Superman – Clark Kent/Kal-El

 

 

Character’s Code Name:  Superman
Real Name:  Clark Joseph Kent on Earth.  Kal-El on Krypton
Alias(es):  The Man of Steel, The Man of Tomorrow, The Son of Krypton, Supes, 
Identity:  Secret
Species:  Kryptonian
Appearance:  Caucasian Humanoid
Gender:  Male
Height:  6’4″
Weight:  240 lbs
Eye Color:  Blue
Hair Color:  Black
Unusual Distinctive Traits:  None
Birthplace:  Krypton
Citizenship:  United States of America
Occupation:  Journalist
Wealth Level:  Upper-Middle Class
Popularity Level:  Extremely Popular
Area of Typical Operations:  Metropolis, USA
Time/Era of Typical Operations:   Present Day Earth
Planet/Specific Earth:  Earth
Known Relatives & Their Statuses:  Jor-El (natural father, deceased);  Lar-A (natural mother, deceased); Jonathan Kent (adoptive father); Martha Kent (adoptive mother); Kara Zor-El (cousin)
Marital Status:  Single
Current Romantic Relationship(s):  Lois Lane
Past Romantic Relationship(s):  Lana Lang, Lori Lemaris
Religious Affiliation:  Worships Kryptonian God Rao.  Also potentially has Christian leanings given his Midwestern upbringing.
First Appearance:  Action Comics #1
Date:  June 1938
Creator(s):  Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster

 

Head/Face/Mask:  None
Arms/Chest:  A long sleeved royal blue shirt, emblazoned with the cardinal red and canary yellow “S” shield in the middle of the shirt.
Emblem/Symbol:  A diamond design with a stylized “S” in the middle of it.
Hands/Gloves:  None
Waist/Belt:  A golden belt with a simple buckle.
Pants:  Royal blue tights with red briefs
Footwear:  Red boots with a “M” tip at mid calf.
Cape:  Red Cape with a fully golden/yellow stylized S emblem on the back on the outside of the cape.
Other:

 

Dexterity:    Extreme Metahuman
Strength:  Extreme Metahuman
Stamina:  Extreme Metahuman
Intelligence:  Enhanced Metahuman
Wisdom:  Normal
Charisma:  Normal

Battle Role in a Group:  Tank
Alignment:  Lawful Good
Motivation:   Upholding the Good

 

Powers

Flight – Superman can break free of gravity and travel unimpeded through the air.

Immunity to Adverse Temperature – Superman has no problem operating in areas where the temperature would cause a normal person considerable problems.

Immunity to Disease – Superman’s super immune system fights off most, if not all, Earth based viruses and bacteria.

Immunity to Toxins – Superman can withstand poison and toxic attacks with ease.

Invulnerability – Superman is extremely durable and hard to damage physically.

Safe in Space – Superman can travel through the vacuum of outer space with no ill effects.

Super Breath – Superman can exude a powerful blast of air from his lungs.

Super Hearing – Superman has the ability to hear sounds from a great distance and pinpoint where those sounds are located.

Super Intelligence – Superman is keenly smart and due to Kryptonian science has a basic knowledge of most Earth sciences and some sciences not on Earth yet.

Super Speed – Superman is insanely fast.

Super Stamina - Superman rarely tires out in a normal battle scenario.

Super Strength – Superman is almost incalculably strong.

Super Ventriloquism – Superman can throw his voice over distances.  Presumably he learned to do this to help with the cultivation of his secret identity.

Vision Powers – Superman possesses four distinct vision powers.

• Heat Vision – Superman can send heat beams out of his eyes gentle enough to warm someone or cook food or laser like as a particularly brutal attack or to melt objects.
• Microscopic Vision – Superman can use his vision to see things at a microscopic level.
• Telescopic Vision – Superman can see far into the distance for detecting incoming objects or to witness trouble.
• X-Ray Vision – Superman can use his vision to see through objects providing those objects are not shielded by lead.

