Man of Steel Sequels: Is Superman’s Rogues’ Gallery A Problem?

Not long ago, we mentioned a conversation that Erik Larsen was having with fans, in which he idly fantasized about reinventing Superman, and that in that scenario a key to making it work would be to retool Superman’s rogues’ gallery.It got us to thinking about something that comes up from time to time as it regards Superman: Are his rogues’ gallery a liability in terms of trying to build a long-term feature film franchise?Certainly he can’t compete with Spider-Man or Batman, whose rogues galleries are legendarily good. Of course, neither of those guys has Superman’s power levels, either, which present a challenge that’s unique to him and maybe one or two other characters.That is, in order to be powerful enough to be a believable threat to Superman, the power and destruction levels have to be very substantial indeed. And given the uproar that happened when 12 city blocks were leveled in Man of Steel, one has to wonder: is it sustainable to move on from Zod to The Eradicator, Brainiac and Doomsday? Eventually won’t you wear out the “Superman does amazing crap with his special effects powers’ card?Of course, most fans really only know Lex Luthor, which is a problem. Batman’s television series has given him unparalleled awareness of his foes, so that Catwoman, Mr. Freeze, The Penguin, The Riddler and more are household names among anyone who even remotely cares about this kind of stuff. But even beyond awareness, there are other issues.