Culture Remix
It’s Time for a Black Superman
If every generation gets the Superman it deserves, then we should let a man of color wear the cape as the new Man of Steel.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about Superman
Over eight decades, Superman has evolved from a man who can just barely leap tall buildings in a single bound to a hero who’s more god than man. If his abilities can change so much and still leave a core character that is still popular, then it’s time for a black Superman.
Let’s not talk about some sidebar Superman elevated from the comic books, like someone from an alternate Earth in the DC multiverse who steps in to wear a cape that needs a new owner. Like the hand-off Marvel just did with the Captain America character played by Chris Evans.
No. Something deeper is needed.
When an African-American actor is eventually cast to play Superman, as will some day happen, he should get the original role — Clark Kent, aka The Man of Steel, aka Superman.
Accept no imitations.
It’s a busy (and confusing) superhero world over at DC and Warner.
We have the Snyder cut of Justice League planned for HBO Max, plus the on-again and off-again negotiations with Henry Cavill to continue in the Superman role. Then there’s the news that Michael Keaton, who last donned the Batsuit in 1989, is going to see if it still fits in a new film (but not the new new film that stars Robert Pattinson in The Batman). DC has seriously bought into the multiverse angle on storytelling and, accounting for both film and TV, there are multiple Flashes, multiple Batmans and multiple Supermans in the marketplace today.
So we have to ask: what’s one more Man of Steel between friends?
There is No Superman Classic Anymore
I worked on Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman in the first season, and I’ve seen first-hand that keeping the classics fresh is how comic companies think. At Lois and Clark, the big risk was turning the character into a rom-com lead, where Clark was the character and Superman the secret identity. At the same time that was going on over on the Warner Brothers lot in Burbank, back in New York City the comic creators were killing Superman in his battle with Doomsday. They embraced death as the ultimate disruptive act in a character arc.
Audiences never seem to get tired of this Superman character (created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster). The Son of Krypton is now safely in the world’s DNA, even if the character continues to mutate with the times.
Since 1947, many brave actors have tried on the tights and cape, and each film or TV appearance provides as much insight into the world as it existed when the production happened as the character itself. Here they are, and the year they first portrayed Superman.
- Kirk Alyn (Superman Serials) — 1947
- George Reeves (Adventures of Superman) — 1951
- Christopher Reeve (Superman: The Movie) — 1978
- John Haymes Newton (Superboy) — 1988
- Gerard Christopher (Superboy) — 1989
- Dean Cain (Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman) — 1993
- Tom Welling (Smallville) — 2001
- Brandon Routh (Superman Returns) — 2006
- Henry Cavill (Man of Steel, Batman v Superman) — 2013
- Tyler Hoechlin (Supergirl) — 2016
That’s ten different portrayals of Superman since 1947, running through both TV and film. Each one appears to be part of an evolutionary step to make the character a little more real, a little more grounded than the last.
Every generation gets the Superman it deserves.
Remember Those Super Old Days?
1950s organization man George Reeves? 1970s disco-era sweet and innocent Christopher Reeve? 1990s romantic lead Dean Cain? 2000s all-Clark Tom Welling? 2010s slightly gay Brandon Routh?
It’s been Henry Cavill’s late 2010s somber and slightly pissed-off characterization that has been the most dramatic shift. This Superman feels like a dark and tortured soul who’s not all that happy with his life.
And yet for all the changing constructs, the character is still the character. The Superman/Clark Kent construct turns out to be sturdy, like Hamlet, Robin Hood or James Bond.
Who Should Wear the Cape Now?
The Hollywood fan media keeps writing articles about how Warner Brothers might be considering a black Superman movie and that J.J. Abrams who just made a deal at Warner thinks the casting should happen (with Star Wars John Boyega).
At the same time, the report is that they’ve made a new deal with Henry Cavill to reprise the role in future DC movies.
So, go figure. In a multiverse, both things could be true.
A couple of years ago, the potential replacement that got fans talking was Michael B. Jordan. Jordan’s star-turns in Creed and Black Panther put him strongly on the list if there was going to be a black Superman and, reportedly, he was (and is) very interested. It’s inspired an entire meme where artists portray Michael B. Jordan as the Man of Steel.
And, as an aside, despite looking stellar in the suit and cape in the picture that starts this article, 47–year-old Idris Elba will probably not get the gig. Hollywood may be ready to tackle racism, but ageism, that’s a bridge too far. Leaping tall buildings is a young man’s game.
There are already black Supermen, but only in the comics.
In Reign of the Supermen from the mid 90s, after Clark Kent/Superman died, John Henry Adams as Steel took over the job. Meanwhile, Superman of Earth-2 is another black man, Val Zod. Then there’s Calvin Ellis, and he’s not from our Earth either, he’s from Earth-23 (23!) which is part of the multiverse, only he’s really intended to be Barack Obama and, well, never mind. It doesn’t matter.
We just don’t need a Calvin Ellis or a John Henry Adams or Val Zod on the big screen to get a person of color into this key role. We need a Clark Kent who happens to be black. (We can’t call the character African-American because, remember, Superman doesn’t come from Africa or America, he’s from the planet Krypton.)
It would, however, be a powerful and compelling character arc of a newly imagined Superman TV series if a black Clark Kent began to increasingly “identify” as African-American, and track how that bleeds over into the Superman/Kal-el persona.
This black Superman idea will disrupt the character in a good way.
For starters, Clark Kent grew up Kansas, a state with only a small black population. Does he grow up with white parents who adopt him? Black parents? How does he fit in at school?
Imagine the Writers’ Room
As a writer of film and television, who actually has had a chance to spin the character in the past, it’s clear that the chance to freshen up the Superman character this way would be revolutionary. Writers’ ideas will crackle with new energy. The writers’ room of a TV series version will be majority diverse and welcome these new ideas. There is one core concept that can drive this re-imagining.
Superman is an alien, an extraterrestrial. He may look human but he’s from Krypton. He lives on a world with eight billion people, but he does not belong. He’s a man on the outside. No matter what he does — keep airplanes from crashing or defeat psychotic villains — he’s never going to be a human, like everybody he knows from his parents to his friends to his wife. He will never quite fit in.
An African-American actor can likely find some inspiration there.
A black Superman TV series has the greatest personal hook, to see how this fascinating story could be spun out to reflect the times we live in. The feature version is the greater symbolic act. We expect TV to experiment with the form of franchises (think Star Trek) but the extended big-budget feature remains the flagship. It’s a tough call.
I could see DC and Warner opt for a TV series to get them past the Henry Cavill conundrum. The CW has already made itself the tip of the spear for alternate Earths and superheroes. They may choose to test the concept here. Or they could simply shoot a Superman origin feature film that has its own universe in the DC multiverse.
They should get it done. It’s not just a good change for social reasons, but it may be the only legitimate way to shake up the franchise and kick it back into orbit where it belongs.
While smashing the Superman stereotype won’t finish bringing truth and justice to the American Way, it’s still a good idea.
Things change. Heroes evolve. Shake it up.