And on a side note about "Clark had been described as having the same charm and stage presence as a table lamp, but not the same likability"...
I would just like to add my observation at this point. Yes, we are shown that Clark is well liked by his colleagues, but we are never shown why (other than because probably they pities him).
He's always shown to us as vaguely unreliable and always a bit whiny ("Oh Lois, it must be something I ate, I have to run".) He has virtually no life outside of work, interests or hobbies (we know why, his colleagues don't).
They like him because he is a loyal, trustworthy, honest friend. His unreliability is attributed to his physical problems, not any moral failings, and saying he's sick and has to leave isn't exactly seen as "whiny," it's more "Oh here we go again." Admittedly, this does frustrate his friends and co-workers, but since every time he does this it's to go Save The City, I can't really hold it against him.
He was shown on occasion to have hobbies, but they were things like collecting opera records, or videotaping his favorite television commercials (that one comes from the Maggin novels, but really should have been used in the comics). They were hobbies that no one else wanted to discuss with him because they were boring, and they weren't shown on the page that often, but they were there.
The worst thing is that
his clumsiness (which we must remember is fake) constantly creates inconvenience and problems for his colleagues. And he really exaggerated with the klutz thing.
You aren't entirely wrong here, but as I said above, since he regularly goes out and saves the world, I can't hold it against him too much. And if I recall right, he would sometimes do something at the end of the story to make it up to whoever he inconvenienced.
If I saw that things like this were happening to a colleague of mine all the time (tripping over a cable that has been there for THREE YEARS!?!?) I wouldn't think "What a bumbling guy!". I would worry about him and think he has some neurological problem. Because it's NOT normal to stumble all over the place every moment.
It is for some people. I was a clumsy kid during that time period, and so were a few other kids I knew. No one ever said "You must have neurological problems." Instead, they just told us to be more careful, maybe said we should try sports to work on our coordination, and basically just accepted that's how it was.
And again from my own experience, it was also accepted that the smarter-than-average kids - and Clark would definitely be considered one - were usually clumsier than the rest of the kids, and that it while it might lessen some, it generally stayed this way through adulthood.
(And a side note: people with glasses - like Clark Kent - are often assumed to be less physically dextrous than others. This is a legitimate thing, because the reason they need glasses in the first place is because they have vision problems, which affect dexterity. And no matter how good the glasses are, they are never going to fully compensate for the vision issues which inhibited their dexterity in the first place.)
And by the way, I absolutely call BS about his justification of why he pretended to trip over the cable. What would have happened if he didn't? "Clark, you can walk normally like most people! This means that you are... SUPERMAN!!!".
It's called "reinforcing the disguise."
After my last post, you thanked me for my extensive and comprehensive response. You might reconsider thanking me after this next part...
I don't think you could have known this, but the page you showed was totally the wrong comic to use to make this point. It's from
DC Comics Presents #47, which was a team up with the Master of the Universe characters, who were from a new toy line.
DCCP was already something of an "introduction to Superman" kind of comic. Yes, the idea was to use Superman, a well-known character, to team up with other characters to give them a boost. But it also worked the other way - "Hey, maybe the horror comic readers will give the Superman titles a chance if we have him visit the House of Mystery!" This issue was an even more extreme case of this - it was using Superman to introduce kids to a new toy line, but it was
also using the MOTU characters to get kids who were interested in the toys to take a look at Superman.
Now, at the time, Superman comics were aimed largely at kids (with an extra layer or two for adults added in), and being kids, they may not know that much about Superman and this issue in particular was
especially targeted for kids, and as an intro to the characters therein.
As such, it was crucial to...
* Show the MOTU characters and explain who they are, which required...
* Show those MOTU characters in their civilian identities. Including Prince Adam, who if I recall correctly was considered by his friends and family to be somewhat flighty, to show why He-Man maintained his secret identity this way.
It was also necessary to do the same with Superman, so they had to...
* Show and explain Superman, which required...
* Showing and explaining Clark Kent, king of the klutzes, who used the clumsy routine to hide that he was Superman.
In fact, this issue of DCCP was something of an exception to the rule here. Most DCCP issues were a bit unusual or even experimental compared to the rest of the Superman line, but this issue here was almost rigidly by-the-numbers so that new readers could pick up the story very easily. And one of those numbers is "Clark Kent is a timid klutz."
I'm not trying to criticize here, but it seems you are putting too much emphasis on the "in-story" details of these things. These were not like today's comics, where maintaining a consistent continuity over a large number of issues is critical to keep readers buying them. Back then, comics were a disposable commodity for kids, and the publishers never knew when a reader would miss an issue, due to poor distribution, or a kid not getting his allowance that week because grocery prices went up and the parents didn't have extra money, etc etc. Not to mention comics were not geared to keep an audience over a length of years like they are now. The publishers expected turnover among readers and wrote their comics accordingly, expecting that old readers were leaving and new readers were coming in all the time.
A lot of people watched the original
Star Trek series every single week, but the producers still went out of their way to always show that McCoy was the emotional one, Spock was the half-Vulcan half-human logical one, and so on to the point of almost mind-numbing repetition because they knew there were always people seeing the show for the first time.
So, it was necessary to repeatedly explain who Superman was and who mild-mannered Clark Kent was in almost every issue. Same with pretty much every other mainstream superhero comic published at the time. Did they take it too far at times? Yes. Did it get ridiculous at times (like the page you keep posting where Clark knocks out Steve Lombard)? Yes. Do you have to like it? No. Even the writers themselves sometimes chafed at having to follow the formula. But that's how they were done, and like it or not, the people putting out the comics had legitimate reasons for doing it that way.