Could season 1 have been a rejected Superman story?

[neatoman]

So yesterday I remembered that David Wise claimed that he based April's characterisation on Lois Lane, now I always wondered what the point of making April a newsreporter was since the first season still included Baxter Stockman so there really wasn't any reason to change her role. Then I remembered that the final scene of Shredder and Krang is lifted from the last episode of Transformers G1. Both scenes are of two bad guys who teamed, now in off earth in a spaceship (well ok, the Technodrome isn't exactly a spaceship but close enough), the two bicker and it's left ambigious who's in charge.

(5:52 for the Transformers video, 20:35 for the Turtles one)





Which got me thinking, how much was lifted from something else? The man is an infamous recycle bin after all. Starting out with the idea that April was pointlessly altered to be a copy of Lois, I started to see parallels with Superman stories. So maybe it was recycled from a Super Friends pitch or something similar.

Now this is of course speculation, I have no official Superman story to directly compare this to nor is there any proof that Wise ever worked on a DC property outside of Wonder Woman or Batman (the latter of which was several years later). On the other hand, I did notice several similarities with Superman aside from Lois Lane. Let's start with the official one and work our way down to the least obvious.

A sassy reporter in cahoots with the heroes:

Spoiler:

An alien villain in need of a robotic body:

Spoiler:

His mobile death fortress that kinda looks like it has a face:

Spoiler:

His size manipulation powers:
http://www.x-entertainment.com/articles/0804/5.jpg

http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/...20110710202627

The evil genius he has an uneasy alliance with:

Spoiler:

The fat editor:
http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/...path-prefix=de
http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/...20090725085820

A not so intimidating cameraman:
http://static4.comicvine.com/uploads...000634.136.jpg

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...Jimmyolsen.gif

A bunch of alien teenagers driving around in a weird car:

Spoiler:

Maybe that last one isn't Superman specific but they're characters he run into, so I still think it's worth mentioning. And I'm sure there were rock people in Superman too, but every superhero fights rock people at some point, so it's not really worth pointing out. The point is that there's more than enough here to make me suspect this was originally envisioned as a Superman story.

Now, when you swapped out the above mentioned factors, replace the Turtles with Superman, cut out the loose MOUSER adaptation, cut out the other bits lifted from Mirage, maybe cut out Bebop and Rocksteady or replace them with similar characters, what do you get?

Lois investigates Lex Luthor, turns out Lex made a deal with Brainiac to build him a new body, the Forever People show up to help out, Lex build the new body with enlargement powers, they attack Metropolis, Superman shows up to save the day. Keep in mind, all I really did here was replace the Turtles with Superman and cut out the bits that were actually from the TMNT comics or loosely inspired by them, the rest was just name swapping.

Makes more sense as a Superman story than it ever did as a TMNT story, doesn't it?