Lower Decks

When it comes to superheroes, there may be any number who can claim to be the most popular at any given moment, but none are more famous than Superman. Without the Man of Steel, there would inarguably be no comic books today. Yet you’d be hard-pressed to find a fictional character get less respect for what he’s due. This is prime HYGOTS material…

The complaint is recent times has been pretty loud and pretty incessant: Superman, when you get right down to it, is pretty boring. What do you do with the man who can do anything? It’s actually a fairly old argument at this point. When John Byrne rebooted the character almost twenty-five years ago, he stripped away most of what the critics were complaining about without resorting to the rainbow forms of the familiar poison kryptonite that had gotten out of control in previous eras, which in any given color could knock the Big Blue Boy Scout out of commission (no real need to explain much more of that here), emphasizing the man behind the Last Son of Krypton and honing his abilities down to the basics: flight, invulnerability, heat- and x-ray vision, and that freeze-breath thing.

Actually, I guess I’m not really the person to try and explain any of that, because I’ve never really understood it. I think of it more of a problem for either readers or the creators. Comics are filled with characters who are more powerful (heck, even Batman has on many occasions been described as having or depicted with the ability to defeat even Superman in battle, and he’s merely supposed to be the quintessential human superhero), some described outright as gods (some borrowed straight from familiar myth, others original creations), others various combinations of omnipotent or simply omniscient. But Superman being Superman, he’s, yeah, the most famous, so you don’t exactly have to be familiar with obscure characters or nerdy allegiances to know, as basic as they come, that Superman is synonymous with the concept of superheroes, embodies everything you could think about. The most recent TV show to feature him has spent nine seasons almost exclusively devoted to the edict “no flights, no tights,” preferring to keep Clark Kent firmly rooted in his ‘Smallville,’ very human roots, the same way the last TV attempt, ‘Lois & Clark,’ focused almost exclusively on his love life. The last time a movie was made, ‘Superman Returns’ alienated audiences by refusing, again, to embody what they thought they should expect, the superhero engaged in manly slugfests with his enemies.

Anyone, I would argue, who says there’s only one way to approach Superman, lest it be predictable and boring, has to have been actively ignoring what’s been done with the character for a very long time now. Since Byrne’s reboot, there hasn’t been a single period where Superman has been approached in a “predictable and boring” light. This was the era that saw the Man of Steel fall in combat against the monster Doomsday, introduced (in two attempts) General Zod into comics continuity, execute two foes, even in recent months relinquish the famous costume to try and moderate a community of his own people, succeeding little better in being the perfect example for Kryptonians than he has with humans, either fictionally or for the real world.

Superman’s problem is that he’s always been a very good idea, one might say almost too good, unbelievable. His biggest problem is trying to maintain his secret identity (which itself has been compromised on a number of occasions, at one point even by his former “pal” Jimmy Olsen), which is easy to ridicule, because it basically involves a pair of glasses and play-acting (nerds aren’t really so bad these days, nor are glasses particularly relevant in the contact lenses/corrective surgery age). He becomes almost an instant piece of nostalgia, something that was probably really awesome for a given era, but maybe not so relevant anymore. What does he have to say now that Spider-Man (“great responsibility”), Iron Man (the military-industrial issue), the X-Men (social fears), or Batman (vigilante justice) don’t better address, on a scale that’s actually relatable? The dude’s an admitted alien. How much more self-symbolic do you really need to get?

But as I said, I find that to be a lot of nonsense. So much of what we think of today in regards to Superman seems to be an apology it’s easy to forget that he was relevant in the first place because he didn’t just embody the superhero, but heroes in general, what it used to be easy to admire, what the Vietnam War did a good job of obscuring for generations. Maybe it’s because no creator has ever really addressed what a modern Superman might mean, what a modern origin story might encompass, it’s easy to continue dismissing him as increasingly irrelevant.

