In a recent interview, a producer for My Adventures With Superman (2023) explained all of the massive character changes and how they made their show better.
Credit: Adult Swim
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It may seem that Superman is in a state of limbo, stuck between Zack Snyder‘s stoic interpretation starring Henry Cavill and James Gunn’s upcoming Superman: Legacy (2025) starring David Corenswet as Clark Kent and Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane. But in the meantime, there’s an incredible version of the Man of Steel on your television: My Adventures With Superman on Adult Swim.
Credit: Warner Bros.
The show follows Clark Kent, Lois Lane, and Jimmy Olsen as interns at the Daily Planet in a futuristic version of Metropolis. It has a fun, lighthearted energy and wonderfully translates Superman’s good nature without making him seem like too much of a Boy Scout.
While the show has been well-received both critically and commercially but still faced its share of criticism from the internet, particularly about changing multiple characters’ ethnicities. However, producer Josephine Campbell had the perfect response to those naysayers.
Credit: Warner Bros.
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One of the biggest points of controversy surrounding My Adventures With Superman, as it always is on the internet, was changing the race of multiple characters, particularly Lois Lane. When asked about this during an interview with Superman Homepage on YouTube, producer Josephine Campbell addressed the question perfectly.
“Lois is still that go-getting person, who is ambitious, and driven, and is calling [Clark] Smallville, and she’s jumping out of windows, or off of buildings. Like, boy, she loves to do that in every single media.”
Credit: Warner Bros.
She went on to explain that the characters still have the exact same traits as every previous interpretation, particularly Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, and Perry White.
“At the end of the day, it’s also a very classic interpretation of Superman. Who Jimmy is, is the funny guy. who’s Superman’s pal, who gets kidnapped by gorillas, and is the photographer. That’s Jimmy Olsen. … But yeah, who they are as people is exactly the same. It’s this classic version. The only thing we’ve done is try to make our show look like reality, look like the world around us, and look like the world around the audience who’s watching.”
Credit: Warner Bros.
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Another major factor was wanting to represent the crew’s idea of a city of the future. Much like in Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994), Metropolis takes place in a future where people with multiple different backgrounds work together.
“One of the big things we wanted to do was… for us, working on the show, for us as people, everybody around us isn’t just one thing. We’re a crew made up of different people of different ethnicities, different backgrounds, different genders, different orientations. Our families and friends, the people around us, are all different. So, we didn’t want a Metropolis that didn’t showcase reality, didn’t show that this is a city… The City of Tomorrow is embracing everybody.”
Credit: Warner Bros.
However, Josephine Campbell’s most important point was that all of these “changes” have actually happened previously in the DC Universe. And since it better supports their theme, it benefits the production as a whole.
“So for us, there’s been an Asian Lois before, there’s been a Black Jimmy before, Perry’s been black before, there’s a lot of these characters who have had different versions of them that we kind of pulled in. And again, our idea was to make it feel real, make it feel like a real city, make it feel like a real place, and the way to do that is to embrace the fact that everybody’s different, and to embrace the fact that the message of Superman, especially our Superman, is that those differences make you stronger.”
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Campbell continued, “Those differences are what pull us together, what sort of binds us. So, for us, there’s a lot of discussion about, once we decided who these characters were, different ways to sort of show their backgrounds, different ways to show them.”
Looking at those goals, Josephine Campbell and the entire team working on My Adventures With Superman absolutely nailed what they were going for. The show is a triumph and is arguably the best adaptation of Superman and every other person in Metropolis on television.
What’s your favorite interpretation of Superman? Let Inside the Magic know in the comments down below!
In a recent interview, a Superman producer justified changing the race of multiple beloved DC Comics characters. #MyAdventuresWithSuperman #LoisLane #DCComics #DC #DCStudios #ClarkKent #HenryCavill #JamesGunn Read More