I wondered how they would handle Hawkman flying. If he just flaps his wings, he’s only a big not too speedy bird, and flapping wings would require a lot of cgi. Making him zoom solved the problem, but left me wondering what he needed with the wings. He mostly wore them spread out, but once they folded. So they have two settings at least. At least they had the original helmet, not the upper-face model or the yellow hood.

This was the first Smallville I’ve watched in years. They’ve gone so far from the legend, there’s no way to get back. Clark and Lex as buddies? So when Clark shows up in costume, Lex isn’t going to say, What’s with the cape, Kent? Knowing Lois in Smallville? The only excuse is there’s no Superman legend in the comics anymore, either. Too many changes, artists, continuities. Siegel and Shuster probably weren’t capable of developing their creation, but Shuster’s human-scale Man of Steel remains the archetype for me — I get a genuine thrill when he leaps into the air.

I have to wonder how much of that stuff ended up at John’s comic book store, though.

As increasingly ridiculous as it is that they don’t just call Clark Superman (hammered home when one tries to describe this episode – “Then Green Arrow, Stargirl, Hawkman and Clark…”) it just ocurred to me that, given how little resemblance characters on this show usually bear to their comic book versions (not including the JSA members in this episode; but seriously Black Canary looked like a background dancer from a Duran Duran video, and Mr. Mxyzptlk was just a European dude with mind control powers) it’s actually reasonable to assume that any version of Clark who actually wears the S-Shield on his chest basically IS this show’s version of Superboy.

And was it me or did the special effects on Hawkman basically look like an attempt to explain why this show doesn’t let Clark fly more often?

Also, I love Erica Durance’s Lois, especially since they stopped having her run around dressed like Britney Spears and got rid of her bad blonde dye job.

I thought the Dr. Fate costume worked as well. In fact, I was kind of surprised that the costumes worked as well as they did (even Hawkman, though they could have sculpted the abs or something).

I’ve always thought that the biggest problem for live action adaptations of comics has been the costumes. Given their unreal body measurements, the costumes of a lot of characters don’t translate well into live action and just have too much potential to look like bad cosplay. That’s why so many movies and TV shows redesign the costumes (see X-Men). Ironically, the one guy who shows up the most in costume on Smallville, Green Arrow, is one of the few that they probably could have gotten away with without the redesign (which was mainly changing the vest and swapping out the cap and mask for a hoodie and wraparounds).

Martian Manhunter’s harness being holsters = Awesome hilarity.