When I was a child, I always preferred Batman. But now that I’ve grown, I’ve realized that I’m much closer to Clark Kent — minus the glasses (and also the flying, super-strength, and red laser eyes). A stable journalism job at a major city print publication with his own apartment? Clark Kent is living the reporter’s dream!
Most superheroes have day jobs where they wear different kinds of suits. (Well, except Hellboy, for whom monster hunting is his day job.) Take Matt Murdock/Daredevil: He’s a defense attorney, showing he’s a man who jumps to champion righteous causes and, also, a self-martyr. That Matt practices the law by day but takes it into his own hands at night also adds fundamental tension to his character. In the words of foundational “Daredevil” writer Frank Miller, only a Catholic like Matt Murdock could be a lawyer and a vigilante.
What about Superman, though? Since his first appearance in “Action Comics” #1, Clark Kent has been a journalist — but what does that say about his character?
Superman’s creators, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, likely picked their hero’s job out of familiarity. The two of them first met in their teen years; while attending Alexander Hamilton Junior High School, they worked together on their school’s student paper, the Federalist. Shuster drew a comic strip for the paper, “Jerry The Journalist.” They even initially envisioned Superman as a newspaper comic strip, not sustaining a full-issue magazine.
As for the in-text reasons for his career, older “Superman” stories often said that Clark Kent chose to be a reporter to further his job as Superman. By working in a newsroom, Clark can be among the first to hear about trouble in Metropolis (like a bank robbery, a train running out of control, or a hostage situation). Clark jokingly spells it out to a disbelieving Lois Lane in “Superman: The Animated Series.”
“Well, the truth is Lois, I’m actually Superman in disguise and I only pretend to be a journalist to hear about disasters as they happen and then squeeze you out of the byline.”
But this answer only raises another question. Is Clark Kent’s job just a cover, or is writing as much a vocation for him as helping people? And in the almost 90+ years since Superman first soared, has this rationale for him working as a journalist become obsolete?
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