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discountchris · 8 years ago

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On Superman

I’ve been thinking about Superman a lot lately.

I don’t know if it’s because I found my copy of Kingdom Come, if I’ve had a desire to get back into playing DC Universe Online again or if it’s just one of those chunks in the soup of my mind that’s floated to the top apropos of nothing. But it’s one of those things where I feel like he’s a fantastic character that people don’t seem to understand. That seems fairly normal, because it’s pretty normal for people to not understand characters, but Superman cops a lot of it because I think they don’t want to understand him. Not to claim that I do, mind you. I’m just some guy who has a few comics and fell asleep last time he watched Superman 3. This is just my understanding of the character and since this is the internet, I’m sure I’m wrong so scroll to the comments for that one.

For me, at least, the core of understanding Superman is understanding Clark Kent. Despite being the same person, they’re two separate characters. Clark Kent is a guy who grew up in Smallville, Kansas and moved to the big city of Metropolis to become a reporter. That’s a pretty decent indie film in of itself, to be honest. But it’s a fairly concise life story of someone you or I might even know. Superman is an alien who crashed to Earth and has amazing superpowers that he uses to save us all from the likes of Metallo, Brainiac and Lex Luthor. Those stories are so different and I think people try to focus on the latter because that’s what makes for better films and comics, but it’s the former that influences so much of what makes them interesting.

There’s that monologue in Kill Bill Volume 2 about Superman, where Bill talks about how Clark Kent is Superman’s critique on humanity because he’s weak.

Now, a staple of the superhero mythology is, there's the superhero and there's the alter ego. Batman is actually Bruce Wayne, Spider-Man is actually Peter Parker. When that character wakes up in the morning, he's Peter Parker. He has to put on a costume to become Spider-Man. And it is in that characteristic Superman stands alone. Superman didn't become Superman. Superman was born Superman. When Superman wakes up in the morning, he's Superman. His alter ego is Clark Kent. His outfit with the big red "S", that's the blanket he was wrapped in as a baby when the Kents found him. Those are his clothes. What Kent wears - the glasses, the business suit - that's the costume. That's the costume Superman wears to blend in with us. Clark Kent is how Superman views us. And what are the characteristics of Clark Kent. He's weak... he's unsure of himself... he's a coward. Clark Kent is Superman's critique on the whole human race.

I hate that entire speech with a passion. Hate it, hate it, hate it. It demonstrates such a lack of even willingness to connect with the idea of Superman and what he stands for as a hero and as a person. It’s the typical macho bravado that the typical Tarantino film flourishes on, and using Superman, the stereotypical “boy scout” archetype to promote that misses much of the point of what makes Superman work. Maybe that’s the point. Maybe it’s supposed to show that Bill himself doesn’t get it, but typical of everything Tarantino has made, people take it at face value. Who knows?

My point is, everything that Bill said in his little speech is the exact opposite to the truth. I didn’t have a father growing up. He died when I was a few months old and as unfortunate as it is, I don’t have any memories about him or anything of the sort. A few pictures and stories, but nothing personal to me. He was just some guy, and as much as it sucks to have not met him or anything, it’s just a fact of my life that I live with. The exact same is for Kal-El. He was sent to Earth as a baby right before his entire planet exploded. He doesn’t know anything about Krypton or Jor-El. All he’s known is Jonathan and Martha Kent are his parents and his home is Smallville. Yeah, he has the capsule and the blankets from his travel, but it’s not something that he remembers. It’s not something that he’s going to recognize as personal to him. He might get bummed out that he’s not able to meet his real parents occasionally, but they aren’t the ones who raised him from childhood. Clark Kent is who he is at heart because that’s all he’s ever really known. He can hardly “critique” the human race when that’s all he’s ever been and wants to have been.

‘With great power comes great responsibility’ might be Spider-Man’s thing, but Superman is the one who exemplifies it way more than Peter Parker ever could. Clark Kent is able to lift planets and fly and is impervious to bullets and he refuses to do it full time because his real passion is reporting. Journalism is a rough job, and you don’t do it on a whim to pass time between saving the world. He just has to save the world because he’s the only guy that can fight Parasite and not get stomped into the ground twenty seconds after introductions. Being Superman, persona included, is Superman’s retail job. The thing he has to do because he feels as though he has to. Not because he wants to, not because he’s the Ubermensch looking down upon us puny mortals, but because he has the ability to help people and that’s just how he was raised.