Vulnerabilities

For all of his powers, Superman is not completely vulnerable.  Superman has a few major vulnerabilities.

Fellow Kryptonians – Of course, when faced with other survivors of Krypton, Superman is battling basically a doppelganger and that doppelganger has the same abilities.

Kryptonite – Superman suffers various effects depending upon his range to and the color of a chunk of his home planet.  There are many types but the most common are below.

• Gold Kryptonite – Takes away the powers of a Kryptonian.
• Green Kryptonite – Takes away his powers and begins to kill him fairly immediately.  This is the most common form of Kryptonite.
• Red Kryptonite – Causes a mutation in Superman’s physiology, mental state, or combination of both for a certain length of time.  Typically 24 or 48 hours, but this has changed over time.

Magic – Superman is inordinately not so super when confronted with magical beings.

Mental Control – Superman can be controlled via strong telepathic powers.

Skills

Acrobatics – None
Animals – Superman was raised as a farmer and most likely has some understanding of basic animal behavior.
Artist  -  Superman in his alter ego of Clark Kent is a writer.
Charisma  -  While many look up to, revere, and even worship Superman, Superman is not very accepting of this adulation.  He frequently will place himself in with the rest of the metahuman community as just “pulling his weight” and has proven a very reluctant leader at times.
Connections – Superman has high security clearance with the U.S. Government.  Clark Kent’s Press Pass allows him into most places with varying degrees of success.  Superman has universal access to The Daily Planet and the Metahuman community.  
Detective  - None
Education – College educated and also received private tutoring via history tapes of Krypton.
Gadgetry - None
Martial Artist – None
Medicine - None
Military Science - None
Occultist - None
Scholar - None
Scientist - None
Survival - None
Thief - None
Vehicles - Normal, plus Tractor.
Weaponry - None

 

 

 

Allies -

Supergirl - Kryptonian cousin.
Justice League of America - Hero Group Affiliation
Legion of Super-Heroes - Hero Group Affiliation

 

Headquarters -

Fortress of Solitude

Pets -

Krypto the Super Dog.  Additionally Superman keeps a zoo at his Fortress of Solitude of creatures he rescued who no longer have a home.

Vehicles – None

Weaponry -

JLA Signal Device – Every member of the Justice League carries this device which serves as a two way communicator.

Legion Flight Ring – Being a Legionnaire when he was Superboy, Clark still possesses a Legion Flight Ring.  The ring allows for non-powered flight based upon will power.

Phantom Zone Ray Gun - This gun teleports those caught in its beams to the Phantom Zone dimension which keeps them alive but unable to harm other beings.

Superman Robots - Superman frequently employed robotic duplicates to help divert from his true identity and to patrol if he would be away for an extended time.

 

Other

Bottled City of Kandor – Superman keeps this shrunken Kryptonian city of Kandor in a bottle in his Fortress of Solitude.  Inside the city Kandorians are just as powerful as Superman just at an average of six inches high.

 

On the distant planet of Krypton in a Red Star system, Jor-El and Lar-A met and mated.  Of that union, was born Kal-El.  Some short time after Jor-El, being one of the Science guild, sometimes viewed as the head of the Science guild, theorized that the planet Krypton was going to explode under pressure from it’s intensely radioactive core.  Jor-El pleaded with the powers that be that they must evacuate Krypton immediately.

The main ruling body of Krypton rejected Jor-El’s findings as radically ridiculous and forbid him to mention his findings to prevent a panic.  Jor-El dejected returned home to Lar-A and began his plan to build a prototype of a ship that would save his family from the fate of Krypton.

Once Jor-El finishes his working prototype, the planet of Krypton begins its death throes with earthquakes.  Realizing there is no more time to work on a ship for him and his wife, Jor-El programs the prototype to take Kal-El to the planet Earth where Jor-El’s calculations have shown that Kal-El will possess amazing abilities with Earth’s lesser gravity and its Yellow Sun, Sol.

