Superman in Comics - A Deep Dive

Superman.  The Man of Steel.  Last Son of Krypton.  The Man of Tomorrow.  Kal-El.  Clark Kent. Created by Jerry Siegel and and Joe Shuster, he debuted in Action Comics #1 in 1938. He was not the first superhero in comics (The Phantom beat him by two years and Superman wasn't even the first one created by Siegel and Shuster) but he was the first truly iconic one and one of the most recognizable characters ever.

This is going to be an exploration of Superman, who is not only my favorite superhero but one of my favorite fictional characters.  I want to share some stuff about him that I really like, some stuff I think is interesting, and some stuff that I suspect people who only know Superman from cultural osmosis may not know.

Superman, who has appeared in more than 18000 comic issues over almost a hundred years, not to mention radio serials, TV shows, and movies has a long and varied publication history across all kinds of media.  I'm going to be focusing  mostly on the modern post-Crisis comic incarnations of Superman, starting in the in the mid 80s.  As I mentioned in my Wonder Woman piece, DC continuity is kind of a wreck with lots of different eras and whole-universe reboots.  I'm not going to get into the weeds of that, as it's not all that relevant to what I'll be discussing.

Despite a myriad of writers and all his differing continuities, Modern Era Superman is a very stable character, even in stories that intentionally dislocate him from his standard context.  And though his personality is sometimes a little different, in the many stories I've read at his core he is always recognizably Superman, which I think is a testament to his iconic status and the reverence for which creators hold what he represents.  There are no doubt exceptions to this; but all the even remotely standard Supermen I've encountered have had a remarkable consistency.

(Also: This is going to be specifically about the Clark Kent Superman.  There's been some others and Clark's son Jon had his own Superman book for a while etc but I'm only going to be looking at Clark.)

I'm going to be referencing the following stories for this exploration:

• Birthright (Waid / Yu) - 2004

• Up in the Sky (King / Kubert) - 2020

• Man and Superman (Wolfman / Castellini) - 2019

• Superman for All Season (Loeb / Sale) - 1998

• Secret Origin (Johns / Frank) - 2009

• American Alien (Landis / Various) - 2015

• Space Age (Russell / Allred) - 2022

• Earth One (Straczynski / Davis) - 2010

• Kryptonite (Cooke / Sale) - 2007

• The Last Days of Lex Luthor (Waid / Hitch) - 2023

• All-Star Superman (Morrison / Quitely)

• Kingdom Come (Waid / Ross) - 1998

• Peace on Earth (Dinni, Ross / Ross) - 1998

• Camelot Falls (Busiek / Pacheco) - 2006

• Red and Blue (Various) - 2021

• Last Son (Johns, Donner / Kubert ) - 2006

• Brainiac (Waid / Frank) - 2008

• Truth (Pak / Kuder) - 2015

• Red Sun (Millar / Various) - 2003

• "What's so funny about Truth, Justice, and American Way?"  (Kelly / Mahnke, Bermejo) - 2001

• Legend of the Green Flame (Gaiman / Various) - 2000

Note, the creators listed above are in (Writer/ Artist) format. (If there are multiple artists, I just list the penciler, which I know isn't fair to the inkers and colorists, but I'm actually going for brevity in this [redacted - fuck's sake] word essay.)

Why Superman is My Favorite

To quote myself from my Wonder Woman essay:

I'm particularly drawn to aspirational superheroes, heroes who represent something more than "crime bad."  ... For me, Wonder Woman and Superman aren't power fantasies in the physical sense like a lot of comic book characters are.  They are moral power fantasies.  It's not "I wish I could punch someone that hard" but "I wish I could be that good."  I don't want to just hit someone until they stop, I want to convince them to change or inspire them not to start.

I'm also a sucker for hope, one of the core values that Superman represents.  He's the kind of character that can be looked to in a moral dilemma. Asking yourself "What would Superman do?" will rarely lead you astray.

I find Superman's humanity to be his most compelling aspect.  He could be a distant savior, above the mess of humanity, but he isn't.  He lives among people, he has bills to pay, and he even took a job where he gets to listen to normal people and their normal problems.

And reading a story where, reeling from his own grief, Superman says to himself "You're special. I love you. I'm proud of you" over a montage of him rescuing people from a fire, cheering up sick kids, and eating pizza with the homeless never fails to choke me up.  (That is from Daniel Warren Johnson's "Generations" from Superman: Red and Blue.)  There have actually been several other moments in various Superman media that have elicited a similarly profound emotional response from me, not something I can say about most comic book characters.  (The endings of Up in the Sky, Birthright, and the emotional climax of James Gunn's Superman (2025) are just a couple that immediately come to mind.)

I also very much like that the nature of Superman, a kind, working class hero who also has the power of a minor god, allows him to be used to tell a lot of different kinds of stories.  He has the power to have galaxy wide adventures or fight a world ending threat, but also the empathy, curiosity, and humanity to tell small scale stories.  Superman can punch gods and demons in the face, but he also will not abandon the regular people that he cares so much about.

And his great, but singular power, also let's a writers toy with ideas about the persistence of systemic injustice that can't just be punched and how Superman can intersect with those systems.

As I did in my Man of Steel (2013) essay, I'm going to quote YouTube critic Dan Olson's video essay "A Lukewarm Defense of 50 Shades of Grey:"

At a certain point characters cease to require their context to be whole and in effect become their own context.  In subsequently the fun comes from taking them and moving them around and playing with them in a variety of different styles and scenarios.

Superman reached that point a very long time ago and this allows writers to alter his circumstances to examine him without altering anything fundamental about his character.  You know who he is, now let's see how he reacts in this new kind of situation.

Super Quick History In Media, etc etc

As I said above, Superman debuted in Action Comics #1 in April 1938.  The next year he featured in a newspaper comic strip, and then in a radio serial from 1940-1951.  Then there was the TV show Adventures of Superman starring George Reeves from 1952-1958 and then a bunch of movies, animated shows, live action TV etc etc,  Point is, he's been a fixture in pop culture since his debut.  According to Statista.com, as of 2015 Superman was the top selling comic book character of all time.

As a character, Superman is accretionary rather than fully realized from original conception, with even things that are now core aspects of his story having been grafted on over the years.  Kryptonite was introduced in the radio show in 1943 and was folded into the comics in 1949; Ma and Pa Kent didn't get the names Martha and Jonathan until the 50s etc etc.  Superman, then, is an interesting study on how iconic characters can get slowly added onto and incorporate ideas that take them far past the original creators' intent.

Superman's Place in Casual Pop Cultural - Criticisms

While Superman is firmly lodged in public consciousness his reputation has been a little weird.  I've walked down the street in a Superman T-shirt and gotten more than one genuine "Hell yeah, Superman!" but at the same time, people think he's boring, or a relic.  He's baseball which, despite it's status as America's past time, has been eclipsed by both American football and basketball in the zeitgeist.

The two main arguments I've seen as to why he's not compelling have to do with his power and his character.  For the former, the thinking goes that Superman is too strong to write compelling comics for, but really I think the abundance of excellent and interesting Superman comics shows that that isn't the case.  I suppose if you are just looking for action stories where he punches things that he might get boring, but even so, people love John Wick mowing through legions of enemies, so in addition to not agreeing with this argument, I sort of don't understand it.

The second argument takes aim at the character of the man himself, usually dismissing him as a dorky Big Blue Boy Scout, which is just a synonym for boring in a lot of cases.  I suppose I understand this one more than the first but it kind of presumes that because he's a boring do-gooder that there can't be much conflict or drama to be mined. I reject both parts of that statement, though.  Not only do I think the character is often very interesting but I also don't see what is categorically boring about a good guy doing good stuff, or how really it's any different than most superhero media, hell most media.

Ironically, this is the kind of cynicism that Superman confronts time and again in his own stories.  It's kind of fun and meta that general audiences tend to be dismissive of hope as naive in the same way Superman's In-universe populace is.  (Or at least starts out as.)

Comics writer Tom King has said:

Superman is not impossible.  He's not even difficult.  He's in fact the easiest hero to write in modern myth.  Superman just does what's right, and all you have to do as a writer is follow where that truth leads.  Record the good man as he makes the good decision.

As I mentioned in my essay on Man of Steel, Reeve's Superman (1978) looms very large in popular awareness of the character and I think that's really where Superman-as-milquetoast-dork really crystalized.  But I think a lot of people haven't actually seen that film in a while because, while Clark is a dork, he is Superman's disguise and the real Superman is smirky, funny, and charming.  It's also worth noting that the way this film's Clark really amps his dweeb up is kind of an outlier in modern Superman media; in most of the stuff I've read Clark isn't so performative and is mostly trying to not be noticed.

