Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Lois & Clark Superman's Aura

I'm new to this so excuse me if the answer is obvious.

I see a lot of talk about Superman's aura protecting his clothes making them invulnerable, but where does that idea come from. Was it mentioned in one of the episodes that I missed?

Thanks for your help

I know Clark talks about it in "Don't Tug On Superman's Cape."

Welcome to the boards!

Thanks for the answer and thanks for the welcome.

I haven't seen the rerun of that episode yet, but do you mean that we are left wondering for over two seasons about how come bullets don't tear holes in his costume and cape? I know in the comics his costume was made out of the blanket he arrived in. Of course that makes it difficult to figure out how Martha sewed it.

While we're on the topic of episodes I haven't seen yet, does anyone know of an ftp site or something similar where I can download them from?

Thanks again

Hello! I haven't acutally d/led any episodes before because my computer doesn't have enough space in it, but my brother once told me that you can get episodes off of the Bit Torrent site .

All four seasons is about 17GB, and you need to d/l half a season at a time, I believe. There are other sites where you could get'em episode by episode, but I don't know any of those.

Hope this helps!

Mirage

Hello and welcome!!!!

I have a few on my computer. I got them from WinMX. If you do a search w/i the message boards you should come upon people taking about it.

Try:

1

2

3

4

Is WinMX safe? I'm a little concerned because I know Kazaa files almost always seem to have viruses with them. I used to work at a recording studio here in Nashville and we had to download a lot of programs off of Kazaa ... when we finally ran a virus check we came up with over 300 viruses on our computer!! Only place we figure they could've come from was Kazaa. I'd love to download some of the episodes, just as long as I can be somewhat assured that viruses are not that common with WinMX. Anyone ever had any problems with it? Thanks!

WinMX is one of the very few filesharing programmes which has NO spyware or viruses whatsoever, SuperGEM. Don't even think of touching Kazaa or eDonkey, though.

If you're ever unsure about a programme, go to Google and search for the programme name plus 'spyware'. The results will tell you whether it's safe or not.


Wendy

Thanks Wendy!

I have Kazzaa and I've never been able to find any Lois and Clark episode on while using it

Thanks for your help and advice. It's greatly appreciated. I may have to contact some of you directly for some more help... I hope you won't mind.

I'm sure this is no longer necessary, but I think Dr. Klein explicitly says that anything within a few millimeters is essentially a second skin when Clark shrinks (I can't remember the eppy name). People have run with the aura theory, making it expandable since otherwise Lois would've fully fallen off of the ceiling the Brutal Youth.

I'm fairly sure the idea of Superman's aura was invented by John Byrne in the late 80s (circa 1987) when he revamped the comic book version of Superman. This revamp is what brought Jonathan and Martha Kent into their adult son's life, by the way. Earlier, in the comics, the Kents died when Clark was a teenager. In the Christopher Reeve movies, Jonathan died when Clark was a teenager, although Martha survived. As you may know, Jonathan recently died on the Smallville show, where Clark is in his late teens. The idea that both Jonathan and Martha are alive and a part of their adult son's life was brought to the comics by John Byrne in the late 80s, and it was transferred to the LNC ABC TV show in the 90s.

John Byrne also invented Superman's aura, as I said. Actually, the aura was used to explain Superman's invulnerability. The aura was created as Clark absorbed and metabolized yellow sunlight - as opposed to the red light from Krypton's sun - and it worked like a more or less impenetrable, invisible shield extending a few millimeters all around Clark's body. The aura also explained why his supersuit never got torn. However, Superman's cape wasn't protected by his aura, so for several years in the comics in the 80s and 90s, Superman was forever flying around with a tattered cape fluttering from his shoulders. Eventually, the comic book artists got tired of the extremely untidy look that the torn cape imparted to Superman. His cape is rarely torn any more, and there is generally no talk about his aura in the comics these days. I'd say that his aura has pretty much gone out of fashion. But the idea of the aura has been, as it were, preserved and fossilized in the ABC TV show, because that show is forever set in the heyday of the idea of Superman's aura.

Well, as a long-time comic book reader, I just think it's interesting to point out that many of the things that seem fresh and different about the LNC TV show were actually lifted straight from the Superman comics of that time. The reason why the Superman comics of today seem very different from the LNC TV show is that the comics have moved on since the mid-nineties, not necessarily in a better direction.

Ann

The "second skin" comment by Superman was in "It's a Small World After All" (3rd season). It's the episode where Clark/Superman shrinks after using some shampoo made by a high school classmate of Lois.

From the script :
which implies that Clark knows about his aura.

Also, about the cape. In "Contact", when the microwave transmitter "thingy" is about to explode, Superman uses his cape to protect the others in the room, and they are not "within a tenth of a milimeter" (unless you count that if he touches them, then their whole bodies are).

malu

In The Dad Who Came in From the Cold, the samr thing occurs where he is protecting Jimmy and Jack Olsen from those bullets.

I like to go with the idea that Superman can sort of control his aura at will and extend it to include whatever he's touching (or not). Otherwise, he wouldn't be able to stop a speeding train or grab on to an aircraft without just having the metal deform under his hands. Remember the episode when he flew out into space to adjust the trajectory of a space station? He grabbed on to a tiny ledge on the side of the window and moved the entire space station by pushing on that!

Now, if the laws of physics had been in effect, that much force on that tiny ledge would have just caused it to break off. So, to satisfy my befuddled brain, I came up with this theory that he can include the object that he's touching in his aura of invulnerability, so that he would be able to move that object by applying massive force on an area the size of his hand without breaking or deforming the object.

Also, unless he could include Lois in his aura, he wouldn't have been able to air-dance with her in "Churches of Metropolis" -- she'd have crashed on the floor the moment he spun her.

At the same time, he can also choose *not* to include what he's holding in his aura, thereby enabling him to crush bullets, guns, and the like.

Just curious, has anyone ever brought this idea up before? I'm not sure if I'm rehashing something that has already been explained in series or comic canon.

you're not rehashing; just clarifying. People have alluded to the aura effect to explain a few things on the show. For example, in the first Tempus episode, Clark takes Lois' hand and floats her over a fence rather than carrying her, indicating that his aura can extend far enough to effect her if he's touching her in any way if he focuses it that way.

It's post chrisis pseudoscientific explanation on how the invulnerabilty works. The kryptonian dense molecular structure could only partly account for it. So his cells creates bioelectric field that require highyield nuclear blasts in order to fail.

It also explain the costume. Pre crisis it was of kryptonian origin so it was invulnerable in it's own right. It could also protect others that wore it. While carrying passengers in flight, Superman would wrap them in his cape to protect them from air friction.

In the post-Crisis comics, his costume is invulnerable because of the bioelectric field.