This here is like the Platonic ideal image of Superman and why he's appealing to the world. It works even better in context. He's dying. He's got a billion things to do before he dies and may not finish. SO much.

And still he loves humanity(possibly because, after all, he can hear and see all of them), not as an idea but as every single person, enough to stop her, and to let her know she's loved.

He's what we wish God could be.

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Gods achieve their power by encouraging us to believe in them.

Superman achieves his power by believing in us.

--Mark Waid, from the introduction to ALL-STAR SUPERMAN vol. 2

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I wrote this on USENET 7 years ago, in the midst of a discussion about how Superman should be more "realistic", both in terms of power and morality:

"I'm one of the view who think that comics are aimed at the wrong audience nowadays. I think they're aimed too high, and at a audience that has been too used to stories playing out over literally years of continuity, and that's not just hurting sales, it's killing the audience of kids who are, after all, the core audience. People have forgotten what it was like to be a kid and reading these comics for the first time. I never thought that an all-powerful Superman was lame. I thought he was the coolest thing on Earth. He was Jesus Christ and Santa Claus rolled up in one, and I am not ashamed to admit that he provided as positive a role model to me as did any other authority figure in my life.

Those who think the Big Blue Boyscout is uninteresting miss the point totally. Firstly, he is not - and was never - uninteresting, not to whole generations of children. He may have been uninteresting to the more cynical adolescent, or a growing generation brought up on might makes right, and ends justify the means, where beating the crap out of things is the first, obvious solution. It's the people who have lost their sense of wonder or had it dulled so much as not to be able to appreciate the simple certainty of a child who insists that Superman will be stop to find his missing dog, because he's Superman, and that's what he does.

...

Superman is the story of a god brought down to Earth. A god who purposely limits himself because he was raised by good people who disabused him of the notion that he should do everything just because he *can*. A god who disguises himself as a human being, allows himself to be humiliated as a human being, to better understand the people he protects. He walked among them, but they knew him not. Clark Kent is the disguise - the Man the Super forces himself to be - Superman is the real person. Until the editors and writers understand this again, the incarnation of Superman they push will always seem weak and half-hearted because there's no superiority of will, or morality, because he's just like all of us. He should not be. He should be better. He should be the *best*.

The messianic overtones are obvious, and deliberate, because that's what makes him Super-*Man*, the one to look up to, the one who will make things right. Isn't that what heroes are for?"

Hey, Elliot S! Maggin wrote me a while later saying that I was one of the few people who "get the joke", so I must have been on to something. :)

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Are you the same Terence Chua as the writer?

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If you're asking if I wrote the USENET post, yes.

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Well-put. I think all these people who bitch and moan about how superheroes just aren't realistic enough are missing the point - superheroes are SYMBOLS. There's nothing wrong with injecting realism into a superhero universe - it keeps it relatable - but when you get right down to it, superheroes are symbols, and if you are going to write them well, you must successfully manipulate the symbols to make your point. Superman is a symbol of hope, honor, decency, fair play; Batman is a symbol of man against the darkness, of what you can make of yourself, of getting beyond tragedy and using it to become stronger; Wonder Woman is a symbol of peace, love, and the feminine ideal, etc., etc. That is also the reason why they wear costumes - it makes them immediately identifiable, like a stop sign or a peace symbol. You know immediately when you see a superhero's costume what you will be getting (or what you SHOULD be getting), and this makes them potent tools for storytelling.
Basically, you can give a superhero a realistic background. You can tell us how his powers work, or what his costume is made of. You can address political issues, reverse our expectations, satirize the ridiculous aspects of superheroism - you can do all those things. But all of them are worthless if you don't acknowledge just what a really good superhero IS - a symbol. A powerful one, representing powerful things. The sort of symbol that, if you ever ran across, you would softly gasp 'oh, wow.' You can tell us why Superman put the 'S' on his chest, and what makes his cape spread out behind him like that - but the S better damn well be there, and the cape better spread out behind him and flap in the wind, and some part of your mind had better be softly gasping 'oh, wow' - or he ain't Superman. That's all.

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The thing about wish fulfillment fantasies that is useful is that they define what people's wishes are. This is why they're important, though not exclusively so. What's a problem is junk, same as always, in every medium and genre; junk and just not trying.

Sigh. Remember the days when indie and mainstream comics both prospered in the same stores? I think it was called the effing 80s.

But. Another thing to consider about Superman. As Batman is driven, as Waid observed, not by revenge but by a desire to never see anyone again die like his parents, so, Superman is driven by the fact that he survived. That he was saved. So, given his abilities, he is worthless if he does not love, and try to save, everyone.

