Superman Through the Ages! Forum

According to Mark Waid, in his excellent essay in the Super-Heroes and Philosophy: Truth, Justice and the Socratic Way book, the key element to Superman being Superman is the fact the he feels more alone in the universe than anyone have aver been. That was his idea when developting the Birthright origin, and while not everyone would agree, there are great Superman stories that deal with loneliness and alienation, the most significant being Superman: Secret Identity, by Kurt Busiek and Stuart Immonem, and the Superman Returns movie by Bryan Singer.

On the opposite side, John Byrne´s revamp The Man of Steel pointed that the reason for Clark Kent being Superman is his creation by higher moral standerds by Jonathan and Martha Kent. Everyone here would agree that Byrne misanderstood the character, in fact, that´s a reason of this site we´re discussing. But, even in his Man of Steel minisseries, even with the football champion jock angle, Clark Kent, while being "human", still feel isolated from everyone else in the scene where he saves the space shutle. So yes, even in Byrne´s work, there is the loneliness aspect important to the origin.

All of this, however, is "post-modernist deconstruction" of the legend, I think, since the original Golden and Silver Age stories did´t deal with this level of subtext. Or did they? Return to Krypton storylines served that purpose, since what I think was the first, by Bill Finger, in wich Superman returns as a "ghost". Stan Lee, the father of human emotions in super-heroes, with Spidey, Fantastic Four and the X-Men, did the aproach more directly, but it was right there all along with Superman - being the intention of Siegel or not. But after all of seven decades, revamping Superman now, would the "loneliness" aspect really be a key element to Superman, to the point hat we would have another character without it? It´s like the murder of the parents for Bruce Wayne/Batman? Is it what really define Superman motivations? What do you guys think?       
 

I don't think Superman's loneliness was something central to Siegel and Shuster's original intentions: they had him come from outer space in order to explain his powers; the death of the Kents was pretty incidental, really. However, once Superman learned of his extraterrestrial roots, and started thinking of himself as a Kryptonian, it became something of a theme with him, and I think it is crucial to the character now. Everything about Superman is about isolation: his origins, his secret identity, his Fortress of Solitude. His isolation is somewhat self-enforced, because he knows that if he just chose to live among humans openly, they'd never stop asking him for favours. He has to take a break every now and then, and in order to do this, he disguises himself as loner Clark Kent.

I don't really think that Superman's loneliness defines his motivations - it's more a result of who he is and what he does. However, I do think it's essential to his character that he remain a bit distant, aloof even, from the rest of humanity, so scriptwriters should never go and do something stupid like, oh, say, HAVE HIM MARRY LOIS LANE, for instance.

Actually, the "alone-ness" aspect I believe was right there in the motivations of creating the character.  If I'm not mistaken, S&S were a bit geeky and social outcasts to a degree.  In Superman - they discovered/created "the most popular guy", who would be liked and admired by everyone (unlike themselves), and in Clark they pretty much cast him into their own molds, using the cover of making it possible for the fantastic Superman to gain access un-noticed into the lives of normal people.  I think Clark's creation has more to do with making it easier to identify with their own creation.  The point being that the creation of Superman himself seemed to be an address to the aloneness of social ostracization.

I don't think that Superman began with that quality.  I do believe however, that Superman himself would begin to take on those aloneness traits more as S&S continued to create his stories.  For instance there is a bit of that aloneness quality that appears in page 16 of K-Metal where Clark learns of his origins.  Although not really as punched up as one might, it does demonstrate a desire to discover one's beginnings,  implying to me that Supes has a desire to be less alone.


I believe some of the beauty of a good Superman story has more to do with his attempts to understand, relate and work with and among humanity - recognizing that he isn't human but caring enough about humanity to help it along.

I can only speak from my impression of reading Superman in the 60s, there are stories like "Superboy's Underground Exile", "The Girl in Superman's Past", and "Krypton's Second Doom" where I really remember a sense of loneliness when I read them.

That's about the only academic "sub context" I like to invest in comics, what I felt when I read them 40 years ago.

Busiek nailed the whole "superman loneliness" thing in that "supergirl and legion" "crossover" with superman issue last month.
Its really important to the character but you don't want to make him whiney.

(there is a thin line between Brooding and being a whiney baby)

Superman absolutely needs his loneliness more than any other element, because otherwise he's just not sympathetic as a character. If Superman came to earth as a tourist, the Superman story would start to look pretty sinister.

Superman, at his core, is a really emotional story: the guy's whole PLANET exploded with him as the sole survivor. There was always something interesting about how Superman and his cousin preserved holidays and rituals only they knew the significance of.

To tell you the truth, I always thought they missed a great opportunity back when Kandor was all-Kryptonian, to do a Thor/Jane Foster "forbidden love" with Lois. They should have had the Kandorian Ruling Council and/or a priest of Rao forbid Superman to marry Lois, because earthlings and Kryptonians should not mix. Superman, to the Kandorians should have been like Tarzan is to us---a man raised by lesser "beasts", admirable in his way, but sometimes reverting to his "savage" upbringing.