The coward? The weak, nervous dork? That’s his true face. He wears glasses not to disguise himself, but because he needs them to see. He wears the business suit because, uh, he’s trying to be professional for his job? That was a weird point to make, Bill. In any case, he’s only Superman because he has to be, not necessarily that he wants to be. He’s a person that people should aspire to be like. Everyone in their own way wants to save the world and because he has that ability, he does just that. The blue tights, the red undies and the cape are just his uniform that he wears to the job. It is part of his heritage, yes, but it’s more because he understands the gifts he’s been given by his parents and his planet. They’re the ones that allowed him to rescue people, and so he honors them by wearing the remnants of that life.

That’s how he differs from the other two main DC superheros, Batman and Wonder Woman. Bruce Wayne was a child when his parents died, right in front of him. That messed him right the fuck up and from that point on, he stopped being Bruce Wayne and became Batman. He trained 25 or so years to be skilled in ninjitsu, detective work and chiropterology. He lost himself and his identity to the Bat, and so when he is out and about as Bruce Wayne, that’s Batman pretending to be a Regular Human Being. Bill’s speech is so much more accurate if you replace Superman with Batman. Bruce Wayne is a disguise Batman wears, whereas Superman is a disguise Clark Kent wears.

Wonder Woman, too, is a fish out of water who uses her gifts to help people, but she was raised to adulthood as a warrior. Someone who understands how to fight and is willing to end someone who’s getting too uppity because that’s how she was raised. All three have different childhoods and ideals about how to effectively be heroes, but they also understand the different methodologies are needed for different situations. Superman might disapprove of Batman’s brutality and Wonder Woman’s killing, but he’s smart enough to realize how the Joker and Ares are so much different to Lex Luthor. That’s what allows them to be a team. That’s what allows them to be friends. Super friends, even.

This is also what makes Superman’s rogues gallery so interesting too. For the most part, they’re things that stand on equal or greater footing with Superman. Darkseid, ruler of Apokolips. General Zod, Kryptonian war criminal. Mr Mxyzptlk, a reality warping imp from the 5th Dimension. Titano, a 50 foot giant ape that shoots Kryptonite laser beams out of it’s eyes. They’re all people and monkeys that can put up a proper challenge to Superman. He has to be smart to outwit them because they can do most of the same things he can do or worse. But his main enemy, the guy that’s always been around and will always be fighting Superman until the heat death of the universe is Lex Luthor. He’s just a bald guy. A rich bald guy who’s pissed off that Superman exists. In the Silver Age it was because Superboy was the one who made him bald, but that was a time when he was also stealing forty cakes. (And that’s terrible.)

Usually, the arch enemy is a foil for the protagonist. The Joker is the opposite to everything Batman is, for example. Light vs Dark, Chaos vs Order, Funny vs Serious, Evil vs Good. So it might seem a bit strange how Superman’s arch-nemesis is someone he can take out with one quick punch and-- Of course it’s because he’s a foil for Clark Kent. If you were questioning that, you probably haven’t read the past thousand words or so.

Lex Luthor hates Superman because he used to be the most powerful man in Metropolis. He used to be the one who held all the power and he is no longer. He has to share it and that is unacceptable, especially when it’s someone who isn’t even human. Whereas Clark just wants to live his life and uses his powers when necessary, Lex obsesses over it to the point where the very idea of Superman existing and being alive is abhorrent to him. He’s a genius that could cure cancer and save the world but refuses to because he prefers having power and influence. The conflict between the two works because it’s not really a challenge of might, it’s a challenge between viewpoints and ideas. Luthor believes that Might Makes Right, but when that might isn't his, there’s an issue. He wants to destroy Superman, but only to make himself top dog again. He just wants the power and not the responsibility that comes with it. They come to blows so frequently because Clark sees all the power and potential that Lex has already but refuses to use it on anything but hoarding it for himself and trying to kill metahumans (mostly Superman.)

And I think this is the primary reason why people don’t like Superman. Why they don’t like his films. They’re not the kind of stories that work well as a two-hour action blockbuster. The best Superman stories are the ones that are about the difficulties of balancing his life in such a way that he can save the world without giving up his passions. “What’s So Funny About Truth, Justice And The American Way?” is one of my favorite stories because it’s so much more about the nature of his No Killing policy instead of the big fights he has. If it were made into a DC Cinematic Universe film, not only would it not fit as part of the universe they’ve established, but I don’t think people would walk out of the theater believing that Superman’s way of pacifism works or that The Elite are in the wrong. They’d just see how the cool and edgy British man kills the bad guys and we came to see fights. People would love Manchester Black and ignore the second half of the film, which is the entire point.

The main difference between Marvel and DC is that people with powers are feared and shunned in the Marvel universe, while heroes are celebrated in DC. Spider-Man has a newspaper running a smear campaign every Tuesday while The Flash has an entire museum dedicated to him. The difference is Superman. He is the paragon of goodness and what all people should try to aspire to. And to dismiss him because of that is a damn shame.

#superman #dc comics #my stuff #editorial

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