Why Superman Will Always Stinks

[JeyNyce]

It's an article I found on Digg.  I figure it should be a good read & discussion for comic lovers.

http://www.bamkapow.com/bk-feature-why-superman-will-always-suck-1189-p.html

[AfghanAnt]

 :thumbdown: The same can be said about every popular hero but I did find some of this humorous.

[Talavar]

An interesting, but I think somewhat shallow examination of Superman, that sounds like it was written by someone without that much first-hand knowledge of the character.  There are beings in the DC universe that can hurt him without involving kryptonite.  They sell his story-arc in Kingdom Come short, and but fail to mention that in Superman: Peace on Earth, the companion to Batman: War on Crime, Superman goes up against a problem he can't beat by punching it, and fails - exactly like they say they'd like to see!

They also sell Superman's morality short.  They talk about how his power isn't earned, but ignore the enormous temptation to "fix" problems more drastically that Superman must have, an issue that the Timm cartoons addressed on several occassions.  For someone with the power of a god to steadfastly refuse to act like a jerk says something, and it's that aspect of him that is more important as a beacon of hope rather than his overwhelming physical power.  And really, how many superheros earn their powers?  Batman and....?  It's a short list, most are just lucky.

They also ignore Superman's story as the (North) American fable - an immigrant who makes good in his adopted homeland, instead calling him on not having the right to uphold America's mortality because he's a foreigner.

I think Superman does have a lot of limitations as a character, but this article doesn't explore them particularly well.

[detourne_me]

well thought-out Talavar!

other superheroes with earned powers i can think of : doctor strange, iron fist, iron man, ted kord, steel, daredevil, hourman, sandman, ray palmer, hank pym, etc.
but the earned power > given power argument doesn't hold too much water for story ideas,  look at the entire X-men mythology.

[Panther_Gunn]

As I forced myself to read past the first paragraph, all I could keep thinking was "geeze, who wrote this, Lex Luthor?"  That's some serious, irrational, selective-logic hating of Superman there.  Notice how he completely avoids the "Batman with resources & time to plan=better than anyone in existance" issue.  Kind of like poll data....you can make it say just about anything, depending on how you present it, and what you include & exclude.

[stumpy]

Well, that was a waste of several minutes.

I honestly can't remember reading a less insightful essay on Superman. Even with political allusions and uniformed vitriol, that article is easily less interesting than the character it fails to explore. Others here have essentially said what crossed my mind as I read it and I especially concur that the author is engaged in a pretty transparent game of cherry-picking. Someone who had never read Superman might come away thinking he must be some sort of uber-powered robot who goes around doing little more than beating up purse snatchers and volunteering for disaster relief, occasionally stopping to throw a jaywalker into prison. If that were the case then I suppose the character would be pretty dull. But, presenting Superman that way isn't really giving an honest representation of the character.

Leaping from one shallow criticism to the next and never pausing to question any of the premises makes for a frustrating read and tempts one to refute him point-by-silly-point, but ultimately, it's not worth it. It's more fun just to re-read the All-Star Superman series and consider the article refuted. :P

[Gremlin]

I was gonna go do a point-by-point rebuttal, but I don't have any evidence I can cite, just my own opinions.  And I'd wanna be smart about it to make this guy look dumb and ill-researched.

Superman is my favorite. :thumbup:

[doctorchallenger]

I was gonna go do a point-by-point rebuttal, but I don't have any evidence I can cite, just my own opinions.  And I'd wanna be smart about it to make this guy look dumb and ill-researched.

Superman is my favorite. :thumbup:

I'll give you a hand:

Superman has no values of his own, so he's content to just uphold the values of the ruling class; this prevents him from becoming a dangerous vigilante a la Frank Castle, but it also means he has no legitimate opinions of his own where crime is concerned. In Paul Dini's storybook series on DC superheroes, Batman had to deal with gangland violence, Wonder Woman fights terrorism, and Superman tries to end world hunger. This is no accident – Superman is way too morally simplistic to deal with complex things like the "wars" on drugs or terror. In Batman: War on Crime, Bats comes up against a young boy holding a gun on him. Batman, understanding the complexity of crime and the reasons for its existence, talks the kid into dropping the gun and giving up a life of violence.

It is pretty obvious that Miller's vision of Superman in DKR made a lasting impression on this guy.  It all depends on your definition of (1) what the limits of the ruling class are, and  what qualifies as "support".  Superman does not, by and large,  try to change the socio-political staus quo, and as aresult the ruling elites continue to maintain their grip on power because of Superman's non-interference. There have been many stories in which Superman tries to regulate human behavior more actively.  The Dini story, which the author references, Kingdom Come, even Superman IV: The Quest for Peace.  With each story Superman is confronted with the decision between enforcing his will, or allowing humans to have individual choice - the classic order versus freedom cunundrum - and always he ends up opting for individual freedom, despite the fact that it leads to bad things. 

