I always loathed Superman – as a comic hero that is. Outside of comics I found him quite cute. First he was a chubby middle-aged man who could pass through walls with the aid of 1950’s tv technology, when I was a kid. Later on he was Christopher Reeves, the man who was born to be Superman and who was perennially charming even when the films were dire.
But as a comic character, I found Superman appalling. Firstly, he was a DC character and I was a very tribal kid who didn’t read DC, only Marvel. I was appalled when a giant sized Spider-Man vs Superman came out. ‘How could they?’ I thought, besides which I suspected that it would be terribly boring.
My main problem with Superman was his invulnerability. He’s just too damn super! Sure, there’s ‘kryptonite’ which can make him feel woozy, but you know he’ll
get away from that somehow, no matter how often people hide it in rings, gloves, facial creme, condoms and what have you. Kryptonite aside, Superman doesn’t need to exert himself like the rest of us and his challenges always seemed a bit bogus to me.
God has a similar problem, although He doesn’t wear blue tights and a cape (not that I know of). People ask why an all powerful deity would allow children to die in hostage crises or starve to death in the Sudan. I used to wonder the same thing about Superman. Why did he allow any crime? It always seemed a bit lazy of him to just fix a mugging here, an attempted rape there, when he could get his super act together and stop the lot. This problem is especially pronounced during war time. Why didn’t Superman just use his laser vision to turn Berlin and Tokyo to dust (without harming any people of course) instead of the occasional bit of sabotage prevention?
One of the best parts of Watchmen for any long term comics fan was when Dr Manhattan, who was a lot like Superman, just won the Vietnam war for the bad guys by simply walking around Vietnam using his super powers until the Vietcong surrendered. Dr M eventually realises the futility of bothering with human beings and drifts off to do godlike things elsewhere. An actual Superman would eventually do the same thing and all the various attempts to give him an edge or make him realistic have been avoiding this central fact about him.
No doubt the various Superman writers have tried to account for this problem over the years and I’ve got no intention of debating them on the subject. The invulnerability remains a problem for me, though, an element of my disbelief I can’t suspend.
What brought me back to the blue-haired one was a couple of DC Archive collections. For those who don’t know, these are beautiful hardback collections of old comics, very popular with my local library. I borrowed two of the Superman collections because I thought they might be fun by virtue of being old and daggy*. They were all of that.
Part of the fun, was watching the stories being made up as they went along. Sometimes Mr S had a belt, other times he didn’t. Sometimes boots, other times just his blue tights. In general the art looks as if I’d drawn it at speed, using a ruler for the faces.
The stories improvised too; when disguising himself, Superman could mysteriously change his face in a few stories, whilst in others he merely had a talent for make up. The superiority of his powers changed a lot as he went from being stronger than a bull to being able to jump very high. There’s more to the fun of these stories than sneers at a previous generation’s innocent thrills, though. There are the health tips (Superman recommends sleeping with the window open, exercise and eating everything your parents tell you too). There is even a recommended reading list for kiddies who’ve finished their exercise and dinner. The book list has some damn good stuff on it, like Dumas and Louis Stephenson I’ve copied it somewhere and will try to read my way through it and see if I’m any more super when I’ve finished. And there are text stories, one or two page short stories, which are quite good (especially if you judge them by the dire standards of the 2000AD stable’s short stories which usually feel like a chore).
I felt some empathy with the kids of 1941 or whenever it was and imagined them reading their way through the list and trying to do their push-ups. I actually inflicted the pictures on my six-year old son, who ran around in a super way for a week or two. You never know.
I still think a team up between Superman and Spiderman is a vile idea, but you might find me reading another one of those Archive editions.
*daggy; naff, lame, cornball
