After growing more and more disgusted with the Daily Planet’ slow drift into corporatized mediocrity and sensationalism in Metropolis ace crime reporter Clark Kent (aka Superman for those of you have been dead for the past 70 years) will leave his job at The Daily Planet, and will take to the Internet and to the airwaves and start reporting the unvarnished truth.
Clark has a Jerry Maguire moment, standing up in the middle of the Planetoffices and complaining that the lofty journalistic standards of yesteryear have faded into an industry built on infotainment directed at the lowest common denominator. “This is really what happens when a 27-year-old guy is behind a desk and he has to take instruction from a larger conglomerate with concerns that aren’t really his own,” says Superman writer Scott Lobdell .
“Superman is arguably the most powerful person on the planet, but how long can he sit at his desk with someone breathing down his neck and treating him like the least important person in the world?” asks Lobdell rhetorically, and if you listen closely you can hear a chorus of unemployed 27-year-olds answering: “Wait, so he’s quitting in an era of mass unemployment because his boss doesn’t validate him often enough?” Kent will be joined in his exodus from print journalism by Cat Grant, blonde entertainment reporter and perpetual sixth place finisher in the neverending contest to win Clark Kent’s affections (after Lois Lane, Lana Lang, Wonder Woman, Lori Lemaris, and Lyla Lerrol.)
Part of Kent’s speech involves an emotional exhortation to his Planet colleagues to stand up for Truth, Justice, and “and yeah — I’m not ashamed to say it — the American way.” Lobdell explains that Kent won’t seek employment at another media conglomerate; instead, “He is more likely to start the next Huffington Post or the next Drudge Report,” which I guess means he’s going to found a website called something like “The Kent Review” — built on aggregation, exactly as H.L. Mencken would have wanted.
Clark Kent not working at the Daily Planet?! Craziness!
But whats even crazier is referencing Clark starting something like The Drudge Report. We all know what a bastion of “Truth, Justice, and the American Way” that is.
Does this mean that Clark Kent is a closet-case like Matt Drudge?