Origin Stories and What They Reveal

Superman's origin is fairly fixed, in contrast to someone like Wonder Woman who gets reinvented a lot.  As a baby he is sent to Earth from the doomed planet of Krypton.  He lands in Kansas and is raised by Jonathan and Martha Kent.   He becomes Superman.  Ta da.

Of course any character with so much publication history, sustained popularity, and multiple reboots is going to have lots of permutations.  Sometimes Pa Kent is dead, sometimes not.  Sometimes Superman has information from his birth parents, and sometimes he doesn't.  Sometimes Jor-El and Lara are benevolent and other times they are... less so.

Superman does get a lot of origin stories (I myself have read six), which might sound strange considering how stable his physical origin and powers are, but I think it's worth pointing out that a good origin tale isn't a catalog of someone developing their physical powers, it's an exploration of how and why they became the hero they did.

Just showing a young version of the character doesn't make it an origin story in anything other than the most literal way.  I think for an iconic character that everyone knows the basic story of, an origin that is just focused on mechanics and not character is not really much of an origin story.  (Looking at you, Man of Steel.)  That's not necessarily criticism, Superman is so well known that unless you have an interesting take, we don't really need to see his origin.  He has become his own context, as Olson said.

What interests me in an origin for a character like Superman isn't how powers manifested the first time, but why is he how he is?  What informs his moral code?  When did he decide to become Superman?  And since the moment he decides to become a hero is not tied inexorably to an event in his life that is integral to his story, like, say Batman's parents being murdered, a writer has a lot more leeway to explore his decision and change particulars without radically altering his actual story.

Man

Moral Code

Superman isn't Superman because of his powers; he's Superman because of his humanity and unwavering goodness.  In stories where he is separated from his humanity (literally in Up in the Sky and figuratively in Kingdom Come for examples) his godlike side gets lost in the metaphorical woods.  His humanity is his anchor and he is connected deeply to the people around him; friends, enemies, and strangers.

In the near future of Kingdom Come the world and Superman have lost their way.  The story's point of view character Norman McCay tells Superman:

Of all the things you can do...all your powers...the greatest has always been your instinctive knowledge of right and wrong.  It was a gift of your own humanity.  You never had to question your choices. In any situation, any crisis, you knew what to do. But the minute you made the Super more important than the Man, the day you decided to turn you back on mankind, that completely cost you your instinct.  That took your judgement away.

Norman is correct and Superman knows it; he decides to become the Superman he once was.

Superman cares about and makes time for everyone, whether by having lunch with a man he's saved a statistically significant number of times (Red and Blue "A Man Most Saved') or visiting a little girl's school to confirm to her skeptical peers that she was telling the truth about the time she did something brave and helped him defeat a space robot (Red and Blue: "My Best Friend Superman.")

Birthright includes a small detail that is actually pretty revealing about how Clark sees and treats people.  In that story Jimmy Olsen always tries to get people to call him "Jim," because "Jimmy is a kid's name," but everyone ignores him on this.  Everyone except Clark.  He calls him Jim instantly and always refers to him that way.  As Clark, at least.  In a bonus nice detail, as Superman he calls Jim "Jimmy."  No need to risk Olsen noticing that there's only two people on Earth that call him his preferred name.

When, in Space Age, Lois asks him why he spends time getting cats out of trees, he replies

...to be honest, I just like it.  But I've come to realize that doing small things, meeting people where they live...it serves a larger purpose, too.  The larger purpose being that it makes people feel like no matter who they are...no matter how great or small their problems are, somebody cares.  And then they feel that way even when no ones looking.  ...maybe that's why it's so important to give people hope, even when there's no good reason for it.  Because hope is the lie we make come true.

And he does do his best to help everyone, too.  In Up in the Sky, he has this conversation with Alice, which succinctly describes his ethos:

Alice

Why did you help him?

Superman

Because he needed help.

Alice

Are you going to help everyone?

Superman

No, but I'm going to try.

Superman dislikes violence and doubts its efficacy as long term strategy.  In Space Age, he says:

You don't heal the world with violence.  You heal it..well...by healing it. ...Life is a battle that we all lose.  Which is why you can't live it like it's a war.

Superman also feels the aftermath of violence deeply, on both the large and small scale.  In one of my favorite moments in American Alien a young Clark, reflecting on a mirror he destroyed in a drive-in bathroom in a moment of anger, sums this up very neatly:

I was thinking.  Somebody had to make it, like, somebody at the factory took the time to make it.  Then somebody had to sell it to the movie theater, and then other people had to fit it to the wall  Which somebody else built before them.  When you break something, you're not just breaking the thing, you're like...hurting everyone who made it the way it was.

He sees the humanity that lies behind even that inanimate object.

Superman values all life and the story Birthright represents this very strikingly: he can see an aura around all living things and he tells his mother that when something dies and its aura vanishes it's hard for him to look at because it becomes "empty in a way that it leaves [him] empty too."  (This version of Clark is a vegetarian.)  This is the only story I've read that explicitly portrays this, but I like it enough to headcannon that all versions of Clark see the world in the same way.

Clark sees the good in everything and everyone and he appreciates the world around him.  In Greg Pak's Truth arc, a de-powered Superman delights in

Feeling my first actual caffeine rush.  Getting legitimately hungry and having the best lunch ever every time I sit down to eat.  Staying inside when it's raining, cause, man, it's cold outside.  Simple pleasures. I could get used to 'em.

Even in a state of vulnerability he's never felt before, he finds joy.

Part of Superman's job description is a willingness to put himself in the line of fire and this willingness is not just a product of his powers.  The Clark of Truth does not hesitate before throwing himself into danger to protect others, even interceding for a man who was just trying to rob him.  (He gets knocked around a bit in that last encounter, but still triumphs.  He's got experience brawling and he's still huge, after all.)

Later, when riot police trigger a confrontation with the people in his neighborhood, Clark, whose identity has been revealed to the world, de-escalates the situation by talking to the cops, all of whose names he remembers.  He later says:

I'm so damn tired. ... I can't clap my hands and make it all blow away. I can't fight for them.  But I can still stand with them.

This urge to resolve conflict without violence is not merely a consequence of not having his super strength and speed.  One of the most striking stories in Red and Blue is G. Willow Wilson's "De-Escalation" where a Clark, with all his powers, is in a convenience store when a person in a ski mask comes in to rob the place.

Clark offers to lock the door so they won't get interrupted and then talks the boy down, effortlessly reading from the boy's body language that he's never tried anything like this before and is out of his depth.  "Are the police going to come? Is this it for me?"  Clark replies "Not if you give me the gun now and never set foot in this place again."  The boy turns the gun over to Clark and leaves.

Demeanor

Clark is generally a chill, positive guy who smiles a lot, and finds joy in life.  He laughs and has a sense of humor, seemingly particularly fond of sparring with Lois.  He is, thankfully, not prone to undercutting a serious situation with a quip.

There are some divergences in his various origins stories as to his worldliness before he becomes Superman.  On one side of the spectrum there are stories like Man and Superman and Secret Origin where he arrives in Metropolis more as a wide eyed Kansas farm boy and on the other side there are stories like Birthright where he has already spent years traveling the globe as a hardworking freelance reporter.

Superman is not generally angsty, but the loneliest versions are isolated by their responsibility and their guilt over whether they're doing enough (Superman for All Seasons) or by their fear that they're accidentally going to hurt someone (Earth One).  Earth One's Superman is the most closed off but he has a realization about halfway through about his fear of accidentally doing harm:

That fear is why I've always kept people at arm's length.  I stick to the big problems, not individual situations.... But there are times now when I think 'Can I afford to keep doing that?' What do I do when it's not about fighting aliens or earthquakes?  When it's about what we do to ourselves?

He realizes that he needs to engage with people, to connect with individuals.  He starts the story isolated and sad, but it's a starting point from which he will begin to progress toward the more standard Superman.  And even with this most serious of Supermen, we see his wit and humor in small moments with his neighbor Lisa or with his ship's Kryptonian AI.

This is not to say that the standard Superman is always happy go lucky.  He's not King's "good man making the right decisions" because he experiences no negative human emotions.   He's that man because he does experience them and does the right thing anyway.  We see his self-doubt in Man and Superman, his frustration in Up in the Sky, and his righteous anger in Birthright.  In that last instance, after stopping a school shooting, Superman confronts a man in a Stormfront* t-shirt that sold guns to the underage attackers.  Superman says with barely contained fury:

One minute ago, I saw a little girl screaming because she was staring down the barrel of a gun.  She was nine, and she will remember it for the rest of her life.

