We each know the story. Dying world. Desperate Parents. Last Hope. Kindly Couple. These four things together created a character more powerful than any fictional character in American history. Superman. For 80 years Superman has graced the page, screen, and even radio teaching us many lessons through almost mythical battles but as those years continued, the world has begun to forget who and what Superman is and turn to darker heroes during darker times. That when things get tough, and things go wrong, we need to accept this darkness and abandon Hope, but this is never the case with the character of Superman. No matter the situation, no matter the circumstance, no matter the foe, Superman will always be there standing tall and with a hand extended outward. This is just a quick think piece on the character of Superman and why he’s so important to us.
In issue #10 of Grant Morrison’s All-Star Superman, Superman takes a young and scared girl, at the edge of a building ready to throw herself off, into his arms and tells the young girl. “You’re much stronger than you think you are. Trust me.”, These words no matter the situation or how dark life is for us genuinely show us that we are all stronger than we see ourselves. These words alone reveal why we need a figure like Superman in pop culture. A character who no matter what challenges they face, stands tall and never wavers. Another example of how inspirational the figure of Superman can be seen in the story “Whatever Happened to Truth, Justice, and the American Way?”
In the story, a group known as The Elite arrive posing as heroes but dealing with criminals brutally and incredibly heartless, even going so far as publicly execute the villain Atomic Skull without a second thought. After showing his real strength and giving the world a view of what a heartless and brutal Superman would be like, he stops and gives the villain Manchester Black this speech after being told that he lives in a dream world. The hero says, “You know what, Black? I wouldn’t have it any other way. Dreams save us, dreams lift us and transform us. On my soul, I swear, that until my dream of a world where dignity, honor, and justice become a reality we all share. I’ll never stop fighting. Ever.”
In a world where we are always divided and set up against one another, we need a figure like Superman. A man that is so powerful that by the age of 10, he could lift a truck over his head. However, instead of using that power to rule the world, he went to college, he got a job, fell in love, and helped people. Not because he was destined too or forced to, but because it is the right thing to do. Is that so wrong? What happened to help thy neighbor or to help someone not out of the hopes of something in return but because it’s the right thing to do. Superman isn’t driven by vengeance like The Dark Knight or some mythological destiny ala Wonder Woman, but he instead was a man with abilities that he decided to use and help people. He truly is an übermensch in every sense of the word, a superior man from the future powerful enough to surpass Christianity with his own moral values and beliefs, a man who seeks to do good purely for the sake of doing good.
It is also because of this, that his greatest antagonist is truly Lex Luthor. Lex is nothing but a mortal man, a man who truly embodies everything wrong with humanity and how we go about acting to one another. Lex is cruel, manipulative, sadistic, and worst of all selfish. In All-Star Superman, Lex Luthor has been beaten once again by the Last Son of Krypton and confesses that if it weren’t for Superman, he’d saved the world. Clark then says to Lex, “That if you really wanted to save the world Lex, you would’ve done so years ago.”
Lex is a man obsessed with his image and refuses to imagine someone that is better than him, he spent over eighty years of comic books in trying to drag the Man of Steel out of the sky and into the ground purely because he is a better man than him and he knows it. So why Superman? Why have I spent this long talking about an alien who flies around in a blue and red costume? Well, it’s because of how the world now views Superman. Whenever I travel to my local comic shop, I find myself amazed by just how much American Society today is obsessed with Batman. Everywhere I go, kids and adults are all drawn and attached to the Dark Knight of Gotham and say that Superman is a character that can no longer work today with the world we live in. We now live in a world that is constantly hopeless, a world where we can no longer trust the very news that is presented to us through our televisions, a world where you can be attacked and even killed for your political stance. In a world so dark and so depressed, why can’t we look up and aspire to be like Superman? True his values may seem dated, even being made fun of in the 1970’s Richard Donner Superman film, but they can still be looked up too and respected.
“I fight for truth, justice, and the American Way.”, These are the words that I hear when I think of Superman and what he stands for. To end this discussion, I want to once again bring up a quote from Grant Morrison’s All-Star Superman Vol.2 as it is the quintessential Superman piece of writing.
“You have given them an ideal to aspire to, embodied their highest aspirations. They will race, and stumble, and fall and crawl, and curse, and finally. They will join you in the sun Kal-El. They will stumble, they will fall. But in time, they will join you in the sun.”
Thank you for your time.