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Does Superman continue to grow older? Or is he immortal, forever locked in his current age appearance? I ask because I saw an image of Superman who had white in his hair and definitely looking much older.
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If Superman does age, what happens to his powers? Do they cap out eventually? Does he continue to store up more and more energy from a yellow sun and become proportionally more and more powerful?
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I’ve also been watching the first season of JLA (from Cartoon network) and Superman seems to get knocked out a lot or bound in a way (no kyptonite) that he can’t escape without help. Would Superman eventually die if he continued to get pounded on again and again from those forces that knock him out?
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Can Superman die? I know that there was a series in which he supposively died, but wasn’t actually.
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And concerning Zod. How is it that he is so powerful? Is there a yellow sun in the Phantom Zone that he absorbs energy from? If not, what is the source of his power?
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As a lucrative fictional character, no, but within the reality of the story, of course. He grew from childhood to the age his is now, there’s no reason that he wouldn’t continue aging.
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…dunno
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Of course. He’s merely a super man. He’s mortal, it just takes alot of effort to kill him - more effort than he’s usually ever faced with.
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See above.
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I don’t know who that is, which leads me to mention that I’m no type of Superman expert whatsoever. The only Superman I’ve read was a couple of the 30’s comic book stories and a recent prose novel (set in the 30’s) called It’s Superman
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Depends on whom you ask, but yeah, he shows signs of age, if not mortality.
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This is unclear.
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Yes. Sufficient force could kill him.
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Yes. Without kryptonite, it takes a lot, but he can be killed. In theory…
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Artistic license.
The current answer is whatever the writers feel like happening will happen.
The long-term answer is exactly the same.
The writers have changed their minds about the answers over and over with the years. This will also continue.
Please don’t tell me I’m not playing the game properly. There isn’t another set of answers to these particular questions.
- As someone said above, since he grew up from Superbaby, he should continue to get older. On the other hand, in The Dark Knight Returns, which was for a brief period canon, he “caps out” at 30-ish looking, permanently boyishly handsome Clark Kent.
- Well, uncertain, but a) he is more powerful now then when he was Superbaby/boy and b) in the Elseworlds series Kingdom Come he does get significantly more powerful as time goes on. According to Lex Luthor, even a kryptonite bomb would do nothing to him, he had become so yellow-sunned. But that was Elseworlds, so make of it what you will.
- Yes. He certainly has met figures who simply beat him till he cried “Uncle” (Doomsday, Cyborg), so there’s no reason to suppose that he isn’t afraid of death.
- One assumes so. I vaguely recall a 1990’s series where Superman was tried by biased judges appointed by Cyborg and senetenced to be killed by- was it being thrown into a sun? Any help?
- Before the Crisis on Infinite Earths, the Earth-2 Superman was visibly older than the “normal”, Earth-1 Superman. That’s probably the white-haired Superman you saw (although Superman in the Kingdom Come miniseries also had gray in his hair).
Just to underscore what’s already said: Superman has been around since the 1930s. He’s been in comic books, newspaper comic strips, movie serials, television shows, movies and a Broadway play. That’s around 80 years, with monthly comic books (often way more than one a month), covering a lot of stories and a lot of plots. And a lot of different writers. So, things change over time as different writers or different situations call for a different perspective. Thus, as Exapno says, “whatever the writers feel like.”
- depends on which version of Zod you mean. But if I may, in the movie Superman II, Superman hurls a nuclear bomb into space where it shatters the Phantom Zone (how convenient) and frees Zod and exposes him and his cohorts to our yellow sun.
Goes to show you how much I know about the mythos. I only knew of one, the one that was banished to the phantom zone by Jor-el (on Krypton). I was hoping that there may be an explaination for his power, like maybe being in the Phantom Zone for so long has caused him to somehow merge with it, changing his physiology enough so that and he can tap in to the strength of anything else caught within the PZ, but no longer be affected by radiation from a sun.
Is Zod even affected by yellow/red light or by kyptonite?
What powers can he have in the Phantom Zone? I thought he just floated around in a grey fog.
On Earth, Zod (or any Kryptonian) has the same physical strengths and weaknesses as Superman. No yellow sun, no powers, and kryptonite would have the same weakening effect.
There are something like 5 or 6 versions of Zod, depending on when in the history of Superman and the DC Universe you are looking, this includes movies and tv.
There have been reboots of the stories, retellings, and of course the all-powerful crossover stories that change many things that have come before, lol.
I’m not particularly well-versed in Superman either, but if you want, check out
Answers.com and look up “General Zod” and also
http://www.monitorduty.com/mdarchives/2005/11/alan_kistlers_p_2.shtml
This guy has a pretty good general history of Zod in his various incarnations.
Inconsistant, but generally, he does age - although, typically, he’s said to age slower than normal people. Some sources (such as John Byrne’s Elseworld Generations) have his rate of aging actually drop as he gets older - so he ages normally into his 20s, looks well preserved through his 30s and 40s, looks remarkably youthful through his 50s and 60s, and so on.
Appearances of visibly older Supermen include the Earth-2 Superman (who’s about 30 years older than the Earth-1 and post-Crisis versions), Kingdom Come and the Kingdom, Generations (where he had long white hair), the first Superman/Batman arc where an older Superman came back to stop S&B from accidentally destroying the Earth (while trying to save it), and several pre-Crisis stories - one where he accidentally aged himself while using a Legion time-bubble to go into the future ending up positively ancient looking, one where he returns to Earth after a long journey in space, and tells the story of what happened to him and Lex Luthor (who had reformed and become his friend again) and has long white hair and a white beard, and no doubt several which I’m not familiar with.
On the other hand, DC 1,000,000 had Superman appearing mostly the same in the 853rd century, due to being super-charged by our yellow sun. (Aside from being golden.)
They are comparitively consistant in his powers getting stronger - and more varied, to a point - as he ages, though. Of those, Earth-2, Kingdome Come, and accidentally aged Earth-1 Superman are all noticably stronger than when they were younger (although Earth-2 was still weaker than the younger Earth-1). Superman in the 853rd century is…well, something else entirely from what he is, now. He never gets weaker as he ages (unless a red sun or gold kryptonite are involved), and is rarely shown to be at the same aproximate level as his younger self when shown using his powers. The S/B future version isn’t shown as any stronger than the modern version, and the friend-of-Lex version doesn’t perform any feats.
It is unclear, though, if Superman of Earth-1 is stronger than Superboy of Earth-1, since their powers are so far out even in Superboy’s time, it’s hard to judge. (The only time Superboy-1 meets a Superman, it’s the much weaker Post-Crisis version.)