That’s not to say no one has done anything worth following. On the contrary, there’s been some real revelatory work done. I’ve already mentioned ‘Superman Returns,’ which at the very least addressed, in a context that was at once familiar (continuing the same general continuity from at least the first two Christopher Reeve films) and also more widely expansive. When Superman tries to explain himself to a suddenly skeptical Lois Lane, he remarks that his super-hearing allows him to hear just about everything, which means he hears every time someone asks for a miracle. He’s not God (despite a number of messianic images used during the film), but he’s assumed the responsibility that everyone’s always expecting, praying for. That’s why I always loved the movie, because it dared to look beyond the expected, to give audiences a glimpse of what a modern Superman might actually represent.

In the ‘All Star Superman’ comic, Grant Morrison took it one step further. While the majority of creators have in recent years attempted to downplay the ways Clark Kent is Kryptonian (something, ironically, ‘Smallville’ spent a good deal of time in its middle seasons torturing the character with), displaying only his powers as what sets him apart, Morrison instead reflected on how similar he really is to his archenemy, Lex Luthor, who in various incarnations has generally been depicted either as a ruthless businessman or genius scientist (sometimes both at the same time, but rarely, like trying to reconcile how he ever ends up in that green and purple battle suit). Discovering that he’s come away from one of his adventures with a terminal condition, Superman decides to focus his attention and abilities doing all the things Luthor has apparently refused to do with the interloping do-gooder flying around Metropolis: using the assets of the Fortress of Solitude and his own mind to help mankind in ways his powers never truly could. The point of it being, Superman is not just another superhero, he’s a Kryptonian who has more than just powers that set him apart, but in fact a rich legacy and evolved civilization to draw on, even if he’s never been a part of it (keeping in mind this was before Geoff Johns rescued the Bottle City of Kandor from the clutches of Brainiac and eventually gave birth to New Krypton, a saga Greg Rucka and James Robinson are still continuing; for further details, sample ‘War of the Supermen’ on Free Comic Book Day this May).

Superman isn’t just a symbol, either of the superheroic ideal or of certain idyllic values, but a man capable of greats things, tempered by an incredible (and incredibly famous) origin, but who continually struggles to do what he can, no matter what that means. Cynically, even the best creators sometimes pervert what that means (see: Frank Miller’s ‘The Dark Knight Returns;’ more cleverly in “Elseworlds” stories like ‘Superman: Red Son’). It’s not about how difficult it “is” to tell a compelling story featuring a character who can do “anything,” but taking that character, his backstory, the heritage that has built up over the decades, and looking at the possibilities. It’s not really that hard. It’s certainly become increasingly popular to take just about every alternative look at superheroes that there is (from ‘The Boys,’ which takes cynicism to an arguably offensive at best extreme, to comics like ‘Irredeemable’ or ‘The Mighty,’ which look at ways a Superman might be corrupted), but it’s more impossible than necessary to truly look at the Man of Steel and only see a character who has not interesting angle to exploit. That’s not what a good creator sees, and not what a discerning reader should be thinking.

There’s hardly a superhero yet created with more raw potential, who’s been knocked off more times, than Superman. I would argue that’s the real stumbling block he continues to embody, the sheer intimidation of a character who continues to loom large, both over comics and our culture. There’s so many ways to approach him, he really has become a new kind of myth, all by himself. If an alien were to rocket into our modern world, look like us, be raised by us, and end up championing us, wouldn’t you at the very least hope he were exactly like Superman? Always trying to do the right thing? He never begs, never grovels, never tries to cut deals that benefit only a few. The worst he’s ever done is make his home in only one place (well, two, technically). But that’s only because he can make it work. A lot of creators like to think he does it because he wants to inspire us, and that’s a pretty good message. At the very least, in the comics, he’s done plenty of inspiring. But in the end, Superman is still only one man. I think that’s what really defines him. Four men once tried to replace him. None of them, not even all of them, could.