With the exception of Wolverine, I think you could charge that every superhero could do more. I mean, I guess you could exempt the Samaritan, but I don’t think you could fairly bring him up because he’s off in his own little property. Spider-Man could work out a deal with someone rich if people didn’t have such a hard-on for a cash-strapped Spider-Man; the X-Men could give a crap about the rest of the world instead of whining about how everyone’s racist against them; the New Avengers could stop sitting around in safehouses watching t.v.; the Dark Avengers . . . well, they’re doing pretty good; Bruce Banner could actually try to control the Hulk or SCIENCE! his way out of it (c’mon – fucking super math so he never kills anyone and he can’t cure the Hulk?); Green Lanterns still have the ultimate deus ex machina; Batman could expand the Bat-family and train folks; and so on, and so forth.

Danger’s the same way. Spider-Man fucking beat the Juggernaut on his own. The Juggernaut. A dude who whoops on the Hulk and ALL of the X-Men at once. The Hulk was super-math’d out of being a threat to everyone who ever got in his way. Death’s a revolving door joke anyway.

I anticipate that being the best line about Superman that I will read all year.

Maybe that’s why I loved First Thunder so much – on finding out what Captain Marvel is, Superman was in a rage. He tracked down the Wizard, and got right to the point. Then he used not his powers, but his reporting skill to track down Billy, get into the situation and solve it.

I guess the bottom line is that I can see your point, but I don’t or haven’t seen it being used in the comics I have read. When it’s actually used it works. Red Son, mentioned up thread is another example of that, but they aren’t the norm.

Of course, there’s also a way easier way around it, which would be alien physiology and the effect of Earth’s sun on a Kryptonian. Do we know what life expectancy for a Kryptonian would be? Especially when jacked up on sunshine?

I’ve always thought the problem is it’s not treated realistically. Superman doesn’t need to eat, right? And is presumably not susceptible to disease? I mean, if scientists could figure out what makes that tick, and how, we just solved world hunger and the AIDS crisis.

Obviously, there are good Kal-El stories.

Mostly Superman hits things. He could shorten fights (and cut collateral damage) considerably if he wasn’t so dedicated to a punch things ’til they fall strategy. His first reaction to any fight is to go in with his fists, and he only bothers to do something else if that doesn’t work. It makes him seem…kinda lazy. Intellectually, at least. Like he’s got more important things to think about while he and his current fight buddy knock out twenty blocks of apartments and offices. Like he’s not just boring, as strawman fanboy charges, but actually bored.

He also almost always falls for kryptonite traps, and again, it seems like it must be because he’s rather unconcerned with it all. By now he’s got to know that a good 30% of Krypton has fallen on Earth, and the bits that Batman isn’t keeping in reserve to kill him with are all in the hands of his enemies. Yet he so often rushes in without looking first, when a simple application of vision and hearing powers, combined with the intelligence he’s supposed to have, would let him turn things around before he’s at the writhing on the floor in agony stage.

If it goes into the commode, it’ll vanish with the next “Final Crisis, We Promise This Time” event.

Turning to Prankster’s comment:

Apparently Neil Gaiman gave Sandman nigh-omnipotence precisely because he thought the arguments about Superman being uninteresting “because he’s so powerful” were a load of tosh.

But if you read “The Sandman,” that story had a beginning, a middle, and an end. And the Sandman, for all of his power, had rules he had to follow, and ultimately, turn to his advantage (kind of. Or “kindly” of, if you get my drift). He had an epic cast that didn’t do dumb things like rob banks even though they had enough tech/money to not need to rob banks. I could also add that this was a comic where the readership could go for pages without an action shot, which isn’t how to sell a Superman book, unfortunately (though I do wish they’d try once in a while, but with a dynamite dialogue writer).

