“CLOSET SUPERFANS???”
These are the best Superman panels EVER
Kal-El realllllly dodged that one
The best part is that his disuise literally IS just a pair of glasses here
He is visibly in his Superman costume
And the citizens of Metropolise STILL CANNOT FIGURE IT OUT O.O
i just
i worry
Apparently he parts his hair on different sides too.
Clark Kent parts his hair like a left handed person, Superman like a right handed.
Clearly they cannot be the same person!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIaF0QKtY0c
They really, clearly cannot be the same person.
I keep telling people, the truth of Clark Kent’s secret identity isn’t Glasses.
You don’t expect Superman to be anyone other than Superman. You cannot imagine someone who can do all the things he does just going to a shitty job, buying groceries, waiting at the DMV.
Clark’s personality, mannerisms, and general nature are what set him apart from the living iconography of the Man of Steel. It’s ridiculous to ever even think of one as the other, regardless of how much they might look alike.
No one anywhere goes looking for Superman in an ill-fitting suit, behind a desk, drinking the office coffee because SOMEONE has to drink it. That is precisely where Clark Kent lives, in the paper margins you don’t think about, that guy on the elevator you see every morning, You think you said “hi” to him once when you were getting a hot dog.
I’d like to add that I think that scene with Lex Luthor literally spells out all anyone needs to know about Lex’s villainous personality perfectly
Lex Luthor CANNOT BELIEVE for even a second that Superman would be an “ordinary” person
Lex’s paranoia about Superman is sometimes treated by writers as actually being grounded in noble reasons and that really does totally miss the point of Lex’s fear of Superman…Lex is paranoid about Superman because Lex judges him by his own shitty standards
Lex is a crooked scumbag who has lied, cheated and stolen to get where he is and views basically everyone as being Secretly A Bastard because he himself is one. So when he sees Superman, a being with these fantastic powers who does good he immediately assumes he’s just as shitty deep down as he is because Lex Luthor cannot believe for a second that anyone can actually just be a decent human being
So even when literally ALL THE EVIDENCE points to Superman being Clark Kent Lex is just like “No one with the GODLIKE POWER OF SUPERMAN would ever setle for such a mundane and ordinary life!” because Lex can’t believe that maybe Superman is just an ordinary person who wants to help people and get on with his life
I appreciate that in the Crisis CW miniseries Lex canonically finds out that Clark Kent is Superman… and then chalks it up to him being in the one random multiverse where that actually happened (Smallville)
Right?
Even literally meeting a Superman who is very clearly Clark Kent he’s like “This must be some weird multiverse anomaly”
Christopher Reeve did such a phenomenal job selling the difference between Clark and Superman. When he stands up straight and squares his shoulders he really looks like a different person, let alone the mannerisms he adopts for each persona.
While I don’t love Frank Quitely’s art, and I don’t like everything in the series, one of the things All-Star Superman does very well is keep Superman very obviously big and buff yet still making it eminently plausible that nobody can guess that Clark is Superman. Quitely even shows in some of the supplemental material how he draws Clark’s posture to give him the appearance of more rounded shoulders and a little bit of a belly under his baggy clothes, and Morrison and Quitely put together a whole sequence where Clark is interacting with Lex as Clark, and disguises all the things he does with apparent clumsiness and such. This is to show how Clark presents himself the kind of big guy who has never fully gotten a handle on how to move about in a world built for people noticeably smaller than him, or even just how to deftly handle his long arms and legs without tripping over himself.
That whole sequence was amazing :D
I loved Clark using his reputation as “Clumsy, awkward human disaster Clark Kent” to just casually save Lex from the various threats to his wellbeing all while Lex obliviously rants away about how much more Special he is than Superman
I think my favorite part in that sequence was how Lex notes that he likes Clark because Clark is so blatantly human.