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Interesting point. The thing I've always kind of liked about Superman is that he seems, to me, to do the things he does not out of any personal tragedy or motivation, but simply because it's the right thing to do - he was raised with strong moral values, and he has these incredible powers, and he feels that this is the only right way to use them. The whole 'Krypton exploding' thing is where he comes from and gets his powers, but it's not his origin as a superhero - he doesn't really have one. He just does what he does because it's the right thing to do, as a conscious decision.
But, like I said, that's my perspective. The concept of 'I was saved, therefore I must save others' is a distinct possibility - however, I would point out that, in both modern and Pre-Crisis continuity, he learned of his Kryptonian origins AFTER he became Superman, not before - so I'm not sure if it holds up to scrutiny. (Post Crisis, he learned that he was an alien before he became Supes, but not from which planet he was from, or the circumstances of his journey.)

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Consider though how that makes him and Batman two poles of the same thing: making the best of loss. In Batman's case it's from a negative angle(make people not die) and Superman's it's positive(help people live).

Another interesting thing, to me, is the basic real-life currents they come from. It's been said that Superman represents the dream of the immigrant, to have come from a destroyed place, and in the new place you find out your true potential, and become useful and even great. Batman is the fear of the urban dweller, which can be distilled down into subjective, personal loss. Superman comes from the loss of cultures, of nations, coming from cultural memories of genocide and endurance. Batman is local and personal and individual.

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Well, exactly, they work on different levels - Superman is macro and Batman is micro. Superman is space opera and Flash Gordon and Kaiju, Batman is '30's gangster films and 'On the Waterfront' and 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde'. (It would, in fact, be interesting to compile a film library of the two characters - as I noted a while back on the old board, Batman is an extraordinarily cinematic character, both in terms of the amount of films/shows/cartoons he's showed up in, and in the amount of films that are acknowledged influences on him. Come to think of it, though, Superman is probably one of the only characters who can compete with him in that regard - he doesn't have as much in the way of cinematic influences, but they ARE there - Flash Gordon serials, for instance - and he's had almost as many appearances onscreen as Batman. It'd make for an interesting compilation.)
As for the two poles - that IS an interesting way of looking at it, but it all boils down, in my opinion, to just why they STARTED to wear the costume and fight the fight. Batman's 'make people not die' motivation springs from childhood tragedy, but if you see Superman's 'help people live' motivation as a result of his interplanetary origins, then it can't really be seen as the reason he started the neverending battle, since he donned the costume BEFORE that. If you ignore for the purpose of argument the whole Superboy thing, which mucks about with a lot of his early history, Clark Kent first became Superman in both chronologies at the urging of his parents - Pre-Crisis, it was because of Jonathan Kent's dying wish, Post-Crisis it was at his suggestion after Clark had had problems with the lack of a secret identity. Krypton added a whole new element of tragedy to his story, of course, once he'd found out about it, but his first and primary motivations for fighting crime, in both continuities, were simply because he was raised with strong moral values and wanted to do his parents proud.

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Dan Didio asked Mark Waid why Superman did what he did and he said in part:

"He was raised as one of us, but he's really not one of us. Superman is the sole survivor of his race. He is an alien being, and he is probably more alone in this world than anyone else ever has been....

Kal-El knows instinctively that it is only when he puts his gifts to use that he truly feels alive and engaged....

Only by being openly Kryptonian can he also be an Earthman with exuberance and excellence. When he lives as who he really is, in full authenticity to his nature and gifts, and then brings his distinctive strengths into the service of others, he takes his rightful place in the larger community, in which he now genuinely belongs and can feel fulfilled....

Yes, Superman aids those in peril because he senses a higher moral obligation and yes, he does it because his natural instincts and Midwestern upbringing drive him towards acts of morality--but along with that genuine altruism is a healthy amount of self-awareness and a surprisingly enviable ability on his part to balance his own internal needs with the needs of others in a way that most beneifts everyone."

I think, btw, that this still applies if he doesn't know his exact origin. The "he's not one of us" is obvious even without that, as would be the loneliness. He's the only person with his gifts.

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Oh, definitely, and Waid puts it very well - he underlines the point I was making, in fact. What I was saying was that his Kryptonian origin was ultimately irrelevant to WHY he does what he does - he does it because it's the right thing to do, and because he can. His learning of Krypton's destruction underscores this motivation, but does not replace it - it's the 'How', not the 'Why'. If he'd come from the center of the Earth and gotten his powers from irradiated moles, he still would've used them in the exact same way. (Well, maybe not EXACTLY the same way - I'm not sure what kind of powers you'd get from irradiated moles.)

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And there's another one: death of parents as touchstone vs. life of parents.

Even as a memory; consider that it seems most of Bruce's memories are kind of narcissistically tied (or filtered to fit--the most we know about his dad is that he was a doctor and dressed up as a bat once and kicked a little ass) his Batmanhood or their death; they're more ideas than memories to him, whereas it's clear it's the values of his parents, how they LIVE, that drives Kal.