He then picks up a gun from the counter case and fires it at the man before using his super speed to catch the bullet six inches from the terrified man's face.  "Now you will to" he says before pinning the man to the walls with his own weapons.

*Stormfront is a neo-Nazi website.

Working Class Man

Superman is definitely working class.  I've heard it pithily put that "Batman has a butler.  Superman has a boss."  In Man and Superman he works his way up from janitor to Daily Planet reporter without a hint of entitlement or any sense that he thinks being a janitor is beneath him.  He spent seven years abroad submitting articles and working to string together enough credits for his journalism degree in Birthright.  In Camelot Falls he listens in on a school board debate and watches a committee hearing with his super senses while helping people all over the city because, in addition to all the Supermanning that needs doing, he has deadlines to make or he'll risk the ire of Perry White, the volatile (if ultimately kind hearted) editor at the Daily Planet.

Even the idea that the world's most powerful man would willingly let himself get yelled at by his editor shows his humility and his job choice reflects the curiosity and the instinct to help others that are a huge part of him.  As he narrates in Man and Superman:

I love to write. To work out a story, to explore it form the inside out, to understand why it's important and to be able to explain it to others.  ... And all my powers, as great as they are, don't make me a better writer than anyone else.

And Clark needs the work, too.  He has to remind Bruce Wayne and Diana (i.e Wonder Woman) that "unlike some people, I have a real job that I need to pay my real bills." (Red and Blue: "Deadline.")   It's rather funny to think that the ultra famous hero with super speed still has to work a 9-5 to make rent but it absolutely befits a character who, for all his power, is more mensch than ubermesch.  (And apparently, he doesn't ask his super rich friends Batman or Green Arrow to spot him any cash.)

Clark chose a job where he could tell the truth to power, another avenue for solving problems without his fists.  He can shine a light on things that aren't punch-that-guy issues and empower humanity to address them.

Superman also never loses touch with regular people as individuals.  They all matter to him.  In the affecting Red and Blue story "The Measure of Hope" by Brandon Easton, Superman reveals that

I get thousands of letters a month from a special P.O Box in Washington D.C.  Most of it is fan mail or people asking for miracles.  The crazy thing is...I eventually read every single letter. I admit it may take a while, but I try to get back to everyone when possible.

He is speaking to Melvin Northridge, a man who wrote him 63 letters for help as a child, mostly about his loving but heroin addicted mother Jolene.  Superman has finally gotten to his letters, and arrived just in time for her funeral.  After comforting Melvin, Superman takes Jolene's ashes and places them on the moon because, as Melvin says "She always wanted to be buried in the starlight."

Superman says to her "Forgive me, Jolene Northridge. I promise I'll do better."

Kids

Superman's respect for all individuals very endearingly manifests in his interactions with children.  He likes kids and he doesn't condescend to them.  He often gets down to their level, literally sitting next to them on a curb or down on one knee so as not to not tower over them while they talk.

One of my favorite moments in Superman Smashes the Klan is when he gives his cape to the lonely and isolated Roberta Lee, a new transplant into Metropolis proper:

Can I let you in on a secret, Roberta?  Crime fighting can be pretty rough on capes, so my mother made me a whole closetful of these. I'd like you to keep this one.

She lights up at this small kindness.

I also love the moment in Red and Blue's "My Best Friend Superman" where the little girl Ava tells her classmates that she helped Superman:

Superman

"That was incredibly kind.. and brave.  But the situation is very dangerous and I want to make sure you're safe."

Ava

"I want to help too... I'm not a hero, but-"  Superman told me to help clear the area and make sure everyone was at a safe distance while he fought the robot monster.

Superman wasn't dismissive of Ava.  He knew that even kids deserve a chance to be heroes.

Superman

The Powers

Superman's powers in the Modern era are pretty well known and fairly stable, as opposed to the Golden and Silver Age (circa 40s through the 60s) where he could do kind of whatever.  (e.g. physically transform his face, use mind control, throw his voice across the world, and shoot a tiny Superman out of his hands.  I'm not making that last one up.)

Most people know Superman can fly, is super strong, super fast, (mostly) invulnerable, can shoot heat beams from his eyes, and freezing breath from his mouth.  He gets his powers from his Kryptonian physiology under the yellow sun of Earth.  His mental acuities do vary a little.  He's always a smart guy, but he's occasionally superhumanly smart, with perfect eidetic memory and the ability to instantly read entire books that are printed on microdots, like in Camelot Falls.

Some stories do interesting examinations of how his powers inform his worldview.  In the second arc of American Alien, entitled "Hawk," a 17 year old Clark reluctantly approaches a gang of murderers in Smallville and is immediately shot in the face when he tries to talk to them.  Hurt, he stumbles up and throws a man 30 feet through a window, leaving him a broken and bloody mess.  A second man then blasts Clark in the chest with a shotgun, and when he goes for a second shot, Clark's heat vision manifests and he melts off the man's arms, who screams in agony and terror.  It's not at all a righteous power fantasy of heroically saving the day.  It's instead a rather upsetting and brutal confrontation, made more so by the grimy and realistic artwork.

Clark is almost traumatized by what he saw, by the monstrous things his powers can do to a human body.  I think this is great groundwork for why he always tries to stay in control, always holds back, and tries so hard to de-escalate whenever possible.

In Space Age, Superman's says:

Power is the seed from which monsters grow.  So how do I convince people that among all the other things in the universe they have to worry about...I'm not one of them? On a planet run by the corrupt, and power mad, it wasn't enough to ask people to trust that I was different.  I had to show them.

Space Age is a completely different continuity than American Alien, but I could see the latter's Clark asking the same question after the confrontation in "Hawk."

Another thing that is touched on in several stories is that, due to his super senses, Superman is constantly aware of the suffering of everyone all the time and this is one of the reasons for his great empathy.

The God Unleashed

I must say, the penultimate issue of Up in the Sky, with a Superman who does not have to hold back while facing down an army of hyper-advanced robots, is really satisfying to read.  It's so rare to see Superman unleashing his full force on an opponent, which makes the moment stand out a lot.  The army he's fighting on a faraway planet is a contingent of a larger force, with the rest currently on Earth wrecking all of its heroes simultaneously.

The issue alternates between pages of Superman about to confront a "threat" and of Earth's heroes getting demolished.   Superman's full might is so overwhelming, though, that Up in the Sky doesn't really even bother showing the fights.   My favorite moment is a splash image of Superman viewed from behind facing down dozens if not hundreds of robots, while their controller says to him "There are enough here.  There are enough to defeat you, Superman."   There is one small inset at the bottom right of the page, showing only a close up in profile of Superman's angry eyes.  He says only "No sir, there are not."  This is a very Jaws-esque level of restraint by King, and leaving the violence off page only makes Superman's power feel more incomprehensible.

Also, there's a great bonus bit in the transition between this issue and the final one.  The last panel of the penultimate issue is Superman, having smashed through the prison holding Alice, standing large in the panel and looking down on the girl cowering in the foreground.  He's facing the reader, looming intimidatingly with his face in shadow.

The next panel we see, at the start of the final issue "Question and Answer," shows Alice standing in a space suit, with Superman down on one knee at eye level with her, much smaller in the frame and shown in profile holding her hands in his.  It is a very comforting image of reassurance.  In just two panels, Up in the Sky manages to show the two aspects of Superman, his great power and his great compassion, and purely through visuals.

The Suit

Superman's iconic blue and red suit, established in his first appearance in Action Comics #1 is said to have been inspired by the garish outfits of circus strongmen of the era.  I can't tell if this is apocryphal as I haven't really found any obviously primary sources that reference it, though, admittedly, I didn't spend a whole lot of time looking.  People on forums repeat it and some mention they saw it in a documentary on Siegel and Shuster, but it's all hearsay.  It doesn't matter that much and it's a very plausible explanation.

In Superman Smashes the Klan, a flashback shows Clark talking to an actual circus strongman that he saved from a rampaging lion.  Clark, in response to the strongman's appreciation of his great strength, expresses fear that people would be scared of him.  The jovial strongman chuckles and replies

I had the same problem! Know how I solved it? A costume.  The more colorful the better!

