"A BROWN LEATHER JACKET
OVER PANTS THAT COLOUR?
THIS MAN IS CLEARLY NOT
ONE OF US!"

THE ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN

(Released 1994)

Audio Adaptation Written & Directed by Dirk Maggs

During the 250th Anniversary celebrations of Metropolis, an experimental passenger aircraft, the Constitution, collides with a light plane, the passenger of which has fallen unconscious. It is helped to land by a mysterious flying man wearing a brown leather jacket and corduroy trousers! Intrepid Daily Planet reporter Lois Lane is aboard, but the man leaves before she can properly speak to him. Unscrupulous businessman Lex Luthor of Lexcorp supplied many of the components used by the supersonic plane, and uses his influence to remove the video of the "flying man". Martha and Jonathan Kent, the 'flying man' Clark Kent's guardians, make him a costume that will make him incognito while helping people. He starts work as a reporter at the Daily Planet newsroom, and the hero (dubbed the 'Superman' by the media) is increasingly sighted
across the city fighting crime.

Lex Luthor is determined to trap and make the new superhero his
own. He has Dr Teng develop a tough battle armour. Meanwhile,
Lois Lane stages an accident, driving her car into the river to be rescued by Superman, simply to get an interview. Luthor's new
yacht, the Sea Queen, is the setting for a gala evening that comes under fire from South American terrorists. Lois and Clark are representatives from the press. Superman saves the day only to learn that Luthor knew it was going to happen and stepped-down security to see what would transpire. The mayor grants Superman deputy powers to arrest Luthor, and the boat is flown back to
Metropolis.

As Lex Luthor is bailed and plots his revenge against Superman, Jonathan Kent takes Clark to the snow-buried capsule he had arrived in as a baby, but it is no longer there. Clark has no time to ponder this as he hears multiple screams of distress coming from
Metropolis. Dr Teng's battle armour, financed by Lex Corp, is rampaging through part of the city. Lois and Daily Planet
photographer Jimmy Olsen are cornered as Superman arrives.
However, Superman soon discovers he is the intended target. A fight ensues, culminating in Superman burning-out the battle armour's circuitry with his heat vision. He personally delivers the wreckage to Lex Luthor's office in Hong Kong, but the businessman has covered his tracks well. There is a war of words and Luthor threatens to best the costumed hero.

Luthor's plans are foiled once more after he tries to end the president's term by demonstrating a missile guidance system to the press which goes wrong. Again, Superman is obliged to intervene. The extraterrestrial capsule, which had gone missing from near the Kent farm, is in the hands of a man called Schwarz, who is studying intensely the data found within. Dr Teng has obtained cell structure samples from Superman, taken by the battle armour, and using the information has discovered that the flying man is not native to Earth. He has also produced a clone, but the process
partly rejects the alien cell structure which crystalises and affects the brain, creating a Bizarro Superman. Superman finds it in a dark corner of the Daily Planet lobby, wearing a suit and glasses over a makeshift representation of the Superman uniform. Fearing his secret identity is about to be blown, the real Superman drags Bizarro out on to the street where it retaliates with heat vision, and a fight is on.

As Clark Kent endures countless dreams about his origins, Schwarz uncovers crystals from Superman's (Kal-El's) home planet in the power source he has stolen from the capsule. The infant had been heavily shielded from them which tells him they will be a useful weapon against the alien. He creates an android called Metallo and dispatches it to infiltrate the reactor plant at Two Mile Island to attract Superman. When the hero arrives Metallo opens a mechanical section of its torso to reveal a heart of Kryptonite
(the crystals from the capsule).

The severely weakened Superman appears defeated
when Lex Luthor arrives and rips the Kryptonite heart from Metallo's chest cavity.
Superman makes his escape but revisits Luthor in rage after the Kents are drugged and
Clark's Smallville sweetheart, Lana Lang, is 'roughed-up' in an attempt to reveal Clark's
connection with Superman. Luthor reveals a ring he has had fashioned from the
crystal. Once again Superman is weakened, but Luthor is forced to let him go when
the reactor at Two Mile Island goes critical. Superman rushes there, rips out the entire
reactor and flies it to a height where the explosion will do no damage. As Lois berates
Clark for going missing in all the excitement, Luthor's assistant, Amanda, explains that their computer has correlated countless data and come to the conclusion that
Superman is Clark Kent. However, Luthor refuses to believe someone with such
power would hide behind the identity of a hack reporter.


In 1988 Dirk Maggs moved from being a Studio Manager to a Producer in the BBC's
Light Entertainment department. One of the first things he worked on was Superman On Trial. It was pitched by him as a documentary to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the

enduring comic character, but he soon realised it would work much better as a dramatisation - a docudrama, as Dirk himself put it. It was well received by Radio 4 and kicked-off several successful comicbook adaptations. Superman was a subject
Dirk knew plenty about, so it was no surprise when he returned to it with The Adventures Of Superman. The recording story of this one spans the years 1990 to 1994. Although the Superman character and situations were initially created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, Dirk adapted updated versions of the original comic tales written by John Byrne, Dave Gibbons and Jerry Ordway. Successful adaptations of Superman On Trial and Batman - The Lazarus Syndrome paved the way for an improved relationship with the powers at DC Comics, but by Dirk's own admission obtaining the required rights is never straightforward.

