Now That's a Murder I Can Get Behind!

I don’t know how many of you out there watch “Smallville,” but I’ve been watching it for a few years now. I actually missed the first season when it originally aired, simply because I didn’t care (and for a good portion of it I didn’t get the WB anyway).
It was my assumption that it was just another ill-conceived bastardization of the Superman mythos.
I have to admit that I was mistaken.
By no stretch of the imagination is it the finest hour on television, or even the best non-comics treatment of the character (that honor goes to the 90s animated series), but it beats all of the movies, and it certainly beats that god-awful “Lois and Clark” featuring Teri Hatchers’ presentation of Lois Lane as a total bimbo (In reality, it’s my understanding that she’s actually a reasonably intelligent woman, but the sad truth is that her voice makes her sound like a bimbo no matter what. Also, her propensity for a sort of Lucy-esque style of physical comedy makes her ill-suited for playing a focused, determined, tough-as-nails, independent woman of Lois’ caliber. That being said, I’d probably still do her in a heartbeat.)
And they take an interesting approach to the character’s development, both as a man, and as a Superman.
One of the most brilliant twists they introduced was the notion that, at least initially, his heat vision was tied to his libido, for example.
This season, as I’ve mentioned before, they also introduced a young Lois Lane, played by actress Erica Durance.
She is the ideal Lois, and one of the best adaptations of a comic book character I’ve ever seen (beaten out only by J.K. Simmons as “J. Jonah Jameson” in the “Spider-Man” movies). Because she is still young, she’s not quite the Lois Lane that she will eventually become, but the potential is obviously there.
My biggest complaint about the show (and, though I do enjoy it, I have a lot of complaints about it) is the character of Lana Lang.
The actress who plays her, Kristin Kreuk (a name that, with the matching initials, almost seems like the name of Superman character) is a very beautiful young woman, but her acting skills aren’t quite up to par. It’s difficult for me to decide if I dislike Lana so much because of how she’s written, or because of how Kreuk portrays her.
I suppose it’s a combination of the two.
In any case, the fact of the matter is that I hate Lana, which is made all the more problematic by the fact that she is a major focus of most episodes.
Here’s a typical scenario.
Boy/girl is in love with Lana. Lana, being a cold-hearted bitch, in a sweet, girl next door sort of way, gently rebuffs boy/girl. Boy/girl goes home to his/her Lana shrine and vows revenge by making use of his/her superhuman powers.
(Note: When Clark’s spaceship came out of hyperspace near earth, all sorts of pieces of Krypton were blasted through as well, coming down on Smallville in a deadly meteor shower that blanketed the entire area with chunks of Kryptonite. In much the same way that when I was a kid growing up in the Upper Peninsula’s “Copper Country” and could hardly kick over a rock without finding copper, residents of Smallville are constantly finding “meteor rocks” all over the place. Under certain conditions [by “conditions” I mean it being Wednesday night at 8 pm] normal humans who are exposed to the meteor rocks gain odd superhuman abilities. It used to be that they were extensions of existing maladies, such as a girl who has a condition that causes her to have soft bones gets exposed to Kryptonite and develops the ability to change her shape, but lately it’s just whatever they need to drive the plot along. Oh, and people are constantly using Kryptonite to do stuff. One kid added some to the nitrous mix on his hot rod, for example. Because, you know, why not? Basically the writers use Kryptonite as a bigger crutch than any of the comic book writers ever did.)
Superhumanly-powered boy/girl tries to kill Lana. Clark intervenes to save her. How it ultimately works out depends on whether or not Clark has needed to make blatant use of his of his own superhuman abilities. If he was able to defeat the crazed boy/girl who’s in love with Lana without any obvious use of his abilities, said crazed boy/girl ends up in a mental hospital. If Clark has to reveal his abilities, the crazed boy/girl will end up dying.
Not because Clark deliberately kills him/her, but typically because of some sort of “happy accident.”
The end result is that the problem is solved, and Clark and Lana can go back to their angst-filled, tortured, doomed romance and we get to watch Kristin Kreuk attempt to emote.
In any case, my point is that in any given episode the action tends to revolve around Lana, and while I personally would be willing to lend a hand to members of the population of Smallville (who seem to be in the majority) aiming to bump off Lana, it is getting a little old, and I’m tired of seeing such a tiresome character being the center of the Smallville universe.
Lana’s just not interesting, and there’s nothing that can be done to make her interesting, particularly when both the character and the actress have been so completely overshadowed by Erica Durance’s perfect portrayal of the person that we know Clark is going to end up with in the future, making Lana nothing more than a footnote.
And that’s really the thing. Even long before most of the cast members of the show were born (it is primarily aimed at the same demographic targeted by shows like “The OC,” or the late “Dawson’s Creek,” after all, so it features a young, good-looking cast) I disliked Lana Lang.
I’ve never viewed her to be a worthwhile character, and she’s never really added much to the mythos, particularly since she was added to the mythos so late in the game.