I really like this idea that the ridiculous outfit is a way to disarm people's fear; he wants people to see him coming.  Plus kids love the bright colors, which I think is a really neat incorporation of the fact that Superman was designed to appeal to children into an in universe character trait.  Same goes for the S symbol on his chest which originally just stood for "Superman" but is usually now a Kryptonian symbol of hope.  It's really cool how all of these new ideas about Superman's character have been extrapolated and reinterpreted from the original character design from 1938.  It's like watching mythology assemble beyond anything the original creators had conceived.

In most origins I've read, the costume was made by Ma Kent from the swaddling blanket she and Pa found with Clark in his ship.  This is often used to give an in universe reason his clothes don't keep burning up on re-entry into the atmosphere or why he's not naked after walking through a fire; the Kryptonian fabric is tougher than most materials on Earth.

And of course Superman does not wear a mask, a rarity among comic book heroes.  In Birthright Clark says "If I want people to trust me, they'll have to be able to see my face."

Secret Identity

In contrast to what some very wrong villains like to say (*cough* cough Bill in Kill Bill cough),  at least in post-Crisis continuity, Clark Kent is the real person and Superman the secret identity.   My favorite moment in the Wonder Woman Rebirth story "And Then There Were Three,"  is when Batman and Superman meet Diana and introduce themselves while holding her Lasso of Truth.   Superman introduces himself as "Clark Kent.  Kal-El."  "Clark Kent" is first; he doesn't even mention Superman.  (Bruce says "Batman" which prompts Clark to chuckle and reply "Seriously?")

How Clark doesn't get immediately recognized as Superman is always a point of critique (and the source of some funny, but some super obvious and tired jokes).  In some older Golden and Silver age stories (which tend to be bonkers) he has super-hypnosis and in the late 70s he had hypno-glasses.

Modern continuities tend to either ignore it completely or convey that the glasses are just a finishing touch.  Clark does everything he can to not stand out, wearing baggy clothing to hide his muscles, adopting a more hunched posture, and speaking softly while pitching his voice up slightly.  The Clark of All-Star Superman takes it in a different direction: he is a clumsy oaf, too big for the spaces he's in.  At its heart, Superman's disguise hinges on people never accepting that this soft spoken, barely there (or klutzy giant) man could possibly be the world's most powerful hero.

Also, because Superman is maskless and accessible to the public, people assume he doesn't have an alter ego.   They subconsciously or consciously don't believe someone as powerful as Superman wouldn't just be that all the time, let alone actually be a mild mannered reporter.  There are some continuities where even the Justice League didn't know he had a day job.

When Clark expresses some worry that Lex, the smartest man on Earth, will see through his disguise in Birthright, Jonathan reassures him, saying "He isn't looking Clark."

I like how American Alien handles the public's lack of discernment.  When Clark's friend Pete visits from Smallville, he asks if Clark has to always keep his glasses on.   Clark says

I take my glasses off all the time.  And you know what everybody tells me? "You look just like Superman!"   

Admittedly, it's kind of insane that anyone who interacts even sort of regularly with both Clark and Superman don't figure it out immediately, but at least in a lot of stories it's really only Lois and Jimmy Olsen that fit that criteria.   But my response to that criticism is, um... :: waves hands frantically ::

In Space Age, Clark's narration discusses an aspect of his secret identity that I haven't seen anywhere else and I think is really interesting.  He says:

I mean, we [superheroes] do come up with all these grandiose justifications. That it's to protect those we love.  As if there's loads of people out there just itching to tick off Superman. But there is one reason to maintain a secret identity they rarely talk about. The one that to me, makes it a fiction worth maintaining. It's the only way you can find people still willing to tell you the truth.

He thinks this while Lois tells him of her first interview with Superman and how disappointing it was. He worries that people can't be their true selves and tell him their actual thoughts in the face of his full power.  This is a really cool idea and I wish more stories used it.

Kryptonite

Superman's main weakness, radioactive fragments of his homeworld known as Kryptonite, was introduced not in the comics but in The Adventures of Superman radio serial in 1943. It was incorporated into the comics in 1949.  Despite the fact that Kryptonite was most likely created as a purely functional plot device to give an invulnerable character a weakness and reveal information about his origin, it's been used in some interesting ways in modern comics.

Darwyn Cooke's Kryptonite is all about a young Superman unsure of his limits and contending with his own mortality.  Early on he says "I appear to be invulnerable.  But am I?"  In one of my favorite passages he says:

They think that I'm fearless.  But each new cataclysm gives me one sharp instant of mortal fear.  Will this kill me?

He, of course, does eventually encounter the one thing that absolutely will kill him and says, in what should now be obviously classic Superman fashion:

Most people would make a deal with the devil to be indestructible. To know they can't be hurt. Chalk it up to my own neurosis but to know I'm mortal... to know I have a weakness… Well, it's a relief. It's given me a more genuine connection to the people I care about. Call it the humility of mortality.

I quite like this, and the idea of a young, untested, Superman who has no idea what his limits are.

Space Age also does something interesting when Superman tells Lois it's his only weakness.  She asks if he should be telling the world this and he replies:

In order to get their hands on Kryptonite, the governments of the world would have to cooperate in putting together a deep-space mission or scavenge every inch of this planet looking for whatever tiny scraps of it they can find.  So I figure that if they are ever willing to go through that much trouble....then I must have done something to deserve it.

"Immigrant from Krypton, Citizen of Metropolis"

In a post Superman (1978) world, Superman is often seen as a Christ figure, but commentators have noted that he may have been conceived as a Moses allegory.  Like Moses he's a baby in a basket sent downriver to save his life and adopted by people not like him and raised as one of them.  (The Egyptians in the Israelite Moses's case.)

With this lens, the story of Superman is an immigrant story.  And he's an undocumented one, at that.  He landed in the USA as a child and his parents clearly forged his paperwork; Clark Kent has a Social Security number, after all.

Clark largely sees himself as a human and the Earth is as much his home as anyone else's.  He is a stakeholder because he lives here.  In Secret Origin he has this exchange with Lex:

Superman

You don't own us.

Lex

"Us" you're not one of them! You don't belong here! You never will.  Why don't you go back to your own world?

Superman

Because I can't, and even if I could, I wouldn't.  This is my home.

Clark's connection to and knowledge of Krypton varies depending on the story, but I tend to prefer a Clark not as connected to it.  One of my favorite moments in American Alien is when Lobo taunts Clark for being the last Kryptonian, a fact Clark did not know, and mocking him for being alone in the universe.  Clark responds with:

No. I'm not alone.  I'm not from Krypton.  I'm from Kansas.

His awareness of his alien origin causes some dislocations and anxiety in the young versions of Clark and his parents, who constantly worry that the government is going to take him away.  Getting over this anxiety is baked into Clark's decision to become, not just a hero, but Superman, a man from another world that is not hiding it anymore.

Superman Smashes the Klan, a story explicitly about assimilation and acceptance, contains this lovely message from his birth parents:

Little one, though we send you to a foreign people, may you find a home with them.  May you find trust and hope and love.  May you be bound together with them, dear son. May your tomorrow and theirs be one.

Amen.

Parents

Jonathan and Martha Kent

I don't have a lot to say about Ma and Pa Kent, but they're good people who did a bang up job raising the most powerful being on Earth.  I would like to highlight two really powerful moments between them and Clark.

The first occurs In Secret Origin, after they reveal Clark's extraterrestrial origins to him and he says "I don't want to be different.  I want to be your son!"  Jon embraces him and replies "You are my son."  A very similar exchange occurs in one of best moments of Man of Steel; the screen writer David Goyer, no doubt drew inspiration from Secret Origin.  He wrote the introduction to the collected edition and in it he references getting asked to help on a Superman film.

The other moment is in Superman Smashes the Klan, after exposure to Kryptonite causes Superman to see visions of his birth parents Lara and Jor-El.  This Superman doesn't want to learn more about who he is and he is in denial about his origins and heritage.  But then the young girl Roberta points out that he's holding back and that not only could he could help more people if he let himself be more fully him, he also shouldn't have to hide who he is.  This leads him to seek out the Kryptonian communication device he threw into a lake as a young boy so he can learn his full history.

Unsure what he is going to learn, he first stops to talk to his parents and they have this exchange:

Superman

I need to know that no matter what happens, no matter what I might find out, nothing changes between us.  Promise me we'll always be a family.

Jonathan

Oh son...we made that promise the moment we laid eyes on you.

Lara and Jor-El

Clark's Kryptonian parents have a wildly varying amount of page time.  Superman consults their holograms in the Fortress of Solitude in some stories and some stories they are not present at all.  Well, "present;" they're usually holograms.  We see them in the flesh in Birthright in the prologue and once at the end in a very emotionally resonant moment, but they do not provide Clark with any direct guidance anywhere in the story.