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It's more precluded possibilities versus actual events - Bruce lost his parents at an early age, so all he has to remember them by is his memories as a little boy, which inevitably means that he tends to put them on a pedestal. He never got to know them as the complex individuals that they actually were, just as the parents that he loved in the uncomplicated and direct fashion of a little boy - had the mugging occurred during his mid-teens or later, he would have developed a different relationship to them, and his reaction to their death might not have been so extreme. Clark, on the other hand, HAS had a chance to get to know his parents as more complex individuals, and to his considerable luck, they really are as salt-of-the-earth as Bruce only imagines, but can never know, his to be - Bruce's examples are idealized and dead, Clark's are truthful and alive (except in Pre-Crisis continuity, but even then, they lived long, full lives before they passed on).

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And got killed by a vacation Clark sent them on, right?

Yeah, they were already aged. In all versions Clark's just about out of high school when anyone dies.

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If I remember correctly, he took his parents on a jaunt to a South Sea island - time travel may have been involved; I'm not sure - where they opened a treasure chest which contained an ancient virus which put the two of them into a coma and ultimately killed them both. This is revisionism, though, as the original account simply had them dying of old age, and had Pa Kent telling Clark on his deathbed that he ought to become Superman - which would tend to mess up the account of him causing both their deaths as SuperBOY. Like I said, Superboy really made a hash of Clark's original history.

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So well said. I think in a lot of media--not just superhero comics--people deconstruct to the point of losing sight of what something inherently is to the point where it no longer works.

Maybe superheroes, like most symbolic things, are also deceptively simplistic. Because there really is a lot of different areas to explore with Superman or Batman or Wonderwoman. It's not a case of always showing them the same way. It's just keeping the core somewhere in your mind while you're doing it.

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Oh, absolutely, and I'm not saying that every Superman story has to involve people saying 'It's a bird! It's a plane!', or every Batman story involving some variation on 'Criminals are a superstitious, cowardly lot'. That's just the base of their character - what makes them such great characters is that they ARE more complex than that; they can be looked at from various different angles, and examined in various different ways, and led along various different paths - they grow and evolve and change. Look at where Wonder Woman is now, for cryin' out loud - she's evolved so radically that she's barely recognizable as Marston's original creation, but she's still recognizably herself. (In fact, it wouldn't hurt if someone tried to bring a few of those original elements back, in my opinion.) The trick is to have a starting point, a place to go back to from where all paths radiate like spokes in a wheel, so that you can retrace your steps if you get confused. If that point is lost or eliminated, then you just have a spaghetti-like jumble of crisscrossing trails, and all of a sudden, you're lost in a maze.

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Hmm. I like that.

I like the good people in general, honestly.

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When I saw The Iron Giant years ago, I considered the Giant's act at the end in the context of invoking a god or hero, in the hope that they will look on you and your deed with divine favor. And I've always felt that Clark/Kal would very much approve of what the Giant does in his name there.

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Oh man, when I saw the Iron Giant ending for the first time, it hit me right in the woobie bone.

And yes, IG was very much invoking.

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I talk a lot of shit about Grant Morrison, but this? This right here? This one page? This is the best thing he's ever written.

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Motto all-around.

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Seriously, I have never seen a comics page that makes me tear up every time I look at it.

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Word.

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Pretty much. It makes me tear up and feel this love for Superman I never have before.

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This.

...Heck, I WAS that girl at one point and this just destroyed me for hours after I first saw this.

(goddamn allergies. snff.)

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I had a friend who was that girl. Sadly, the past tense there is quite literal.

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So true. I'm not much of a GM fan but damn this page is THE perfect moment of Superman.

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Sniff, makes me tear up EVERY time.

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And people wonder why I love Quitely.

I can't see this page and think of anyone else who could pull this off. I mean it. Other artists could bring something to the table that might make it interesting, but only Quitely could make me feel so in tune with Morrison's vision, to feel that emotional depth and the sheer relief. I struggle to find the words.

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Now, I just wanna hug the both of them.

...GROUP HUGGGGG!

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What astounds me is that Morrison based his interpretation on a real person who he met at a convention, who was basically - in appearance and personality - the epitome of Superman.

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The best part is the way they present him as always calm.

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A really well tear jerker moment.

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..I love you Superman..

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A great page in a great issue of a great series.

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Thanks to YOU S_d I bought the first trade of All-Star Superman this weekend. It is every bit as good as you all said, and as the woman at the till said. Just about perfect.

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Why have I seen this scan now three times in the past week?

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That is so Superman.

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I've been reading through All-Star Superman for the first time this week, and out of two volumes of amazing, gorgeous moments, it's this one that still makes me tear up. That is who Superman should always be.

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That is who Superman should always be.

Yes.

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Consider too the chapter with Lex in prison, which is altogether at least the best Luthor story. He does not hate Luthor. He feels for him. He wants Luthor to realize his potential. What angers him is Luthor's refusal.

Which might mean that what really makes Lex his archenemy is: he is the man who refuses to be saved by Superman.

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Brb crying. ;_;

This is the essence of Superman that still makes me love him.

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