IMHO, Clark Kent took that job back in the 50’s because that’s the place that usually got information about world events and crisis first. The newsroom would hear about the tidal wave in Iceland before Clark could, so he’d get the information in the newsroom, then rush off to fix it. Nowadays, he’d just be able to have a Twitter subscription to hear about world events.
Him having a job was also to keep himself grounded, and be in touch with the common man. If all you are doing is flying about, saving people, you would soon lose touch with what is going on.
And yes, money is never an issue - LOTS of pirate gold out there, just waiting to be recovered from the Marianas trench.
How about the collateral damage of all those fights?
“You Honor, if “superman” had just left well enough alone, that supervillain in the armored exoskeleton would have just robbed the bank, and left. Instead, “superman” grabbed him and threw him through 5 city blocks worth of buildings, directly causing the complete destruction of over 200 homes and businesses!”
The Superman Homepage notes that the phone booth change rarely happened over the first forty years of Superman’s existence, and ultimately stems from the 1941 Fleischer cartoons.
Oh, dear! And I see that I have more serious spelling issues than I thought. Nice page, that is something to get lost in. Don’t know when I’ll be back.
This was addressed in the first Christopher Reeve movie - a quick visual gag in which Clark seems to do a double-take at a phone “booth” (just a phone on a pole, with some sort of barrier on either side of the phone). I don’t recall what he did instead.
As far as right to work in the US, that’s a good question. He’s a foundling who was basically dropped off at the Kent’s doorstep. Wouldn’t such a baby be picked up by Child Protective Services as abandoned, and placed in a foster home situation? The Kent’s wouldn’t have been preapproved as foster parents, and even though they might well request to be the baby’s foster parents, there’s no guarantee of it. Clark Kent might well have turned out to be George Jones.
I expect, though, that there’d be some kind of assumption of legality once he was formally adopted, by someone.
Clark Kent ran to a building’s revolving door (no one else in it of course), the door started spinning faster than the eye could follow, and Superman emerged.
When John Byrne retconned the franchise in the mid-1980s, he had Jor-El and Lara launch a rocket containing an embryo. The fetus gestated during the spaceflight, and the baby technically wasn’t “born” until after the ship landed in Kansas.
He then had the Kent farm get socked in by a blizzard for a couple of months, so when they rejoined civilization, they could claim that the baby was theirs without arousing suspicion. So the neighbors and the authorities never knew that Clarke was not theirs.
Personally, I think it’s more fun to think of the Kents wrestling with the CPS bureaucracy.
In some versions of the story, they just passed him off as their own (there was a coveniently-timed harsh winter with little visiting, that masked Martha’s lack of pregnancy). In other versions, they dutifully took him to the local orphanage and requested to adopt him, and were approved through the normal paperwork process. They wouldn’t be guaranteed to be approved, but in the event, they were approved.
X-Ray Vision + Superspeed makes it possible for him to span the whole globe in an eyeblink. After the initial “because I said so” recall, having the holdouts suddenly missing their guns (maybe replaced with a little card that says “In Future, Do As You’re Told!”) would do wonders to keep people in line. That, plus he can also close down all the factories.
In an Injustice-type world, of course he could do the same but with less of the leaving-a-card, more of the popping-your-head-off type vibe.
Unless they didn’t want to be, like Team Captain America in “Civil War”. I suspect Superman would prefer to not work under any government or corporation.
Superman would also have to hope modern facial recognition software is as stymied by eyeglasses as Lois Lane is.
There’s actually an undercurrent of that in the new Superman and Lois TV show. Superman is willing to work with the US government, but he makes it clear that he doesn’t take orders from them.