In my Man of Steel essay I mentioned how much I hate the versions of Jor-El who sent his son to Earth specifically to inspire the people.  As I said, it can be done more or less well, but I dislike it as a story choice for how it can blunt Superman's agency.

Inspires and Inspired

It should be fairly obvious that Superman inspires humanity in his fictional worlds.  Heck, he's a source of inspiration in our non-fictional one.  What is less obvious in pop consciousness is how much Superman himself is inspired by humanity.

One of the most striking depictions of this is in Earth One, when after being temporarily drained of his powers by Parasite, Clark tells his mother:

For the first time in my life, I didn't have my powers, and I felt what you must feel like, what everybody must feel like.  Vulnerable, so vulnerable.  At any moment you could get hit by a car, fall off a subway platform, get mugged.  Death and injury can come in a second.  I knew that intellectually, but until today, I never knew what that felt like.  Everybody thinks I'm some kind of big deal, but losing my powers made me realize what courage humans have just to walk out the front door every day.  How hard that must be and how much the odds are against you.  And I'm in awe.  I'm in such awe of you.  All of you.

And of course there's his repeated mantra of "You're special. I love you. I'm proud of you" over vignettes of his interactions with people in Red and Blue's "Generations" that I mentioned earlier.   His says his final "I love you" from orbit, looking down at the entire earth, and then his final "I'm proud of you" in close up with tears in his eyes and a smile on his face.  He is mourning the loss of Pa in this story, and the world and its people bring him comfort.

This connection to other humans (and as I said above, he does largely see himself as human) is highlighted in his narration from Space Age:

Lois has been my constant reminder that whatever strength fate may have granted me it's nothing compared to the strength I've gotten from the people in my life.  And that whatever else we hope to accomplish in life, no matter how important our ambitions, none are greater than to be worthy of it.

Superman is not only inspired by people; he believes in them too, in their capacity for good, and their ability to help themselves and look out for each other.  This comes up many times in his origin stories.  In Man and Superman he says

I can do many things but I can't protect you from yourselves.  You have to believe in the good.  You have to make sure you don't surrender your freedoms for security.  You can't only hope for a better tomorrow, you have to work for it.  I'll be there to help, but that better world is up to you.

In Secret Origin when the people ask what he wants them to do, he says

I want you to stop looking for a great savior.  Lex Luthor isn't it. I'm not it.  You are.  All of you are. I do what I do because I was given a gift.  But all of you were given gifts, too. Use them to make each others' lives better.

This speech also highlights his egalitarian nature; he doesn't see himself as better than the regular folk.  His gifts are some among many others that humans possess.  I also absolutely love his plea to humanity at the end of Peace on Earth:

I ask everyone to share what they have with those who need it.  Their knowledge.  Their time.  Their generosity.  Especially with the young, for on them rests our future...and all hope of a true peace on Earth.

I think that this plea includes knowledge and time is really lovely, and shows that he sees that people have valuable things to offer beyond just their material resources, and thus even people without many things they can hand out, still have much to share.

In Grant Morrison's JLA Superman neatly articulates what he sees a heroes function as in the grand scope of history:

Superman

I can only tell you what I believe, Diana.  Humankind has to be allowed to climb to its own destiny.  We can't carry them there.

Flash:

What's the point?  Why should they need us at all?

Superman

To catch them if they fall

And, in Superman's universe anyway, it's often working.  I particularly like this exchange in Red and Blue's "A Man Once Saved" when the titular character, Dr. Miles says of Superman:

We've had lunch like four times.  He never gets to finish it, but he always tries.  That's what's changed my life, you know.  Superman always tries and if I'm only here 'cause of him, then when life gets hard, when I get afraid... All I know how to do is what Superman would do.  I try."

Superman as Hope

Superman is an antidote to despair.  In my Batman v Superman essay, I quoted the scene in   American Alien where a young Dick Grayson say to Clark, regarding Batman:

It's a smart move to become a fairy tale monster to scare crooks, but I don't know if it's ultimately a good idea. ...he's all fear.  It's been show that -- like, dogs and whatever -- they don't always respond to fear to train them... sometimes they just get meaner.  So I think Batman needs a counterpoint... Darkness needs light.  Fear needs hope.

Clark clearly takes that idea to heart.  As long as Superman is, there is hope.  Alice, the terrified young girl kidnapped into space and imprisoned in Tom King's masterful Up in the Sky, tells herself

I know I'm so far away, and everything's going so bad, and no one's coming to save me.  No one can save me. ... But... But Superman.  But Superman.  But Superman.

Up in the Sky is both the 12 Labors of Hercules and the Parable of the Lost Sheep as Superman leaves Earth to track down one missing girl across the vastness of the universe.  Against all odds he finds her, and foils the plot of the Controller, the alien intelligence who took her.  The Controller thought she was a girl no one would miss, that no one cared about.  He did not account for the fact that Superman cares about everyone will leave no lost sheep behind if he has the power to save them.  To the defeated Controller's callous "No one cares about her! She is worthless!" Superman simply replies "No, sir. She is not."

Superman found a way, even when all seemed lost.

Superman is aware of how this type of hope for the impossible sounds. In Space Age he says in narration:

My mind kept coming back to that trolley problem.  If you could save five people by sacrificing one, should you do it?  To me, the answer seems to be no.  You should try to save them all. Because even if you fail and end up sending five people to their deaths, you remain the kind of person who will do whatever it takes to save six. The kind of person who refuses to play god, even though you have the power to.  And in the end, that's what saves the most lives.  I suppose that in the Space Age, in our era of game theory and cold mathematical analysis, operating on that kind of optimism might seem naive.  Hokey even.  But when all seems lost, when the cynical and corrupt are fully in charge, isn't that when you need optimists the most?

There's an interesting, if odd, Superman and Green Lantern comic called Legend of the Green Flame that, as the exception-that-proves-the-rule, shows how intrinsic hope is to Superman.

In this story, by comic book shenanigans, the heroes end up getting teleported to literal Hell.  Facing the scope of the place, Superman thinks:

The tears in my eyes cannot blur my vision.  I hear the crying, the screaming, the whimpers of pain and loneliness, the bellows and the squeals and the shrieks.  ... Millions? Millions of millions?  Even I have lost count.  From all corners I smell the skin burning, dripping, the blood and urine, the smell of hate and fear and despair.  X-ray eyes perceive the black grubs burrowing in human skin; I see people drowning in ice and fire; I see them eviscerated and destroyed and forever lost; I see them.  It's all I can see.  All. I. Can. See

The scale of the despair overwhelms him; he weeps and becomes insensate, finally confronting enough suffering to shut even him down. 

This version of Hell is in debt to Dante's Inferno, where the gates of Hell are inscribed with "Abandon all Hope Ye Who Enter Here." And this story is what happens to Superman when he is faced with that total, utter abandonment.

Later after they escape he says to Green Lantern:

The people, Hal... All those people... I didn't know how to... help them.  And you know what made it worse?  ... I knew they didn't want me to help them.  They were there because they wanted to be.  They were creating that place themselves.

This is what it takes to shut Superman down: The only place in the Universe with absolutely no hope at all.   I think that speaks to his resilience in the face of normal Earthly suffering.  Most of us shut down in despair after looking at the news for 20 minutes.  For Superman it took Hell.

(This conception of people who are in hell because, ultimately, they choose to be is very standard medieval Catholic theology and is present throughout Dante's Inferno.)

Superman v Cynicism

Superman is an antidote to cynicism as well as despair.

"What's So Funny About Truth, Justice, and the American Way?" from Action Comics #775 is primarily concerned with whether Superman can exist in a new, jaded world.  In this story, which came out in 2001 after a decade of edgy, blood-soaked (and shallow) superheroes flooded the comics market, a new band of hyper violent vigilantes calling themselves The Elite make the case that Superman is obsolete and that the world has moved on from his naive brand of optimism.

Superman is initially anxious that the world he believes in is a sentimental fantasy saying to Lois:

I heard a child tell his friend that he wanted to be in The Elite - because it would be fun to kill bad guys.  Fun to kill.  People have to know there's another way, Lois.  They have to hear a voice of compassion and faith instead of spite and anger.  They have to see that someone believes in humanity...

The Elite assures him that their way is the future because the villains they kill don't get back up and because of Superman's principles, the villains he stops will just get out into the world again.  He responds

Then I'll stop them again.  And again, and again if I have to - until they get the message. And I'll do it without melting anyone into slag for kicks.

