Superman is a character that has become synonymous with the term “superhero.” The creation of Superman in 1933 by Jeremy Siegel and Joe Shuster created something never seen before in art or literature, and heralded a new age of creation in America, with other countries following in the wake that rippled after him. When Superman was bought by Action Comics, later becoming Detective Comics in 1938, the game was changed.
Kal-El, the son of Krypton, was a character different from any that had come previously. He was at once both a mild-mannered, polite, gentle man, he was also an all-powerful alien possessing vast strength and kindness. Growing up on Earth as Clark Kent, the son of simple farmers, was a story of the American dream, with Clark’s journey from ignorant baby to a near-godlike hero producing a genre that became the comic books with which we are all familiar today.
All of this is an incredible feat, but it comes with its own problems, too.
Superman is, for lack of a better term, a Golden Boy. He’s physically perfect, he has only two weaknesses, he has super strength and speed, he can fly, and he can see through walls. Whether or not he ages depends entirely upon the writer, once he takes on the mantle of hero. The only powers he doesn’t have seem to be that he can’t handle magic, and irradiated parts of his old home world make him vulnerable and mortal again.
As a writer, I hate Superman. His perfection, his limitless ability to defy any plan to stop him, and his propensity for letting it all go to his head are all hallmarks of a flat character. Superman is weak to Kryptonite and magic. In the older comics, any time someone found ways to stop Superman, suddenly he’d get a new superpower.
This made it so the only risks Superman ever actually faces in his entire life, as a hero and a man, are those of an emotional variety, i.e. his inability to be with Lois Lane as Clark Kent until much later in his history, or his pride.
Having a character that can do no wrong and can face any threat is boring. It’s cheap storytelling. It means that no matter who fights, who dies and who lives, you always know that Superman wins. I hate Superman because he takes the challenge and emotional investment away from the readers and makes everything too easy to predict.
This year, Batman will once again fight Superman, and once again instead of Supes finally losing, they’ll just become partners to fight someone else. "Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice" promises at least one thing. You’ll get quite a spectacle as DC tries to show that their plots won’t sacrifice narrative quality for gritty one-liners and the power of sick fight scenes to get around Superman having to actually pay his due.
It’s a tired narrative, and it’s been happening since 1938. As comic book fans, we should get a character worthy of our own intelligence. We deserve a character who doesn’t cheapen a plot where our favorite heroes get killed or injured or changed into something darker. We deserve it, because a character like Superman always bounces back, and in the real world, when we bounce back, we change. Superman doesn’t.
Sure, his outfit might change, but in the end, all that’s different for Superman is who he gets to beat up next.
