10 Hot Takes About Superman
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Also, I’m hosting another Writers With Drinks reading on July 12 in San Francisco!
10 scorching hot takes about the Man of Steel
1. Kryptonite should be deadly
I've recently been watching My Adventures with Superman, and one of my favorite things about this animated show is that Kryptonite is a serious threat to the Man of Steel. Of course, there are other things that can hurt him, including Parasite and various weapons derived from Kryptonian tech. Still, Kryptonite is built up as a huge problem for Clark, to the point where every time it shows up he is put out of action and placed in mortal peril.
All too often in adaptations of the Superman mythos, Kryptonite gets downgraded to the point where it's barely an inconvenience. In the comics, Superman has built up such a huge resistance to Kryptonite he can just shrug it off. Someone as powerful as Superman should have vulnerabilities that will stop him in his tracks — or else you start having to come up with more complicated ways to put him in danger. Of course, the corollary to all this is that Kryptonite shouldn't show up everyday — otherwise it gets boring, because Superman is just constantly flopping around on the ground. It should be both deadly and rare. On a related note, I am the one person on Earth who wishes that Green Lantern’s ring still didn't work on anything yellow. (I know!)
2. You can tell a lot about a Superman adaptation by how it treats Jimmy Olsen
The wide-eyed photographer who describes himself as Superman's Best Friend is, in many ways, one of the hardest parts of the Superman mythos to tackle. He's an unapologetic Superman fanboy, he hangs around Superman all the time, and he's constantly getting himself into ridiculous scrapes — especially in the Silver Age comics, where he regularly becomes a turtle dude or whatever.
But Jimmy is also the heart of the Superman story to some extent — as I've realized from watching My Adventures With Superman. Lois Lane is amazing and clever, and it's important that Superman has a woman in his life that he both loves and respects. But having a healthy friendship with another man is essential for Superman, and letting him be a bit of a goofball is a major plus.
In Supergirl, Olsen is so serious and stoic that he has to go by James instead of Jimmy, and he frequently seems uncomfortable even being in the same show as a lot of the goofier elements. In the Zack Snyder versions, Jimmy Olsen is alive for a grand total of two minutes, and also turns out to be a CIA agent?? I guess. Anyway, in James Gunn’s upcoming Superman film, he’s played by Skyler Gisondo and seems suitably goofy, but I hope he actually gets some decent moments.
3. Superman belongs on television
Obviously Supes belongs in the comics first and foremost — but he clearly thrives on television more than in the movies.
The last unambiguously successful Superman film was in was Superman II in 1980 (!) and every film project since then has either failed or underperformed. Meanwhile, Superman has consistently ruled on television, including Lois and Clark, Smallville, Supergirl, and Superman and Lois — not to mention a bunch of animated shows even before the latest iteration. This goes back to my theory that superhero stories are soap operas: Superman is at his best when he has a rich relationship with his supporting cast, and with the people of Metropolis generally. He's not really Superman unless he's hanging around a lot of ordinary people who have everyday problems — take the human beings away, and he's just a big guy who punches things.
I’m excited for James Gunn’s film, especially after watching the cute AF trailers. And yet, I’m convinced that we'll never get a Superman movie that captures what's great about Clark as well as many of the TV shows have, purely by virtue of the extra time a show has to develop a rich supporting cast and a whole host of relatively low-stakes subplots. I wanna know about Cat Grant’s love life!
4. It's unethical for Superman to be a journalist
When you're a journalist, sources will sometimes ask if they can go “off the record.” It took me way too long to realize that the correct answer to that question is often “No.” As in: “Don’t tell me anything I can’t print in the newspaper.”1 When someone gives you information off the record, you are immediately boxed in because you know stuff that you cannot print, and you have to write around that somehow. A lot of the time, when people ask if they can go off the record, they’re trying to sabotage your reporting by contradicting what others have told you on the record. They may even be lying to you.
