Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related Superman & magic

I've been wracking my brains lately trying to remember some details about the old Superboy series that was on TV in the eighties. Was there a lot of magical stuff in that one?

And yes, this is fanfic related because my son recently objected to an idea I was playing around with for a L&C fanfic on the basis that I was using magic as a main element. So naturally I starting listing all the cases of Superman and just plain old magic I've seen over the years. Most of those are isolated incidents in various episodes/arcs, but my memory is telling me that quite a few of those Superboy episodes involved magic of some type. Am I imagining that?

I haven't read too many issues of Superboy, but yes, my impression was that magic came into it fairly often. I vaguely recal an issue I read a good number of years back that featured quite a bit of magic, and Superboy was all but saying, "Oh, great. Not another magically transformed classmate!"

I can also tell you that (in the comics) it's not entirely uncommon for Superman (the adult) to come up against magic. In fact, if you polled a bunch of fanboys about Superman's greatest vulnerability other than Kryptonite, you'd probably get as many who said "magic" as "Lois Lane."

I remember I came across an official DC "choose your own adventure" type webcomic a couple years back in which Superman was facing off against the recurring magical villainess Silver Banshee. One of the things that came up if you chose the wrong path early on was Superman being struck down by the Banshee. "Always was... vulnerable to... magic. <thud>" (Well, the "thud" wasn't in the dialogue box, but the rest is word for word.)

Beyond that, magic showed up a couple of times in the series. Illusions of Granduer, Chi of Steel, Never On Sunday, Ghosts, and I've Got You Under My Skin all involved magic, as well as a couple of other episodes. Remember, though, that there's a reason those episodes are not exactly the most popular ones around. Soul Mates had magic, too, by the way, but it was a minor part of the episode (crucial to the plot, but not given much actual screentime) and it was in a more magic-friendly context.

So, FoLCs may not like (or may choose to ignore) the more comics-like aspects of the show, but magic is definitely in canon.

Paul

I don't think in the actual Superboy short-lived series magic was used or if so very little.

Sorry it took me so long to get back to this but my Internet connection went out over the holiday weekend and I'm just now catching up.

Hmm, I certainly never realized magic played that great a role in the comic books although I suppose I should've suspected it. Thanks for the confirmation.

See, I never got the vulnerablity to magic as being a big deal. In most universes where magic works, most normal, non-magical, people are vulnerable to magic, so why shouldn't a 'super'-normal person be vulnerable as well.

James

I could be completely wrong on this but the impression I got from early FoLC discussions on this - meaning while the series was still on and those magic episodes were very fresh in everyone's minds - people's reactions pro or con seem to stem from whether they perceive Superman to be pure fantasy or more science fiction. People who see him more as a fantasy creation don't seem to have as much problem with his magic vulnerability and, conversely, the more sci-fi they see him, the more they resist the idea.

And then there was that whole other camp that appeared to want nothing more than to have him be the ONLY thing in the L&C universe that had powers period. Those individuals tended to object to magic in and of itself.

Like I said, I could be completely misremembering this but I don't think so. I got into too many discussions on the topic.

Yes, James. It's more a matter of not being invulnerable to magic than of being especially vulnerable. For Clark, though, that's a big deal.

Beverly -- Yeah, that sounds about right. It's a mixed bag. You may turn some readers off, but you may please others. My best advice is this -- if the story says it needs it, then use it. At least no one can say it's not in canon.

Paul

Well, if Smallville is anything to go by, he seemed quite vulnerable to Lana's powers when she was taken over by the witch. In the L&C series, he was vulnerable to hypnosis, which isn't exactly magic, but it's associated with it.

I'm sure he'd have more resistance to magic than normal folks, but I don't think he would be completely resistant.

I was reading this thread for fun, not really having anything to contribute or anything that I especially needed to learn from it, until I read what Emily wrote:
I'm currently writing a fic that involves hypnosis and I can't remember what episode you're referring to. I vaugely remember something about hypnosis now that you mention it, but the only ep I can think of is Oedipus Wrecks and that was Lois, not Clark.

*thinks some more* Okay now I remember that he wa hypnotized in JSN, but were there any other eps?

~Anna

I think Clark was hypnotized in Never on Sunday .

Illusions of Grandeur, Anna - the awful S1 ep with the magician and the kidnapped kids. Superman is hypnotised to believe that 'might is right'. There's that ridiculous scene where he walks along the street knocking over parking meters, and the horrible scene where he's just rescued one of the kidnapped kids, but hands him right back to the bad guys because they hold a medallion in front of his face and say the trigger words again.

One word.


Wendy

Never on Sunday and Illusions of Grandeur. Two of my least favorite eps, so it's no wonder I didn't remember. I might have to watch them just to refresh my memory of what all went on. Thanks for the info!

~Anna

I'm surprised that Mxyzptlk hasn't been mentioned yet. He was a magical being right?

TEEEEEEJ

Forgot about Myxie.

What he is depends on your definition, of course. What we know is that he's a being from the "5th dimension," and that coming from a "higher level of reality" gives him special abilities in our world.

The idea is kind of like this: If you lived in a two dimensional world, a line would be like a wall to you. There'd be no way past it. But someone from a 3D world would be able to jump over it. Someone from a 3D world would be able to do all sorts of things like that which seem completely impossible to someone from a 2D world. So, it'd seem like magic powers. Depending on how you define magic, it might even be magical powers.

From our perspective, Myxie is a magical creature, and he's generally written as such. Whether or not his abilities are technicaly magical in nature is up to debate.

Oh, and Baron Sunday didn't just use hypnotism. He used Voodoo (Baron Sunday is, I believe, the Voodoo god of death -- like the Grim Reaper, but with more powers and a willingness to interfere with matters of the living), a form of magic which employs hypnotism as one of its tools, but with an extra magical backing. Can't remember whether or not there was an actual magical component to the villain from Illusions of Grandeur. There was that magic box, but they never explained whether or not that was a trick. <shrug>

Paul

Correction: "Wrong is right."

I had some fun extending that concept when I rewrote the ep.

Mere

I saw in the Justice League animated serie a episode where Superman is attacked for Dr. Fate and his suit is tore. Then he say something like "It's magic, only magic can do this." (I did't remember the exact quote)

What the story name is? I want to read!!

That was from the Superman animated series. A demon attacked Superman and its claws tore through his costume and wounded his chest. Dr Fate immediately noted that the wound had to have been made by a magical creature (presumably because, in the normal course of things, Superman is invulnerable to just about everything else).

Paul

Andreia, the story is Illusions of Candour . You probably need to read All Sewn Up first, though, to make sense of it (mercifully, it's short!)

Mere

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, according to Arthur C. Clarke.