Superman

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Personality and character

Originally, Superman's personality could be rough and destructive. In one really early story in which the government would not help maintain low income areas unless a disaster occurred, Superman went on a rampage and created one. Superman is also nearly always portrayed as having had some hand in WWII, when the timeline permits. As superhero stories became more oriented toward young readers, the writers moved toward his better known "boy scout" persona. Even so, Superman's capacity for a violent anger is a key element to many of the most dramatic moments in his appearances, since it is this sort of telling snapshot into his psyche that allows readers and watchers to see that Superman's goodness is not inherent to his being, but learned, like it is with us.

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This is why, despite the emphasis on Superman having powers "far beyond those of mortal men," his name referred also to his goodness. While Jor-El sent Kal-El to Earth because he felt the human race had the capacity to be great and good if they wished to be, it is clear that Kal-El chose to become Superman and a force for good. The education he received on the family farm is the most potent symbol for 'old fashioned values' one can conjure, and this helps ground the character. He seems out of place and out of touch with his world because he is, in fact, the product of 'better times' more than the real world.

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Superman has been willing to lay down his life or sacrifice his powers for good. He rescues cats from trees and participates in community fund-raisers. He often acts behind the scenes and lets others receive the credit. His modesty and humility catches his foes and critics off-guard, as they do not understand why he spends his life helping others and doing good.

Related Topics:
Modesty - Humility

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Recent writers have attempted to deepen Superman's persona and provide a rationale for his goodness. They reveal his self-doubts, and his fear that he might abuse his powers and become a monster, subject to no one. He therefore makes it a point of submitting to authority, helping him to feel a restraint on his actions. In an extraordinary show of mutual respect, Superman has given Batman a ring of green kryptonite, so that if he ever lost his reason, posing a danger to himself or to humans, Batman could use the ring to defeat him.

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This line of thinking, that Superman is a hero as deeply conflicted with his gifts as Batman is with his past, is key to the modern interpretation of Superman not as a better man, but what is best in man. It is also important that Superman often struggles with vast social issues in his fiction, including tackling world hunger, unsuccessfully, in a short wide-panel 1990s graphic novel called Peace on Earth (with artwork by Alex Ross). Through these conflicts, discussions of good and evil are formed, as Superman struggles with restraint in the face of bigotry, avarice, and cruelty. In this manner, Superman's excessive arsenal of powers is rendered secondary to his ability to convince others to act.

Related Topics:
1990s - Graphic novel - Alex Ross - Bigotry - Avarice - Cruelty

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This was a further motivation for Superman becoming a reporter, for it is then possible that his physical abilities give him no unfair advantage in a field where the critical skills are intellectual (although his editor, Perry White, praised him in ' as "the fastest typist I have ever seen"). In current continuity, Clark Kent writes fiction in his spare time, and has had two books published, "The Janus Contract" and "Under a Yellow Sun".

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Far from a perfect individual, Superman is often pictured with a sense of childish innocence mixed with patriarchal restraint. He is also a man with an incredible depth of feeling, since he lives within his own mind as much as he does in the reality of society, often struggling with the differences between the right answer and the practical one. In many ways, Superman is truly one of the most "human" heroes conceived, since he responds to emotional grief in stark contrast to the way he shrugs off bullets, bombs, and death-rays. Superman's daily martyrdom is reflected tellingly in print during his reappearance in the 1996 miniseries Kingdom Come, where he is pictured as a bearded carpenter with a long beam of wood across his back, mirroring a Christ-like image of a man who gave himself for a world that, in that storyline, did not love him.

Related Topics:
1996 - Kingdom Come - Carpenter - Christ

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Superman's "lily white" persona has been mocked, ridiculed, and spoofed, especially in recent comic book history, when "grim and gritty" comics dominated the market. Superman may seem old-fashioned and even quaint compared to the "dark avengers" who currently command the lion's share of the market, and this is intentional. Superman fights fair long after both sides have begun swinging below the belt, knowing that his vast powers require him to act with equal restraint. On several recent occasions, Batman has faced Superman, and Batman has served as a foil to Superman's goodness; Batman, in his more recent incarnations, won't hesitate to use guile or underhanded tactics to gain an advantage, while Superman will be overly hesitant to use his natural gifts as an unfair edge. Indeed, Batman has undergone an increasingly dark makeover. However, Superman continues to be a driving force in the medium after more than sixty years, continuing to serve as an "old school" hero in a time of increasingly darker, anti-heroic superhero characters.

Related Topics:
Old school - Anti-hero

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In the Infinite Crisis storyline launched in 2005, Superman is forced to deal with how his ideals and code of conduct are applicable in the modern (and, some may argue, post-9/11) world. Most recently he has come to terms with the fact that his friend Wonder Woman made the decision to kill Maxwell Lord in order to save Superman's life, and did so without apparent remorse. His reaction to this was to terminate his friendship with Wonder Woman, though the long-term ramifications of the killing on both Superman and Wonder Woman has yet to be played out.

Related Topics:
Infinite Crisis - 2005 - 9/11 - Wonder Woman - Maxwell Lord

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