"Because everyone involved is a shapeshifter and I'm just a mild-mannered reporter."
But even mild-mannered reporters are capable of the occasional bold gesture.
Here he was no more than a surrogate, a mild-mannered reporter waiting for Superman to take over.
(A misunderstanding over destiny has left our hero, a mild-mannered reporter at a major metropolitan newspaper, battling for his life.)
A mild-mannered reporter might not have noticed, but banners with "Alias" in large letters were not all that the helicopters were towing.
Superman was the baby alien from outer space, reared as a normal American boy and growing up to become Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter.
WRITE it off as a fantasy of mild-mannered reporters everywhere, but I can barely repress the urge to fly.
As the mild-mannered reporter, Mr. Johnson is gentlemanly and polite in a role that must have been thankless.
In the Fleischer theatrical cartoons released by Paramount, the mild-mannered reporter often ducked into a telephone booth or stockroom to make the transformation.
When commuting on skates, I am no longer the mild-mannered reporter on her way to work in a taxi or on the subway.