​I started watching season 1 of The Adventures of Superman. It’s kind of my Rite of Fall, along with getting my train layout organized for the new season.

Episode one of Superman opens with Jorel meeting with the high council to warn them of Krypton’s impending doom. I guess you can say he was a climatologist. Jorel warned that Krypton was going to explode like a giant bubble.

Of course, the high council, Kryptonian Congress, laughed and jeered, and in Jorel’s own words, “…marked me for a fool.”

Of course, we knew what Jorel knew, and a bit more as the episode progresses.

When Jorel gets home, he gets busy in his laboratory and is greeted by his wife. She complains that it has been oppressively hot and asks,

“Is that because Krypton is getting closer to the sun?”

Ok, so now we know that Kalel gets his brains from Jorel.

Then, Krypton shakes rattles and rolls, and Jorel laments that he didn’t build a bigger space ship so that they could all go to Earth.

Rather than try to get into the rocket with her baby, Lara says that she’d rather stay and die with Jorel in lieu of living on Earth with Kalel. Again, she reinforces the notion that Kalel gets his smarts from Jorel.

The rocket lifts off, and in a matter of a minute or so, it crashes into Smallville, where Ma an Pa Kent are driving along. The rocket is on fire, and Pa Kent rescues the crying baby.

After a brief discussion, they decide not to tell anyone what they witnessed and decided to raise Kalel as their own. Of course, they didn’t know his Kryptonian name, so they named him Clark.

Clark Kent had a better ring to it than Kalel.

We are led to believe that no formal notification of public services or application for adoption was ever made.

We can only assume that Clark had a Social Security Number as he was able to get a job at the Daily Planet. But there are several outstanding questions that need to be asked.

Did Clark Kent ever vote?

Did he have a birth certificate​?

Did he have a passport? (We think he did because in later episodes he would visit London and Paris.)

Nevertheless, for all intents and purposes, we can assume Clark Kent never enrolled as a Registered Alien; never got a Green Card; and was, in fact, an undocumented​ immigrant.

In summary, Jorel warned about global warming on Krypton, and Kalel was an illegal immigrant.

Yet, Superman turns out to be the champion of fighting for truth, justice, and the American way.

It makes you think, doesn’t it?