A Hero in the Making

Where is Superman when we really need him? Beating up on terrorists and flying toward Osama bin Laden faster than a speeding missile?

Hardly. Instead he’s attending high school in a Kansas hamlet as Superboy Clark Kent, putting on a klutz act while yearning deeply “to be normal.” Fat chance.

The series is the WB’s “Smallville,” yet another of fall’s superior new dramas. Devoid of caricatures, this one is by far the best-ever TV depiction of the big fellow, framing him nicely as part of a coming-of-age story and treatise on little town America, before he moves to Metropolis and becomes Christopher Reeve.

Years in the future are Lois Lane and the Daily Planet. Our earnest young Kryptonian (Tom Welling) is still a Man of Steel in progress here, just now learning of his origins and the full extent of his powers while residing on a farm with his upstanding adoptive parents, finding a mysterious buddy in skinhead Lex Luthor (Michael Rosenbaum) and mooning dreamily over luscious cheerleader Lana Lang (Kristin Kreuk).

Meanwhile, certain Smallvillians are being stalked by a young man with a grudge and a zest for electrocuting his targets, and a little green crystal keeps surfacing and having an effect on Clark. Could it be ... kryptonite?

“Smallville” opens with a wee space traveler arriving in a cornfield during a savage meteor shower, then zooms forward a dozen years to when Clark is a sweet, sensitive, obedient teenager hiding his great physical prowess from his classmates. It’s hard imagining anyone buying big, strapping, handsome Clark as the nerdy, clumsy “total freak show” he pretends to be, but this is pretty standard.

What isn’t is the smartness of these characters, who are not only likable and beautiful but intriguingly layered, to the extent that even Lana’s football star boyfriend has dimension, worrying about someday becoming a forgotten hero.

Meanwhile, Clark believes he’s responsible for a series of calamities that beset Smallville after his arrival, Lana has cemetery chats with her dead parents, and poor little rich boy Lex has all the makings of a complex villain whose glints of humanity belie a twisted agenda (yet to be revealed) and deep emotional scars. It’s no wonder that when “Smallville” ends, you want more.

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“Smallville” premieres tonight at 9 on the WB. The network has rated it TV-PG-V (may be unsuitable for young children with a special advisory for violence).