    Superman, like Tarzan, is a man between two worlds. One of the few things I thought Byrne got RIGHT was making Superman stop swearing by Rao, stop thinking like a Kryptonian. Tarzan---even the cultured Edgar Rice Burroughs multilingual Lord Greystoke---is at heart an ape. To him, Kala is much more his mother than Lady Greystoke was. Superman, similarly, would think himself more human than earthling in outlook, and be torn between the two worlds---the one he belongs to by biology, and the one he was raised by.

     That should also be the key to Kara's chracterization. UNLIKE Superman, she was in a Kryptonian environment until age fifteen. She's a true emigrant, probably thinking in Kryptonian, and should be much more "alien" than Superman is. (I could justify this as part of evolving of the character in the Silver Age Superman stories---that he was originally in the Smallville/Metropolis/earthly mindset, and slowly, as he gained Kandor and Kara, learning more and more about Krypton and trying to be more and more Kryptonian---but he would always be at heart more earthling than Kryptonian. Supergirl should be the opposite...much more Kryptonian than earthling.)

     So he should be lonely BOTH places, both among earthlings and among Kryptoanians, truly belonging to neither. He is a Kryptonian by birth, and everything about Earth must have been wrong, wrong, wrong on an instinctive level. He probably dreamed about red suns, of a comfortably heavy gravity, etc. When growing up, some gut biological level must have told him he was in the wrong place...but when he visits Kryptonian conditions, his biology might have gone "Ahhh...I'm home!" but his mind must have gone, "No WAY!" being different in a thousand different ways from the earthly culture he was brought up in.

---Al

I think alschroeder is right on the mark about Kal_el being a man of two worlds.  and i also like his thinking about Kara, she'd have memories, knowledge and feelings about argo city and krypton that Kal would never really understand. I was always amazed when they showed Kara in a school seting she never thought to herself, algerbra in the 10th grade? did they put me in the slow class? or why she never seemed to have a bad day remembering her family and friends that where destroyed. She always seemed to much like a TV ad, "Hey Kara,  your world world just died a slow death, you were shot of to a strange planet, where your only relative is dumping you in a primative orphanage, what are thinking"  Kara's response (big smile) "I'm going to Disney Land" Considering what she had gone thru she was too adjusted and accepting of it all, or maybe that was the fore shadowing of the whole emotionless krypton we saw post crisis?

When did Superman in the comics actually start saying "Great Krypton" and "Merciful Rao" and all that? As Al S. points out, it doesn't really make sense originally, any more than it would for an Australian brought up in England to say "Bonzer". When it does start making sense is during the Silver Age, when you have established that Superman has total recall and therefore remembers his infant days on Krypton (some stories of that period also have him leave Krypton not as a baby but a toddler, like the completely bugged-out one where Jimmy Olsen babysits for him).

Personally, I rather like to think that Superman is a bit affected when he invokes his Kryptonian origins, a bit like people who do some genealogical research and find out that they have an interesting relative or ethnic background (my own sister, when she discovered our Jewish origins, started using random Yiddish terms as a complete affectation). It would have been quite good if, when Kal-El discovered Kandor and started interacting with Kryptonians for the first time, he'd be peppering his language with terms like "Merciful Rao" until someone told him "Uhm, relax, man, nobody's really talked like that in 200 years, and even then it was in, like, plays and stuff."

I belive it was in the 1970's or 1980's, he used to say "Great Scott!!" in the 1960's.

I always thought that there must have been a story I missed in which Clark Kent started saying "Great Krypton" and then changed it to "Scott" just in time, and then stuck with it.

From what I remember, I can only remember Superman saying "Great Krypton!" on the Super Friends cartoon show, which then perhaps made it to the comics, mostly for Superman of Earth-2.

It was "great" everything on the Super Friends -- Great Gotham, Great Hera, Great Lightning, etc.  That's clearly what made the show great.  :)

I thought "Great Krypton" started with Julie Schwartz. 

Maybe the question can be:how much the loneliness angle is important to a superhero? Every major character have suffered for this problem,the feeling of being isolated/different from the people around him.
Comes to my mind the early issue of Captain America,or the entire Silver Surfer run,Ben Grimm is another example,all of this have touched even people like Tony Stark.Maybe because for special people is hard to find someone who can really relate to them?

Certainly, Siegel and Shuster were reflecting their own loneliness and geekyness viewpoint in creating Superman and the love tringle with Lois and Clark Kent. But based on interviews and books like Men of Tomorrow, I don´t think it was intentional. What they always say is that they were trying to create the new mythological hero in the spirit of Hercules and Sanson. All the subtext was inintentional, they said even about the messianic/Moses/Christ analogies.

And yes, it is not only Superman that is a lonely character. The Superman on The Couch book have two chapters that deal with the issue. Accordind to the author, two of the more strong desires we have is to be unique, hence the orphan thing, and therefore the loneliness, and the exact opposite, that of being part of something, that would be a team like the JLA or the Legion of Super-Heroes. In the case of Superman, I just think it´s more important, and for his being the world´s greates superhero, he must be the loneliest, and also the best leader in a team.