Whitney Fordman

Whitney Fordman was a student at Smallville High School and star quarterback of the Smallville Crows football team. As a high school senior, he was a member of the popular crowd. He dated the beautiful cheerleader Lana Lang and he and Lana were elected Homecoming King and Queen.

After graduation, he joined the United States Marines and was killed in action in Indonesia. Whitney's heroic sacrifice is one of the things throughout Clark Kent's journey in Smallville that inspired him to become Superman.

Powers
Whitney Fordman is an ordinary human with no superhuman capabilities. On one occasion however, he did develop super-powers after being exposed to green meteor rock.


 * Intangibility: Whitney Fordman once had a tattoo made of ink cultivated from green meteor rock. This temporarily gave him the ability to phase through solid objects.

Origins
Whitney grew up in Smallvile where he worked in the Fordman's Department Store which had belonged to his family since 1943. From a young age, he professed a love for the sport that made him a football star at Smallville High. During this time he met Lana Lang and began dating her. At the start of football season, Whitney encouraged Clark Kent to toss a football and dunk Lana Lang.

Season 1
Whitney performed an annual 'hazing' ritual on Clark Kent, choosing him to be the one freshman hung up as a "Scarecrow" in the cornfields of Smallville. Whitney put Lana's necklace on Clark, inadvertently incapacitating him with meteor rock radiation. Lex Luthor rescued Clark, who then got back at Whitney by stacking his pickup truck on top of two others.

Whitney tried to apologize to Clark and get Lana's necklace back, but Clark coldly told him to go into the cornfield and find the necklace himself. Later, when Whitney was attacked by Greg Arkin, Clark rescued him. Over time, Clark and Whitney became less hostile toward each other. When Whitney grew distant following his father's heart attack, Clark encouraged him to open up to Lana. When Whitney tried to kill Kyle Tippet while under the control of Kyle's former friend Clark stopped him.

After losing his football scholarship, Whitney got mixed up with some former jocks with tattoos made of meteor rock that temporarily gave them the power to walk through the walls. However, when Whitney learned that they were planning to blackmail and potentially murder Lex Luthor, he told Clark what was happening, resulting in a confrontation in a car impound lot that resulted in the death of one of the jocks. As Whitney's father's heart disease grew even worse, he was moved to hospital on a full-time basis. However, shortly before he died, Clark asked Lex Luthor to help Whitney's father fulfill a promise he had made that he would see his son play his first game with the Metropolis Sharks: Lex literally hired the entire team to play a game with Whitney as their quarterback while his father watched. George Fordman died shortly afterwards.

While going through his father's things after the funeral, Whitney came across his father's military medals from the Vietnam War, including one for his father saving three people. Whitney realized that being a football star isn't the only way to be a hero and impulsively decided to join the Marines.

He asked Lana to wait for him. Before he left, he made an honest apology to Clark for the way he had treated him and even asked Clark to look after Lana until he returned. With this, Clark and Whitney finally made peace and perhaps even became friends.

Season 2
As she began her sophomore year, Lana prepared a video of well-wishes from his friends back home to send to Whitney, but then decided that she should be honest with him. She recorded her own message, breaking up with Whitney. Whitney wrote a letter to Lana in response to the videotape. He mentioned the pain he felt when receiving the message and said it was a truth that he didn't want to hear. But Whitney decided to let go and told her that he was glad she was looking for happiness and hoped that she'd find it. Whitney was killed in action in Indonesia, sacrificing his life trying to save a fallen soldier. His letter to Lana was in his hand at the time of his death and never made it to her.

Whitney was later announced as missing. Tina Greer broke out of Belle Reve Sanitarium and impersonated him in order to be with Lana, but Clark discovered the truth and she was killed in the final confrontation.

Both Clark and Lana were deeply affected by Whitney's death: Lana regretted ever having sent the video to him in the first place and feared that Whitney's last thought before he died was that Lana wasn't there for him and Clark remarked that Whitney had willingly put himself in harm's way to protect other people and wondered if he would have such bravery if he didn't have his abilities.