# Superman nitpic **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 10, 2013, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superman-nitpic/660665 "2013-06-10T22:34:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2013, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superman-nitpic/660665/1 "2013-06-10T22:34:14Z")
This must be the most ancient of all Superman nitpicks. (I have no idea whether it applies to post-Crisis Superman, my ideas of the character were formed earlier). If Superman gets his superpowers from Earth’s yellow sun, how can he fly through interstellar space with no such stars nearby? ---
**Author:** ![Kamino\_Neko](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kamino_neko/32/34_2.png) [@Kamino\_Neko](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kamino_Neko)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2013, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superman-nitpic/660665/2 "2013-06-10T22:39:20Z")
His cells are batteries. He stores yellow solar energy for significant periods of time - unless he encounters red solar energy, which his cells absorb preferentially. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2013, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superman-nitpic/660665/3 "2013-06-10T22:42:34Z")
Originally, BTW, Superman did **not** get his superpowers from Earth’s yellow sun. From Dave Szondy’s [Tales of Future Past](http://davidszondy.com/future/man/superman.htm): > [@](#): > > Everyone is familiar with the character of Superman, if only as an allusion in political cartoons or figures of speech. Most people know the bare bones of his story; that he’s a visitor from another planet who comes to Earth, where the peculiar conditions make him faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, and able to leap tall buildings at a single bound. > > But what many people don’t know is that the name “Superman” isn’t just an affectation given to a chap with magical powers. When Joe Schuster and Jerry Siegel created Superman back in the 1930s they conceived him as a literally superhuman creature-- and probably as neat an encapsulation of the popular idea of the future of man as there could be. > > Today the back story is that Superman came from the planet Krypton, a world of high gravity and a red sun, and that the low gravity and yellow Sun of Earth endow him with his marvellous powers. But in the original version of the story, Superman’s Krypton was a world where evolution was millions of years more advanced than on Earth and whose inhabitants were possessed of superhuman abilities as a matter of course. The early Superman’s powers didn’t include anything magical such as flying or heat vision. Instead, he was an idealised and exaggerated version of desirable human abilities. He was incredibly strong, fast, impervious to anything short of a direct hit from a tank round, incredibly intelligent, and could see through solid objects because his senses were more developed than those of ordinary mortals. > > Small wonder that one of Superman’s nicknames is “The Man of Tomorrow.” They were originally going to call him “The Man of Later This Afternoon,” but that was regarded as a bit silly. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2013, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superman-nitpic/660665/4 "2013-06-10T22:42:42Z")
He can store up energy for later use, as long as he doesn’t get too close to a red star (which saps the energy back out). You may argue that this is silly, but it has actually been addressed. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2013, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superman-nitpic/660665/5 "2013-06-10T22:43:46Z")
> [@Kamino\_Neko](#): > > His cells are batteries. He stores yellow solar energy for significant periods of time - unless he encounters red solar energy, which his cells absorb preferentially. Is that original canon, or post-Crisis? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2013, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superman-nitpic/660665/6 "2013-06-10T22:45:31Z")
And its “Earth’s low gravity” still a canon-element of his powers or not? I can recall it being mentioned only in the oldest [Golden Age](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheGoldenAgeOfComicBooks) reprints, never in [Silver Age](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheSilverAgeOfComicBooks?from=Main.SilverAge) comics. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2013, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superman-nitpic/660665/7 "2013-06-10T22:48:28Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > He can store up energy for later use, as long as he doesn’t get too close to a red star (which saps the energy back out). > > You may argue that this is silly, but it has actually been addressed. True enough. Also, the Post-Crisis Superman didn’t do much in the way of interstellar flying under his own power anyway. (I don’t know about the New52 version.) And while the Silver/Bronze Age Superman did, it generally seemed that, once a Kryptonian was powered up, s/he’d stay that way until red sun energy sapped his power. I’ve had this private fanwank for a while that someone cosmic – the Guardians of the Universe, maybe, or Darkseid – hinkied with the Kryptonian (and Daxamite) genome millennia ago so that their natural red-sun environment would leave them powerless. > [@BrainGlutton](#): > > And its “Earth’s low gravity” still a canon-element of his powers or not? I can recall it being mentioned only in the oldest [Golden Age](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheGoldenAgeOfComicBooks) reprints, never in [Silver Age](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheSilverAgeOfComicBooks?from=Main.SilverAge) comics. At least as of the Post-Crisis era, they had abandoned the low-gravity element. Again, I haven’t read enough of New52 to know. ---
