More powerful than a locomotive!
Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound!
It's a bird! It's a plane! It's...
SUPERMAN.
The first superhero. The one just about everyone will mention when you bring up the term "superhero."
He's part of the American experience, but like all true art, was bigger than any one nation, political movement, or era.
He's been around for seventy-four years. Without him, comic books as we know them today would never have come to be. And when you consider that "Superman: The Movie" influenced a generation of filmmakers and film production, you realize that an entire genre of films would have never come to be, either.
This is just one small example of the impact the Superman character has had on the world. According to research, Superman's "\S/" is the second most recognized symbol in the world, right after the cross of Christ.
That's amazing when you think about it.
How did I come to love Superman? Well, let's be clear: what kid doesn't, or at least didn't, at some point? This is especially true for our generation. The Christopher Reeve films took a character that existed only in two dimensions and made him real. Superman was real. There wasn't any doubt to those of us who were kids when those movies debuted.
But even before then, I knew Superman and was a big fan. My brother, who I've mentioned before, had stacks of comics featuring Superman, from The Man of Steel's own solo titles to books that featured Superman regularly, like Justice League of America. And I had Superman pajamas and a huge Superman action figure with glow-in-the-dark kryptonite.
When I became a comic fan on my own, however, I didn't find that I was all that interested in Superman. I read a lot of X-Men related titles, and was a huge fan of dark, sometimes violent characters, like Wolverine, The Punisher, Ghost Rider, Morbius The Living Vampire, and so on. I was also a huge fan of The Batman, who was my favorite character during this "dark age" I went through.
Flash forward to 1992. I read an article in the Lafayette newspaper about a shocking event: The Death of Superman. The article said that Superman was going to be killed and the comics featuring him cancelled. Like the ill-informed media at the time, I believed this truly was the end for Superman. I was kind of relieved, since I preferred those darker characters I mentioned and had found Superman a little one-dimensional and "goody two-shoes" for my liking. It seemed to me that Superman was a character out of date and no longer relevant.
One of the two comic shops I frequented at the time had the entire six-issue run of "The Death of Superman," and my mother bought them for me as a Christmas gift. They were first-prints, which is usually only a big deal when a story is important enough to warrant reprints. My shock and fear grew as I read one issue after another, each bringing the clock that much closer to zero hour for The Man of Steel.
Then I read Superman #75. There were two versions: a "newsstand" edition, which is just a regular, mass-market printing of a comic, and a direct edition. The direct edition was packaged in a sealed black bag featuring a bleeding, red \S/ over a black background. I read my newsstand copy and marveled at the first comic I'd ever read that used one big panel for each page. At the end of the issue, the creature called Doomsday, which had beaten every other hero and which was bent on wiping out all life on Earth, was defeated. But at a great cost.
Superman was dead.
Of course, no one stays dead in comics. I added the Superman titles to my folder, surprised that there were going to be future issues in light of Big Blue's demise. One year later, after the debut of four mysterious beings who each claimed to be Superman, the one, true Superman returned from the dead.
I'd been hooked with the first issue in the "The Death of Superman" series. Granted, this guy didn't have blades coming out of his hands, he didn't have a flaming skull for a head and a demonic motorcycle that could streak up the sides of buildings, he didn't wear black and gun down bad guys with an unbeatable arsenal. That's what I found some refreshing and inspiring about him. Instead, he came to the aid of people who needed him, even if they didn't seem to respect him or care for him. And he fought Doomsday, the first villain who could actually give him a run for his money, knowing full well he might have to lay his life down to save others.
I was "converted," I guess you could say. And I still love Big Blue to this day. Some say Superman is appealing because of the power fantasy. We all wish we could fly and were invulnerable, that we had the strength to change the course of mighty rivers, that nothing could stop us. And there are those who say that Superman is a popular character because of his relationship with Lois Lane and because he's a symbol of American immigrants who moved here to start a new life.
That's all fine and good. But I'll tell you the real appeal: we wish we could be like Superman. I don't mean have his powers. I mean we wish we could make a difference and be the good people we know we really are at heart.We wish pettiness, bigotry, hatred, fear, arrogance, and bloodlust would bounce off of us like those bullets bounce off Superman. We wish we could soar, not above cityscapes or into space, but above those failings that keep us from being better than we are.
We wish that we could be heroes ourselves.
I know I certainly do. Superman is one of my three favorite characters for these reasons, and of course, because he's a great character. The sci-fi stuff is fun and exciting. There's truth to the wish fulfillment, power fantasy stuff. And who doesn't like a story where the guy gets the girl and vice versa?
Tomorrow, I'll tell you a tale of my love for a certain Dark Knight Detective, who you know better as Batman. And I'll even explain why I refer to him as "The Batman." Chris
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