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Do you remember this series? I remember watching it as a kid in the 90s but don't remember much about it. However, I'd like to see it again someday. Couple of things I remember about it, the white "cubeface" character. I had to search what that was, turns out the character is Bizarro. Also, Superboy and Luthor changed bodies somehow at some point.... I'd really like to see this series again.
Ah, Superboy (later, The Adventures of Superboy). I LOVE that show. I've watched the whole series on DVD twice, most recently in just the last year. It's my exact flavor of cheese, and a complete blast.
Superboy was on DC Universe, but I don't know if it made the move over to HBO Max. I rewatched the whole thing then, and I've reviewed the first two seasons on my Patreon (see link in signature), and will be getting to seasons 3 & 4 fairly soon.
It's essentially two different shows, two seasons each. The first two seasons are much cheesier. The show starts out truly terrible -- they had no money to start with, even the veteran directors turned out shoddy work, and the original showrunner was Fred Freiberger, the same guy who was responsible for Star Trek season 3 and Space: 1999 season 2. Eventually they brought in veteran Superman comics writer-editors as story consultants and scriptwriters, and the show got better, though it still had a Silver-Agey cheesiness to it, and never had much depth to its stories, focusing mainly on adventure and action. Season 2 started out about the same as season 1 ended, quality-wise, though it replaced season 1's terrible Lex Luthor actor with Sherman Howard, who was much better. But the back half of season 2 deteriorated considerably in quality, and the treatment of Lana Lang throughout was pretty sexist (though we did get to see the stunning Stacy Haiduk in lots of skimpy bathing suits, which I admit I appreciated greatly).
The last two seasons, retitled The Adventures of Superboy, were enormously better. It was retooled to make Clark and Lana interns at a government agency investigating the paranormal, and went for darker, eerier stories -- basically beating The X-Files to the punch by several years. The writing got smarter, the characters richer. It was, I think the first live-action production that really delved into Clark Kent's psychology and inner conflicts, and there was some really terrific stuff. It also did some fantastic work delving into Lex Luthor's psyche, with Howard doing brilliant work, far better than the Hackman-esque stuff he was given in season 2. It was the best screen portrayal of Luthor until Michael Rosenbaum and Jon Cryer.
I was really surprised by how good seasons 3-4 were. I consider them the best live-action DC screen production of the 20th century, and I say that as a longtime fan of the 1990 The Flash (which was contemporaneous with Superboy season 3).
A bit of trivia: Superboy was the first series scored by Kevin Kiner, who's currently a co-composer on DC's Titans and Doom Patrol -- and he recycled his Superboy theme as the leitmotif for Conner/Superboy on Titans.
I loved this show so much as a kid. Soooooo much. I rewatched some episodes on Youtube back when I fell in love with Smallville (which I came to long after it ended, on DVD) and... yikes. One of those kid's shows that you shouldn't revisit as an adult, IMO.
I loved this show so much as a kid. Soooooo much. I rewatched some episodes on Youtube back when I fell in love with Smallville (which I came to long after it ended, on DVD) and... yikes. One of those kid's shows that you shouldn't revisit as an adult, IMO.
I rewatched some episodes on Youtube back when I fell in love with Smallville (which I came to long after it ended, on DVD) and... yikes. One of those kid's shows that you shouldn't revisit as an adult, IMO.
As I said, the quality was highly variable. Seasons 1-2 ranged from dreadful to decent to bad again, but seasons 3-4 were really impressive.
I really wouldn't recommend watching the entirety of seasons 1-2, but on my Patreon, I offered recommended lists of essential episodes, based on either quality or continuity relevance. For season 1: "Countdown to Nowhere" (series premiere, though it's weak and you could skip it without losing much), "The Alien Solution" (first episode by comics writers, first relatively good episode), "Troubled Waters" (first Smallville/Kents), "Kryptonite Kills" (self-explanatory), "Revenge of the Alien Part 1-2" (sequel to "Alien Solution"), "Terror from the Blue," "War of the Species," "Mutant," "Hollywood" (a surprisingly good Fred Freiberger-written time travel episode), "Succubus," and "Luthor Unleashed" (season finale).
For season 2: "With This Ring, I Thee Kill"/ "Lex Luthor: Sentenced to Death" (premiere 2-parter, debut of Sherman Howard), "Metallo," "Bizarro... the Thing of Steel"/ "The Battle With Bizarro," "Superboy’s Deadly Touch," "Superboy, Rest in Peace," "Super Menace!" (Metallo/red Kryptonite), "Abandon Earth"/ "Escape to Earth" (Jor-El/Lara appearance), and "Superstar." There are a few other decent episodes, but those are the strongest or the most important to lay groundwork for seasons 3-4 (mostly where Luthor and Bizarro are concerned).
Still, seasons 3-4 are practically a different show, and you could skip seasons 1-2 altogether and not miss that much.
Love Superboy. Didn't watch it as a kid (my mom wasn't keen on letting us watch too much TV), but I remember a TV ad. In the German dub of season one, John Haymes Newton's Superboy was voiced by Charles Rettinghaus, who was also the German voice actor for Geordie La Forge on the TNG TV show and Generations (before being replaced for the other three movies).
A bit of trivia: Superboy was the first series scored by Kevin Kiner, who's currently a co-composer on DC's Titans and Doom Patrol -- and he recycled his Superboy theme as the leitmotif for Conner/Superboy on Titans.
I loved this show so much as a kid. Soooooo much. I rewatched some episodes on Youtube back when I fell in love with Smallville (which I came to long after it ended, on DVD) and... yikes. One of those kid's shows that you shouldn't revisit as an adult, IMO.
