The introduction of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster's Superman in 1938 turned comic books into a major industry, and is the start of the Golden Age of comics.

Not to be confused with Superman supervillain Cyborg Superman, a technopathic entity who prefers cybernetic forms, who is occasionally referred to as merely " The Cyborg.

To deflect suspicion that he is Superman, Clark Kent adopted a largely passive and introverted personality with conservative mannerisms, a higher-pitched voice, and a slight slouch.

This personality is typically described as " mild-mannered ", perhaps most famously by the opening narration of Max Fleischer's Superman animated theatrical shorts.

In the Pre-Crisis comic book title Superman Family, Clark is featured in a series of stories called " The Private Life of Clark Kent ," where he solves problems subtly without changing into Superman.

Adopted by Jonathan and Martha Kent from the Kansas town of Smallville, Clark ( and thus Superman ) was raised with the values of a typical rural American town, including attending the local Methodist Church ( though it is debated by comic fans if Superman is a Methodist ).

Feeling that Clark is the real person and that Clark is not afraid to be himself in his civilian identity, John Byrne has stated in interviews that he took inspiration for this portrayal from the George Reeves version of Superman.

In " Visitor ," Lois finds Superman at the Kent farm with Lana Lang and asks him point-blank if he is Clark Kent.

In the 2009 retcon of the mythos, Lois Lane is fully aware from the beginning, along with Perry White, that the meek, pudgy and bumbling Clark Kent deliberately holds himself back: however, still far from associating him to Superman, they simply believe he's hiding his qualities as a good reporter.

In the current continuity established by DC's " New 52 " relaunch in 2011, Lois Lane remains unaware that Clark is Superman.

In the future of the Legion of Super-Heroes, his secret identity is historical fact, with exhibits at a Superman Museum depicting the hero and his friends and family's adventures.

* The explanation most commonly offered is simply that, despite their physical resemblance, Superman and Clark are perceived as being too different in mannerisms and personality to be the same individual.

A new element that has shown up recently is the fact that most people only know of Clark as a name in a byline, and only see Superman from a distance, if they see him at all.

Since the shorts were produced during the rise of film noir in cinema, the change was usually represented as a stylized sequence: Clark Kent's silhouette is clearly seen behind a closed door's pebble glass window ( or a shadow thrown across a wall ) as he strips to his Superman costume.

The CBS Saturday morning series The New Adventures of Superman produced by Filmation Studios — as well as The Adventures of Superboy from the same animation house — featured the iconic " shirt rip " to reveal the " S " or Clark Kent removing his unbuttoned white dress shirt in a secluded spot, usually thanks to stock animation which was re-used over dozens of episodes, to reveal his costume underneath while uttering his famed line " This is a job for Superman!

Later in the film, when the need to change is more urgent ( as he believes the city is about to be poisoned by Lex Luthor ), he simply jumps out a window of the Daily Planet offices, changing at super-speed as he falls ( the film merely shows the falling Kent blurring into a falling Superman ) and flies off.

A relatively recent debate is which of the two identities ( Superman or Clark Kent ) is the real person and which is the façade.

* Clark Kent is real, Superman the mask: With John Byrne's more assertive revamp of Clark Kent as well as Superman's greater grounding in Earth culture and humanity ( as opposed to the everpresent Kryptonian heritage of the Pre-Crisis version ), Superman is considered the " mask " and Clark the person.

* Neither Clark Kent nor Superman is the real person: Some versions of Superman explain that Clark Kent and Superman are both identities of the same person.

He is also considered to be the real person, with Superman the " alter ego ", though Kent often appears less in most episodes.

In the original Richard Donner films, Luthor is a vain, wisecracking money-hungry gangster, with a particular fixation on real estate, who plots outrageous disasters for Superman to try to avert.

Spacey's Luthor continues the real-estate fixation of the Hackman version, but also appears to have a real personal animus toward Superman.

In some versions of the Superman mythos, additional survivors were later discovered, such as Krypto the Superdog, Supergirl, her parents ( kept alive in the " Survival Zone ", a similar parallel " dimension " to the Phantom Zone ), the criminal inhabitants of the Phantom Zone, Dev-Em, Beppo the Super-Monkey, the residents of the bottle city of Kandor and the real parents of both Superman and Supergirl.

