Boring Super Powers: The Problem With Superman

Superman is the very first super hero. Created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, he burst onto the scene like an explosion. Of course, there were costumed characters in pop culture before him (characters like The Lone Ranger and The Shadow both made their radio debuts in the early thirties whereas Superman didn’t appear until 1938) but it is commonly accepted that Superman is when we started calling characters super heroes.

There was something about Superman that elevated him from those other characters who had appeared in radio serials and pulp novels before him. Superman was the first such character birthed from the comics and he would dominate the medium from his inception to today.

But there lies the problem. Superman is so closely associated with comics that there seems to be an innate belief that in order for a character to succeed he or she must somehow bare a resemblance to this progenitor archetype. Sometimes the duplications have been subtle, other times they have been overt, and in some cases the similarities between Superman and the new creation are almost indistinguishable. Some famous Superman ripoffs are Captain Marvel, The Sentry, Miracle Man (aka Marvel Man in the UK), Supreme, Samaritan, Apollo, The Plutonian, The Homelander and a host of others in various titles from multiple publishers.

 

What makes those above characters ripoffs of Superman? For some it is the costume, for others it is the origin, but the real thing that makes them so similar to the first super hero is their powers. All these characters have flight, strength, speed, enhanced senses, and invulnerability. Some have additional abilities like energy blasts/vision but the core powers are all the same. So these powers have been established as the basic powers a super hero must have. Basic meaning boring in this case.

Now I am not saying Superman is a boring character. After a run of close to seventy five years the character has been in many amazing stories. I am saying his powers are boring. Since the inception of Superman only a handful of additional super powers have been added to the repertoire of writers working in the genre. And I would certainly consider shapeshifting and telepathy to be just as boring as flight. It’s just become pedestrian.

Having read so many comics over the years, the only times I truly get excited about a story or character is when they complete break the rules. When a writer decides to go against the tropes of the super hero genre and twist things in a new direction. Superman is in essence the box that comic book writers need to think outside of.

The secret identity, the cape, the major metropolitan city, these ingredients seem to be present in so many characters. Even the secret identities of these characters seem to resemble Clark Kent, with their foppish clumsiness designed so no one will suspect that they are anything but ordinary. Even characters like Underdog and Hong Kong Fooey (Number One Super Guy!) owe a debt to Superman.