WB Sends Superman Back to School

September 20 -- American comic book icon Superman will return to the hell that is high school for a new WB network series tentatively titled Teenage Clark Kent Project.

Tollin/Robbins Prods. and the television arm of Warner Bros. have committed to 13 episodes of the show, which finds a teenage Clark Kent discovering his superhuman strength, notes The Hollywood Reporter.

Perhaps, armed with nothing more than a tube of zit zapper and a Goo Goo Dolls album, 15-year-old Kent will toil through those awkward adolescent years in Smallville, U.S.A. WB Network entertainment head Susanne Daniels said the young hero will be joined by Superman's standby characters: sweetheart reporter Lois Lane, arch-nemesis Lex Luthor, and Kent's loving, adoptive parents.

But don't expect an apple pie-and-aww-shucks kinda vibe. Daniels explains that the show will show Smallville's criminal underbelly in an effort to guide Kent to his true calling in life. "It'll be a cross between the way [Smallville] is portrayed in the [1970s] movies and Twin Peaks," Daniels said. "There's deadly crimes going on in Smallville, and that's how Clark will get his first taste of crime-solving."

In true WB fashion, Daniels said the network plans on finding a newcomer to play the Kryptonite-allergic teen.

Superman first arrived on the comic hero scene in 1938 and has been reincarnated in various forms for film and TV. The last Superman-themed TV show was Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, which ran from 1993 to 1997 and starred Dean Cain and Teri Hatcher.