Superman: Unanswered Questions (Humor)

Superman:  Unanswered Questions

Everyone likes Superman.  He’s a modern legend.  A heroe’s hero.  But there are a lot of funny things about him that somebody really needs to clear up.

Here are some of the more obvious questions:

Kryptonite

Everybody knows that kryptonite incapacitates Superman.  So why don’t his archenemies just use kryptonite every time they fight him?   Instead, it seems like an occasional, capricious thing with them.  Like all of a sudden they remember, “Oh yeah, Supermen can’t handle kryptonite.”  But the rest of the time it never occurs to them.

Lead protects Superman from kryptonite.  Why doesn’t Superman line his suit with lead?  Then he would always be protected.

By the way, kryptonite is still not listed in the periodic table of elements.

Archenemies

The bad guys in Superman stories are always called  his “archenemies.” Does he have any regular enemies, or just archenemies?

Energy Requirements

Superman must have incredible metabolic requirements.   Does he get this from food, or from another source?  It must be the latter.  You could probably show with math that the amount of energy he expends in a typical super adventure is more than someone would get eating Baskin-Robbins banana splits nonstop for 100 years.

The Superman “Eulogy”

The 1950’s television show began with the following famous introduction:

Faster than a speeding bullet. More powerful than a locomotive. Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.

Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s Superman!

Yes, it’s Superman — strange visitor from another planet who came to Earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men. Superman — who can change the course of mighty rivers, bend steel in his bare hands, and who, disguised as Clark Kent (mild mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper), fights a never ending battle for Truth, Justice and the American Way.

This, of course, is very inspiring, but it bears close scrutiny.  Let’s examine it.

Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.

Superman can fly, right?  If you can fly, who cares if you can leap tall buildings?  Unless maybe the point here is that he leaps buildings by a different method than he flies by.  Maybe he flies using anti-gravity or something, but leaps buildings using very strong leg muscles.

Update!  According to the Wikipedia, the old Fleischer cartoon company (Popeye, Betty Boop, Superman) is “responsible for Superman being able to fly.”  When they began making Superman cartoons, they complained that a “leaping” Superman, though it might work in panel comics, was “silly looking” in a moving image medium.  Hence Superman became a flying hero.  The phrase of the cartoon prolog was accordingly changed from “able to leap tall buildings in a single bound” to “able to soar higher than any aircraft.”  Why the 1950’s television series reverted to the earlier formula is anyone’s guess.

By the way, the animation in Fleischer Superman cartoons was way ahead of its time.

(Speaking of Wikipedia, here’s an article on Powers and abilities of Superman. )  Now to continue…

Look, up in the sky.  It’s a bird!  It’s a plane!  No, it’s Superman!

Is it really that hard to visually distinguish Superman from a bird or plane? When he flies he doesn’t look anything like either of them.  He doesn’t flap wings.  And there are no contrails.  If anything, he might be mistaken for a UFO.

Yes, it’s Superman!  Strange visitor from another planet…

Is Superman “strange?”  Unusual, perhaps; or unique.  But he’s not really strange, is he?  Except for his powers he really seems fairly ordinary—especially compared to some of the villains he fights—giant robots, creatures with tentacles, etc.  All in all, Superman is fairly normal.

And about this “visitor” part.  What does that mean?  A visitor is someone who comes for a while and then leaves.  This seems to imply that Superman is going to leave.  Otherwise they’d call him an “immigrant” or “refugee” or “asylum seeker” from another planet. When is he going to leave?  Why?  Where is he going to?

Does this reveal something we’re not supposed to know?  Like the world is going to blow up soon, so that there won’t be an Earth and Superman will have to fly to some other planet?

…with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men.

Are there other kinds of men besides mortal men?  Anyway, it seems like this confuses the issues of mortality/immortality and having super powers. These are really separate things, aren’t they?  It might be more precise to say “powers beyond those of non-super men.”

Superman–who can change the course of mighty rivers,

Well, that is impressive!  How would he do this?  By digging a channel very quickly to divert the river?  Or maybe by using his super breath to make a huge wind that changes the river’s course?

It’s worth noting here that Superman has never actually done this.  It ‘s just a hypothetical power.  Seen in that light, it seems funny they would pick this particular example;  it’s not the kind of thing people think about much, unless you’re a river diversion engineer or something obscure like that. They could as easily say, “who can change the course of hurricanes,” which  might be more relevant.

Or they could allude to an even mightier hypothetical power—like “Superman, who could hurl up the sun like a softball all the way to another galaxy” or something like that.

Update! After writing this I found that one of the several variations of the opening prolog of the Fleischer Superman cartoons was in fact:

 Faster than a streak of lightning, More powerful than the pounding surf, Mightier than a roaring hurricane,

bend steel in his bare hands…

What?  They’ve just said he could change the course of mighty rivers. That’s probably stronger than 1 million men combined!  But—bending steel?  Any circus strongman can do that.  They might as well say he can tear phone books in half or lift really heavy rocks.  Sheesh!

