Smallville

Author: Alfred Gough And Miles Millar

The Superman mythos has to be the most iconic of all American stories. The idea of an alien who has come to America and is our savior can be seen as the most telling as to what America wanted in the years immediately before America entered WWII. While he's been brought to new media several times, notably the famed Christopher Reeve films of the 1970s and 80s, but it's in Smallville that you get to see how Clark Kent learned what he needed to know and feel to become Superman. Tom Welling's Clark Kent is a powerful figure, sometimes actually managing to be more impressive when he's exposing his emotional self than when he's using powers. The way the series gives us so much as to the backstory of characters we know from so many other sources is incredible. Appearances from heroes ranging from Green Arrow and Martian Manhunter to Doctor Fate and Booster Gold make it into one of the widest-ranging comic series ever. Of course, Michael Rosenbaum's Lex Luther is just about perfection for villainy! Why it's on the list: Superman's backstory has been well examined, but here it's given so much more space to breathe.