Why do they alays want Superman to be "weaker"

[carmine]

the doomsday fight was lame
though I did like the reign of supermen storyline

I don't get the whole "make superman weaker to make it easier to write stories" Superman is always JUST strong enough to beat the bad guy
(like every superhero!!!)

its called Drama power

[Uncle Mxy]

I've referred to Doomsday as Dumbsday when it first came out.  Nothing's changed.

The more powerful the superhero is, the more unrecognizable the world should be after their emergence.  With the Superman we grew up with, this could lead to ridiculous results:

Silver Age Superbaby would be everyone's Facebook friend, having invented things like Facebook, Google, and the Internet a second or two after he figured out how to use personal pronouns properly.  Imagine Christmas for real, where Superman zooms to every kid everywhere and gives them what they need or want the most.  Imagine all the nukes gone before anyone had a discussion over it.  Any screwups along the way could be fixed by spinning back time, just like Groundhog Day, so the consequences of bad actions or bad ideas can be washed away easily.  Global warming was that thing that Superboy fixed that one time so Lana wouldn't get sunburned.  Religion would get blown away.  And why didn't Superman just hypnotize Lois to not pursue Clark's identity once and for all, among a gazillion other things that super-hypnosis would've been good for (curing smoking and weight loss for the masses, making Luthor a productive member of society, etc.)  And just imagine the landscaping possibilites of the Phantom Zone...

Yeah, I could see where a writer might want to tone Superman down a little, just to prevent the logical conclusions from constraining the world too much.

[Rugal 3:16]

One of the Best Rebuttals i've found so far (which i completely agree with)

There's a difference between having a prefference to a Superman who, while still extraordinary when compared to humans, is much more tame in power, and saying that it was him having been weaker that made him relevant. What's relevant is his actions, his motivations and his personality when confronted with everything that represents evil in this world, his ability to inspire the good in people and stand out for the weak, when he has it in his power to impose what he thinks and much more, not whether he can bench-press a tank or a planet. It's so asinine to think that him being 'weaker' makes him more relevant, that it's a tad sad.

For all the talk of a weaker Superman - he doesn't seem to realize that Superman was still above anybody else in his Universe in the Golden Age. And once his Universe was expanded to include Gods and other heroes, he became more powerful. A 'Golden Age' powerlevel Superman won't work in a shared Universe, where there's space travellers with wishing rings and extra-dimensional gods attacking Earth. Superman's power adapts through all mediums - but he is still supposed to be the pinacle of heroism, as far as everything is concerned.

Wanting to see him hurt by tanks and wrecking balls is fine. Does that make him more inspiring or relatable, than when he stands up to Darkseid fighting for humanity's free will and soul until his last breath? Not for me. I can't do either, and I'd rather read of something more fantastical, than to see Superman get depowered and "realistical" because it supposedly makes him better.

Just because he is godlike, doesn't mean he can't be challenged. Challenge isn't about being hurt physically with human-made machines from the last century. That doesn't make him seem more incredible, or more worthwhile to read. If anybody actually thinks his relevany is dependent on that, he's missing the point. Big. Rags Morales hates a Superman who is even remotely powerful. Ok. I get it. And thankfully, he's not writing the book. But his "love love love love weak Superman, because he gets hurt by tanks and thus is more relevant!" is inane, from every logical standpoing.

credit goes to Philosophía

[India Ink]

There's a topic I've meant to develop that would examine the relationship between Superman's super-powers and the United States as a super-power. I think this correlation exists and may even influence writers and editors (albeit unconsciously) in how they approach Superman.

Just briefly, you can see how from the Depression through World War Two, Superman gains power and emerges as a force in the world. Until he's the world's policeman. When the U.S. is the preeminent nuclear power (presumably with the ability to destroy the Earth several times over), Superman is at the zenith of his powers. As the reputation of the United States falters during the Vietnam War, Superman's powers fall into question.

The one tangled issue in my argument is the relationship between Superman's powers and the powers of the U.S. during the Reagan era. It seems like John Byrne de-powered Superman just when the U.S. was gaining in strength (and all its enemies were on the ropes).

But certainly in the present circumstance, given all the doubts about America and the deepening financial crisis, the fact that Superman's powers have been downgraded may be in line with the publishers' doubts about the power of the United States in the current era.

We should all be nervous if even Superman can't get us out of the mess we're in.

[Great Rao]

The one tangled issue in my argument is the relationship between Superman's powers and the powers of the U.S. during the Reagan era. It seems like John Byrne de-powered Superman just when the U.S. was gaining in strength (and all its enemies were on the ropes).

I can see how it's tangled - but I also see that, in a sense, Reagan was a desire to return to the 1940s or '50s, doing away with all the 1960s and 70s baggage of Vietnam, Hippies, etc.  Similarly, Byrne claimed to be stripping off detritus (also of the '60s and '70s , although in this case Mort Weisinger and Julie Schwartz) from Superman and returning him to the Golden Age (ie, the '40s).  A sort of post-modern nostalgia for the same era, and dislike of the same era, in both camps.

We should all be nervous if even Superman can't get us out of the mess we're in.

Agreed.

[BBally81]

I don't mind a Superman with limited power if he's in his youth or at the start of his career like in Morrison's run on Action Comics as long as he'll grow up to be the Superman we're all familiar with.

[Klar Ken T5477]

Yeah by the time I'm dead.
 
 DC reportedly sold 5 million copies of the launch of 52.

But Barnes & Noble booted all their graphic novels because they signed an exclusive with Kindle.

No browsing, no impulse gift buying for civilians for comics reading kids (and/or friends family).

Smart.

Let's see those sales figures in two months......

[India Ink]

I think that really the arrival of other Kryptonians on Earth made Superman retroactively have to be more powerful as Superboy.

Because, when these guys arrive, they already have all the powers of grown up Superman. It's purely a story mechanics thing. You see the same sort of thing happen again when Geoff Johns is loading up the Earth with more Kryptonians. Then suddenly Clark had most of his powers earlier in life.  It's still hard to square this with Supergirl and her power levels.

And then you get into a lot of tortured logic to make all of this work. So it's just easier to say that all Kryptonians get their powers immediately as soon as they are under a yellow sun.