I would like to say something about the notion of taking on world hunger being in the the words of the author "simplistic."  The same can be said of the author's analysis.  I guess that to the author cirme and terrorism are more 'complex' because they have obvious human agents - people who choose to be criminals or terrorists, whereas a person doesn't starve because the fodder for our grocery stores decides to up and rebel.  Cows aren't acquiring Grodd-like intelligence and planning to take out the human race; No plant-matter character called "Bad Apple" with an an agenda to turn humans into people sauce and people juice has been confronted by the Justice League.  What this author forgets (but Dini did not) is that the productio and distribution of food is a human enterprise.  I might be wrong, but I believe that we currently produce enough food to feed all of humanity to a degree beyond minimum subsistance level - though I am willing to admit I have no evidence proving that at the moment.  It's just that human agricultural production is not equally distributed, and that this inequallity is not completely a function of market forces.  As Dini demonstrates in his story, the distribution of food is has been used as a weapon against populations, and this practice has a long history (There was plenty of food in Ireland during the Irish Potato Famine, for example).  All of the Dini books in that series look at the "Bad Guy" with a level of comlexity that the author does not ascribe to the Superman story; in EACH story the hero is forced to concede he/she can only confront the problem in a limited way as a costumed superhero.  In this regard the Superman stroy is NO DIFFERENT than the others in the series.

Now to the "ruling class" issue.  Superman, at this point, is an American Heartland New Dealer, kind of the Harry Truman, to Batman's FDR.  If anybody cares to notice,  the support of New Deal agenda and its political decendents in the American heartland has waned considerably in the last 30 years, judging by the fact that these states have tended to go Republican in elections.  I'm not criticizing, just pointing out a historic fact.  So one could argue, by embodying the values of the New Deal, the political regime that held sway in the years of the character's creation, he stands in opposition to the current political trends in both the region in which he was supposed to be raised and in the country as a whole, thus stands in opposition to the prvailing political constellation.  Again, it is how you define ruling class.

[danhagen]

Superman's power is "earned," psychologically. He lost his parents and his entire race and was cast into space as a vulnerable infant. A steeper price for his powers can hardly be imagined.
If a fictional character who has created a whole genre and industry and earned worldwide fame and several hundred millions dollars steadily across seven decades "sucks," I'd certainly be interested to see what a successful character might look like.

[detourne_me]

Minor quibble, but can we get a mod to remove the final 's' in this thread's title?
Between this and 'stop hateing' I think I'll have a grammeurysm

[BWPS]

Minor quibble, but can we get a mod to remove the final 's' in this thread's title?
Between this and 'stop hateing' I think I'll have a grammeurysm

Hi, welcome to the internet! Please keep in mind that grammar effects nothing of any importance.

[Uncle Yuan]

Minor quibble, but can we get a mod to remove the final 's' in this thread's title?
Between this and 'stop hateing' I think I'll have a grammeurysm

Hi, welcome to the internet! Please keep in mind that grammar effects nothing of any importance.

Except communication . . . (whee!  Here we go again!!! :lol:)

[herodad1]

superman was never one of my favorites but you cant help but like his character.i guess the way they wrote some of his stories back in the late 60's through the 70's is why i steered away from him as a kid.(pulling planets out of orbit was alittle to much for a superman.)i was always drawn more toward marvel for their attempt at some realism/scientific explanations.over the years the writing for dc has gotten better.john byrnes run on superman was my favorite.he powered him down and tried to give us answers for alot of superman questions.i really like the way he's portrayed in the jla/jlu series.i dont keep up with dc/superman stories but i do have a question.john bryne touched on the point of superman generating a natural forcefield,thats why his costume doesnt get destroyed and that he has telekinetic powers thats how he flies and lifts objects without them falling apart as well as fly with super heavy objects.whats your superman fan opinions on how he's so invulnerable/dense but only weigh around 240-260 pounds?

