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He is an icon of all-American heroism - but yesterday it was revealed that Superman is set to quit the US for a West seaside resort. Weston-super-Mare, more famous for its donkeys than costumed crime-fighting, will replace the US mid-West as the place where the Man of Steel's spaceship crashes on Earth in an official comic.

Co-written by Weston-born Monty Python legend John Cleese, Superman: True Brit, is a tongue-in-cheek look at how the tights-clad hero may have developed had he grown up in the UK.

The youngster is discovered near the north Somerset town and adopted by the kindly Clark family, who dub him Colin and encourage him to hide his powers to avoid making too much of a scene.

Like Clark Kent in the original storyline, Colin goes on to become a newspaper reporter as his day job.

But, instead of the working for the Daily Planet, he ends up on the Daily Smear, a muck-raking British tabloid dedicated to savaging the superhero. [ . . . ]

The new Superman story comes from a collaboration between Mr Cleese and his co-author Kim Johnson.

DC Comics, the US publisher behind Superman and Batman, offered the Fawlty Towers star a chance to work on a superhero story, which he accepted.

Mr Johnson said that Superman was chosen because he was one of the few costumed heroes Cleese knew.

"It seemed like having Superman land in Weston-super-Mare was a good start."

Superman: True Brit is due to be published in hardback in late November

Not so long ago, Ken Kuykendall stood before a group of Mormon teens in an Atlanta suburb, dressed in starched white shirt and dark tie. He was there, he said, to talk about serious things.

Then Kuykendall literally ripped off his shirt to reveal a "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" T-shirt and carefully laid out the moral values of the popular television show, featuring a sassy blonde in a micro-mini skirt who goes one-on-one with the world's nastiest demons.

The Mormon leader told his gum-chewing audience that Buffy was not too unlike them. For the most part, she was a spoiled, rich teenager in southern California who loved nothing more than shopping and shmoozing and clubbing in a place called Sunnydale. That is, until she discovered that dark forces were everywhere and only she had the supernatural powers to thwart them.

"The safety of the world routinely rests on her attractive, usually bare shoulders," Kuykendall told his startled audience. Time and again she had to sacrifice her own desires to save humanity and the planet.

And that is what Jesus Christ wants us to do, too, Kuykendall told the teens.

[ . . . ]

Still, the show depicts a world where evil never goes unpunished and doing good is its own reward.

"It's a medieval morality play -- only with skimpier clothes, wittier dialogue and cutting-edge music," says [religion scholar Jana] Riess, author of the just published What Would Buffy Do? The Vampire Slayer as Spiritual Guide.

[ . . . ]

The characters explore notions about sin and forgiveness, friendship and failure, redemption and self-worth -- lightened up by puns and sarcasm and playfulness. And that's spiritual, too.

"I know every slayer comes with an expiration date, but I want mine to be a long time from now. Like a Cheeto," Buffy says in one episode.

Riess argues that the show, created by an avowed atheist, also abounds in Buddhist parallels.

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During S5, Cordelia is either unconscious or dead. So she doesn't enter the office pool.

Way back in BtVS3, these are the schools she got into: USC, Colorado State, Duke, and Columbia.

Cordy, all incarnations of her, would have taken Duke. And would be fully convinced of how wonderful Duke and Coach K are.

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