Superman has received a lot of grief over the decades for his Clark Kent disguise. Most fans think it’s ridiculous that someone can just pop on a pair of glasses, comb their hair differently, and make everyone think they’re a different person. A few actors, notably Christopher Reeve, actually manage to make the disguise work thanks to their remarkable acting ability. Most, however, wonder how anyone with half a brain could be fooled by such a lame gimmick.
Interestingly, while Clark Kent’s glasses were meant to hide his identity as Superman in the original Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster Superman stories, one Superman origin story offered a very different take. Believe it or not, in one storyline Clark originally donned his glasses to protect other people from himself.
In the miniseries Superman: Secret Origin, Geoff Johns, Gary Frank, and Jon Sibal offered a new take on Clark Kent’s early years after DC Comics rebooted their universe again. Taking elements from Superman’s Silver Age history and combining it with a modern take, the comics established that when he was a young boy, Clark didn’t wear glasses and liked to play rough with other kids. However, his super strength and invulnerability caused him to unintentionally hurt others, including his best friend Pete who broke his arm while they were playing football.
Even worse, Clark discovered that when he got excited, his eyes shot out rays of heat. This proved problematic when his best friend and confidant Lana Lang kissed him in school, causing Clark to accidentally light a banner on fire and set off the sprinkler system. Seeking help, Clark told his parents what had happened and learned about the rocket ship that brought him to Earth. This just upset Clark even more, however, and he blasted the crystals in the ship with his heat vision.
Realizing that the alien crystals were somehow impervious to Clark’s heat vision, Martha Kent came up with an innovative idea. Taking a couple crystals that Clark broke off, she fashioned them into lenses for a pair of glasses and had Clark wear them until he could control his heat vision. Clark initially hated the glasses, especially since the lenses were too big, giving him a nerdy appearance. This saddled him with a reputation as a nerd and a weirdo among school kids, especially after he stopped playing sports out of fear of hurting people.
But the glasses worked – as Clark discovered when he saved Lana from a tornado, accidentally discovering his ability to fly in the process. Lana kissed him again – and this time, Clark’s glasses kept the situation from getting too messy. Eventually, he’d learn to control his heat vision and other powers, but he became so accustomed to the glasses that he started wearing them on a regular basis anyway, which came in handy when he needed to adopt dual identities for Clark Kent and Superman.
Clark Kent’s relationship with his glasses has changed in different retellings of his origin, with some versions stating that Clark always wore glasses to hide his identity as Superboy, while others contend that Clark didn’t start wearing glasses until he was an adult, and actually participated heavily in sports as a teenager. In truth, it actually makes sense that Clark should have worn glasses as a child, since anyone who knew Clark as a teenager in Smalllville would be able to ID him as Superman from a picture (which actually does seem to be the case in the Man of Steel movies).
By giving Clark a different reason for wearing glasses, Secret Origin also helped establish an aspect of Superman’s early years that often gets overlooked – his status as a special needs child. Although he eventually embraced his powers as a gift, Clark’s initial unfamiliarity with them led to many problems that both he and his parents had to contend with, often in creative ways. Far from just a lame disguise, then, Clark actually did need to wear glasses – although not to see.