We’ve recently been through an era where there could concurrently be a Superman in multiple mediums at the same time; a world where there can be four different incarnations of Bruce Wayne at a time. Aside from Superman Returns coming out while Smallville was still on the air, that didn’t happen as much back in that time, which provided some limitations on what could or could not be done. Heck, before Smallville was in development for The WB, there was a Bruce Wayne TV series project in the works!

Speaking in a panel at the recent TerrifiCon convention, Tom Welling talked a bit about two things he would have liked to have seen on Smallville — and one of those things is Bruce Wayne.

“I always thought that we should have had Bruce Wayne pass through somehow,” Tom said during his panel Q&A. “That would have been really cool to see. Like, you know how Clark  always got into the Luthor Mansion with no problem? [What if] he had gone into Lex’s office, and it was just as simple as Lex being like ‘good to meet you, Bruce,’ or ‘I’ll talk to you later, Bruce,’ and have him just walk out,” he added, making the someday-Superman and Batman just pass each other.

“I think that would have been cool, but one of the challenges we had is DC movies and DC television don’t talk to each other,” he continued, adding that even using the John Williams Superman score could be a challenge.

How close did Smallville actually get to landing Bruce Wayne? See what show creators Alfred Gough and Miles Millar had to say!

There’s another iconic moment in Superman lore that Tom would have liked to have done: “I think one of the most iconic scenes that I remember from Superman II [was] when he loses his powers and he’s in the diner, and he gets beat up, and then he goes back and got the guy. Hindsight is 20/20, but we could have ripped that scene off pretty easily, and that would have been fun,” he said.

In a twist of irony, Superman & Lois did a variation of that scene on their show, which stars Tyler Hoechlin as Clark Kent… but what ties it back to Smallville is that the person he confronted in the diner was played by Adrian McMorran — “Jeremy Creek” himself from the very first episode of Smallville! As Jeph Loeb famously would say, “It’s all connected!”

See Tom and more Smallville stars at Creation’s “Salute to Smallville” in October!

Tom Welling was recently featured in his own panel at the Terrificon in Connecticut, and in addition to his talk about the potential Smallville animated series, he spoke about returning to the role of Clark Kent for the “Crisis on Infinite Earths” crossover event in 2019. In his answer, he revealed a few things… for example, the notion that he had been asked to appear before this big event.

“They had asked me to be on a couple of the other shows after Smallville, and I just never felt like the tone would [fit]. Clark doesn’t like travel like that, Like, if I showed up on Supergirl, it would just be ridiculous in my mind,” he admitted. “But when I got a message [about “Crisis”], they were like, ‘listen, we know you’re gonna say no, but just please read this scene. Just read it. You can say no, but please read it.’ So I read it, and I was like, ‘man, this is good’,” he recalled.

“I thought it was cool. I knew that the fans would think it was cool. It was one scene… you’ve got Lex in there, who’s not Lex… and I was just like, t’his is a good idea!’ And so it was. It was a lot of fun to do,” he confirmed.

“We shot at the Kent farm with the the crew that was shooting [Batwoman], and they had never shot there before,” Tom said, adding that he had to “bite his tongue” and try not to offer tips about what it’s like to shoot there and what techniques or shots would be best.

Welling described the “Crisis” experience as “fun,” especially having Erica Durance being there with him, but he did reveal a personal feeling about where this fits in the Smallville canon — or at least, noted that he was unsure. “I don’t know if that’s actually the Clark from Smallville, because it’s a multiverse, so you never know,” he said, adding that he also didn’t know how Clark lost his powers. “No one ever told me,” he added.

See Tom and several other actors from Smallville at Creation’s “Salute to Smallville” convention happening in October in New Jersey!

It seems that every few months we hear news about the potential Smallville animated project that Tom Welling and Michael Rosenbaum have been discussing. On August 18, Tom Welling attended the Terrificon convention in Connecticut, and while there he was asked about any potential creative endeavors involving the show, and of course, Smallville came up.

“We’ve been talking about it for a few years,” Tom said, adding that Michael Rosenbaum, Kristin Kreuk, Erica Durance, Laura Vandervoort, and John Glover have been part of the discussions. “We want to do a Smallville comic book and animated series, and then we would all voice the characters. We’ve already got an artist, and we have a poster. We haven’t been able to share it yet, but Lionel Luthor is looming over everybody, and it’s really cool, but we just we we can’t do anything without DC saying we can do it. They just haven’t given us a green light, but we’re ready, and Al [Gough] and Miles [Millar], who wrote Smallville, want to write it., but it’s not our property, until they say we can do it.”

“It would be more of a labor of love,” Tom admitted. “It’s not going to make a billion dollars, so the studio is kind of like [grumbles].  Maybe we can do a — not a GoFundMe, because that’s financial — but like a petition. We can petition Warner Bros. to let us do it,” Tom said.

So, no news yet… though the mention of a comic book is a component that we haven’t heard before. It is also curious to see if Gough and Millar could even contractually be involved due to their recently-signed deal with Sony Pictures. Stay tuned — perhaps we’ll get more news soon!

See Tom and other Smallville cast members in October at the first “Salute To Smallville” convention! Details can be found here.