S:TAS reviews: Target

Middle-of-the-road Superman can often be a surprising integration of unlikely parts, i.e. over-the-top camp and sophisticated drama. Target is almost unanimously considered average at best, a redundant mystery with a silly line-up of suspects and hammy no-holds-barred finale. But I cannot deny a strange satisfaction I got from this seeming standstill waste, and that was a satisfaction almost exclusively associated with what Manny Farber calls Termite Art, network charting, expansive works of wonder disguised as garish melodrama and trite action.

After Superman rescues Lois the first time, during the awards ceremony, there is an immediate cut to their return drive, the sort of in-between sequence rarely indulged in flash-bang superhero cartoons. Naturally this immediately turns into another Lois-in-jeopardy scene, and before the first act is over Superman has come to her rescue on two separate occasions. The subsequent acts alternate between mystery solving and more tiring rescues, the latter compounding as fast as the list of suspects. Slicing it a different way, it is an alternation between campy silliness and refined character intermingling. In the realm of the silliness are Lois’s demurely obnoxious journalistic competitor that flaunts his red herring status, Lytener’s geeky murder motivation, and the endless barrage of flying elevators (“I believe this is your floor”) and out-of-control cars. In the latter category are the sense of well-founded paranoia that might plague a hunted journalist with a long line of potential malefactors, the brief, realistic exchange between Lois and Lex that aptly characterizes their tinted relationship, and of course the final payoff that transforms the running rescue gag into low-key romance.

I’m still indifferent in spite of my momentary spurts of excitement. Structurally it is still a messy sine graph of ups and downs and the cheese doesn’t always jive with my comic sensibilities. Though it is impossible for me to take the mystery seriously, I still cringe when Lytener reverts from mild-mannered lab worker to histrionic, browbeating spurned lover with an insatiable schoolboy crush. The entire third act fight is silly to me, especially Lois’s nervously standing within a ring of vertical lasers waiting for it to end, her impatience mirroring my own as Superman and his body-armored nemesis trade repetitive blows.

It appears that if the final reveal and subsequent fight is Target at its lowest, then Luthor is its saving grace, clouding our villainous perception of him in his sincere concern for Lois’s well being. Though it is Superman who comes to Lois’s rescue, fists raised and ready for battle, one must not forget that it is Luthor who slips Clark the revelatory information. In stark contrast to his appearance in Identity Crisis, in which he is played up as either a mad scientist or a source of dry comedy, Target grounds him as a real person with indelible virtues and remnants of past feelings scattered luminously throughout the darkness at his core. It is appearances like these that make the character’s series spanning arc such an intriguing phenomena, as we can trace how these virtues slowly, and almost tragically, diminish.