Under the Influence: Superman

 

"That man won't quit as long as he can still draw a breath. None of my teammates will. Me? I've got a different problem.

I feel like I live in a world made of cardboard, always taking constant care not to break something. To break someone. Never allowing myself to lose control, even for a moment, or someone could die.

But you can take it, can't you, big man? What we have here is a rare opportunity for me to cut loose, and show you just how powerful I really am!"

     The Man of Tomorrow. The Last Son of Krypton. The Man of Steel. Kal-El.

SUPERMAN.

The archetype of the modern legends we call superheroes, Superman was the brainchild of Jerry Seigel and Joe Schuster, who went through several evolutions of the character (the first "Superman" was a villain with mental powers, then another was a baby from the far future) before settling on the now-familiar origin of the last child of a dying world, rocketed to Earth to be raised by the Kents, and eventually taking up the job of fighting crime with his vastly superior powers.

Those powers, along with the character, evolved over time to some extent. One of his most iconic powers – flight – was not originally part of his arsenal, and his other powers were not nearly so extreme as they would later become; instead, Superman could "jump an eighth of a mile", his skin couldn't be pierced by anything less than an artillery shell, he could run as fast as an automobile, and lift and throw things like cars.

He was also originally a less restrained and considered individual, a vigilante with sometimes rough ways of dealing with what he viewed as injustices. Even then, however, he sought to deal with both individual and larger social injustices, and was generally not as grim as his rough contemporary Batman.

But it didn't take too long from his debut in 1938 for him to start to evolve, first to the "faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound" version, and then with the Fleischer animated shorts gaining the power of flight. As time went on, his physical capabilities vastly increased – and fairly swiftly reached the general iconic levels of effective invulnerability, nigh-unstoppable strength, and almost unlimited speed, with ancillary powers like heat vision.

His personality also quickly shifted, in part due to a directive by a new editor in 1940 that instituted some specific requirements and limits on what the heroes in their books would be allowed to do. From this, Superman quickly evolved into the icon of "Truth, Justice and the American Way" that he has generally been viewed as for the last seventy years.

Today, Superman is the superhero. Even though other superheroes have managed greater success on the silver screen, especially in recent years, and his book sales have varied, there is absolutely no other superhero that has his level of instant recognition, and very, very few that have as generally untarnished a reputation. Even attempts to deconstruct him tend to either end up Reconstructing him and accepting him as he is, or they tend to fail to work because the basic zeitgeist of Superman is, like the character, too strong to seriously damage for long.

While I didn't come directly to Superman fandom for quite a while, I could not escape knowing of Superman, even in a relatively sheltered upbringing that didn't even involve comic books until I was in my teens – and for a lot of that I was reading more Marvel than DC. Despite this, Superman still managed to become an icon for me, probably because there was literally almost no way for a superhero to define themselves without some comparison with Superman being drawn by somebody.

Still, over the years I have read quite a few of Superman's Silver-Age adventures in various collections, and in the 1980s I followed Superman fairly closely, including the famous reboot by John Byrne which tried to reverse the ludicrous power inflation of the Silver Age, and succeeded for a while; that version is also famous for publicizing the concept of "tactile telekinesis" as an explanation for various oddities of comic-book superstrength, such as the fact that even if you are strong enough to lift a building, the building should just come apart if you're just grabbing it with two hand-sized grippers. Tactile telekinesis meant that it was a subconscious psionic power which was doing the actual lifting, and it only worked on things Superman touched. The idea itself wasn't new – among others, my own gaming group had been using that explanation since about 1980, for example – but this was the first large-scale use of the concept.

In all of the versions, however, and with – comparatively speaking – very, very few exceptions, Superman presented one of the most truly heroic personalities of any character in fiction. His closest competitor in that area is Captain America, who is spiritually his equivalent in the Marvelverse. Not, of course, in power – there are a number of other characters who are basically Marvel-Versions of Superman in powers, such as Hyperion and Gladiator – but in the fact that each of them is their respective universe's moral compass. Are you arguing a moral point with Superman? You're probably wrong, and the fact you're arguing with Superman is one of the key pieces of evidence.

