“Look, he doesn’t write the ‘sexy’ stories, but Clark Kent’s expose on the prevalence of lead water pipes in Metropolis’s housing has probably saved more lives than everyone else in the news room combined.”
Perhaps you haven’t heard of a literary device called “Unintended consequences”?
Maybe someone has done this already, but I have one. The last Superman comics I bought, if I still owned them, would make me rich. It’s been a while. The interesting story about Superman is how he decides who to save. Five people are being mugged in Metropolis at the same time. Does he pick the one he stops randomly? How about two cities away, which he could fly to instantaneously? Does he break away from stopping a robbery in progress to catch an airplane in trouble?
Stopping the Brain try to take over the world is easy, only one of them at a time. The rest represents the trolley dilemma writ large.
I have. But I prefer stories where the hero is the hero and not the problem.
This. Superman movies should be about hope for the future of humanity and happy endings. Superman movies shouldn’t be just another Batman movie where the hero happens to be wearing red, blue, and yellow instead of black. I don’t want to see yet another ambiguous ending, or a Pyrrhic victory, or Superman dying yet again. We’ve done the dark Superman movies to death. That’s not what we need.
Many storylines had the threat being a possibility that Superman’s secret identity would be exposed. I never really bought why that would be such a catastrophe. So Clark Kent disappears and a new schlub appears in a new city. What’s the big problem? He could even change the color of his eyeglasses to ensure that no one would recognize him as Clark Kent.
His job? His friends? Stuff that keeps him connected to humanity. Superman is not a loner by nature.
I’ve read stories - maybe even this one - that have asked how Superman can with good conscience have a secret identity at all? Something is happening somewhere all the time, from natural disasters, to street muggings, to plots to take over the world. How can Superman spend most of his time as Clark Kent and ignoring millions in peril?
The real answer is that the character is far more interesting that way. Just like nobody writes utopias, because they are boring, but a million people write dystopias, because are not. Superman just saving, saving, saving, 24/7 is not a character but a machine. And even Superman working at super-speed can’t protect everybody everywhere. He is not a god. His main weakness is not kryptonite but the omnipresence of evil and his lack of omniscience. Clark Kent is the unspoken recognition of this; he does good down on human scale
Many writers have taken up the subject of Superman as god. It never ends well. How can a god survive on a planet that’s developed a million competing visualizations of good, morals, heavens, and rules - so many rules and so many wars if one tiny rule is interpreted differently even if all the rest are the same?
The real world cannot contain a Superman. One exists only in a universe that regularly makes up the rules anew whenever it suits the narrative and needs to show only the tiniest sliver of the effects.
Exactly. And that is where the interesting internal conflict comes in. He can’t save everyone, but if he was on call just a bit more he could save more people. But maybe not even Superman can stand that pressure. Part of the problem of evil is that God can save everyone everywhere but doesn’t. Superman can’t.
Perhaps the reason for him spending time as Clark is that Clark can’t save people, and Superman finds that role play relaxing.
Batman did well with a bit more depth. Maybe Superman could profit from this also.
The hero in Superfolks has a crisis when he hears screams for help while he’s in a romantic situation. He ends up deciding that he’s just not available under those circumstances.
Samaritan from Astro City (part of Image) does this. He has to carefully time everything, because seconds matter when saving people. He doesn’t get downtime. He’s just “on” all day, and all of his dreams are of just floating in the clouds before he’s pulled back to the never-ending toll of saving. He’s not very happy. Has one day off a year. Even his secret identity is just his supercomputer writing his articles for him while he slips out to be a hero.
With the twish that he didn’t just happen into that mindset; his variant of the ‘Kal-El, sent here from a dying world’ origin story is getting sent here from this world’s dying future — where, he’s told, all of the devastation resulted from one disaster not being averted.
God that sounds good. I need to read this.
I loved him thinking “Ok, twelve seconds to get to that robbery”, then he turns around and, launching himself into space to stop a meteor, thinks “And that was two minutes ten seconds”… at the end of the day, he collapses into bed thinking “I only spent eight minutes actually flying today”… as he drifts off and dreams… of flying for fun.
[totally paraphrased, it’s been a long time]
Which also means that, by preventing the disaster that led to his future, he destroyed that future and everyone in it. All his friends and family never even existed, and when he visits the utopian future that replaced it, the house he grew up in was now the site of an automated taco stand.
He is both the last survivor of Krypton, and the unstable planetary core that blew it up.
If I remember correctly that Samaritan story was literally issue one of Astro City. A really great introduction to an amazing series.
I think the comic Astro City covered this with their “not Superman” character named Samaritan. Samaritan pretty much spends every waking moment saving people. When the city is giving him an award for being such a great guy, Samaritan worries about what’s happening while he’s wasting time during the ceremony. When he sleeps, he dreams of being able to fly, which he does all the time, but to really be able to just bask in the sheer joy of flying instead of rushing from one disaster to another.
Edit: And I should have checked to see if someone else mentioned Samaritan.
I was a kid in the early '80s and I don’t want the comic book Superman from back then. My brother had a bunch of issues of World’s Finest (Superman + Batman) and Justice League of America. I tried to reread them as an adult, and 95% of those stories featured either (a) kryptonite/red sun radiation, (b) magic, or (c) something invulnerable for Superman to punch fruitlessly. It made for pretty repetitive reading.
I’m a fan of Silver Age Superman. His only role in a story should be teaching nosy Lois a lesson.
Yanno, given a different read and the murder of just one comma, we’d be considering the poetic and sobering concept that Superman is both the last survivor of Krypton AND he is the unstable planetary core that blew it up.
Just saying.