Look! Up there in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's ... Whatever it is, it's not WB's new Superman.

        The young Clark Kent seen in Smallville, premiering Tuesday (9 p.m., Channel 64), is an alienated teen-ager confused by his unusual strength and speed. But he can't fly.

        Think of it as Clark Kent 90210. This inventive retelling of the Superman mythology focuses on the formative teen-age years in a tiny Kansas town, long before he adopted his alter ego.

        We all know how the story ends. It's fun to see how the legend could have started.

        Young Clark, played by 24-year-old Tom Welling, is faster than a speeding bullet.

        But there are no flights, no tights.

        No specs, no pecs.

        “What the show is about is him finding out who he is and what he is here for,” says Mr. Welling, who we saw romancing Amy Brenneman on six episodes of CBS' Judging Amy last year.

        “He's got these abilities that he doesn't necessarily understand, and it alienates him in a lot of ways from just wanting to be a normal high school kid,” he says.

        In the WB version, Clark is found as a toddler by Jonathan and Martha Kent (John Schneider, Annette O'Toole) after a 1989 meteor shower. They don't tell him about his origins until he's in high school.

        Like Clark, his parents have no clue that someday he will put a red “S” on his chest and be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. All they know is that he has extraordinary, inhuman strength. To keep that secret in their small town, they won't let him play football or other sports.

        “We're not dealing with Superman as a teen-ager,” says Mr. Schneider (The Dukes of Hazzard, 1979-85). “We are really in effect dealing with a special needs child.”

        In a way, Smallville is more The Waltons than Superboy. The drama centers on the Kent family life, showing that “Superman is who he is because of his parents,” executive producer Alfred Gough says.

        On another level, the special effects in the opening 10 minutes are on par with any Hollywood blockbuster. I can't imagine them having millions to burn on special effects each week.

        “We feel confident that we can maintain the quality of action and special effects in the series,” says Miles Millar, another executive producer.

        “In the post-Matrix world, where you can see Clark move faster than a speeding bullet, we definitely want ... to be able to give those a signature look,” says Mr. Gough, whose credits include Jackie Chan's Shanghai Noon and Lethal Weapon 4.

        The meteor shower concept for sending infant Clark to Earth had to be approved by D.C. Comics, which owns the Superman characters.

        “The great thing about Superman is that it's always been sort of reinterpreted for every generation throughout the decades,” Mr. Gough says.

        The great thing about Smallville (and UPN's new Enterprise) is how the show has fun with conventions. Clumsy Clark is hazed by the football players, strung up in a cornfield as a human scarecrow. They paint a red “S” on his chest.

        In this show, future foe Lex Luthor (Michael Rosenbaum from Zoe, Duncan, Jack & Jane) is a loner who becomes Clark's best friend.

        “I think the only way you become mortal-mortal enemies is if you were the best of friends, and then felt that betrayal,” Mr. Gough says.

        In future episodes, young Clark will travel to Metropolis and meet a rookie reporter from the Daily Planet. Not Jimmy Olson, but a young Perry White.

        As a teen, Clark will develop X-ray vision. Imagine being able to see into the girls' locker room and you can't tell your buddies?

        “There will be some other things (powers) that come and go that he doesn't always have control over,” Mr. Welling says.
        Smallville also works because of the exhaustive casting process that resulted in hiring Mr. Welling and Mr. Rosenbaum.

        For Luthor, Smallville producers looked at 700 men over five months. They wanted someone like a young Michael Keaton who had humor, charisma and a sense of danger.

        “Trying to find young Clark Kent was like trying to find Anakin Skywalker,” says Mr. Gough, referring to the main character in Star Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace.

        Mr. Welling says he didn't watch the old George Reeves or Dean Cain TV series, or the Christopher Reeve movies, before shooting the series. He wanted to “take it from a fresh standpoint” since “it's really looking at these characters ... at an age where you've never seen them before,” he says.

        “We've all been to high school. I think why the show is going to work so well is because it's touching on issues and topics we've all kind of been through,” he says.

        “It's all about being understood, finding out who you are.”

        The biggest negative about WB's Smallville is the 9-10 p.m. Tuesday time slot against Frasier, Scrubs, Spin City and Roswell.

        But check out Smallville. It's super, man.

        E-mail jkiesewetter@enquirer.com. Past columns at Enquirer.com/columns/kiese

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