This has always, of course, been one of the points of contention for those arguing about Superman as a character in the sense of one for telling stories about. Not only is Superman one of the most powerful and nigh-indestructible beings in all fiction, his moral stance is about as nigh-invulnerable as well. If you're writing the generally-accepted version of Superman, you're dealing with a man who is simultaneously humble and also absolutely certain of his moral compass. He isn't an arrogant bastard trying to force his way of life upon you – just a man who will demonstrate his beliefs by absolute, unswerving obedience to those beliefs.

The morality that he follows isn't a simplistic "Superheroes are good, so he's got to be goodest" either; it's a natural outgrowth of the character's design and development. Superman was born during one of the great civil rights awakenings, and so even in the 1940s was championing the cause of the common people against the general ills of society. He was found and raised by a farmer and his wife, the most "salt of the earth" of all professions, especially in that era. His small town background and then travel to the big city, combined with his hidden but very real separation from humanity allowed him a feeling of personal responsibility for those around him, and the ability to have a perspective that covered an entire civilization.

The combination, however, makes it extraordinarily difficult to tell stories about his adventures that have excitement or tension. By his physical nature, Superman is very, very hard to threaten. Even the effects of his few known weaknesses vary in strength, and never seem to be able to manage anything like the lethality of a bullet to an ordinary human. At the same time, he is also about as difficult to threaten morally or emotionally. Superman is a stable person, with absolute faith in the basic morality he was taught. He will never have crises of right and wrong under any ordinary circumstances; his personality may grow slowly, but he can't be tested morally in the same way less certain characters might be.

Of course, stories are written around him and have been for many decades. Many of them, though, point up the problems of writing with Superman as a character; often he simply appears to be in trouble until he finally decides to do something, and then with a handwave and some expository dialogue he sweeps aside the formerly insoluble problem, defeats the seemingly unstoppable foe, end of issue.

To address this people have tried various approaches. Some have tried to examine a Superman raised differently, or one with a slightly more flexible – or inflexible – moral code, or one with less overwhelming power. These approaches all run into the same problem, to wit, that in one way or another they simply don't fit the general perception of Superman. They may be good as individual examinations of the character or alternative universes, but as main-continuity Superman they don't work. This can be true even of works which simply try to put Superman in positions where he has difficulty applying his principles fully. This is really the major problem with works such as Man of Steel. As I wrote in my review, from my point of view, Superman/Kal-El in Man of Steel really did do about the best that he could, and in his worst situations simply didn't have any choice but to take the course he did – a course which was not nearly optimal, but was the best possible choice left open to him. The problem was that from the point of view of many fans, Superman simply should never be put in that position; he should, as TVTropes would put it, always be able to Take A Third Option.

Addressing these problems is one reason that one of Superman's longest-running adversaries in all continuities has been Lex Luthor, pitting the power, alien strength, and simple country morality of Superman against the power of a human intellect with a big-city industrial morality. Well done, these conflicts force Superman to evaluate his effects on the world from a different perspective, or at least allow the reader to ask different questions as to Superman's position in and responsibility to the world, without forcing Superman to compromise or betray his morality, nor physically having to weaken him to the point that he is no longer the character we expect.

I admit that I find it sometimes bemusing to realize that the image of Superman is so strong in me, despite not having been nearly as heavily "into" Superman as I was into other comics such as The Mighty Thor or The Spectacular Spider-Man. I've read a lot less of Superman than those, or even several other, titles. Yet…

Yet…

He's SUPERMAN. His presence defined the modern comic book. He continues to define "superhero" in a way that quite literally no other character has, or can. And he is, and remains, one of the greatest icons of hero in modern mythology.

And in that sense… it is not surprising at all that I cannot think of him without a chill of awe. His influence on me extends to the most basic level of hero; if I create a character who is supposed to be a real hero, a representative of Good versus Evil, somewhere in the back of my mind a part of me will be asking "Would Superman approve of her/him?".

And I always have to hope that the answer would be "yes".