Now let’s think about Superman — he’s constantly learning information that he cannot ethically include in an article. How does Superman know that Lex Luther committed securities fraud? Because he used his X-Ray vision and his super hearing. He can’t put that in an article without confessing that he’s Superman. There's no story that Clark Kent can report out without running into areas where he already knows too much that he can’t verify through legitimate means, and this means his reporting is fucked. A source might tell him something on the record that contradicts what he’s learned with his super-senses, and he can’t do anything about it, for example.
Side note: Whenever we see/hear a piece of journalism written by Clark or Lois, it's always an op-ed. Every damn time. These are not reporters, these are opinion writers. They need to stop claiming to work on the news desk.
5. Quentin Tarantino doesn't understand Superman
That moment in Kill Bill where David Carradine explains that Clark Kent is a bumbling fool because that's how Superman sees us mere mortals is pure garbage. It's always bugged me a lot, and it’s clearly Carradine speaking for Quentin Tarantino.
As anyone who's ever paid any serious attention to Superman knows, Clark Kent is who Superman really is — he's a good-natured farm boy from Kansas who was raised by two extremely square human parents and grew up with a gentle “aw shucks” demeanor. To the extent that Clark Kent plays up his own haplessness to throw people off the scent of his being Superman, this is purely an extension of how Superman moves through the world in general: Trying very hard to make people feel unthreatened by his immense power, and to make people feel comfortable with him as much as they can.
Honestly, this makes me feel like Quentin Tarantino just can’t understand a character as aspirational and altruistic as Superman. Even though I’m sure Tarantino would make a stylish-as-heck superhero film — and superheroes could sure use a dose of style right now — I’m very glad it’ll never happen.
6. Krypton is intrinsically boring. Sorry!
Doctor Who finally gave the Doctor a home planet in 1969, and the first few times we saw it, Gallifrey was just some white guys in tunic robes declaiming. Robert Holmes realized this was boring as hell, and turned Gallifrey into a literally colorful place full of fools enacting complex rituals. And then… Gallifrey got boring again. Sorry.
Similarly, people have tried many times to tell interesting stories about Krypton. John Byrne did a whole miniseries back in the day, and more recently Syfy had an entire Krypton TV show. It never works. Everything we know about Krypton is one big snooze: they had a lot of science, they had a cruel penal system involving the Phantom Zone. They were kind of uptight and sterile — sometimes literally, to the point where their babies have to come out of a Smurfberry tree or something. They didn’t listen to Jor-El when he said their planet was doomed. That’s it.
You cannot make Krypton interesting, because the function of Krypton is to be a cautionary tale about the death of a civilization. And the more we learn about that civilization, the less power that parable has.
7. Superman should never fight strong guys, only smart guys
Superman is the strongest guy, so what's the point in seeing him fight another strong guy? To see which one is stronger? You know it's gonna be Superman, because Superman is the strongest guy!
Sorry, yes, this is another dig at Doomsday, whom I already spent a whole newsletter dunking on. But it's no accident that Lex Luthor is a genius, and arguably Superman's other famous enemy has “Brain” in his name. Superman's whole deal is that he's physically able to fight his way out of almost any situation unless there's kryptonite (see above) or magic (see below). Even the Toyman is a whiz at building clever gadgets. Superman's greatest fights will always be a battle of wits, not brawn, and I never need to see Superman fight Shazam, Doomsday, or any other roided-out dude ever again. Make him think his way out of a situation, people!
8. Superman should hate magic
Besides Kryptonite, the Man of Steel’s other main weakness is magic. But I feel like Superman, as a dude who comes from a world of science and still aspires to uphold the traditions of Krypton, should low-key hate magic in any case.
Magic doesn't just hurt Superman the way Kryptonite does — it can mess with him in so many ways, and render him not just helpless but irrelevant. If you want to give Superman a flaw, or something to keep him from being entirely a good-natured dude — for the record, I am fine with him being entirely a good-natured dude — I would love to see Superman be distrustful of the mystic arts. Especially if magic prevents him from saving innocent lives a few times, I could see Superman making it his business to eliminate a lot of magic from the world. That would be a really interesting story if it pits him against folks like John Constantine and Zatanna.
