7 Things Everyone Gets Wrong About Superman

Superman is the world’s first superhero, and that means he comes with a lot of history but a lot of baggage, too. Superman has been at the forefront of superheroes since the beginning. Every change to superheroes has been made in Superman comics, and the character has evolved in many different directions since his debut. Superman has starred in brilliant stories, and yet Superman has a reputation as the most boring superhero of all time. There are definitely problems with Superman, but most Superman stories that are worth cover price (so, the vast, vast majority of them) don’t have those problems. However, for some fans and even creators, the problems are all they see.

I love Superman and I have for most of my life. I’ve watched Superman grow and change, and I have witnessed many Superman stories where there was something off about the character. There are some fundamental things that everyone gets wrong about Superman, and they appear in more Superman stories than you’d like to think. These seven things are the most egregious and they’ve led Superman stories in some directions that can be quite unfortunate.

7) Superman Is Too Powerful

So, admittedly, Superman is vastly powerful compared to someone like Spider-Man or Captain America, but calling him too powerful is a lack of imagination. Superman’s powers are such that he can pretty much do anything he needs to do and anything the story calls for. However, that cuts both ways. There have been plenty of Superman stories where the Man of Steel is weaker than his foes, and that’s not just because of magic or Kryptonite. See, if Superman can be as a strong as he needs to be for the story, he can also be as weak as he needs to be. On top of that, anyone who says they can’t come up with credible threats for Superman just isn’t thinking hard enough. Too much is made of Superman’s power level, and that, frankly, is even more boring than him being too powerful. Superman can stand up to any threat out there, and that is part of what makes him such a great characters for all kinds of stories. The best Superman stories find a way to make Superman’s often overwhelming power level a non-factor, and just tell interesting stories. Superman isn’t anywhere near too powerful.

6) Superman Is Boring

This one is a corollary to the last one, because usually after someone says that Superman is too powerful, they then say that he’s boring. This couldn’t be further from the truth, and the best way to prove that is just to take out a Superman comic from basically any era of the character. There’s always some kind of interesting action or the story uses Superman in an interesting way. Are there boring Superman stories? Of course there are, but there are all kinds of boring superhero stories out there. Every superhero who has ever existed has boring stories. But there are some people who think Superman is a boring character. They think someone who is so good can’t be a good character, that his purity is the problem. Superman is often called the “Big Blue Boy Scout”, but that’s part of the fun of the character. Superman isn’t some prude who has no idea about the world; Superman can and has made dirty jokes. Or dirty for him, at least. He believes in truth and justice because everyone should believe in those things. Superman represents the best parts of humanity, and there’s nothing boring about that. Superman’s entire life is a whirlwind of action and adventure. The character can be used in a million different ways, and is entertaining in his special fashion. There’s nothing boring about Superman and that’s always been the case.

5) Fascist Superman Is Interesting

Injustice has a lot to answer for. There’s a certain person out there who hate Superman’s purity; they would rather see stories where that pure person is transformed into a monster. They read something like Kingdom Come, a story that is all about a darker Superman in a darker world realizing the only way to make things better is to be the light, and not like it. But they read Injustice and think it’s poetry. They unironically love Homelander. Omni-Man is their favorite character in Invincible. We all know these people; we all see these people and we’ve seen them a million times online. And, look, you can do evil Superman stories. Superman: Red Son and The Multiversity: Mastermen both do a great job of taking two different evil Supermen — one Soviet and one a Nazi — and makes them compelling because in the end, both of them break with the evil that has so far defined their lives because that’s what Superman is actually all about. There’s nothing interesting about a Superman that is evil and just stays that way. There’s nothing interesting about Superman falling to the darkness without coming back to the light. Evil Superman is actually the only boring kind of Superman story out there.

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4) Superman Would Be a Government Stooge

The Dark Knight Returns also has a lot to answer for. Frank Miller’s Superman embraced his all-American roots in order to get the chance to continue protecting the world in a time when heroes were very much out of style. Superman’s been associated with the United States for most of his existence, but that doesn’t mean that he’s actually a government stooge. In fact, even The Dark Knight Returns makes sure to show that Superman will lie and do things his way if he can get away with it. Too many people think of Superman like he’s some kind of rubber stamp for the United States, but that hasn’t been the case for a very long time — John Byrne did his best in the late ’80s to make Superman into a Reaganite, something that subsequent creators have fixed. Superman was raised in the heartland, yes. He was raised to be a good decent American, of course. But to him, these weren’t just American values, they were just the way you were supposed to be. Superman isn’t special because he’s American, he’s special because he sees the best in that, and he does that. Superman would one hundred percent speak out if he disagrees with something and he has. Superman can definitely be a pretty cool patriotic hero, but thinking that’s the only thing important about the character is a misunderstanding.

3) Superman Is a God

This can be misconstrued as “Superman is to powerful”, but it’s not that exactly. This is more in terms of symbolism. There are some who see a character as powerful as Superman, and think that the only thing that he can be is a god. That he has to put himself above humanity because he’s so much more powerful than everyone else out there. That he is an aloof god who needs to find the balance between the human and the divine. This is not only the least interesting kind of Superman ever, but this also completely misunderstands who Superman is. Superman wasn’t raised to be some aloof god hiding his powers so the world wouldn’t discover him; he was raised to do everything he could to help other people, to give of himself to make the world a better place. You know, what all humans should do. Superman just so happens to be an immigrant from Krypton, but he was raised here. He wasn’t taught that he was above the humans, he was taught to be one of them. Discovering his heritage and his power didn’t make him withdraw from humanity, it made him appreciate what he was taught even more. It allowed him to discover new parts of himself to embrace. Mark Waid once said that, “Gods achieve their power by encouraging us to believe in them. Superman achieves his by believing in us.” That’s the difference.

2) Batman Is Better than Superman

Superman was once the most popular superhero of them all, but eventually Batman took his place. Right now, Batman is, at the very least, DC’s most popular hero and an argument can be made that he’s even more popular than even the heroes of the MCU. Batman is often thought of as the cooler of the two characters. He’s brooding, he has an attitude, he has aura. His costume is unequivocally amazing and looks awesome. Batman is a normal human who fights against the greatest forces in the universe. Batman is cool. He’s just not cooler than Superman. The thing that proves this is the big difference between them — Batman hides who he is because the world has hurt him. Superman isn’t scared of anything inside or outside of him. Batman is a fun character to read about — it’s cool to see him brood about the injustices of life — but Superman is so much cooler than Batman. Superman can be in any kind of story that Batman can be in, but put Batman into one of Superman’s more out there stories and it’s another story. Batman is awesome, but he is not better than Superman.

1) Superman Is for Kids

There are some people out there who think Superman is for children. That only children can believe in a character like him. This is honestly the most cynical way of looking at Superman ever. Superman’s purity isn’t a bad thing, and it’s not just for children. The world is a hard place, sure, but that doesn’t mean that there’s no reason for hope. Superman is the personification of hope and that’s what makes him so great. Adults love Superman because we can see the people we want to be in Superman. We can all be Superman in our lives every day. Kids like the simple side of Superman, but that’s just one side. There’s so much more to the character than just that, though. The fact that Superman can appeal to children and adults so perfectly is one of the main reasons Superman is such an amazing hero and dismissing him as just a children’s icon is, well, wrong.

What do you think people get wrong about Superman? Sound off in the comments below.