The late Christopher Reeve would have been 57 today.

The actor, born in New York in 1952, died on October 10, 2004, after a truly valient second-life as a champion for victims of spinal cord injury and advocate for stem cell research. Reeve had been left a quadriplegic after he was thrown from a horse in Virginia in 1995 during an eventing competition.

The Man of Steel in four films, he also had memorable turns in "Remains of the Day," "Deathtrap" and "Somewhere in Time." He is sorely missed. Here's a look at his appearance on " The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson" shortly after the release of Richard Donner's 1978 classic "Superman."

-- Geoff Boucher

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All images from the Los Angeles Times archive.

Comics writer Mark Millar (who brought the world "Wanted," "Superman: Red Son" and Marvel's "Civil War") is a big fan of Richard Donner's 1978 film "Superman."

How big?

Well, he has one of Christopher Reeve's capes from the movie hanging in his home in Glasgow and (this is not a joke) he bought the stuffed and mounted corpse of Frisky, the stranded cat that Superman plucks from a tree in the movie. He recently got a chance to meet Donner and giddily compares it to "meeting Gandhi."

Millar was in Los Angeles visiting Golden Apple and he chatted with Blair Butler of G4's Fresh Ink for an interview and the subject turned to the future of Superman on the screen, which is quite the hot topic right now. It turns out that, a while back, Millar hatched an idea for a trilogy of films about the Last Son of Krypton and, after some recent conversations with an unidentified director, he thinks it might be gaining some traction.