[bearded]

superman was never one of my favorites but you cant help but like his character.i guess the way they wrote some of his stories back in the late 60's through the 70's is why i steered away from him as a kid.(pulling planets out of orbit was alittle to much for a superman.)i was always drawn more toward marvel for their attempt at some realism/scientific explanations.over the years the writing for dc has gotten better.john byrnes run on superman was my favorite.he powered him down and tried to give us answers for alot of superman questions.i really like the way he's portrayed in the jla/jlu series.i dont keep up with dc/superman stories but i do have a question.john bryne touched on the point of superman generating a natural forcefield,thats why his costume doesnt get destroyed and that he has telekinetic powers thats how he flies and lifts objects without them falling apart as well as fly with super heavy objects.whats your superman fan opinions on how he's so invulnerable/dense but only weigh around 240-260 pounds?

he actually weighs 22 tons, but is actually constantly levitating.  if he ever turned off his flight power, he would sink into the ground.

[herodad1]

really.i always wondered about that.did they explain that in a certain issue?is that something his body does automatically?what happens when he sleeps?what about his early years before he flew?another dc quirk i never cared for is they never really explain things.they just say "oh,he's just an alien..they can do those things".one of marvels greatest things done was their 80's marvel universe handbooks.they explained everything.even the characters limitations.dc tried doing their versions of the handbooks but never in detail.they would say superstrength but never how strong so that it left a open door for their character to be stronger,faster,ect.thats why i always hated dc/marvel crossovers.marvel always seemed to come up short somehow.dont take all this the wrong way...there are quite a few dc characters i like.captain marvel,green lantern(HAL JORDON),green arrow,jonn jonzz,and flash just to name a few but i think sometimes when the companies write the stories they forget that their readers arent just kids.

[yell0w_lantern]

I have a hard time accepting that article as anything other than ill-conceived tripe. And I'm not much of a Superman fan either. Any written composition which relies so heavily on expletives lacks a certain amount of credibility and is a negative reflection on the intelligence and skill of the author.

I do like Captain Marvel better.

[Talavar]

well thought-out Talavar!

other superheroes with earned powers i can think of : doctor strange, iron fist, iron man, ted kord, steel, daredevil, hourman, sandman, ray palmer, hank pym, etc.
but the earned power > given power argument doesn't hold too much water for story ideas,  look at the entire X-men mythology.

I said it was a short list, not a non-existant one.  Now compare that to the list of super-heroes who just luck into their powers.

[Ajax]

well thought-out Talavar!

other superheroes with earned powers i can think of : doctor strange, iron fist, iron man, ted kord, steel, daredevil, hourman, sandman, ray palmer, hank pym, etc.
but the earned power > given power argument doesn't hold too much water for story ideas,  look at the entire X-men mythology.

I said it was a short list, not a non-existant one.  Now compare that to the list of super-heroes who just luck into their powers.

One could say the prejudices that the X-Men and other mutants face on a day to day basis is another means of "earning" their powers. I find the arguement that him losing the parents/planet he never knew, effects him on some level a bit weak. He found out when he was in his teens, not to mention he is physically identical to your average person, and there is no indication he can't reproduce. If he were like Martian Manhunter who is physically different, even though he can shape shift he still feels like an alien, then it would carry more weight. But all in all, Supes is THE American hero. The only character more American than Supes is Captain America and for obvious reasons.

The thing that adds depth to Superman is the very thing that makes him Superman, aka his powers. On one hand he is one of the most powerful individuals in the universe, on the other hand he constantly has to be cautious of how he interacts with people out of fear he might harm them unintentionally. The JLU series touched on this.

[Alphanaut]

Anyone read the rebuttal?
http://www.bamkapow.com/rebuttal-defender-of-truth-justice-and-the-american-way-1204-p.html

[BWPS]

Anyone read the rebuttal?
http://www.bamkapow.com/rebuttal-defender-of-truth-justice-and-the-american-way-1204-p.html

Is it ok to like Batman and Superman?

[DrMike2000]

The author of the article just doesnt get it.

No fictional character has ever earned their powers, they were all handed to them by the writer. Whether its Superman's vast array of hard powers, or Sherlock Holmes' ability to deduce anything, they're part and parcel of the character. They usually get balanced with a few burdens to bear, to help them evoke our empathy.

Similarly with Indestructibility. All heroes are indestructable, unless they're in a deliberately "life is cheap" story like X-Statix, Strike Force Morituri or Blakes' Seven where the writer has decided that he/she will kill off characters at random in the name of realism. Batman is indestructible!

Frank Castle has a "complex" take on problems like the "War on Drugs" while Superman would throw 70% of the current college populace in prison? (Presumably for smoking weed..) I'd see it the other way around if anything.

In the end, why bother rebutting this? Theres a perfectly good illustrated rebuttal to all this tripe out there right now, with only two issues to go in its twelve part series. And Im not talking All-Star Batman ;)

[House Quake]

john bryne touched on the point of superman generating a natural forcefield,thats why his costume doesnt get destroyed and that he has telekinetic powers thats how he flies and lifts objects without them falling apart as well as fly with super heavy objects.whats your superman fan opinions on how he's so invulnerable/dense but only weigh around 240-260 pounds?