Superman had been an established popular character for years when the creative staff at DC decided to retroactively create a backstory involving his youth. Thus, “Superboy” was born, even though the idea that Superman had been engaging in public acts of super-heroics since he was a kid totally contradicted the existing continuity.
In any case, because there were certain conventions that needed to be followed, there had to be a romantic interest/damsel-in-distress/meddling bitch in Superboy’s life. Rather than retroactively moving his existing romantic interest/damsel-in-distress/meddling bitch into his history, they created someone new, with the same initials.
Thus Lana Lang was born, and even though, in the chronology of Superman’s “life” Lana came first, in the chronology of the actual creations of the characters Lois predates Lana by several years.
That’s Lana’s first strike against her: she was an afterthought.
Her second is that she’s basically a cheap adolescent imitation of Lois.
Her third is that she was, right from the start, irritating as hell.
Granted, because the men writing the comics were men of their times (read: chauvinistic bastards), Lois herself was pretty irritating, but Lana was much worse.
Lana’s primary reason to exist was to constantly try to find ways to prove that Clark was really Superboy. That was it. That’s what she did.
She came up with an endless variety of schemes to do it, but they always failed, and in the end she would be convinced that there’s no way that Clark could really be Superboy.
That conviction would last until the next issue, at which time she’d be back at it.
The thing that I never understood, though, is that she was totally in love with Superboy, and hoped to one day marry him.
Okay, I can understand that part. I mean, come on; he’s got it all over some teen heartthrob. He’s freakin’ Superboy! There's no New Kid on The Block/Backstreet Boy/Ricky Nelson/Whoever that's going to compete with that.
But what I didn’t understand was how she thought that revealing his secret identity to the world was going to win her any points.
“Gee Lana, you just robbed me of my ability to escape, however temporarily, from the pressures and responsibilities of my life as Superboy by revealing to the world that I’m secretly mild-mannered teen Clark Kent. And now that he knows my secret, to exact revenge on me, Lex Luthor has kidnapped my adopted parents, the people who took me in after my entire race was obliterated in a fiery explosion, loved me, raised me as their own, and bestowed upon me the values that I live by. He is torturing them to death in some secret location even as we speak. In fact, Lex just sent me this photograph of himself forcing Ma Kent to give him a blow job. The photograph is a little bloody, as it arrived wrapped around Pa Kent’s severed penis. So…you want to go steady?”
Beyond that, though, was the condescending disdain with which she treated Clark. Even though she firmly believed that he was secretly the Boy of Steel, she treated him like a worm. WTF? If you even suspect that he might be more than he appears, don’t you think you should try to get in his good graces, just in case? Besides, even if he isn’t Superboy, he’s still a smart nerd. As I mentioned in an earlier post, giving a nerd a little sugar goes a long way.
It didn't really matter though, as Lana was pretty much the only game in town anyway, so Clark/Superboy would put up with pretty much anything to get busy with her.
Eventually to spice things up a little, rather than having Lana solely focused on trying to out Superboy as Clark Kent, the writer started coming up with ways to temporarily bestow superhuman abilities on Lana, which would naturally lead to all sorts of misadventures.
Lana would typically gain these powers from various ancient mystic artifacts that her archaeologist father would bring home when returning from his digs and leave lying around the house for her to play with, since evidently he didn’t notice all the trouble it cause the last time he left the Mayan Scepter of Power unattended in the living room.
In order to create a catty rivalry, they eventually brought a grown-up Lana Lang to Metropolis, where she competed with Lois as a reporter and for the Man of Steel’s affections.
So yeah, basically Lana’s never been anything other than a pain in everyone’s ass.
When John Byrne totally revamped Superman back in 1987 he completely marginalized Lana, which was fine by me. In his version of Superman’s history the one-sided, unrequited nature of the Lana/Clark relationship was all on Lana’s side. Byrne’s Clark always viewed her more like a sister than a potential love interest, though he did ultimately confide in her about his powers before flying out of her life to find his place in the world.
Lana left Smallville as well, but eventually returned, living a quiet and largely unobserved life on the farm. Eventually she married her and Clark’s old friend, Pete Ross (this Lana was smart enough to realize that she needed to settle for second best).
There have been some developments since, such as her husband being elected Vice President to Lex Luthor’s President, but even so, nothing has been done to make me actually like the character, and the even more annoying version of her presented on TV hasn't helped matters any.
Yes, she’s been around for a long time, but she’s just so disposable.
And yet, here she is, the center of a Threshold entry. Damn her! She’s so insidious.
Today is my niece Jourdan’s eighteenth birthday. That is terribly depressing.
Not much else is going on. I’ve been kind of slacking when it comes to drawing. I started on another picture of Alley Baggett, but soon lost interest.
Earlier today I started to work on it again, but then I found some more pictures of Jessica Simpson as Daisy Duke. I found one that I think I can crank out before the end of the day, so I think I’ll go to work on that. Eventually I’ll finish that picture of her in the bikini.
Probably, at any rate.
Well, maybe.
We’ll see.
In any case, that’s it for now. Sorry about the boring ramblings about Lana.