The Silver Age Superman was not alone in the survival of Krypton's destruction, being joined by his cousin Supergirl, the Phantom Zone criminals, Beppo the super-monkey, Krypto the Superdog, a juvenile delinquent named Dev-Em, and the entire population of the city of Kandor, Supergirl's real parents and even Superman's real parents ( in hibernation on a space ship-Superboy # 158 July-1969 ), When the planet exploded, one entire city of Krypton, Argo City, survived the cataclysm.

The real town of Metropolis is portrayed in one Superman comic-book story, specifically " Superman # 92 ", in a story titled " Massacre in Metropolis!

Sometimes the distinction as to which persona is the " real one " may be blurred or confused, as has sometimes been the case with Clark Kent and Superman.

NOTE: The Silver Age Phantom Zone appears to be prefigured in the 1950 Superman serial Atom Man vs. Superman, in which Lex Luthor uses a kind of matter-transmitter device to trap Superman in a limbo called the " Empty Doom " from which he can see and hear events in the " real " world but cannot touch anything or be seen or heard.

He never claimed to be the real Superman, but Lois Lane speculated that if Superman were really dead, perhaps his soul had moved into Irons ' body as a walk-in, and she used that word.

He had a recurring role as " Bill Church Jr ." based upon the character of Moxie Mannheim's son ( Bruno Mannheim ) from the Superman comics on Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.

From his first introduction in 1938 to the mid-1980s, " Clark Kent " was seen mostly as a disguise for Superman, enabling him to mix with ordinary people.

In 1986, during John Byrne's revamping of the character, the emphasis was on Superman being the manufactured persona of Clark Kent, the side of the character he most identifies with.

Through the popularity of his Superman alter ego, the personality, concept, and name of Clark Kent have become ingrained in popular culture as well, becoming synonymous with secret identities and innocuous fronts for ulterior motives and activities.

In 1992, Superman co-creator Joe Shuster told the Toronto Star that the name derived from 1930's cinematic leading men Clark Gable and Kent Taylor, but the persona from bespectacled silent film comic Harold Lloyd and himself.

In the earliest Superman comics, Clark Kent's primary purpose was to fulfill the perceived dramatic requirement that a costumed superhero cannot remain on full duty all the time.

Clark wears his Superman costume underneath his street clothes, allowing easy changes between the two personae — and the dramatic gesture of ripping open his shirt to reveal the familiar " S " emblem when called into action.

Superman usually stores his Clark Kent clothing compressed in a secret pouch within his cape, though some stories have shown him leaving his clothes in some covert location ( such as the Daily Planet storeroom ) for later retrieval.

In the wake of John Byrne's reboot of Superman continuity in The Man of Steel, many traditional aspects of Clark Kent were dropped in favor of giving him a more aggressive and extroverted personality ( although not as strong as Lois ), including such aspects as making Clark a top football player in high school, along with being a successful author and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer.

According to the DC Comics Official Guide to Superman, Clark enjoys peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, football games, and the smell of Kansas in the springtime.

Traditionally, Lois Lane ( and sometimes others ) would often suspect Superman of truly being Clark Kent ; this was particularly prominent in Silver Age stories, including those in the series Superman's Girl Friend Lois Lane.

In post-Crisis continuity, Lois Lane, feeling that someone like Clark could not be Superman, never suspected the dual identity beyond one isolated incident before Clark finally revealed it to her.

Various reasons over the decades have been offered for why people have never suspected Superman and Clark Kent of being one and the same:

The 2004 limited series Superman: Birthright has a young Clark Kent study the Meisner technique to move seamlessly between his Clark and Superman personas ( dropping his head, lowering his shoulders, and talking in a lighter tone as Clark Kent, while standing straight and talking in a deeper tone as Superman ).

Live-action actors adopting this approach while playing Clark Kent / Superman include:

This fact was one of the main inspirations for the 1980s reboot of the Clark Kent half of the Superman character, according to writer and artist John Byrne in the article " Super-Discussions " published by Attic Books in Comics Values Monthly Special # 2 ( 1992 ).

** Christopher Reeve in the Superman film series, who was praised for making the disguise's effectiveness credible to audiences, portrayed Clark Kent as massively clumsy, paranoid, and, of course, mild mannered.