Posted in: Adult Swim, Cartoon Network, Max, TV, Warner Animation Group | Tagged: Adult Swim, lois lane, max, my adventures with superman, superman

Why My Adventures With Superman S01 Avoided Using Certain Villains

We didn't get Lex Luthor or other familiar villains in the first season of Adult Swim's My Adventures With Superman - here's why Warner Bros. wanted that.

Adult Swim's first season of My Adventures With Superman ended up being a much-loved new adaptation of the most famous superhero in history, despite some fans being cautious about the new take from the outset.  The key to its success was the characters and having the audience really fall for these young and modern versions of Clark Kent, Lois Lane, and Jimmy Olsen. The trio was fun, relatable, and full of heart, and those are three adjectives for Superman that you don't hear used together too often these days.  One thing the producers of the show did not do was get into a pattern of focusing more on the marquee name supervillains than the titular hero, something superhero adaptations are often guilty of, and as it turns out, Warner Bros. may have had a hand in that being their approach.

Josie Campbell, co-producer of My Adventures With Superman, recently chatted with Duy Tano of The Comics Cube, and during their discussion about the show and its characters, the topic came up of how the first season seemed to avoid using heavy hitters such as Lex Luthor. As it turns out, according to Campbell, Warner Bros. wasn't too keen on seeing more of the same old.

"I think it was it was a good note. Like our big execs on Warner Brothers were like, 'Well, these are the big hitters that everybody's seen and everybody's expecting. And we've seen this a million times, so we want your twists on things.' And I think it was Sam Register… and Audrey Diehl, who were doing notes with us, were like, 'These characters take up the whole screen. They kind of suck the air out because they're so famous, and there's so many expectations, so hold off on them. Hold off on these characters, and build the story how you see fit.'"

The notes were clearly well-received and acted upon, as My Adventures With Superman was clearly on the shoulders of Clark, Lois, and Jimmy and their combined efforts to grow and find out who they (and each other) were instead of just feeling like a rush to fight the big bad of the week.  With that in mind, Campbell explained how their attention shifted to using lesser-known villains to flesh out their stories.

"We were like, 'Okay, we're not gonna have Lex Luthor. We are not going to have the Brainiac stuff coming in. We're going to start small, we're going to start with… Clark is still learning his powers and figuring out who he is. So, we're going to start small and start with some of these lesser-known villains. We're going to start with some of these weirder villains. We're gonna build up.'"

And build up they did, as if you saw the season finale, the teaser was clearly laid out that we're getting at least a couple of Superman's most iconic foes in season two of My Adventures With Superman, which is confirmed to be in the works right now.

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