And a side note about Lex Luthor and Norman Osborne, since they’re the same type of character (a mastermind with resources and power, but no metahuman abilities): I’m all for flawed, evil geniuses. But I really hate it when time after time their perfect plan’s “flaw” is that they don a suit of armor or hire an easily-traceable contract killer (usually with superpowers) to do in an old arch-nemesis, rather than finding a clever way of being a threat that the hero must overcome, perhaps without being able to send the villain to jail.

Of course, this is a less immediate risk than life and limb, to which I can only say that I can’t really hold it against Superman that he’s invulnerable, as though it somewhat decreases what he accomplishes. He could, after all, choose to do *nothing*, but he doesn’t. Given that it would be much more lucrative to scale back his powers in public and become Clark Kent, highest-paid professional athlete in history (or, frankly, just take over the world), it’s pretty swell that he decides to devote much of his free time to helping people for no reward.

But, ultimately, if that does not satisfy That Guy or Lister Sage, then I have run out of arguments. Short of hypnotizing you into liking Superman or wiring your eyelids open Clockwork Orange-style and forcing you to watch Superman IV over and over again, I’m probably never going to convince you that Superman is a rad character, and I shall respect that. Fundamental opinions are fundamental opinions.

So I will affect my best Brian Blessed voice (which is, in fact, the same as my worst Brian Blessed voice) and say “Then we agree to disagree! Let us retire to separate alehouses content that no blood was shed in this civil disagreement!”

Mr Zyduck’s reply to my contention that yes, his challenges are pschological and social, I assert no, those are the hooks to get us to care about what he faces. And unfortunately for the character, they don’t hook everyone very well. It’s a matter of tast I suppose, but no, I really don’t have enough invested in Supes to really care if he saves everyone. Or if that affects him. If it does, I really haven’t seen it in the books I have read.

If those are his challenges, then honestly the comics themselves should be far less underants-over-tights wearing flying cross city brawls and more … I dunno. Archie? Mary Worth? I just doin’t see any investment of the character that way. Granted I rarely read Supes…

To Mr Entrekin I say nay nay. It’s not death or disfigurement I’m looking for. It’s risk. It’s outting something on the line- your self, your reputation, your freedom, your well-being. It’s an intrinsic investment on the art of the hero that he could, indeed lose in a palpable, real, personal, immediate way. We know the hero won’t. Or at least it won’t last, but the bet is on the table, understood and accepted. So we root for the “goodie” as we identify with the risks taken.

Superman doesn’t risk, unless it’s by proxy – his survivor guilt driving him to save others, or worse by extention- his family, friends or loved ones. So I end up asking do I really want to root for a guy willing to do this? I can’t answer yes. I really can’t.

It’s not about death. Superman neither has to die nor be in danger. If Superman is our protagonist, he must simply want something, and the dramatic tension comes from whether he can get it.

So what does Superman want? A better cape? More money? Fame and fortune?

Obviously not.

He wants to save everyone.

Can he?

Obviously not.

And there’s all the tension required.

No matter what Superman does, no entity he encounters will ever be stronger or better or more powerful than he is, but still, no matter what Superman does, he will never be able to do enough. Not in his own mind. There will always be another person to save, another fire to tame, another . . .

This is why “Superman Returns” failed so utterly. Not only did it start giving Superman something more to care about and forcing him to address previous shortcomings, but it also introduced a slightly more realistic element into the story. Luthor got off because Superman didn’t show up to court. How brilliant is that?

And then they make Luthor a real estate mogul who wants a Kryptonite continent, which is mind-crushingly dumb.

For Superman to work, he needs to encounter his own weakness, which is not about how much he can lift and how far he can fly but rather that he can’t do everything. Tension in Superman would rather come from whether what is good for one person is good for everyone. Can Superman deal with bureaucracy? Alex Ross’ “Superman: Peace on Earth” made a reach toward such an epic story, and it came off rather powerfully for what it was, especially in that the villains were dictators and despots, climate and natural disasters, and not a hunk of rock.