His struggle may not stop, but to him it's worth it.  He does not accept the Elite's pessimistic view of the world and of humanity.  After crushing the Elite in a brutal (and short) televised battle where he initially appeared to have killed them, he tells their leader:

[Humanity] did see, didn't they?  They saw all the ugliness, the anger and I bet it frightened them.  It frightened me.  When I decided to cross the line, [to] do what you do... I was terrified.  Thought it would be tough but you know what?  Anger is easy.  Hate is easy. Vengeance and spite are easy.  Lucky for you I don't like my heroes ugly and mean.

Superman refuses to believe the world can't be better, that it is so broken it can't be fixed or that the answer is to break it further.

As he says to the leader of the Elite:

Dreams save us.  Dreams lift us up and transform us.  And on my soul, I swear until my dream of a world where dignity, honor, and justice becomes the reality we all share - I'll never stop fighting.  Ever.

Lois Lane

Towards the end of Birthright, Lois Lane (presciently for something written in 2003) lays out the pervasive cynicism Superman has to overcome:

You can't show up nowadays and be a super-friend.  We are a skeptical lot.  Government. Advertising. God help me, the media. These things manipulate us 24/7, and worse, we know it, we claim to fight it, but most of us don't have the energy to struggle every moment of every day.  Wear us down enough and the lesson we eventually take to heart is the it's easier and safer to be cynical than it is to trust someone.

As a star reporter, Lois is steeped in this kind of cynicism and that is what makes her a good foil for Superman.

In stories about Superman's first emergence into the public eye, she often wants to believe in him and wants to be proven wrong about how crappy she suspects humanity is at heart.  But where she is starting from, vis a vis Superman, is on different part of the spectrum depending on the story.

One one hand you have something like Birthright, where she has been looking into his pre-Superman exploits and has already decided he's what the world needs to see.  On their first meeting during a city wide assault by "malfunctioning" attack drones, she hands him her card and says "Sky! Copter! Artillery! Danger! Go go go.  We'll talk later."   He flies away with an amazed "She's not afraid."

The Lois in Superman For All Seasons, is more wary, worried he's too good to be true:

He flies. He can see through walls. He can lift up cars or bounce bullets off his chest or do just about anything he wants to.  And that's the part that gets me. He can do anything he wants to... and he decides to do what?  Be a hero? Why? We live in a world where nobody sticks their neck out for anybody. I write about it all day long, We lie to each other. We brutalize each other We kill each other. And here's this... this... man. Sticking his neck out for everyone.  Way, way out...

The Lois of Space Age is even more skeptical about Superman's efficacy as an agent of change, though not about his personal intentions:

Don't get me wrong, I think you're great.  But thousands of people died of starvation and disease during the time it took me to say that I think you're great.  I feel that, in the end, the world doesn't need saint so much as it needs changing.  That if we're ever goin to turn things around, it's going to take more than just one guy in fireproof underwear.

I like that all these Loises together, with different doses of faith, act as a stand in for all of humanity's various starting points when faced with Superman.  Lois is kind of synecdoche for all people: the already convinced, the hopeful but wary, the long term skeptic, and the sure-there's-got-to-be-a-trick-here.  She's the tip of the spear in his quest to inspire people out of their pessimism.  If Superman can convince Lois?  The rest of the world is definitely in play,

Lois, of course, is an ace reporter, though she frequently can't spell for shit, a quirk that I think started in Superman (1978) film, but has trickled into the comics now, too.  She takes her job and her responsibility seriously, as she says in Space Age: "I feel like I already have a job saving the world."

She's smart, tenacious, and she does not like bullies.  The first we see her in Birthright, she is defending Jimmy Olsen from the abuse of Mr. Galloway, the publisher of The Daily Planet and a colossal prick.  (Clark's response is to utter under his breath "I...I think I'm in love."  Which shows a dynamic I appreciate in early career Superman; he falls in love with Lois because he knows her as Clark.)

This fearlessness and willingness to stand up to the powerful is what makes her a great reporter and an appealing heroic figure in her own right.  In American Alien while Clark is recovering from his bruising climactic fight with Lobo, Lois asks him why he was running towards the battle to get a story.  (She doesn't know he's Superman yet in this story.)  He says

Isn't that exactly what you did? I was trying to be like you.   You're the bravest person I've ever met.

This is sincere; she thinks this is Clark talking about finding the courage to get a story, but it's Superman talking about finding the courage to face down a powerful alien in order to protect people.  Lois is a role model for the greatest hero on Earth.

Lois is very much a person who may not seem all that nice, but is extremely kind and empathetic. In one of my favorite panels in Up in the Sky, after fielding a call about a boy who fell off a roof while playing Superman, there's just a close up shot of her laying her hand gently over Clark's and saying "Clark....something's happened."  She knows not only that something awful happened, but also that Clark will take it hard and she begins with this small measure of comfort.

In another sweet moment in Up in the Sky, Superman answers Alice's questions about a time he was scared by telling her about asking Lois out the first time.  He says "She was smart and kind and I really liked her."  (Also, it's a nice touch that her primary appeal to Superman was her intelligence and her goodness.)

Unsurprisingly for a clever and articulate character, Lois also gets some funny lines.  One of my favorites is from Space Age after Superman reveals to her in an interview what his mortal weakness is (i.e the passage I quote above.)  She says "That's the first interview I ever conducted that included murder instructions."

Lex Luthor

If Lois is the persuadable cynic, Lex Luthor's hubris and envy make him the unpersuadable one.

Lex is of the best and most iconic villains in comic books, if not fiction in general.   He's a fantastic character foil for Superman, at least in his post Silver Age incarnation as a billionaire industrialist rather than a scheming mad scientist.  He's the problem you can't punch.  He's powerful, petty, vindictive, and borderline obsessed with destroying Superman.

His origin varies a bit.  For example, sometimes he knew Clark in Smallville, sometimes he didn't.  (Writer Mark Waid seems to like the former idea; both Birthright and The Last Days of Lex Luthor handle it very similarly.)  But what doesn't really change is Lex's arrogance, dismissiveness, and jealousy.

When we do see younger version of Lex in Smallville, he's a loner and an outcast, isolated by being possibly the smartest man on Earth.  Clark sees a potential kindred spirit in the gifted Lex but, though he tries, he never makes much progress in actually bonding.  Well, Clark bonds, but Lex does not reciprocate.

Lex believes he needs no one and achieved everything he has completely on his own which, to be fair, has a lot of truth to it.  This leads him to resent the power Superman has and the affection that Superman gets; he sees it as unearned and an unfair affront to his own story.  In The Last Days of Lex Luthor, Lex says this to Superman:

Order me around.  Order the poor, puny human around!  How dare you pretend you didn't stand in my way every day of my life?  Belittling me just by existing?  What could I have been if not for you?

He is not interested in learning that anyone else may have wrestled with their gifts the way he did and is quick to be insulted by anything that makes him feel less than superior no matter, or maybe even especially, if it's well intentioned.

Lex also lacks the empathy to understand that Superman is liked because people respond to the way he engages with and values them.  He truly doesn't think he's better than anyone else.

Lex on the other hand, says stuff like this:

People aren't important, not as a whole.  Everyone runs around like they've got a big S on their chest for 'Special," but the actual gift of genius, of work ethic, or aspiration, is rarer than a white tiger. That's why you see people throughout history rising above the masses.  Those are the changers.  Those are the doers.  You are not important.  You're not.  I am.

Ironically he's saying this to Clark in American Alien.  Bless your heart, Lex.

His reasons for disliking of Superman can be kind of a moving target, and he'll latch on to any reason to justify his disdain.  In Last Son of Krypton, he articulates nothing about Superman's unearned greatness, but emphasizes his alien nature:

They need someone to wake them up. They need someone to show them they can reach the stars without you flying them up there.  They need someone human to inspire them. … You leap over tall buildings.  You outrun speeding bullets.  You juggle locomotives.  How does the inspire anybody to be a better human being?

Lex thinks people do need to be inspired but he can't bear that the vessel for that inspiration is not him and he shows a fundamental misinterpretation of Superman's values and effect.  In the world of the comics, Superman obviously does inspire people to be better.  But Lex cannot accept that.

Out of Continuity Evolution - The Last Days of Lex Luthor

The Last Days of Lex Luthor actually does have Lex evolve in his views on Superman and one of the triggering conversations is one he has with Wonder Woman.  Wrapped in her Lasso of Truth, he reveals how he thinks Superman sees humanity:

I'm dying.  Meanwhile, for all we know the Kryptonian is immortal.  Eager to keep looking down at us humans with Godly disdain until the end of time.

