Who Is Naomi's Superman - And Why Is He Different? - CBR

Starting in Naomi’s pilot episode, Superman has been a vital—if distant—component of the title character’s development. Superman comics helped sustain Naomi through life as a constant outsider, and an incident involving the real Man of Steel played a role in unlocking the young protagonist’s latent superpowers. Yet, despite casting such a long shadow over Naomi, this version of Superman remains a mystery. Who is he, and what is his relationship to Naomi’s world?

The hero exists as a fictional character in the universe of Naomi. In fact, Naomi even runs a fan site dedicated to him. At a party in the pilot episode, she explains to her friend Nathan that part of what draws her to Superman is that he, like her, is adopted. She makes no specific mention of the Kent name, but this suggests that she and the greater world are aware of Superman’s secret identity, which makes sense. As a comic book superhero, his backstory would be, more or less, common knowledge.

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The real confusion begins when Superman shows up in the middle of Port Oswego’s town square. Like Naomi, the viewer doesn’t get to see much of the fight that ensues, but we see enough and hear enough from eyewitnesses to confirm that this is a version of Superman. While most of the world assumes that the incident was some kind of stunt performance, Dee, Naomi’s ersatz mentor and an alien in his own right, explains that Superman is, in fact, real.

If Superman is real, why do so few people know about him? If he operates in secret, how is he the subject of a well-known comic book series? Superman’s simultaneous fame and anonymity seem to contradict each other. However, this contradiction may help explain who this version of The Man of Tomorrow actually is.

The apparent disconnect between comic book Superman and real world Superman could suggest something similar to Kurt Busiek and Stuart Immomen’s 2004 miniseries Superman: Secret Identity. In that series, a man named Clark Kent, who lives in a world in which Superman exists as a comic book character, develops the same powers as his namesake and eventually takes on the same mantle in secret. If something like that occurred in world of Naomi, it would explain how everyone could know about fictional Superman while being unaware of real Superman.

On the other hand, the Clark Kent of Superman: Secret Identity is much less engaged with the larger universe than the one who appears in Naomi seems to be. Secret Identity Superman has no alien friends, and he doesn’t fight monsters in town squares. Despite his superpowers, his life looks to be more grounded than that of Naomi’s Superman. While such differences don’t necessarily rule this explanation out, they do suggest that the Superman who appeared in Port Oswego is of a more traditional variety.

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However, the presence of a more classic Superman still begs the question: how is he both an unknown figure and the subject of a comic book? A potential answer is that this Superman hails from a different corner of the multiverse. The writers of Naomi have already established that the title character is a refugee from an alternate Earth. Bringing in a Superman from a different alternate Earth wouldn’t be too much of a stretch. In Gardner Fox and Carmine Infantino’s classic “Flash of Two Worlds” from The Flash (Vol. 1) #123, which first established the DC Multiverse, Jay Garrick, the Golden Age Earth-2 Flash, existed as a fictional comic book character on Barry Allen’s Earth-1. Something like this could be the case with Naomi’s Superman.

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A multiversal explanation could be a fun way to introduce a familiar Superman without requiring Tyler Hoechlin to pull double duty if the Superman & Lois actor isn’t available to do so. Perhaps Brandon Routh’s fan-favorite version of the character could help mentor Naomi, or maybe this would be the perfect opportunity to reintroduce Tom Welling’s Superman ahead of a possible Smallville animated series. Infinite Earths make for infinite possibilities.

These questions around the identity of the Superman who appeared in Naomi’s first episode add a fun layer of mystery to the series as a whole. No matter what version of Superman ends up interacting with Naomi, he has already played an important role in her development as a hero. When the two characters finally meet, we can only hope that this iteration of the Man of Steel can live up to her expectations and to ours.

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