The Man of Steel hails from Kansas, but where exactly is Smallville?

The Man of Steel hails from Kansas, but where exactly is Smallville?

The new Superman movie leaves no doubt where the Man of Steel nurtured his super morals. Clark Kent, played by Henry Cavill, wears a Royals T-shirt in one scene and watches a KU football game on TV in another. His dad, played by Kevin Costner, mentions Kansas State, and when we first meet the super schoolboy, his teacher is quizzing him on Sunflower State history. “Clark, I asked you, who first settled Kansas?” In “Man of Steel,” opening today, Superman’s boyhood home is pegged as the fictional Smallville, Kansas. It hasn’t always been so. In the 75 years of Superman appearances in comics, TV, movies and radio shows, Smallville has been all over the map: the outskirts of the fictional Metropolis (a stand-in for New York), on the Eastern Seaboard, in Iowa, Maryland, Pennsylvania, northern New Jersey … New Jersey? Don’t be Snookied, says Dan DiDio, co-publisher of DC Comics. “Smallville is always in Kansas,” DiDio says. “I always say it’s in the heart of Kansas. Wherever you find the biggest field, the biggest open ground, the best area for farming, that’s always where Smallville is, right in the center of that. That flag has been planted.” If such a place existed, what region could lay claim to be the home of the world’s most recognizable superhero? “I would put it in the middle of Kansas because it’s not near a big metropolitan area, and it’s in the wheat area, so I’d put it at a middle point, even at a northern point in Kansas,” says Jim Cavanaugh, owner of Clint’s Comics in Kansas City. “It’s always Midwestern … because his creators were originally from Cleveland, Ohio.” There’s just one hitch. “Technically, there is a Smallville,” says Neil Cole, the keeper of Supermansite.com, who lives in the suburbs of Myrtle Beach, S.C. “It’s not a town, per se. I couldn’t tell you how to get there, but it’s in Tennessee. It’s nothing more than just a spot on a map that doesn’t actually have a ZIP code. … It’s a space.” There also is a real Metropolis — Metropolis, Ill., on the Illinois-Kentucky border, which recently wrapped up its annual Superman Celebration, held every June. Coincidentally, “Man of Steel” producers chose two other Illinois cities to film — Chicago for Metropolis and Plano, with its rolling grassy plains and wide-open farm fields, for Smallville. Clark Kent’s hometown was first named in the second issue of the “Superboy” comic book in 1949. Ever since, fans have tried to place the fictional town on real maps. The first official placement in Kansas didn’t come until 1978 in “Superman: The Movie.” But where exactly? In Action Comics No. 822 from 2005, Smallville is about 55 miles west of Salina and directly in line with Junction City. Dorrance, perhaps? Though obsessive interest in fictional geography may not have been foremost in the minds of the producers of TV’s “Smallville,” speculation ramped up on sites such as KryptonSite.com after the show debuted in 2001. Fans scoured their small screens for clues, picking out highway signs and ZIP codes on mail. Fans noted that the coordinates of a dam outside Smallville are, in real life, in the northeast corner of Osage County, near a town named Richland, roughly 25 miles southwest of Lawrence. On another episode, a map clearly placed Metropolis in southwest Kansas, near Dodge City. The same map appeared to show Smallville about 200 hundred miles to the east, near Wichita. That would make Smallville … Hutchinson? Ben Eisiminger, KC McNeely and Christopher Wietrick think so. The three pals last week persuaded the Hutchinson City Council to rename the town Smallville for a day. The guys wanted a permanent name change, but city officials agreed to call the Reno County town Smallville for just one day, June 21. That day also happens to be the day of the inductions in the Kansas Hall of Fame in Topeka. This year’s honorees: James Naismith (father of basketball), Kansas (the band) — and Clark Kent (aka Superman). Attending the ceremony as Superman’s guest, Laura Siegel Larson, daughter of writer Jerry Siegel, who created the superhero with comic book artist Joe Shuster in 1938. “I believe a real Smallville could exist, and no matter what it’s called it would become known as ‘that place that produces truly exceptional individuals,’” Larson says. So consider it forever settled: Smallville belongs in Kansas. To find it, just look for the little town where flannel shirts flap on clotheslines, beat-up trucks bump along dusty back roads and little boys turn red blankets into capes.



news sours   www.kansascity.com