This is the absolute truth for Lex, in this story anyway, as the Lasso does not allow any deception.  Wonder Woman assures him that he is projecting and describes Superman's view of humanity in terms very similar to Clark's speech about being in "awe" of humans in Earth One.

She adds:

You're made of tissue paper, and yet you can do anything.  He doesn't see you as inferior.  If anything, he marvels at your bravery.  You're his heroes.

Lex accuses her of lying, but she smiles and reveals she is wrapped in the Lasso as well.  This is the start of Lex's slow coming around on Superman, even if he still dislikes him.  Towards the end in a confrontation with the actual villain of the story who has drained Superman's powers, Lex says:

Making Superman just another human, then.  That's hardly 'destroying' him.

He may not have even consciously realize the perspective shift that statement reveals.  Superman is not made into a "human" but "just another human," a subtle tell that he's accepted Superman's humanity, and the acknowledgment that taking away Superman's powers doesn't actually make him not Superman shows he now believes Superman's egalitarianism to be genuine.

(This Lex, who has an honest to God evolution regarding his arch-nemesis is not the standard Lex and I believe it is an out of continuity standalone story.  I quite like it.)

Against the System

Superman's powers are immense but not limitless.  He's still one man and he finds himself facing impersonal injustices and running afoul of human behavior, incentives, and selfishness.  None of which are things he can punch.

Peace on Earth deals with Superman's limits when dealing with global systemic issues, in this case hunger.  He announces a new goal to deliver food to starving people all around the world over the course of a day. Volunteers load shipping containers with extra grain and he will fly them to those in need.  Superman knows he cannot possibly fix something like world hunger by himself; his goal was to try, to set an example and perhaps inspire governments to take more action.

It does not work.

The day starts out promising enough, but the first crack occurs when a little girl asks if he will be coming back with more food tomorrow.  He doesn't answer.  Desperate people nearly riot at one of the drops.  A warlord threatens to execute the villagers Superman is trying to deliver the food to if he lands.  He calls the bluff and defeats the warlord's men, but the question the little girl asked is implicitly asked again: What about tomorrow?

He says:

And so the day wears on.  Everywhere I see hunger and poverty, some a result of circumstance; too often it's the product of man's cruelty to man.

Governments around the world order him not to enter their airspace; one country fires a missile at him.  He's unhurt, of course, but the grain is destroyed.  He has failed:

I hear the voices of those I've helped praising me for trying.  I see headlines commenting on the effects, good and bad, of my mission.  Most of all, I feel the disappointment of millions who look skyward, yet know in their hearts I won't be coming. ... I tried to relieve world hunger, but I encountered heartbreaking poverty, not only in the slums and wastelands of the world but within selfish men's souls.

These types of stories are perfect for a hero like Superman because not only are they more complex and thornier than a punch fight with Lobo, they are also driven by the cynicism, adverse incentives, and dehumanization which human nature enables, and those thing all directly fight against Superman's ideological goals of hope and inspiration.  They are the tide he's constantly swimming against.  This is why I think Lex's brand of bureaucratic evil makes him an interesting opponent for Superman.

Other Villains

"Kneel Before Zod"

Owing to his presence as the primary antagonist of two Superman films (Superman II (1980) and Man of Steel), General Zod is probably Superman's best known villain who is not Lex Luthor. He was created in 1961 by Robert Bernstein and George Papp.

He's a Kryptonian who was imprisoned in the Phantom Zone but often escapes to wreak havoc.  He has the same powers as Superman, making him a potentially interesting counterweight to the Man of Steel.  He has Superman's power without his morality.

He's also one of the reasons I hate how people keep trying to make Superman-turns-evil stories happen.  We already have evil Superman; it's Zod.

"I expect gratitude, not defiance. - Brainiac

Created by Otto Binder and Al Plastino in 1958, the hyper intelligent Brainiac is, due to his absence from any widely release films, not as well known as Lex or Zod, but I think I like him more than the latter.

He has been reworked and retconned throughout the years, starting as an alien, then becoming a skeletal robot, then taking over the consciousness of psychic carnival huckster Milton Fine (?), and then back to being an artificial intelligence robot covered with the appearance of a biological organism.  (He is also the origin of the English word "brainiac," obviously a portmanteau of "brain" and "maniac."  Real subtle, guys.)

Superman says of him "Of all my enemies, there is only one whose ruthlessness genuinely terrifies me."  Anyone who can terrify Superman has the capability of being a great villain.  In modern incarnations he travels the universe looking for new cultures to steal and integrate into his own intelligence.  He does this by using technology to shrink cities as samples which he then keeps in his ship.  (In Geoff Johns's Brainiac arc, he then destroys the civilization he stole the city from.)   This is how the Bottle City of Kandor, a Kryptonian city that has made its way into Superman's Fortress of Solitude, came to be.

Both Mark Waid and Geoff Johns have written really compelling and frightening versions of Brainiac and both authors have made him, despite his humanoid appearance, very alien and almost beyond human concepts of good and evil.  He is also a genuine physical match for Superman.  He exists to collect and sometimes perfect what he takes.  He occasionally seems to genuinely not understand why anyone would resist the inevitable, saying "I am giving purpose to those without" and "I expect gratitude, not defiance."  (I don't want to obviously spoil which book this is from as he's the surprise antagonist.)

Space Age has an interesting version of Brainiac, whose is collecting civilizations not to horde knowledge but to gather them from across the multiverse to make a last stand against a reality destroying threat.  He's very similar in character to the other Brainiacs, he's just made the calculation that this is the best way to ensure the survival of the multiverse he lives in.

I hope he's in more mainstream media soon.  (And I suspect he will be, given what has come out about the DCU's Superman (2025) sequel.  In two years I'll make an edit to say if I was right or wrong).

"I'm so hungry" - Parasite

Parasite, introduced in 1966 and created by Jim Shooter, is probably the last even remotely well known Superman villain other than Bizarro, and he lags pretty far behind the others I've discussed.  He is most often Rudy Jones, a man who was changed into Parasite in an accident involving radioactive comic book shenanigans.  He has the ability to drain powers from whoever he touches and temporarily take them on himself, as well as absorbing memories, which gives him a fighting chance against Superman.  In the comics I've read, he's mostly an obstacle, a secondary villain in a larger story, but he can be used as more, as shown in the fantastic 2020 animated film Man of Tomorrow, where he is the primary antagonist.

In addition to having a power set that can challenge Superman, I like that he is his metaphorical opposite: Superman gives as much as he can.  Parasite only takes.

There are a few other villains that jump to my mind, like Metallo the aforementioned Bizarro, but I don't have very much to say about either.

Top Book Recommendations

Birthright

This is my favorite origin story.  Charles Yu's artwork is excellent; the scenes of pre-Superman Clark flying above the zebras in Africa then soaring into the air with with incredible joy on his face are such great visual characterization for Clark.  This is my favorite version of Clark as well and it captures all the things I love about Superman.  If you read one origin story, make it this one.

Up in the Sky

This might be the best Superman story on the list.  As I said above, it's a galaxy hopping adventure that's a bit the 12 Labors of Hercules and a lot the Parable of the Lost Sheep.  Like most Superman in space stories it's often quite odd, but the story is deeply rooted in character.  We see Superman feel guilty, doubting himself, angry, impatient, annoyed, and yet persevering.  And there's more than one very emotional moment and an incredibly satisfying ending.  There's lot's of Superman hugging people in this, and that's a very good thing.  This book is everything great about Superman.

Superman Smashes the Klan

This was my biggest surprise as it's relatively new and I hadn't really seen anything about it.  I knew about the radio serial it's based on (and hews pretty closely to) so I was intrigued.  I love this book.  The art by Gurihiru (Avatar: The Last Airbender) is interesting and feels appropriate for the 1940s setting.  I am still kind of shocked at the prescience of the radio serial to have the head of the Klan be a grifter who doesn't actually care about the cause because when it comes to hate, there's money to be made.

Superman for All Seasons

I really like that in this book we see Superman through four different POVs, Jonathan, Lois, Lex, and Lana Lang.  You are not likely to find a review of this book that doesn't mention the art, specifically the gorgeous work of colorist Bjarne Hansen.  I like the panels of Clark alone in his childhood room or in his Metropolis apartment.  What is he thinking?  Is he listening to everything around him?  The answers are up to the reader and I think that's great.