9. Please stop bringing up “Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex”
Larry Niven is a justly acclaimed science fiction author who’s best known for his monumental work Ringworld. But I’m really sick of people bringing up his jokey 1969 essay about what’d happen if Superman and Lois Lane ever had sex.
Basically, it's a lot of speculation about Superman's alien biology and the notion that he would inevitably kill Lois Lane if they hooked up, because his pelvic thrusts would be too powerful or his sperm would travel at high velocities and tear her body apart. I don't love imagining a gruesome and revolting death for Lois Lane, honestly. And though this is an interesting thought experiment, it runs counter to everything we know about Superman, which is that he is a fantastical being (not magical, but still a fantasy character at his root), whose defining trait is gentleness.
Superman is someone who could break anything he touches, if he's not careful — so he's incredibly careful all the time, to the point where this is second nature for him. Plus we still know comparatively little about Kryptonian biology. And if you can swallow the idea that Kryptonians are compatible enough with humans to have intercourse, then it’s reasonable to assume that Superman’s sperm could operate within the parameters of human sperm. We’re also talking about someone who has an absurd level of control over his own body — he can breathe ice! — so Superman might consciously be able to control the muscles that cause ejaculation, so they don’t do any harm to his partner.
In any case, this essay is fundamentally about something really terrible happening to Lois Lane and I would love to never hear about it again.
10. Superman is American
One of the main clips I keep seeing from James Gunn’s new Superman film involves Lois interviewing him about interfering in a foreign countries affairs and being perceived as representing the United states. Superman protests that he doesn’t represent anybody but himself. (Other times when this comes up, he often says he belongs to the world, not any one country.)
This scene follows years of Superman trying to distance himself from his status as an avatar of the U.S.A. He tried to change his iconic catchphrase to “Truth, Justice, and Some Third Thing." At one point, he even renounced his American citizenship for thirty seconds, causing conservative media outlets to have an orgasm of pearl-clutching. I miss the days when he became POTUS.
The truth is, Superman is as American as a hot dog inside a piece of apple pie served in a baseball glove. Remember how I said that Clark Kent is who he really is? Kansas farm boy, a little bit square, good natured American boy? That means he's an American. And he does represent our country — which is good for us.
I feel like Superman is who we wish we were, and Batman is who we actually are. Superman is an immigrant who tempers his immense strength with kindness and tries to see the good in everyone, no matter what. Batman is a rich thug whose default assumption is that anyone who steps out of line is a criminal who deserves a boot to the face. Now more than ever, we need Superman to represent the United States of America, because we are becoming more like Batman all the time.
Want more of these? Check out others in the series:
7 Hot Takes About Shared Universes
Sly Stone Literally Changed Music
I almost wrote about the death of Sly Stone last week, but literally everything I have to say about the importance of his music is contained in the phenomenal documentary Sly Lives! which you can still watch on Hulu. It kind of sucks that Brian Wilson from the Beach Boys died just two days after Sly, because a lot of outlets seem to have pivoted to talking about Wilson’s legacy rather quickly. The fact is Sly Stone changed music in so many ways, inspiring countless other artists including Prince and George Clinton. If you listen to enough music from the late 1960s and early 1970s, you can hear the impact of each Sly and he Family Stone release in real time — the bright, upbeat, positive sound of Stand! is all over the early Jackson Five recordings, for example. Larry Graham’s thumping bass in “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)” instantly changes music as well.
The other day I was listening to a great compilation called Black Rio, Vol. 2: Brazil Soul Power 1968-1981. As the name suggests, it’s a collection of funk and soul from Brazil, and this song from 1971 caught my ear:
Listen to the opening bars — that’s “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)." Less than a year after Sly and the Family Stone’s masterpiece comes out in the U.S.A., people in Brazil are copying it and building on it. That’s how huge Sly’s influence was, and how thoroughly and quickly he changed music. Now’s a great time to listen to Sly’s music — the 4-disc Higher! box set is still available on streaming services, and it’s a great crash course.
Same goes for anonymous sources, who can tell you all kinds of things without having to take responsibility. ↩