Superboy was interesting, but it is not one of those older TV series that aged well because it never had the elements necessary to become a timeless classic. It just works within its limits as a TV series, but I will say this: of the DC live action properties--big or small screen--produced in that late 80s - 90s period, Superboy was more entetaining than the rest, and that includes the Burton/Schumacher Batman films, TheFlash and Swamp Thing TV series, Steel, etc.
I remember as a teenager walking in on one episode airing late at night where Superboy was either sped up or the world slowed down and he was walking around all these frozen people and stopping potential accidents. I always wanted to track that episode down and figure out what the hell happened.
Joe Likes Movies n Stuff did a neat retrospective on the show that I liked. I also thought it interesting that Superboy visited a bunch of alternate universes including one like Kamandi, one with older Superboy (regular Supeman?) and a couple with evil Superboys. Salome Jens who played the Female Changeling on DS9 played Superboy's mum!
Season 1, episode 7, "The Beast and Beauty." From the early part of the series where it was terribly written and acted and had a microscopic budget. Those early episodes were so inept and lazy that I wonder if their producers saw them more as a tax write-off than a serious show. But the response was good, so they upped the budget and started actually giving a damn.
Anyway, it wasn't a pier, it was a swing bridge, the kind whose middle section rotates to let ships go by. The "bully" was a guy who'd been impersonating Superboy to commit robberies, in order to impress a beauty contestant he was stalking. Superboy trapped him on the swing bridge and accepted his challenge for a "fair" fight. He could've dealt with the guy far more easily, but it was pretty obvious that they managed to get permission to use the swing bridge and wrote the whole climax of the episode around it.
I remember as a teenager walking in on one episode airing late at night where Superboy was either sped up or the world slowed down and he was walking around all these frozen people and stopping potential accidents. I always wanted to track that episode down and figure out what the hell happened.
Season 3, episode 9, "Test of Time." Written by David Gerrold, his only contribution to the series.
It was aliens. They were testing the natives of Earth to see if the planet was viable to colonize. Superboy and Lana scared them off by convincing them that all Earthlings had Superboy's powers.
I also thought it interesting that Superboy visited a bunch of alternate universes including one like Kamandi, one with older Superboy (regular Supeman?) and a couple with evil Superboys.
They did two multiverse 2-parters in season 3, "Roads Not Taken" and "The Road to Hell," both scripted by Stan Berkowitz -- who would go on to do similar parallel-world stories for the DC Animated Universe, Superman: TAS's "Brave New Metropolis" and Justice League's "A Better World."
"Roads Not Taken" featured two worlds, a "Brave New Metropolis"-style dystopia where Superboy had crossed the line by killing Lex and gone on to become a murderous bully (dressed in a manner foreshadowing the clone Superboy who'd be introduced later in the comics), and a '40s-style dystopia where Kal-El had been adopted by the Kents' fascist-leaning neighbor instead and grown up to become the dictatorial Sovereign. It's notable for Sherman Howard's truly amazing work as "our" Lex Luthor impersonating his martyred double returned from the dead and giving a speech to rally his followers. It's the first time the show gave Howard a chance to show what he was really capable of as an actor, since season 2 didn't give him anywhere near such good material.
"The Road to Hell" was the season 3 finale, featuring two more parallel worlds. In one, Superboy's pod had crashed in the jungle and he'd grown up alone, and was still a child. (This must be what you thought of as "like Kamandi," though it was a normal world otherwise.) The other was the one with the adult Superman (whom they weren't legally allowed to call Superman), played by former TV Tarzan actor Ron Ely. It was a world where Kal-El had arrived in the Depression and helped the world recover and become a utopia.
The time displacement thing was kind of a clever touch. Old Superman explained that their rocketship passed through a time warp on leaving their homeworld, so that it arrived at different times on different Earths. I suspect this was meant implicitly as a way of reconciling Superboy with the Christopher Reeve movies, given that this show was from the same producers and used the same Kryptonian designs as those films while being incompatible with their chronology and continuity.
Salome Jens who played the Female Changeling on DS9 played Superboy's mum!
Yes. She was largely wasted as Martha in the first season, but got more stuff to do later on. Stuart Whitman played Jonathan, and did an excellent job.
Jor-El and Lara did "appear" once (though they turned out to be not what they seemed), and they were played by two James Bond veterans, George Lazenby and Britt Ekland.
I have the first season on DVD, and tried watching it as a nostalgia watch. Not even the divine Stacy Haiduk could help me get through the whole first season. Oh. My. God. Bad. It was like some college kids got together and cranked out some halfassed videos for a film class they didn't care about.
I watched an episode or two at the time before it disappeared and went to satellite/cable TV.
Rewatched the pilot episode last year (which isn't actually the pilot but the first broadcast or something), it was bad. Haven't been inspired to watch more although I know good episodes exist. I just need to know which.
Seasons 3-4 are excellent. And I posted a list of "essential" seasons 1-2 episodes earlier, though not all of them are good (some are just significant for continuity).
Is there a recall I don't think it lasted long in the LA market (or they quickly shifted it to a really late night slot). I just remember an episode where I guess Superboy was trying to save a space shuttle launch; and while I didn't expect great visual effects, I swear as I watched it I was thinking - "Wow the Superman series from the mid-1950s did better flying visual effects than these... and had more cohesive story plots."
So yeah, It wasn't until nearly a decade later that I found out this particular series had three separate seasons; although I admit I've never watched anything beyond the two or three first season episodes I saw - and what I related above is about all I can remember of it.
I really wanted Gerard Christopher to appear in the CW's Crisis as Old Superboy.
I read the tie-in comic which I enjoyed at the time for what it was. I seem to recall a pseudo-Legion story. Yes, the Mazerunners, the 23rd-century Legion-ish team of teenaged assholes!
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