**Author:** ![Prof.Pepperwinkle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/prof.pepperwinkle/32/13627_2.png) [@Prof.Pepperwinkle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Prof.Pepperwinkle)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2013, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superman-nitpic/660665/8 "2013-06-10T23:25:10Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > True enough. Also, the Post-Crisis Superman didn’t do much in the way of interstellar flying under his own power anyway. (I don’t know about the New52 version.) And while the Silver/Bronze Age Superman did, it generally seemed that, once a Kryptonian was powered up, s/he’d stay that way until red sun energy sapped his power. This is right. One of his powers in the Silver Age was Superindefatigability, he never got tired or used up his energy, and didn’t need to eat, breathe or sleep. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2013, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superman-nitpic/660665/9 "2013-06-10T23:33:35Z")
[Here’s](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Franchise/Superman?from=Main.Superman) some interesting bits of character-development trivia from TVTropes: > [@](#): > > **Characterization Marches On:** Way, way back when Supes was first created, he was far more rough and aggressive than his modern counterpart. While he was never as cold-blooded as the early Batman, the Superman of the 1930s had no problem using his strength to the fullest and never seemed to care that fatalities would presumably occur, although these were seldom shown explicitly on the page. This came to an end late in 1940, and ever since then, Supes has been the Thou Shalt Not Kill boyscout we all know and love. > > \ > > **Early Installment Weirdness:** Superman wasn’t a very nice person in quite a few older stories. In particular, this showed up a lot in Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane and Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen. > ◦ He beat up and/or killed (usually off-panel, but not always) humans quite frequently in his earliest appearances. > ◦ Also, his powers were added over time and his costume was all over the map. He used to wear lace up sandles instead of boots and his chest logo was anything from a basic triangle to a coat of arms. The merchandise was even worse in the early days as they couldn’t even get his color scheme right (sometimes his costume was primarily yellow instead of blue.) > ◾ His arguably most famous power (flying) didn’t even appear until the early 40’s, around the time of the Superman Theatrical Cartoons. Before then, he could only leap tall bounds (the creators used the metaphor of a grasshopper’s relative high jumps). > > \ > > **Evolutionary Levels:** The first Canon explanation for Superman’s powers in Action Comics #1. His unnamed planet was centuries ahead of Earth on the evolutionary scale. Originally, he had been conceived as being the last post-human from the end of time, rather than an alien from another planet. > > \ > > **Psychic Powers:** In the past “Psionic Superman” was one common explanation for Superman’s Required Secondary Powers. He doesn’t have super strength, he just lifts things with his mind and needs to touch them to use it (hence why he doesn’t just rip his “handle” off whenever he carries something), “x-ray” vision is clairvoyance. This is the only ability of his clone in The Death of Superman. > > \ > > **Strong As They Need To Be:** Supes’ strength seems to be all over the place sometimes, writers differentiated it by making scales of power between the other earths, in which the Superman from that universe isn’t as strong as the Superman from the other one; Crisis on Infinite Earths came and mostly made the presence and worth of other earths useless, with this Supes was (in theory) given a consistent power level; still it’s common to see writers making notes about how Superman _can destroy Earth_ with his strongest punch and run at the speed of light, things that only the ridiculously overpowered Silver Age (Pre-Crisis) Superman could do. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2013, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superman-nitpic/660665/10 "2013-06-10T23:33:46Z")
> [@Prof.Pepperwinkle](#): > > This is right. One of his powers in the Silver Age was Superindefatigability, he never got tired or used up his energy, and didn’t need to eat, breathe or sleep. It may be, though, that having been on Earth for about 27 years, Earth-1 Kal had simply soaked up so much energy that it was going to take an extremely long time to burn it all off. He was explicitly [del]more invulnerable[/del] measurably tougher than anybody from the Phantom Zone (immune to Faora’s psychic lightning bolts, at least) because he’d soaked up much more yellow sun radiation than anybody else. Bronze-Age Supes did need to sleep, though. Or, more accurately, he needed to dream every once in a while, even though the rest of him could go indefinitely without rest. ---
**Author:** ![DrFidelius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drfidelius/32/3447_2.png) [@DrFidelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrFidelius)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2013, 1:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superman-nitpic/660665/11 "2013-06-11T01:01:16Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > It may be, though, that having been on Earth for about 27 years, Earth-1 Kal had simply soaked up so much energy that it was going to take an extremely long time to burn it all off. He was explicitly [del]more invulnerable[/del] measurably tougher than anybody from the Phantom Zone (immune to Faora’s psychic lightning bolts, at least) because he’d soaked up much more yellow sun radiation than anybody else. > > Bronze-Age Supes did need to sleep, though. Or, more accurately, he needed to dream every once in a while, even though the rest of him could go indefinitely without rest. Hot damn. I remember reading that one, with the creepy ninja guy trying to assassinate Clark Kent (and some ineffectual space-detective observing). The super-ninja was Kal having a psychotic episode because he had not slept for weeks while working on some super-project. