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 ).

The 2004 series Superman: Birthright also explained that Superman's eyes are an inhumanly vivid shade of blue, which Clark's glasses diffuse to make his eyes appear more human.

Superman: Birthright, a limited series written by Mark Waid in 2004, offers an alternate look at Luthor's history, including his youth in Smallville, and his first encounter with Superman.

In Birthright, Luthor remains a wealthy corporate magnate ; in contrast to Byrne's characterization, however, LexCorp is founded upon Luthor's study of extraterrestrial life, thereby providing a link between himself and Superman.

In the retrospective section of the Superman: Birthright trade paperback, Waid explains:

Birthright was initially intended to establish a new origin for Superman and Luthor.

As shown previously in Superman: Birthright and the pre-Crisis stories, he spends part of his adolescence in Smallville, Kansas, where he meets Clark Kent, Lana Lang, and Pete Ross.

In the 2004 mini-series Superman: Birthright, a new retelling of Superman's origin and early years, Mark Waid depicted a Krypton, officially stated as being located in the Andromeda Galaxy 2. 5 million light-years away, with elements of various versions of the planet, but closer to the pre-Crisis version.

While in previous comic versions of the mythos, it was assumed the " S " simply stood for " Superman "; in Birthright, Waid presented the symbol as a Kryptonian symbol of hope ( borrowing and modifying a concept from Superman: The Movie, where the " S " represented the House of El, Superman's ancestral family ).

But after Superman: Birthright it was suggested that the planet Krypton was from an entirely different galaxy.

Superman's symbol is given a Kryptonian origin in the film ( as Smallville and Mark Waid's Superman: Birthright would years later ).

Action Comics # 850 presents the latest revision of Superman's origin, containing many subtle retcons to Superman: Birthright, the latest major revision of Superman's continuity.

In the 2004 miniseries Superman: Birthright, Jor-El, along with Krypton and Lara, was, more or less, reinstated to his Silver Age versions, though with such updated touches as Lara contributing equally to the effort of sending Kal-El, once again an infant while on Krypton, to Earth.

* Superman: Birthright

The Superman: Birthright miniseries reinstated several Silver Age elements of Superman, one of which is Kandor.

Superman was thrown out of time and saw both versions of his origin: Man of Steel and Birthright.

He is well known for his eight-year run as writer of the DC Comics ' title The Flash, as well as his scripting of the limited series Kingdom Come and Superman: Birthright, and his work on Marvel Comics ' Captain America.

In 2003 Waid wrote the origin of the " modern " Superman with Superman: Birthright, a twelve-part limited series which was meant to be the new official origin story of the Man of Steel.

Birthright contained several characters and elements from Silver and Modern Age Superman comics and also homages to Superman: The Movie and the Smallville television series.

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.

Besides Dick Tracy, Capp parodied many other comic strips in Li ' l Abner — including Steve Canyon, Superman ( at least twice ; first as " Jack Jawbreaker " in 1947, and again in 1966 as " Chickensouperman "), Mary Worth, Peanuts, Rex Morgan, M. D., Little Annie Rooney and Little Orphan Annie ( in which Punjab became " Punjbag ," an oleaginous slob ).

( Siegel and Shuster had earlier poked fun at Capp in a Superman story in Action Comics # 55, December 1942, in which a cartoonist named " Al Hatt " invents a comic strip featuring the hillbilly " Tiny Rufe.

These longer strips include The Bash Street Kids Adventures written and drawn by Kev F Sutherland which since 2004 have featured parodies of famous comic strip images, including Amazing Fantasy's first Spider-Man cover, Action Comics ' first Superman cover, and most recently the cover of X Men # 100.

Sometimes these are spin-offs from comic books, for example Superman, Batman and The Amazing Spider-Man.

When most people think of a superhero or a comic book celebrity, Superman, Spider-Man, and Batman will usually be the first that comes to mind.

Four comic books to have sold for over $ 1 million USD as of December 2010, including two examples of Action Comics No. 1, the first appearance of Superman, both sold privately through online dealer ComicConnect. com in 2010, and Detective Comics No. 27, the first appearance of Batman, via public auction.

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.

It was not until 1949 that comic book writers incorporated kryptonite into their stories, as both a convenient danger and weakness for Superman and to add an interesting element to his stories.

Kryptonite, in its first comic appearance ( Superman vol.

Since the debut of the prototypical superhero Superman in 1938, stories of superheroes — ranging from brief episodic adventures to continuing years-long sagas — have dominated American comic books and crossed over into other media.

* All-Star Superman, a comic book

" There is no central plot to the comic, leaving only a forced fight scene between Superman and Batman as an out of place climax to the story.

From the late 1980s through the early 2000s, the number of survivors was reduced to Superman himself in the comic book stories ( the Eradicator was added in 1989 as a nonsentient device, and shown to be self-aware in 1991 ), but more recent accounts have restored Supergirl, Krypto, and Kandor, and introduced another newly discovered survivor, Karsta Wor-Ul.

Soon, beginning in the Superman comic strip, Krypton was shown to have been a planet similar to Earth, older by eons and possessed of all the beneficial progress that implied ( though the downside was the hint that Krypton exploded due mainly to old age ).

The debut of the Superman newspaper comic strip in 1939 also delved into further details about Krypton, including introducing the idea that all Kryptonians possessed a level of heightened physical abilities, including super-strength and super-speed.

Superman's Kryptonian heritage was a frequent factor in Silver Age Superman comic storylines, as he was fully aware of his origins from an early age.

* Depictions of Krypton on both The New Adventures of Superman and Super Friends are generally similar to those of the pre-Crisis comic books.

After years of litigation due to a suit lodged by National Publications ( publishers of DC Comics ) against Fawcett for copyright infringement claiming that Captain Marvel was a copy of Superman, Fawcett in the early 1950s ( partly in response to flagging sales ) reached a settlement with DC in which it agreed to discontinue its comic line.