"Why the Man of Steel is still super" article by Ty Templeton

[Spider-Man]

Ty Templeton wrote this great article for the Toronto Star about Superman's 70th anniversary this year and it is a great read. Check it out:

http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/article/413980


Why Man of Steel is still super

As Superman turns 70, our guest columnist ponders the reasons behind this comic icon's enduring popularity today

Apr 13, 2008 04:30 AM
Ty Templeton
Special to the Star

Superman is 70 this month. He doesn't look a day older than when I met him, but I guess that's why they call him Superman.

Why has he lasted so long? Why is he still relevant to a modern audience, decades after teenagers Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster first imagined the Samson from outer space in the 1930s?

It's not because he was the first superhero, although a lot of people falsely credit him that honour. Popeye had super strength and invulnerability, Tarzan talked to animals, the Shadow turned invisible, and Philip Wylie's pulp hero in his 1930 book Gladiator (see sidebar) could leap over a barn, stop bullets with his skin, and lift a car over his head, all long before Superman showed up.

As for the costume? The Phantom wore the tights-and-trunks years before Action Comics No. 1 hit the stands in April 1938, as did Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers every Sunday in colour. The Shadow even wore a cape. So why has Superman left them all behind in history? Why did he age so well when they didn't?

What sets Superman apart from all those who came before and after him, is that he is the personification of the most deeply rooted human belief there is: that there are gods in this world, and if we pray to them, they might help. The wonder of Superman is, that when we ask for HIS help in fighting something so big or dangerous that we poor humans can only fail, he shows up and helps. Instantly. On time. And everybody lives at the end of the story. He is god in a cape. The living answer to our prayers.

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[tb4000]

I see what they're getting at, however, a lot of fans have become put off of him for exactly that reason...he's too infallible, he's a god among men, etc. The hero we can relate to has become what's popular as of late.

[Ed Liu]

I see what they're getting at, however, a lot of fans have become put off of him for exactly that reason...he's too infallible, he's a god among men, etc. The hero we can relate to has become what's popular as of late.

I still say (http://forums.toonzone.net/showpost.php?p=2828648&postcount=73) that this is just not true (or, as I'll get to, it's right but for the wrong reason). If you're going to say that Superman's perfection and his powers distance him from the rest of us, then how can you explain the runaway popularity of characters like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Neo from The Matrix, or Harry Potter? All of them have powers well beyond what a normal person can "relate" to, especially in the case of Neo, but that does not seem to have affected their popularity at all.

You might argue that all of the characters I've mentioned have their human fallibilities, their moments of doubt and their moral dilemmas, and the things that they screw up and have to pick up the after. To that, I say that 1) Superman does, too, and 2) that's what Clark Kent is for.

That latter point is important, because I just don't think that you're supposed to "identify" with Superman (http://forums.toonzone.net/showpost.php?p=2751927&postcount=401). You're supposed to identify with Clark Kent. Superman is a figure that you aspire to. To an extent, that's embodied in Buffy, Neo, and Harry Potter, also, except that the whole split personality thing isn't as explicit.

This also relates to something in the op-ed itself. With all due respect to Ty the Guy (who may well show up here to tell me I'm full of crap ;)), I don't know that Superman has been able to take on one big thing that has given anxiety to several generations now. While he's always been a champion of individuals, Superman has also become a symbol of the Establishment over time. He represents the law-and-order status quo, working with the system. He's the one who talks to Presidents and Mayors and heads of state. This puts him in opposition to Batman, who's always been the anti-Establishment superhero. Batman's only contact with the Establishment is through Jim Gordon, and he is hunted by the police almost as often as he helps them.

My current working theory is that the Watergate scandal and the Vietnam War were the watershed events that led a very large sector of the American populace to think that they couldn't trust the Establishment to act in their best interests. I think that anxiety has colored our pop culture for decades, and that's the one anxiety that Superman has never really recovered from or been able to grapple with head-on. There are a lot of reasons why, including Superman was an Establishment hero since the 50's and 60's, which was just enough time for him to get walloped hard in the 70's; that the Establishment has, if anything, gotten even worse over time; that comics themselves (and Superman in particular) has gone from being disposable trash culture to being a real icon, which limits what can really be done with him; and that superheroes tend to fall down when you put too much metaphorical weight on them.

However, I'd say that the whole Establishment/anti-Establishment dichotomy is the real reason why people say they can't identify with Superman. After the 70's, I think people just tend to like the anti-Establishment characters more. I think this is why Neo, Buffy, and Harry Potter are appealing, despite having Superman-like powers compared to those around them. All three are really anti-Establishment characters, since they come into conflict with the Powers That Be quite often. Neo, in particular, may be the definitive anti-Establishment Superman, since "the Establishment" in his world is the Matrix, but the setup means the Establishment can be openly presented as a Bad Thing.

I don't think it's an accident that nobody really pays much attention to Superman or Captain America (the other super-Establishment character) on an on-going basis, but that massive furors erupted when both characters got killed in the comics. There's a lot to say about that, too, but I've rambled on long enough.

-- Ed