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2013, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superman-nitpic/660665/12 "2013-06-11T01:14:52Z")
BTW, does post-Crisis Superman need food or water or air? Or does the yellow-sun-energy in his cells serve in place of (what I presume are) normal and necessary (even for a Kryptonian) biological processes? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2013, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superman-nitpic/660665/13 "2013-06-11T01:16:39Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > Bronze-Age Supes did need to sleep, though. Or, more accurately, he needed to dream every once in a while, even though the rest of him could go indefinitely without rest. Too bad they didn’t think of that sooner, they could’ve got a lot of corny-comedic Silver Age plots out of Sleepwalking Superman. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2013, 11:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superman-nitpic/660665/14 "2013-06-11T11:22:09Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > Bronze-Age Supes did need to sleep, though. Or, more accurately, he needed to dream every once in a while, even though the rest of him could go indefinitely without rest. IIRC, Bronze-Age Supes had figured out how to sleep with one hemisphere of his brain at a time, like a dolphin. ---
**Author:** ![Prof.Pepperwinkle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/prof.pepperwinkle/32/13627_2.png) [@Prof.Pepperwinkle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Prof.Pepperwinkle)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2013, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superman-nitpic/660665/15 "2013-06-11T15:20:04Z")
This seems like a good place for this article: [Super Weird Facts That You Didn’t Know About Superman.](http://io9.com/super-weird-facts-that-you-probably-didnt-know-about-s-512395429) ---
**Author:** ![BMalion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e274bd/32.png) [@BMalion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BMalion)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2013, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superman-nitpic/660665/16 "2013-06-13T02:30:16Z")
Superman is a dick. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2013, 4:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superman-nitpic/660665/17 "2013-06-13T04:32:55Z")
Here’s a _real_ Superman nitpick. Okay, it’s more of a _Man of Steel_ nitpick, because it’s based on the promotional materials for the movie coming out this month: Where the hell is his spit-curl? Superman without a spit-curl is as implausible as Batman without an Aunt Harriet. ---
**Author:** ![Balance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ccd318/32.png) [@Balance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balance)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2013, 6:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superman-nitpic/660665/18 "2013-06-13T06:09:58Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > I’ve had this private fanwank for a while that someone cosmic – the Guardians of the Universe, maybe, or Darkseid – hinkied with the Kryptonian (and Daxamite) genome millennia ago so that their natural red-sun environment would leave them powerless. It fits with my notion that the Kryptonians couldn’t have evolved their yellow-sun-based powers under a red sun. The only natural explanation I have for it is that their sun was yellow for most of their evolutionary period, advancing to red late in their development. The problem with that is that such a change would probably have rendered Krypton uninhabitable, but you could handwave that Kryptonian life retained enough of its superpowers to survive the transition for long enough to adapt (or escape and settle on another planet, perhaps). Under the circumstances, gene-tweaking somewhere along the way seems like a more likely explanation, and the Guardians seem like a good bet. They like color-coded weaknesses, after all. The Kryptonians could have been one of their pre-Corps attempts to create a super police force, either by harnessing their natural superpowers or by engineering them. Either way, they proved too dangerous, and the Guardians were forced to use a failsafe mechanism–either activating a genetic override that changed the Kryptonian absorption spectrum or changing the spectrum of the Kryptonian star to depower them. Either way, it would effectively bottle the Kryptonians up until they developed interstellar travel. Of course, their planet just happened to get destroyed when they were apparently on the verge of doing just that… ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2013, 6:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superman-nitpic/660665/19 "2013-06-13T06:34:29Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > If Superman gets his superpowers from Earth’s yellow sun, how can he fly through interstellar space with no such stars nearby? So that’s the part you find implausible, is it?:dubious: ---
**Author:** ![Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/son_of_a_rich/32/5439_2.png) [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Son_of_a_Rich)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2013, 1:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superman-nitpic/660665/20 "2013-06-13T13:38:19Z")
> [@kaylasdad99](#): > > Here’s a _real_ Superman nitpick. Okay, it’s more of a _Man of Steel_ nitpick, because it’s based on the promotional materials for the movie coming out this month: > > Where the hell is his spit-curl? Superman without a spit-curl is as implausible as Batman without an Aunt Harriet. Spit-curl? Hell, where’s his red BVDs? [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superman-nitpic/660665.md?page=2)