Politics

Because of his powers, don’t you think the U.S. government would try to draft him or something?  Like, why spend trillions of dollars fighting wars when you could just send Superman?

And not just national defense.  They’d probably want to use Superman to fight the war on drugs, build a lot of highways, or put satellites into orbit.

Would he do these things?  If Congress passed a law, or maybe if all citizens got together and amended the Constitution to make him do our bidding, wouldn’t he, patriotic guy that he is, just go along with it?

But if, say, Congress passed a law that Superman had to obey them, and he refused, how would they enforce it?  The only recourse would be either (1) to cut a deal with Superman’s enemies, maybe offering them immunity or a lot of money to capture him; or (2) to use kryptonite to make him to cooperate.  The second alternative is more likely because it could involve defense contractors like Lockheed and Halliburton, who would make a lot of money designing and deploying kryptonite devices.

Probably Superman would hire good attorneys (friends of Perry White) and take it to the Supreme Court.  (Something to think about when voting — you don’t want a President who’d appoint namby-pamby Justices who are too soft on the Superman-slave issue.)

Sports

Superman could easily win every event in the Olympics, except maybe synchronized swimming.  (Badminton is questionable—it’s not clear whether he has super fine-motor control.)    That he hasn’t participated and hogged all the Olympic glory reflects well on Superman.  Most people would probably want to do it at least once, just to prove the point.

What would happen if Superman played pro sports?  It might be fun to watch at first, but would probably soon get boring.   They’d eventually have to change the rules to negate the advantages of his super powers–like the NBA did with Wilt Chamberlain.

Still, you’d think Superman could at least make a Wrestlemania appearance.  He could make millions and give the money to charity.

This is just sad.

Super-Battles

One naturally wonders how Superman would do in a fight against various other superheroes.  For example:

Batman.  Ordinarily, this would be no contest.  Batman doesn’t have super strength at all.  He can barely knock out a human villain with a punch. Basically, he’s just a regular guy in a bat suit.

On the other hand, Batman is the one superhero you’d most expect could get his hands on kryptonite, since (1) he’s rich; (2)  he’s good with technology; and  (3) he’s friends with the Gotham City police, and could borrow stuff they’ve confiscated from archvillains.

Spiderman.  There should be no doubt but that Superman would kick Spiderman’s spider-butt. Spiderman couldn’t even beat Supergirl.  Even Batman would probably beat him.

A few years ago, publishers D.C. Comics and Marvel Comics collaborated on “Superman vs. Spiderman.”  But it was ridiculous:  Spiderman’s powers were temporarily boosted to super levels by archenemy Lex Luthor.  You can’t cheat like that, even in fiction.  I mean, they could have as easily given Spiderman a potion that made him 1000 feet tall.  With Superman and Spiderman at their normal strength levels, Superman would obviously win.

The Incredible Hulk.  This is the most promising match-up of all.  Superman and Hulk have about equal physical strength.  But, owing to all his other powers (heat vision, super breath, super speed, etc.) Superman would likely win.  Besides, the Hulk is incredibly dumb, so Superman could easily trick him.

Superman and the Hulk have fought a few times in the comics.  In this example you can see what I mean.  Superman has a really patronizing attitude towards the Hulk.  Like he’s talking to a dog or something.

The comic book battles themselves are indecisive.  The only real conclusion is that if these guys fight there is a huge amount of collateral damage, so you probably don’t want to be around.

Wonder Woman.  This is a hard one to answer because, whereas Superman’s powers are well established, Wonder Woman’s are more vague.  For one thing, she has powers that verge on the magical, which takes us off into a completely different realm.  Anway, the point is moot, because Superman would have a hard time fighting a woman.

Superman and Wonder Woman fought once, but I don’t think it was meant to be taken seriously.  It was just a excuse to sell comics:

Hercules.  Superman would win.  Hercules was basically like a very, very strong man (or maybe technically a demi-god – but not a god).  For example, if Hercules threw the discus, he would beat all the other competitors by a wide margin. But Superman would send the discus clear out of sight—into outer space, if he wanted!

This question, however, has an interesting spinoff.  The most famous Hercules movie actor, Steve Reeves, has the same last name as George Reeves, the actor who played Superman on television.  So if we asked instead which of these actors would win in a fight, the question is potentially answerable, though we will probably never know.  Steve Reeves had a lot of muscles, but George Reeves looked pretty strong, too:

George Reeves (R.I.P)	Steve Reeves

Godzilla.  Godzilla is not usually thought of as a superhero.  But sometimes, he sides with humans against rival monsters or aliens from the future, so he might qualify.  In any case, I think Superman would probably beat Godzilla.

Superman has never fought Godzilla one-on-one, but there was a three-way battle between him, Godzilla and King Kong once.