American Alien

This anthology series is up there with Birthright for me as an origin stories go.  I heard about it after reading an AVClub review by Oliver Sava, who writes that "It’s memorable because it gets at the heart of what has made the character one of the world’s popular heroes."   Each issue has a different artist and a very different art style.  And I like how in the final fight with Lobo, Superman is drawn more lanky than hulking and looks unsure of himself.  This is a great book and a great window into Superman as a character.  As for the writer...maybe get this one from the library.

Space Age

This is another relatively new one and it's quite different than the rest as it follows Superman through the decades and explores how his presence in the 1950s would change the course of the Cold War and the world.  There's great character stuff in here, and most surprisingly to me, it has perhaps my favorite version of Batman.

Brief Thoughts on the Some of the Other Books

Man and Superman

This is this close to making my top recommendations.  It has a more grounded climax than Birthright, and there are scenes I really like like Clark hanging out with his janitorial coworkers at a baseball game.  I also like how crappy Metropolis is and really like the scene where Clark is sitting in his shitty apartment listening to the all the many ill's around him.

Kryptonite

Another near miss for the top list.  I really liked Superman wondering about and working through his own mortality.  The 40's noir style art is also very cool, and despite being drawn by Tim Sale, looks a lot like Darwyne Cooke's own art in Batman: Ego and Parker.  Unfortunately this one was a little hard to scare up, which is a shame because it's really good.

The Last Days of Lex Luthor

I very much like this book. It only doesn't make the top list because it's more of a Lex Luthor story than a Superman one, though it does give some interesting insights into the Man of Steel and I really like how it examines the two men's relationship.  I also really like Brian Hitch's art.  Probably safe to say Mark Waid is my overall favorite Superman writer.

All-Star Superman

Not having All-Star Superman in my top six is probably heretical.  I do like it I'm just not sure it's the best entry point for a new reader.  It is really weird in a way that is pretty awesome if you're into big weird Superman stories, but might be a turn off for someone getting their feet wet.

Earth One

I really, really like this story, but I wouldn't suggest it as an introduction to the character.  Unlike Batman: Earth One, which wobbles a little in Volume 2 and kind of goes of the rails in Volume 3, I thought this entire run was strong.  As I alluded to above, I very much like how the version justified the changes to the character and made them the starting point for an arc rather than just changing status quos because it would be neat.  I also liked this alternate version of General Zod quite a bit.

Superman Red and Blue

Red and Blue is a good collection and, though I'd say Wonder Woman: Black and Gold is probably better on the whole, it has some incredible stories in it.  Highlights for me are "Generations," "De-escalation," "The Lesson," and "Ally."

Red Son

I've seen a lot of praise for this book as one of the best Superman stories, but I didn't like it all that much.  It isn't bad, but it gave me Wonder Woman New 52 vibes, as in it's a cool plot that doesn't seem really thought out much past the awesome premise.  It doesn't really use the setup change to reveal anything about Superman and it had so much potential to be deep an interesting.  There's definitely some stuff that feels like it was put in because it sounds kind of awesome, but then isn't really explored.  Your mileage may vary; it is a cool idea.

Kingdom Come

This is a great and mournful story in its own right, but Alex Ross's art is worth the price of admission alone.  It's all painted from reference models and the posing and colors are marvelous.  Incidentally, Ross also has an interesting YouTube channel where he shows his process.  Kingdom Come feels appropriately apocalyptic and I think the framing narrative with Norman McCay as the point of view character along with the "angel" Spectre is brilliant.

Peace on Earth

Another one with art by Ross.  Also a great story, if a bit of a bummer.  This is easiest to find as part of The World's Greatest Super-Heroes collection, which also includes standalone stories by Paul Dini and Ross about Wonder Woman, Batman, Shazam, and the Justice League.

Secret Origin

This is another one that I've seen people say is the definitive Superman origin story. I think it's good but there's a few things I'm ambivalent about.  I don't really like the Superboy stuff, where he gets pulled into the 31st Century and cuts his teeth being a hero with the Legion of Superheroes.  This would have been a hard sell to me anyway, but it also felt a little incongruous with the rest of the book.

Also, while I generally like Gary Frank's art just fine, his Superboy is kind of unsettling as it just sort of looks like an adult head on a child's body.  There's something off about it.  I do really like that adult Clark and Lois look like Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder though.  It's a nice homage.  For me I guess it's mostly that it suffers in comparison to Birthright, Man and Superman, and American Alien.

Last Son of Krypton (i.e. Last Son / Brainiac)

This came close to making the "Almost made the cut" tier on the strength of the Brainiac story in the back half of the book, which I think is brilliant.  The Last Son storyline of the first half is a fine story, but it's more of an adventure punch-em up so I personally found it less compelling than the Brainiac story, but that's just a taste thing. Brainiac's art is also by Gary Frank, and again Lois and Clark look like Kidder and Reeve.

Last Son also has one of my favorite exchanges in any Superman comic, when Clark and Lois are talking to a Kryptonian boy that crashed to earth that they named Christopher:

Christopher

Who's Batman?

Lois

Someone you're not meeting until you're sixteen.

Clark

No one's better at clandestine paperwork than Batman.  He set up Wonder Woman with a secret identity that fooled the department of meta-human affairs.

Christopher

Who's Wonder Woman?

Lois

Someone you're not allowed to meet until you're eighteen.

Camelot Falls

This collection is deep in continuity, but onboards the reader just fine.  (Superman has been away and is recovering his powers.)  There's some good Supermanning and I like a lot of his inner monolog and how it really shows what his day to day as Superman looks like.  It also sets up a really interesting conflict with a sorcerer who knows the future, but I have read in several places that the next volume that concludes the story falls on its face.  Hard.  So I didn't bother reading the end of the overarching plot.  Camelot Falls is self-contained enough and was a satisfying read with really cool art.

Gallimaufry

• I love Superman answering Alice's questions in the final issue of Up in the Sky.  "Is Mr. Terrific smarter than Batman?"  "He says he's not."  "And you believe him?"  "I do not." lol

• The entire confrontation with Lobo in American Alien is gold.  The entire world is watching (and listening) when the have this exchange:

Lobo

How shocked do you think the population of earth is gonna be to see me beatin' your bloody teeth down your fraggin' throat?"

Superman

",,, Probably not as shocked as they'll be when I take that fancy bike of yours and shove it up your [ass]"

The panel cuts away before he actually says "ass" but you see the reaction of everyone who heard it.  Lobo is pissed, Ma and Pa a little shocked, Lois seems worried about Superman taunting a dangerous alien.  And Lex Luthor just barks out a "Ha!"

• Something I think is interesting about Superman is that he's interesting whether he's the point of view character or not.  A lot of stories have internal narration by him (e.g. Space Age, Man and Superman), some have him as the POV character without his internal monolog (Birthright, Brainiac), and in some he's not even the POV character (Superman for All Seasons, Kingdom Come, several stories Red and Blue.)    I like that there's really good stories in all three categories; not all characters can accommodate this.   For example, I generally think the Punisher becomes less interesting the more you are in his head.

• What's going to happen when Superman becomes public domain in 15 years or so?

• Some comics YouTube channels I like are ComicPop, Owen Likes Comics, Matt Draper, NerdSync, Troyoboyo17.

Conclusion

So that was a bunch of what I like about Superman and I hope someone who made it this far might be inspired to pick up one of his books.  I think there's something great about the good man who gets to just be a good man and help lift everyone up.  And though I hate when it comes from Jor-El, I like the idea that Superman gives

the people of Earth an ideal to strive towards. They will race behind [him], they will stumble, they will fall. But in time, they will join [him] in the sun ... (from Man of Steel)

Tom King, in an interview with ComicPop, said of Superman:

Some characters are like that where you need to Dark Knight Returns them… Look for ways to tear those characters down and rebuild them into their wonderfulness…There are some characters that the best way to make them good is to let them be themselves. .. I think that’s true of the Superman family of characters.  ...  It’s not about deconstruction it’s about reconstruction.

Superman is good.  And he will help us.  Why?  To quote Batman in Up in the Sky, it's because "we were in need. And he's Superman."  And I love that.

I am compelled by Superman's humanity more so than his powers.  To quote him from James Gunn's Superman (2025):

I'm as human as anyone. I love, I get scared. I wake up every morning and despite not knowing what to do, I put one foot in front of the other and I try to make the best choices I can. I screw up all the time, but that is being human and that's my greatest strength.  And someday, I hope, for the sake of the world, you understand that it's yours too.

Any superhero who can say that is all good by me.

I hope after Gunn's well received film after a long drought in the public eye and a year that desperately could use some inspiration, 2025 will be the year people will start liking baseball again.

May we find trust and hope and love.  May we be bound together. May our tomorrows be one.

-m