But such is not the case, at least not yet.

"We're really kind of sheltered here, which is good," Welling says one afternoon on the set. "I mean, I've been working the last five Saturdays until dawn.

"But it kind of keeps us -- well, it allows us to maintain our focus and to really just concentrate on what we're doing.''

Mainly what they're doing is putting a new spin on the early years of the Superman saga. In the WB's version, Clark doesn't wear a cape, doesn't cavort in a unitard, doesn't even fly yet. He's just a teenager who is developing some extraordinary powers while suffering the usual hideous agonies of adolescence and the occasional bout of kryptonite allergy. Of course, he's got a bad guy to battle every week. But the real heart of the show lies in Clark's unrequited love for Lana Lang, his odd, amusing friendship with bald bad boy Lex Luthor and his relationship with his folks, who are always good for some moral guidance. Plus, he's dealing with the guilt he feels over the way he arrived on Earth: in a meteor shower that killed Lana's parents, stripped Lex of his hair and in general turned Smallville into a weird place to live. It's a unique, inventive and often moving mix; and a number of highbrow types have praised the show for its "soul'' and its "intuitive feel for the zeitgeist,'' and sensed in this particular Clark Kent a new kind of hero for the post-9/11 world.

Naturally, Welling and Company don't spend a lot of time pondering this stuff. Mostly they're too exhausted. Plus they've got a show to create. At the moment, Kreuk is in the makeup chair, while Welling and Rosenbaum rehearse a scene, the two of them ambling around a battered Porsche, practicing their lines.

"Don't you remember anything about the accident?'' Rosenbaum asks Welling.

"I remember pulling you out,'' says Welling. "That's all.''

"You sure you don't remember anything?'' asks Rosenbaum. He pauses. He lifts an eyebrow. Finally, displaying his own intuitive feel for the zeitgeist, he says, "My ass was sore afterward. You sure you didn't give me a superfuck?''

The director steps forward and says, "Well, yes, that was very good, very professional.''

Rosenbaum is chuckling, and Welling is looking kind of embarrassed. As well he might. Being the new kind of hero and all.

Bleary-eyed, Welling shuffles into Morrissey's, an Irish-type bar in downtown Vancouver, and plops himself into an overstuffed chair, takes a deep breath, sighs, swipes at his mop of chestnut hair and says, "I'm hanging in there.'' Yawning, he stretches his legs out and grins good-naturedly. He's a tall fellow, with huge size-fourteen feet, and limpid green-grape eyes, and cheeks that seem to have a permanent apple-red flush on them. In other words, at the age of twenty-four, he's great-looking and totally WB, which undoubtedly explains why the network splashed photos of him, naked from the chest up, on billboards all over Los Angeles before the show's premiere.

He orders a BLT and an iced tea and gives an account of his early years growing up in Wisconsin, Delaware and Michigan, where he played a lot of sports (baseball, basketball and soccer) and did no better than "fair'' in high school. After graduating, he had no idea what he was going to do with his life. He didn't want to go to college, so he got a job as a construction worker, lived at home (until retiring, his father was an executive for General Motors) and basically just hung out. "I was just going with the flow,'' he says. In that spirit, one spring day he and ten pals hopped on a plane and flew to Nantucket for a vacation.

Cocking his head at the memory, Welling says, "We were at this bar, and these people scouting for an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog shoot walked up to me. I learned they worked for photographer Bruce Weber, who is huge, so I thought, 'OK, maybe you need to take this more seriously.' So I went home for a week, then went right to Lake George, New York, to do the shoot, made a couple thousand dollars, and then I moved to Manhattan and became a model.''

He modeled in New York and Europe for the next two years, didn't feel especially at home in the modeling world, and in 2000 decided to move to Los Angeles to become an actor. He had no real acting experience, planned on taking no acting classes and gave himself one year to make something of himself. It took only five months for him to land his first big gig, a three-episode run on CBS' Judging Amy, as Amy's boy toy, which led to three more episodes of the show. Shortly thereafter, Smallville's producers rang him up.

At first, he turned them down, figuring the show would be dopey and lame. They called again. He turned them down again. After auditioning several hundred other young men for the part, they called once more, and this time Welling relented. He read the script and liked what he read. "It was focused more on Clark trying to be a human, rather than a superhero,'' he says. He auditioned -- and the executives were bowled over. Says Miles Millar, one of Smallville's five executive producers, "He had innocence and earnestness and sincerity and a strength about him. He embodied everything that we wanted.''

So that's how he got to where he is today, essentially on the wings of serendipity. As he likes to say, "It blows your mind, almost to the point where you're like, 'Nah, it's not -- no, no, it can't be.' '' And after saying that, he just sits there, happily munching on his BLT. Finally he says, "You know, one of the things about going from modeling to acting is it's so much more fulfilling. With modeling, you get your picture taken, which is great, good for you, you know? But in acting, you're able to reach in and show a little bit more of yourself.''

That may be. But what he prefers to show off-camera isn't that much. In fact, he seems pretty low-key, even shy. "Tom and I get along very well,'' says Kristin Kreuk, "but he is very closed off with people.'' Or perhaps he's just wary.

"Do you have a girlfriend?''

"I have a very special woman in my life, yes.''

He sips his iced tea. Then he says, "We have been together for three years.'' And then, later on, he says, "But, you know, we kind of keep that stuff between us.''

"Do you.''

"Yeah.'' He leans forward. "I don't mean to be rude, but I'm trying to respect her privacy. And mine. I mean, literally, I've been asked what the names of my dogs are, and I haven't told, just because, you know, let's talk about the show.''

"OK, fair enough. What are your vices?"

"Well, I can't have my fingernails clipped or filed,'' he says deftly. "I just don't like it. So when they get long, I'll bite them and spit them out.''

Over time, however, he loosens up a little. Pretty soon he's able to reveal that he's both a huge Christopher Walken fan and an equally great admirer of Bob Saget ("He's rude, he's crude, he's funny!"). Regarding his nose, he will blow it in the shower but only picks it "recreationally.'' His favorite cuss word is "Damn!'' One of his favorite phrases is "There you go!'' Yesterday, he had the song "Somebody's Baby'' stuck in his head. Also yesterday, he nearly cried after his dog Cook, a pug, ate himself sick and had to go under the vet's knife.

"Is Clark Kent a virgin?'' he muses. "We haven't gone there yet. But I hope we touch on that at some point!''