From Cracked: "4 Reasons Anyone Who Says 'Superman Is a Boring Superhero' Is Full of It"

[ClarkKent_DC]

From Cracked: "4 Reasons Anyone Who Says 'Superman Is a Boring Superhero' Is Full of It"

It begins:

Cracked wrote:

A common complaint about Superman is that he's just too damn powerful, which is kind of like saying that the Grand Canyon is too damn grand, or that your Baconator came with too much damn bacon. Still, a lot of people seem to think it's impossible to tell interesting stories with a character who's practically invincible ... including some of the writers and studio execs whose job it is to make those stories.

Thing is, there's nothing inherently uninteresting about an all-powerful character, as long as every comic book writer on Earth isn't seriously imagination-challenged. And that's because ... 

[1xxtglbeice6g]

       As originally created by Siegel & Shuster, the baby came from an alien world "dying of old age."

       SUPERMAN, the name, the shield, the uniform/costume, and his mission came from 15-year-old Clark Kent.

        Perhaps inspired by Clark, Bruce Wayne and Peter Parker would later create their own heroes.

         Whaaa? You heard differently?

      

      

[Randy Jackson]

I've never felt Superman was a boring character. It's more of a question of how he's written. For me, the best Superman stories are not the ones where he has to face a foe that's at his level of power or higher, but rather the ones where his powers won't easily and obviously resolve the issue at hand.

I remember a Bronze Age story in which Superman had to deal with a malfunctioning Superboy robot. I don't remember why, but he couldn't just dismantle the robot, so instead he disguised himself as an ordinary human and convinced the robot that it had killed him, causing the robot to destroy itself as it had violated its programming.

I've also seen other characters that are just as overpowered made interesting by good writing. 

I think anyone that thinks Superman is boring because he's overpowered probably shouldn't have anything to do with creating superhero comics. 

[1xxtglbeice6g]

          Lex said it best: "All this accumulated knowledge, when will these dummies learn to use a doorknob?"

[ClarkKent_DC]

I think anyone who creates superhero comics who thinks Superman is boring because he's overpowered is admitting he isn't talented enough to write Superman stories.

[Jeff of Earth-J]

I have encountered a similar argument against super-hero comics in general; namely, if a character appears in a title published on a monthly basis, there is no suspense because the main character is in no danger of dying (which is really begging the question of what constitutes a good story). 

[The Baron]

Sure, the same way we know that the Doctor or Batman or Captain Kirk aren't going to die, either.  The suspense has to shift from "Will they survive?" to "How will they survive?"

Jeff of Earth-J said:

I have encountered a similar argument against super-hero comics in general; namely, if a character appears in a title published on a monthly basis, there is no suspense because the main character is in no danger of dying (which is really begging the question of what constitutes a good story). 

[ClarkKent_DC]

Jeff of Earth-J said:

I have encountered a similar argument against super-hero comics in general; namely, if a character appears in a title published on a monthly basis, there is no suspense because the main character is in no danger of dying (which is really begging the question of what constitutes a good story). 

By that logic, there's no suspense in any story that isn't a one-and-done.

[1xxtglbeice6g]

         SUPERMAN is THE Superhero the world grew up with and the "Founding Father" of the Fanboy Universe!

       SUPERMAN and Frankenstein's Monster are at the top of the sf/f pyramid. Both were created by teenagers!

[Luke Blanchard]

My own sentiments are with the author of the article in thrust, but if the customer finds the entertainment dull, that's how he finds it.

My own initial feeling about Superman was he was boring. I think I disproportionately read local reprints of 1950s stories early on, and in the 1950s DC seems to have made a point of keeping violence out of "Superman", so the stories of that decade usually lack exciting action.

When I first ran into stories I liked more they didn't change my opinion of the character. It was my encounters with Julie Schwartz-era stories that changed my mind, particularly Martin Pasko's.

Randy's story is the return-to-Smallville story in Superman #284. The robot has improved its strength and indestructability, so Superman resorts to the disguise-trick appears as an efficient way of getting rid of the thing.

I know when I was a kid I got caught up in the drama of Doctor Who and feared for the protagonists.

[Luke Blanchard]

I think the ease with which Superman can overcome the challenges the rest of us can't was the point of the character. Early on Siegel may have preferred his challenges to be recognisable ones. He gets to stop a wife-beater, to save people from a collapsing damn, to drag Hitler and Stalin before an international tribunal. Which said, he did write fanciful Superman stories as well, such as "Powerstone"/"When Titans Clash".

 

The use of mundane opponents may have been the preference of the DC editors. Over in More Fun Comics the the horror was taken out of "The Spectre", and Dr Fate made a crimefighter.

[Richard Willis]

I remember one panel in a Superboy story in which Clark literally puts his pants on both legs at the same time.

[1xxtglbeice6g]

    Why Superman?

   Bottom line: The Man of Steel makes us imagine!

   If not, like every S movie and TV series since S2, forgettabout it!