Superman’s Powers Used to Be a Lot Different

The tagline for the original Superman movie from 1978 was “You’ll believe a man can fly.” Ever since his introduction, Superman has been pushing the boundaries of what people thought was possible, even for fictional characters. Today, Superman’s capabilities are pretty well known to the general public. Despite the fact that he has such a wide and varied set of powers, most of them are fairly commonly known, even by people outside of the comic book circle. James Gunn’s Superman put these abilities on full display, showing us the Man of Steel’s strength, heat vision, and flight, to name a few. However, what many people don’t know is that when Superman was first introduced, his powers were vastly different from what they are now. Today, we’re going to look at what his original powers were, and where they came from.

Stronger Than a Locomotive

When Superman was introduced in Action Comics #1, he wasn’t able to move planets like he could today. His first powerset was much down to earth, in as much as Superman can be. Figuring out what his original powers are is actually very easy, since most early issues of both Action Comics and Superman volume one list them out in narration before the start of the adventure. In short, Superman was super strong, near-invulnerable, incredibly fast, and could leap great heights. The first three powers sound exactly like what he currently possesses, and yes Superman always possessed them in some form, but with asterisks, as they were much weaker than the current iteration. The early issues never showed anything that Superman couldn’t lift, but there were implied limitations with what he could do. He could easily lift cars and tear a building apart, but he’s never seen doing something like lifting a building itself. His speed is much the same, as Clark regularly outraced bullets and trains, but traveling great distances still took measurable amounts of time, and certainly wasn’t as close to instantaneous as it is today. 

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Superman’s super tough skin has explicitly defined limitations, as the narrator in Action Comics #1 says that nothing short of a bursting shell could hurt the Man of Steel. This is corroborated in Action Comics #8, where the National Guard drops bombs on Superman, and he dodges while saying they could very well hurt or even kill him. Similarly, his great leaps are quantifiable as he is said to be able to jump up to an eighth of a mile. These were the only powers Superman possessed when he first appeared, although you can argue that both his super senses (telescopic vision and super hearing) and his ability to change his entire body to disguise as someone else were there from the start, given how early they appear. Beyond that, the first major new power Clark displays is X-Ray vision, which debuted in Action Comics #11. Fun fact, his heat vision was originally explained as heat produced by his X-Ray vision. Superman’s powers developed very quickly, as he broke that maximum leap height in some some of his earliest stories, jumping up to the upper atmosphere in Action Comics #23. Fun fact number two, his great leaps here changed to flight because that was easier than animating his legs for the Fleischer cartoons. 

A Perfectly Evolved Physical Structure

Not only were Superman’s powers much different in his earliest days, but so was the source of his abilities. Originally, Krypton was a planet that died of old age, filled with a race of people who had evolved to be physically perfect. On top of that, Krypton had a much stronger gravity than Earth, so when Superbaby landed on our planet, he was able to exert far more force than anyone else. These two facts combine to make him practically unkillable by most means, including poisons, as no drug could affect his incredibly advanced physical structure. The explanation of Superman’s strength coming from higher gravity actually was kept in canon for decades, even after the sun was introduced to give Clark his abilities. The reasoning was that Clark’s physical powers (strength and invulnerability) came from Krypton’s dense gravity, while his more esoteric powers (heat vision and flight) came from being charged by the sun. The gravity explanation would eventually fade into obscurity until the sun became the main source of all of his mighty feats, but it’s surprising to know just how long this original story held.

Superman has evolved a lot over the years, both as a character and in how his character functions. To us imagining Superman not being able to fly or not being charged by the sun is like imagining him without a cape, but back in the earliest days of superhero comics, this was the standard. I’m certainly very happy with the Superman we have today, but it’s still very fun to look back on how he started, and laugh at how far we’ve come, some parts slowly, and some very quickly. What set of powers do you prefer Superman to have? Let us know in the comments below!