Superman Contends With Parenthood and Villainy in New Series

Superman & Lois. The CW Tuesday, February 23, 9 p.m.

I have a damning confession to make. Though I’m a TV critic in an entertainment world rife with superheroes, I haven’t laid eyes on Superman—not in a TV show, a movie, a video game, or comic book—in more than 40 years. (And then only because a journalist friend advised me that the movie Superman, with Christopher Reeve, included Daily Planet editor Perry White’s explanation of what made Clark Kent such a great reporter: He was “the fastest typist I’ve ever seen.”)

Otherwise, my knowledge of the character is pretty much limited to the old 1950s TV series, which my elementary-schoolkid pals and I watched endlessly in syndication, laughing ourselves into tears as Superman busted such threats to the American way of life as a rogue ventriloquist’s dummy, some Haitian voodoo priests and even—egad! —a crooked professional wrestler. We lost interest when we realized Superman was never going to use his X-ray vision to look under Lois Lane’s clothes. (We continued to hold out hope for those X-Ray Spex we saw in ads in the back of comic books.)

In the years since, I’ve missed about 200 Superman movies and TV shows, and that’s only counting those that have the word “Superman” in the title—when you start adding  Superboys and Supergirls and Superdogs (seriously), the numbers turn googolesque. I am, generally speaking, unrepentant about this, though I’ll confess to an occasional twinge of longing to see Superman and the Mole Men, in which a grungy race of underground creatures wield a death-ray thingy which looked alarmingly like my mom’s Electrolux vacuum.

So I wasn’t expecting much out of The CW’s Superman & Lois, the big guy’s latest iteration. Instead, you can color me amazed. Th