A lot of that has been cast to the way side.  The only thing which remains constant that Byrne introduced was that Kal-El's powers are derived exclusively from the sun... or like solar energies.  He is a walking talking solar energy cell.  Because energy has no mass... he's not particularly dense... nor does he generate a force field.  His invulnerability is more so ultrafast healing to the point most conventional damage is healed virtually instantaneously.  But he can be hurt and over whelmed.  Recently he had damaged his ability to absorb solar energy and walked around for a significant time powerless.. until his abilities started creeping back after months.

Nowadays his costume gets shredded just as often as anyone else... which is rare.  Ergo no force field.  Likewise when he lifts things.. its no different than any other super being lifting.  Its one of those things you just let comic book science rule... because if they explained it one way for him.. they would have to explain it for every one else since super strength is not exclusive to just him.  Which in itself was the problem with some of Byrne's explanations.  He tried to explain things 'scientifcally' for Superman.. but these apects of his abilities are not exclusive to him.

Really... how often do you see Wonder Womans strapless top get blown off...?  Is it TK holding them puppies in..?

But really with Supes even if his costume doesn't get shredded as much as others.. its a lot safer to assume it isnt made out of standard off the shelf materials. He does have access to resources from advanced civilizations and such.  I'm sure some where down the line he came across some super scotch guard or something.

Oh yeah... the TK strength thing wasn't tossed totally out... it was given to explain Conner Kent's super strength.

[detourne_me]

Minor quibble, but can we get a mod to remove the final 's' in this thread's title?
Between this and 'stop hateing' I think I'll have a grammeurysm

Hi, welcome to the internet! Please keep in mind that grammar affects nothing of any importance.

Except communication . . . (whee!  Here we go again!!! :lol:)

hahaha!!!
and FIXED!

[bearded]

i made up the weight solution.  but i do recall that his cape and costume were made of his baby blanket from the rocket, hence invincible.  is this still true?

[Protomorph]

i made up the weight solution.  but i do recall that his cape and costume were made of his baby blanket from the rocket, hence invincible.  is this still true?

That was silver age Supes.

[danhagen]

DrMike's reply is right on the money. By the way, the entire industry, and this web site, owes its very existence to Superman.
"This country is safe again, Superman, thanks to you!'
"No sir, warden. Don't thank me. We're all part of the same team."

[The Enigma]

Minor quibble, but can we get a mod to remove the final 's' in this thread's title?
Between this and 'stop hateing' I think I'll have a grammeurysm

Hi, welcome to the internet! Please keep in mind that grammar affects nothing of any importance.

Except communication . . . (whee!  Here we go again!!! :lol:)

hahaha!!!
and FIXED!

http://xkcd.com/326/ (although in this case, it is, in fact, probably meant to be 'affects')

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

Even as a strict grammarian who has studies advanced grammar in college, the difference between effect and affect are so subtile and intricate that you might as well just stop worrying about it.

[Uncle Yuan]

They are?  Have I been oversimplifying again?  Dang!

[Talavar]

john bryne touched on the point of superman generating a natural forcefield,thats why his costume doesnt get destroyed and that he has telekinetic powers thats how he flies and lifts objects without them falling apart as well as fly with super heavy objects.whats your superman fan opinions on how he's so invulnerable/dense but only weigh around 240-260 pounds?

A lot of that has been cast to the way side.  The only thing which remains constant that Byrne introduced was that Kal-El's powers are derived exclusively from the sun... or like solar energies.  He is a walking talking solar energy cell.  Because energy has no mass... he's not particularly dense... nor does he generate a force field.  His invulnerability is more so ultrafast healing to the point most conventional damage is healed virtually instantaneously.  But he can be hurt and over whelmed.  Recently he had damaged his ability to absorb solar energy and walked around for a significant time powerless.. until his abilities started creeping back after months.

I don't think I've ever read Superman's invulnerability described as ultra-fast healing, and I don't think it's how they depict it either.  I mean, even large caliber bullets bounce off, they don't hurt him then heal, ala the Hulk.  To use a gaming term, most of the time it's treated like damage reduction.  Anything not damaging enough gets ignored, anything that would go over hurts a little, but I haven't seen a pseudo-scientific reason given for why recently.

As to Superman's ability to not get knocked around all the time, he could also generate tremendous thrust in any direction at incredible speeds with his flight power.  By holding himself steady with the invisible thrust necessary to move at mach 15 or whatever, that can compensate for a pretty big impact, rather than necessitating a high density.