Last time I did a Superman Thoughts post, I foreshadowed this one. To reiterate, I like that Clark is just drawn to using his powers to have socially-beneficial adventures from a young age. It is, as far as I’m concerned, perfectly in character for him to want to use his powers to help people. I just don’t like him going by the name “Superboy” while he does it. This is the post where I expand on that.

For the most part, it’s like this: the name “Superman” is a specific reference. If we assume a world where superhumans didn’t exist and then someone with those Kryptonian powers showed up, yes, it would make sense to name him after the concept of the Ubermensch, since we’d think of him as being above normal humanity. So yeah, naming him Superman makes sense. The name Superboy, however, only works as a reference to the name Superman. As a title, it relies on the audience knowing that this guy is going to grow up to be Superman, but the people in the stories don’t know that* so why would they call him that?

One way it could work is if someone sees young Clark doing his super-feats and does indeed compare him to the concept of the Superman, and then somebody says “Well, he’s awfully young. He’s more of a Superboy.” and then that name sticks. Sure, that’s work. But I also prefer when Lois Lane is the one who gives Superman the name. It definitely feels better if the moniker doesn’t come from Clark himself, and giving Lois the honour does her character a good turn. And since I prefer that Lois and Clark not meet until they’re adults, my preference can only be for a Superboy who was not called Superboy except perhaps retroactively.

I’ve said before that I state my Superman preferences as fact here on this site when I’d likely be more diplomatic when actually discussing with other people and their preferences, but the thing is I’m not even sure how controversial this preference would even be. Certainly there’s plenty of people who just prefer that Clark was never Superboy because they think it’s goofy or whatever. I’ve never had a problem with goofiness in my Superman. There’s plenty of popular takes on the character who were never Superboy: The original Golden Age stuff, the Post-Crisis stuff, all the movies and most of the shows (the obvious exception being the Superboy show). Heck, Smallville remains a dominant part of the Superman fan landscape and it had Clark having teen adventures without a superhero identity. For all I know, this might be one of the rare times when my preference places me in the majority. It’s weird to be on this side, but my reasoning is sound.

*An exception to this, of course, would be those who DO know that Clark will grow up to be Superman. A classic example here would be the Legion of Super-Heroes, a team from the future who travel back in time to have adventures with Clark. Well, I don’t want them around anyway (I’ll do a post about it sometime), so I feel fine just not caring about them with regards to this discussion.

As you know, this has been a year of me getting caught up on going to the dentist after several decades out of the game. With each visit I made, I was impressed by the advances in technology that had been made since my childhood, but all the while I felt like something was missing.

Where were the Gleam Team?

I strongly remembered a team of anthropomorphic dental superheroes that existed on stickers and posters and stuff, but searching the Internet I could find nothing about them. Not even people thinking back about them and asking whatever happened to them.

Well, they existed, and today I did a deep dive into the files (aka pile of papers and binders) that I have kept since my childhood and I found the proof!

A sticker showing the team charging out of… a pocket I guess? Like, is it a dental hygienist’s pocket? I guess so. If you’d asked me to describe the team, they would have basically been thus, though in my mind I think they had donned capes, making them more like traditional superheroes. We’ve got a big molar guy, a floss guy, a toothbrush girl, and a toothpaste guy. Probably they had names, though I don’t remember them. Let’s ignore how most of them are tools and one is an actual tooth and just respect them for trying.

Maybe this will end up like my post on Strand-Man, where my site is seemingly the only information on the topic and it gets more hits than anything else on here. Or maybe nobody but me ever had any memory of these guys to begin with. Either way, I’m doing my part. Certainly the fact they were apparently produced by the Nova Scotia Department of Health and Fitness suggests a more limited reach than a product that was probably sold across the country and maybe beyond.

I’ve said before that I’d like more interestingly-designed aliens in Star Trek and I’m about to do it again.

Early in my days as an uncle I bought many books for the kids. I want them to enjoy books. That included some sort of Alphabet of Star Trek book. It wasn’t a great book. The art is wonderful! Colourful and fun. But the text is boring. They don’t even make the effort to rhyme or anything. It’s certainly not a great introduction to the franchise for children.

But remember, an important thing about me is that I like aliens. That’s a big thing for me. So when I got to the page for letter S, which is about Starfleet Academy, and found this gang of student waiting for me, I was pleased.

Sure, I’ll admit that they aren’t EXTREMELY alien aliens. They basically fall in line with Trek’s preference for humanoids with little difference, but the differences are significantly bigger on these ones than they are on Vulcans or Betazoids or whatever. More eyes. Fewer eyes. Fancy skin tones. Gills. It’s not much, but it’s something (after all, we are meant to understand that these are aliens who can exist easily on Earth and could serve on Federation ships alongside their more well-known species). These ones look like something I’d find in a Space Quest game, which is a compliment for sure (and it would be nice if the franchise had aliens as cool as its parodies).

So obviously, we need to make these aliens canonical to the Star Trek universe. Certainly it’d be harder in live action than on a cartoon, so do it in a cartoon. And you could even staple it to the existing lore to help a sense of verisimilitude. On Deep Space Nine we got a mention of a Doctor Trag’Tok, who had three eyes, but we never saw him. He could easily be the same species as the blue cadet there.

Also, I’d want the two one-eyed cadets to be two examples the same species. There are big differences between them, sure, but not so big as we can find between humans. Let the aliens have some diversity for once.

Now, you might say “PDR, you only want to see these aliens used again because they were in a book you gave to your niblings.” and I would say “Yes, that’s correct. But also, all that stuff about how I want Trek to have better aliens on top of that.”