Or get his hair cut?
He has a deep mystical awareness of every single follicle on his body. Our yellow sun gives him the power to retract each hair independently of the others.
In the comics, he uses his heat vision and a mirror and just burns the hair off.
Have the comics ever addressed the issue of Superman’s sexual prowess? Size and performance.
I have an old comic in which he bounces his heat vision off of a mirror to shave in the morning. I’m guessing the haircut thing would work the same way, though the back might be messy.
Dunno about the Smallville series. Heat vision is still new to the boy. Dunno what he’s been doing all these years.
Hmph! Mr. Blue simultpost beat me by two minutes. shakes fist Curses! Foiled again!
Yes, search for a copy of “Man of steel, woman of tissue paper” by Larry Niven.
Good question. When I was a kid back in the 60’s I remember something about Clark Kent’s eyeglass lenses being made out of the windshield of the spaceship that brought Kal-El to Earth from Krypton. Also, Mrs. Kent made his first uniform out of the blanket he had been wrapped in. The reasoning was that anything from Krypton was “super” once it was in Earth’s atmosphere.
Perhaps he fashioned a razor from the wreckage?
“Woman of Kleenex,” actually.
All of this is according to my husband, who used to work over at DC, so I am pretty sure this is correct:
First off, the essay is “Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex”. Deals with questions like how can Superman have sex with a mortal woman, wouldn’t his sperm shoot thru her at super speeds and hurt her? Fascinating stuff.
Pre “crisis” (the restart of the story in the 1980s) his hair did not grow. If he was in a situation where he lost his powers (near kryptonite, under a red sun) his hair would grow normally.
Post “crisis” he says yes, he uses the heat vision to burn off his facial hair. The mirror is actually a piece of his space craft (a normal the mirror would melt). For his hair he used two mirrors.
I read an issue once, many years ago, where just about everything was explained- and quite well, I thought.
He uses his heatvision… but an ordinary mirror would melt. So he uses a curved, reflective piece of the ship he arrived in. It was explained that it took him a while to get the process down.
Since the time he tried to use his heatvision as CK, and it melted his glasses, he also used the ship material to make his new (heat-resistant) glasses.
Now here’s the neat thing, in my opinion:
On the journey to Earth, as an infant, he was taught all sorts of Kryptonian science. How was he taught, since he was an infant? Telepathically- he was sort of force-taught by the ship. The antenna for this telepathic process was the windshield…
Which explains, according to that issue, why nobody ever recognizes ol’ Clark as Superman when he’s got the glasses on: he’s constantly subconsciously thinking “I’m not Superman, I’m not Superman”… and the glasses are broadcasting that to everyone around him.
Hey, it’s as good an explanation as anything else.
Well? You just gonna toss that out there and not follow up?
Depends on what you mean by “pre-Crisis”, Righteous. Back in the 50s and 60s, he used his heat vision, usually bounced off a mirror, to burn off his own hair and beard. The first story in which this trick was used was a plot gimmick – Lois Lane thought she could prove Clark was Superman by sneaking up behind him and trying to cut his hair. Clark, aware of what she was doing, did the heat vision trick, so Lois thought she had cut Clark’s hair (not aware that he had just burned it off right where the scissors hit it), and was confounded.
In the 50s and 60s, as someone else noted, everything from Krypton gained super-strength, the baby blankets were somehow sewn together by Ma Kent into his uniform, etc.
They apparently changed it all in the 70s and 80s, and then redid the whole kit and caboodle for the post-Crisis revamp.
Considering that Superman’s hair can withstand being at ground zero of a nuclear blast, or a swim in the sun’s corona, can you imagine how hot his bathroom must get when he burns it off?
“Clark, have you seen my-”
“LOIS, DON’T COME IN!!!”
“Cla… ARRRRRGGGGGG!!!”
I remember a pre-Crisis story in which his beard grew while he was sick with Kryptonian “Blood-morel” fungus infection. When it was all over, he burned his beard off by bouncing heat vision off an ordinary car mirror.
RE: Superman’s sexual prowess
Reminds me of an old joke (middle school?) - Apparently, Supe and Lois finally do the deed, and one of Lois’ friends is asking, “Well, is he more powerful than a locomotive?”
and a dejected Lois replies
“More like faster than a speeding bullet.”
You got it wrong. I believe Mr. Niven’s exact words were “gut her like a trout”. Plus a discussion of the Cherenkhov flashes which would be produced by the resulting super-sperm as they zipped through Metropolis at relativistic speed.
Man, that’s funny… and yet, somewhat disturbing.
The story can be found in the collection All The Myriad Ways. The book also contains equally fascinating(and funny) essays on faster-than-light travel and time travel, along with some great short stories.
Another way the Supercuts thing was used as a plot point was when Superboy loses his memory somehow (big surprise). When he visits the barber, the barber’s scissors break unceremoniously and demonstrate his powers (his, Superboy’s, not the barber’s). I can’t remember when I read this comic but it seems as if it must have been a fairly old-style four-color drawing in my mind’s eye: maybe late '70s or early '80s.