Smallville is an American superhero television series developed by writer-producers Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, based on the DC Comics character Superman created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.

The first four seasons focus on the high school life of Clark and his friends, his complicated romance with neighbor girl Lana Lang (Kristin Kreuk), and his friendship with future nemesis Lex Luthor (Michael Rosenbaum).

From season five onwards, Smallville ventures into Clark's early adult years, eventually focusing on his career alongside Lois Lane (Erica Durance) at the Daily Planet and introducing other DC comic book superheroes and villains.

Series developers Gough and Millar pitched their "no tights, no flights" rule to the president of Warner Bros. Television, reducing the Man of Steel to the bare moral essentials and examining what led Clark Kent to become the iconic superhero.

[3] Smallville's first season primarily dealt with Clark Kent's coming to terms with his alien origin and the revelation that his arrival on Earth was connected to the death of Lana Lang's parents.

The final season revolves around Clark's attempts to lose his doubts and fears and become the hero he is meant to be, while confronting his biggest challenges: the coming of Darkseid and the return of Lex Luthor.

The primary source of his life on Earth and the super-powered beings Clark must fight, it would take away the parents of the girl he loves and start Lex Luthor down a dark path.

[3] Chloe Sullivan (another character created for the series) was considered the "outsider" the show needed to ensure that someone would notice the strange happenings in Smallville[4] rather than a "precursor to Lois Lane".

Although Snow said it initially seemed odd to combine two types of music on a "typical action-adventure" television show, "the producers seem to like the contrast of the modern songs and the traditional, orchestral approach to the score".

John Williams's musical score for the Krypton sequence in the opening credits of Superman was used in season two's "Rosetta" (which featured a guest appearance by Christopher Reeve) and several times in the season-two finale.

[85] That season, Al Gough wanted to use Johnny Cash's cover of the Nine Inch Nails song "Hurt" for the final scene of "Shattered" (when Lionel Luthor looks at Lex through a one-way mirror at Belle Reve sanitarium) as soon as he read the episode's script.

[103] Levin, acknowledging early concerns that Smallville had become a villain of the week series, said that season two would introduce "smaller mini-arcs over three to four episodes" and become less of a "serialized show".

[105] Christopher Reeve, star of the Superman films, expressed his approval of the show:I was a little bit skeptical when I heard about [Smallville] at first, but I must say the writing, the acting, and the special effects are quite remarkable.

[107] TV Guide's Michael Schneider called it one of the best examples of a superhero adaptation for television,[108] but Christopher Hooton of Metro wrote that Smallville was a story which did not need to be told: "No-one bothered to follow Bruce Wayne's tedious years spent manufacturing microchips before he became Batman, so why must we endure a decade of flannel shirt-wearing Clark Kent bucking hay?

[161] The second novel (See No Evil, by series writers Cherie Bennett and Jeff Gottesfeld) follows Dawn Mills, a young actress who wants to attend Juilliard.

[168] Aspect published Dean Wesley Smith's Whodunit, in which Clark, Chloe, Lana and Pete investigate the murder of a boy and his sister while Lex tries to decide whether to ransom his kidnapped father or try rescuing Lionel himself.

[174] Little, Brown Young Readers published its eighth book, Greed, by Bennett and Gottesfeld in which Clark and his friends take summer jobs as counselors at a camp for disadvantaged youths.

[176] On February 1, 2004 Little, Brown Young Readers published Suzan Colon's Temptation, where Clark uses red kryptonite in an attempt to impress Lana and Chloe when they are infatuated with a French exchange student.

[179] Smallville's first venture into comics was "Elemental", a one-off story by Gough and Millar which appeared in TV Guide during the series' first season and set in that period.

Michael Green and John Paul Leon wrote "Exile and The Kingdom", with insight into why Lex remains in Smallville after his father offers him a position in Metropolis at the end of season one.

[185] In the comic book (written by Smallville executive story editor Bryan Q. Miller), set six months after Darkseid's attack, Clark no longer fights crime as "The Blur" but as "Superman".

Although Clark is generally accepted by the public, some distrust him (including Lex Luthor, despite his memory loss after his encounter with Tess Mercer),[186] and this worsens when he reveals himself as extraterrestrial.

In this series Chloe joins a costumed vigilante, whom she calls the "Angel of Vengeance", to expose Lex Luthor's Level 33.1 experiments on meteor-infected people.

[195] According to Lisa Gregorian, senior vice president for television of Warner Bros. Marketing Services, their goal was to create companion programming that offers new and exciting ways to engage the audience, just as music videos did for record promotion.

The CW began its tie-in campaign with the March 13, 2008 episode "Hero", where Pete develops superhuman elasticity after chewing kryptonite-infused Stride gum.

[211] Tom Welling and Erica Durance reprised their roles as Clark Kent and Lois Lane for the Arrowverse crossover event "Crisis on Infinite Earths".

[212][213] The crossover retroactively establishes the events of Smallville as taking place on Earth-167 and reveals that in the years since the finale, Clark has given up his powers and taken over the Kent farm, where he and Lois raise their two daughters.

[215] Alan Ritchson, who played Arthur Curry / Aquaman on the series, was also approached to reprise his role in the crossover but turned it down due to scheduling commitments with Titans.

[219] John Glover, Sam Jones III, Kristin Kreuk and Erica Durance, and original series showrunners, Gough and Millar, were said to return,[220] with the exception of Allison Mack due to sex trafficking charges made against her for which she was convicted and imprisoned.

[292] Ultimate Smallville Soundtrack, a five-CD box set with 100 songs from the series' 10 seasons, was released by Vicious Records in May 2013 with all profits benefiting the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation.