Superman Character Review
Superman is an American fictional Character, a comic book superhero who appears in comic books published by DC Comics. He is widely considered to be an American cultural icon. Superman was created by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster, high school students living in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1933; the character was sold to Detective Comics, Inc. (later DC Comics) in 1938. Superman first appeared in Action Comics (June 1938) and subsequently appeared in various radio serials, television programs, films, newspaper strips,
and video games. With the success of his adventures, Superman helped to
create the superhero genre and establish its primacy within the American comic book.
Superman's appearance is distinctive and iconic. He usually wears a blue costume, red cape, and stylized red-and-yellow "S" shield on his chest. This shield is used in a myriad of media to symbolize the character.
The origin story of Superman relates that he was born Kal-El on the planet Krypton, before being rocketed to Earth as an infant by his scientist father Jor-El, moments before Krypton's destruction. Discovered and adopted by a Kansas farmer and his wife, the child is raised as Clark Kent and imbued with a strong moral compass. Very early he started to display superhuman abilities,
which upon reaching maturity, he resolved to use for the benefit of
humanity. Superman resides and operates in the fictional American city
of Metropolis. As Clark Kent, he is a journalist for a Metropolis newspaper called the Daily Planet.
Superman has fascinated scholars, with cultural theorists, commentators, and critics alike exploring the character's impact and role in the United States and the rest of the world. Umberto Eco discussed the mythic qualities of the character in the early 1960s, and Larry Niven has pondered the implications of a sexual relationship involving the character. The character's ownership has often been the subject of dispute, with
Siegel and Shuster twice suing for the return of legal ownership.
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Powers and Abilities of Superman
As an influential archetype of the superhero genre, Superman
possesses extraordinary powers, with the character traditionally
described as "faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a
locomotive, and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound", a phrase
coined by Jay Morton and first used in the Superman radio serials and Max Fleischer animated shorts of the 1940s as well as the TV series of the 1950s. For most of his existence, Superman's famous arsenal of powers has included flight, super-strength, invulnerability to non-magical attacks, super-speed, vision powers (including x-ray, heat-emitting,
telescopic, infra-red, and microscopic vision), super-hearing,
super-intelligence, and super-breath, which enables him to blow out air
at freezing temperatures, as well as exert the propulsive force of
high-speed winds.
As originally conceived and presented in his early stories,
Superman's powers were relatively limited, consisting of superhuman
strength that allowed him to lift a car over his head, run at amazing
speeds and leap one-eighth of a mile, as well as an incredibly dense
body structure that could be pierced by nothing less than an exploding
artillery shell. Siegel and Shuster compared his strength and leaping abilities to an ant and a grasshopper. When making the cartoons, the Fleischer Brothers
found it difficult to keep animating him leaping and requested to DC to
change his ability to flying; this was an especially convenient concept
for short films, which would have otherwise had to waste precious
running time moving earthbound Clark Kent from place to place. Writers gradually increased his powers to larger extents during the Silver Age, in which Superman could fly to other worlds and galaxies and even across universes with relative ease. He would often fly across the solar system to stop meteors from hitting
the Earth, or sometimes just to clear his head. Writers found it
increasingly difficult to write Superman stories in which the character
was believably challenged, so DC made a series of attempts to rein the character in.
The most significant attempt, John Byrne's
1986 rewrite, established several hard limits on his abilities: he
barely survives a nuclear blast, and his space flights are limited by
how long he can hold his breath. Superman's power levels have again increased since then, with Superman
currently possessing enough strength to hurl mountains, withstand
nuclear blasts with ease, fly into the sun unharmed, and survive in the
vacuum of outer space without oxygen.
The source of Superman's powers has changed subtly over the course of
his history. It was originally stated that Superman's abilities derived
from his Kryptonian heritage, which made him eons more evolved than
humans. This was soon amended, with the source for the powers now based upon
the establishment of Krypton's gravity as having been stronger than that
of the Earth. This situation mirrors that of Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter.
As Superman's powers increased, the implication that all Kryptonians
had possessed the same abilities became problematic for writers, making
it doubtful that a race of such beings could have been wiped out by
something as trifling as an exploding planet. In part to counter this,
the Superman writers established that Kryptonians, whose native star Rao had been red, possessed superpowers only under the light of a yellow sun.
Superman is most vulnerable to green Kryptonite, mineral debris from Krypton
transformed into radioactive material by the forces that destroyed the
planet. Exposure to green Kryptonite radiation nullifies Superman's
powers and immobilizes him with pain and nausea; prolonged exposure will
eventually kill him. The only substance on Earth that can protect him
from Kryptonite is lead, which blocks the radiation. Lead is also the
only known substance that Superman cannot see through with his x-ray
vision. Kryptonite was first introduced to the public in 1943 as a plot device to allow the radio serial voice actor, Bud Collyer, to take some time off. Although green Kryptonite is the most commonly seen form, writers have
introduced other forms over the years: such as red, gold, blue, white,
and black, each with its own effect.
Enemies of Superman
Superman also has a rogues gallery of enemies, including his most well-known nemesis, Lex Luthor, who has been envisioned over the years in various forms as both a rogue scientific genius with a personal vendetta against Superman, and a powerful but corrupt CEO of a conglomerate called LexCorp who thinks Superman is somehow hindering human progress by his heroic efforts.
In the 2000s, he even becomes president of the United States, and has been depicted occasionally as a former childhood friend of Clark Kent. The alien android (in most incarnations) known as Brainiac is considered by Richard George to be the second most effective enemy of Superman. The enemy that accomplished the most, by actually killing Superman, is the raging monster Doomsday. Darkseid, one of the most powerful beings in the DC Universe, is also a formidable nemesis in most post-Crisis
comics. Other important enemies who have featured in various
incarnations of the character, from comic books to film and television
include the fifth-dimensional imp Mister Mxyzptlk, the reverse Superman known as Bizarro and the Kryptonian criminal General Zod, among many others.
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