steve, Lois and Superman track down another villain who has obtained a sudden tech upgrade, only to uncover that some think that Superman is kidnapping people. This eventually leads to a confrontation with the real kidnapper, Slade Wilson, who is being directed by Amanda Waller and Samuel Lane, Lois’ father, the latter of whom seems to have a personal grudge against Superman. When Clark returns from the fight with an injury but won’t confess that he’s Superman, Lois jumps from a building and forces him to save her. The two argue and fight about this, not knowing Jimmy has gone off on a planned trip alone and is later taken by a giant gorilla.

OUR TAKE

Well, they actually did it. Only half a season in and we have Lois finding out Clark is Superman, which has already set off a bunch of discourse about who was in the right. Clark needed to protect his personal secrets, had only known Lois for a few weeks or months, and had no reason to think she wouldn’t blab about this to the press, BUT at the same time, she had shown herself to be trustworthy and he had been lying to her basically the whole time they’d known each other. Neither one of them is necessarily in the right or wrong, this is just a complicated situation that makes for good drama, especially when working with the established Superman mythos. I’ve seen some argue that she shouldn’t have jumped off a building in order to force him to confess, or compare it unfavorably to the confrontation between Amber in Mark in Invincible also about secret identities, but keep in mind, this is definitely an in-character move for Lois. In the second live action movie, she does this in order to get his attention, so while it’s a different context, this was most certainly a thing Lois would do. Also I don’t dislike Amber in that show either.

Probably the thing most worth noting about all this is that, unless they wanna REALLY take some wild swings, they’re not going to be arguing for very long. Not only are they going to overlook their differences to save Jimmy from the giant gorilla, this is also Lois and Clark we’re talking about. They’re 99.9% most certainly going to end up together, so it’s just a matter of how they overcome this, not if. In any case, it’s going to be quite interesting seeing an animated series have Lois be fully aware of Clark being Superman very early on, as well as the increasing tension of knowing this while being aware (eventually, just not right now) that her father seems to have some personal vendetta against him that even Clark can’t figure out. Add to that Clark’s first major encounter with Slade “Deathstroke” Wilson, who looks like he really liked Bionicles as a kid because his helmet definitely gives me Kopaka vibes, and we seem to be headed into more serious territory with this series. Which is good, because honestly things are getting kinda undercooked on the villain front. Here’s hoping that changes so we can see this show really take off up into its full potential. I don’t know if it’s the designs or the dialogue or something else all together, but we gotta step it up.