The rocketship takes off from Krypton as Jor-El and Lar-A hold each other and in their last moments of life the planet Krypton explodes sending fragments everywhere throughout the cosmos.  Kal-El’s rocketship travels from Krypton to Earth unimpeded.

It is a normal November day, the harvest is done and Jonathan and Martha Kent of Smallville, Kansas are returning home from town to their family farm with their supplies for the long winter months ahead as the spaceship from Krypton crash lands off the road in a corn field.  Jonathan and Martha stop their pick-up truck and investigate and find the infant wrapped in clothing bearing the El family symbol, an S in a diamond shape.

 

Fate played a hand as well as the biggest blizzard of the century began to bear down on the farm.  Jonathan managed to get the spacecraft hidden in the barn just as the snow became a white out and as he went inside the Kents welcomed their new child as their own since they had been unable to conceive naturally.  They named the child Clark Joseph Kent and when the snows finally abated in April, no one in town doubted that Martha had been expecting and delivered early on the farm in the small rural community.

Raised in the Midwest by salt of the Earth people with strong American values, Clark was indistinguishable from any other child in Smallville, except after a while he began to exhibit some interesting traits.  He never got sick for instance and seemed extraordinarily strong for his age.  One day Clark was playing football with a bunch of boys and when he grabbed one by the shoulder Clark broke his arm.  It became apparent that Jonathan and Martha could no longer keep Clark’s origin a secret and they told him the story of how they found him.

Together they concocted a plan, a secret identity for Clark, more to keep everyone else safe until Clark could control his strength fully.  Clark would become a bookworm, a klutz, a withdrawn teen to shield others from the possibility that his abilities hurt another.  This act stuck and Clark found himself socially ostracized in the small town.

As Clark matured he discovered his other powers and eventually he began to wear a costume and took to calling himself Superboy.  Superboy being so brave and powerful couldn’t possibly be timid, meek, glasses wearing Clark Kent.  Superboy began to have a great number of adventures in Smallville which enabled him to do some good even though Clark himself was a wall flower.

Clark had two close child hood friends.  Pete Ross was Clark’s best friend in Smallville.  When they went on a camping trip there came a great storm and Clark changed to Superboy thinking everyone was asleep but Pete saw Clark in a flash of lightning and became aware of Clark’s identity.  This is a secret that Pete would hold onto for a very long time.  Then there was Clark’s main love interest in Smallville, Lana Lang.  Lana was convinced that Clark and Superboy was the same person, but just could never prove it.  Lana herself would go on and have some wacky adventures as The Insect Queen.

Clark’s third friend would prove to be his worst enemy.  Lex Luthor.  Luthor lived in Smallville and wanted to be the best scientist in the world.  He wanted to be able to develop a serum to cure Superboy of Kryptonite poisoning.  Lex perfected the formula, but his lab caught on fire.. Superboy spotted the fire and used his superbreath to put the fire out, however this also blew the chemical fumes back at Lex.  Lex lost all of his bright orange hair and became permanently bald.  Enraged at being a bald 15 year old Lex Luthor swore vengeance on the Boy of Steel.

Superboy learned how to become a super-hero when he was recruited to the future by The Legion of Super-Heroes.  When confronted by the three future teens from the 30th Century, Superboy went into the future to see the impact his life would have on the universe.  He saw his destiny.  Superman.  Saturn Girl used her telepathic abilities to make sure that Superboy would not become overwhelmed by his future and in a true chicken and egg metaphor, the Legion taught Superboy how to be a hero using the example of Superman from their past.

Clark eventually will graduate from Smallville High and head off from the farm for the big city of Metropolis.

Once there, Clark would join the team of The Daily Planet and become a crack reporter using his super power abilities to assist in scooping his fellow investigative reporter Lois Lane, who would become the love of his life.

Along with their boss, newspaper editor Perry White and the eager cub photographer Jimmy Olsen, it seems as if Clark is set for a long life of excitement in the city.