To put things in perspective, a script for two hours thirty minutes of material can take three to four weeks to write. It is then necessary to send the script to DC Comics for approval, and then make changes to incorporate the received comments. It is
obligatory to show the DC quality controllers the initial script, because they are often concerned about the possibility of 'rules' being broken. Then Dirk, as Producer, has to ensure the finished product is fit for broadcast in terms of language and violence censorship.

"I read Superman as a kid. Avidly. My parents were in residential child care, so I
was raised with the kids in care. The downside was that I had to learn to defend
myself at an early age; the upside was that they had all sorts of exotic relatives or
absentee parents overseas buying comics I'd never even think existed, and so I fell in love with DC and Marvel characters in the early 1960s. I still remember the thrill of getting a DC '60-page special' or discovering Spidey and how funny and inventive Stan Lee and Steve Ditko were. Stan Lee's use of ornate language and Marvel's lauable crediting of artists, colourers and inkers were eye openers to me. DC was more enigmatic; they had all these amazing characters seemingly drawn by invisible hands. Only later did I discover the geniuses slaving away there!

and transfers of ownership from DC to Warner to Time Warner to AOL...

"Superman is tough to write for - he is genuinely a decent person who wants to build things up, not knock them down. It's very easy to write colourless stories about people who attempt to do good, because philanthropism - even on this scale - means going the long way round, doing t hings the slow way, generally avoiding mayhem. So to write a Superman story that has grit, you need to explore the conflict between his Kryptonian soul and his human upbringing. And pitch him up against some genuinely dirty fighters too. I have to say I feel about the Smallville TV series the way I felt about Lois & Clark; nice ideas but you can't do Superman on a TV budget. Superman is NOT a soap opera character, he's too special for that. Leave it to the people in the biggest and most visual medium of all - radio!"

The Adventures Of Superman was originally split into two serials, the first culminating in the character's first major confrontation with Lex Luthor and their exchange of threats. Reheasals took place at the BBC's Maida Vale studios, and Series One debuted on BBC Radio 4 on 18th September 1990, with Series Two following on in 1991. Each series aired as five fifteen-minute episodes. The Mail On Sunday said, "Sheer quickfire genius in the most sensationally produced comic strip..." and "technically brilliant." The Independent called the production "Gripping... a dense blend of dialogue, sound effects and music." In 1992, the same year that Dirk's production of the classic Marx Brothers radio show Flywheel, Shyster & Flywheel won the Gold Medal at the New York International Festival, the second series of The Adventures of Superman became a finalist in the Best Use Of Sound category. Both series were repeated on BBC Radio 5 in 1993, where they aired, together for the first time, on Saturdays as five 28-minute episodes between 3rd and 31st July.

When Dirk pioneered what he later termed the 'audio movie' process by introducing multi-levelled effects at the BBC, and mixing the productions in Digital Dolby Surround, thereby revolutionising radio dramatisations over night, he went back and
remixed the adaptations he had produced thus far. Although Superman - Doomsday And Beyond was the first to be tackled, The Adventures Of Superman was included in this batch. The revitalised production was released in its two hour thirty minute entirety on a double cassette by the BBC Radio Collection (ZBBC 1633) on 5th September 1994 to tie-in with its new broadcast on the BBC Radio 1 Claire Sturgess Programme 3:45pm Monday to Friday, with an omnibus on Saturdays at 1:00pm. Again there is a solid orchestral score from Mark Russell.

The assembled cast of voice artists proves strong once again. Among the throng is established actor William Hootkins as Lex Luthor, with Stuart Milligan returning to the red, blue and yellow, and talented regular Lorelei King playing Lois Lane. Others include Burt Kwouk as Dr Teng and Jon Pertwee as Schwarz.

Although these are generally lightweight tales told from the character's origin, the whole is curiously devoid of humour. Even Batman - Knightfall, which is intentionally dark and gloomy, contains more, emanating from the multitude of psychotic criminals of Arkham Asylum. It would perhaps have been a little more natural to incorporate a handful of funny or glib remarks.

The Adventures Of Superman is competently structured, fast-moving
and on the whole enjoyable. The many locations visited in the story are easily differentiated between in the mind due to Dirk's attention to atmospherics. In other words, each setting has its own ambience. The only thing that lets this production down in my humble opinion is the comic character itself. I don't think Superman has nearly enough depth; he's all-powerful unless the relevant plot and a lump of Kryptonite dictates he isn't. Whereas Batman lives off his wits and gadgets and Spider-Man has powers but suffers from all the problems of everyday life. Indeed, although Dirk himself loves the character, he admits that Superman is strangely unappealing and has some of the lowest audience figures of all the things he has done. Having said that, the feedback can't have been that bad or the BBC wouldn't have sanctioned Dirk's proposals for three separate Superman serials for radio!

As always, let's leave the final words to Dirk...