Why Superman Matters

This piece was adapted from Russell Moore’s newsletter. Subscribe here.

As I’m writing this, I am preparing to go with my sons to see a one-day-early screening of the new Superman film by James Gunn. I can hardly wait.

No doubt that moviegoers and my fellow Superman fans will argue about the movie—its continuity in the tradition of the classic 1978 Superman with Christopher Reeve, and so forth.

One debate trope I hope does not return, though, is the well-worn argument that “Superman is boring because he’s too powerful and can’t be hurt.” Here’s why that matters.

I do not write this as a neutral observer but as a fan of the character—and of the larger DC universe—since before I was even able to read. The stories from Smallville and Metropolis (and Gotham and Central City and Paradise Island) populated the Fortress of Solitude that was my childhood imagination in ways that, looking back, I think pointed me onward to the writings of Lewis and Tolkien and beyond.

But why did I and millions of others over the past 80 years want to put that red blanket over our shoulders and pretend to fly?

Author Grant Morrison (himself a prolific writer of comic books and graphic novels) has argued that Superman persists because he represents hope and power; he is the pop-culture equivalent of a sun god.

Some psychologists would say that Superman appeals to us because of his power. We long for the grandiosity inherent in the ability to fly, outpace bullets, see through walls, or, as on the cover of that first Action Comics, lift a car over our heads.

Some would say that children especially identify with the phenomenon of the secret identity: “I might seem to be bumbling, bespectacled Clark Kent, but if you could just see me in my Kryptonian battle armor …”

The idea of Superman as the idealization of strength and power would make sense. His name, after all, comes from Friedrich Nietzsche and his idea of the Übermensch in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. But if Nietzschean power were what we longed for, then there would be other characters more powerful than Superman to stand in for hope. The atomic symbol of Watchmen’s Doctor Manhattan, for example, would be far more appropriate than the S-shaped logo of the House of El.

No, what we love about Superman is not his power so much as his vulnerability. In this, playwright David Mamet was right when he wrote in the 1980s that the real draw of Superman is not flight or x-ray vision but kryptonite. “Kryptonite is all that remains of his childhood home,” Mamet wrote. “It is the remnants of that destroyed childhood home, and the fear of those remnants, which rule Superman’s life.” He continues,

Far from being invulnerable, Superman is the most vulnerable of beings, because his childhood home was destroyed. He can never reintegrate himself by returning to that home—it is gone. It is gone and he is living among aliens to whom he cannot even reveal his rightful name.

The Superman mythos, he concludes, is a fable not of strength but of a “cry for help.”

Mamet is partly right. An inexpressibly powerful alien force would not be as beloved, because it wouldn’t seem to ring true in our own lives. Kryptonite is the symbol of brokenness.

More than the literal kryptonite, though, is the metaphorical kryptonite in the background. Superman wears the uniform of a lineage far away and lost forever. Beyond that, he has learned to lose those who welcomed him into the human family—the Kents.

Superman may be the Man of Tomorrow, but he can be hurt; he can even be killed. And even worse, he can lose those he loves. We can identify with this. We don’t all come from Krypton, but we all have kryptonite.

This brokenness, however, leads to purpose and mission. In the Geoff Johns era of Action Comics (one of the best, in my opinion), Jonathan Kent tells his son, “Your greatest power isn’t being able to fly or see through walls. It’s knowing what the right thing to do is.” That’s consistently true of the character over the past 80 years. That’s one of the reasons the incarnation of Superman as a husband and a father is especially inspiring, as he tries to do his best to balance family and work.

One of my favorite Superman scenes is from Scott Snyder and Jorge Jiménez in their run on the Justice League comics series of June 2019. Superman, drained off-world of his power, reignites out of sheer force of will. The scene—expertly drawn by Jiménez—shows Superman charging through the sky between the reflections of his father, Jonathan Kent, and his son, also named Jonathan Kent. The scene sums up a legacy and a future that gives Clark Kent his power and also makes him able to be hurt.

This sense of mission, and the ethical framework undergirding it, is activated not by a yellow sun but by patient parenting. It didn’t come from Krypton but from Kansas. Superman may carry out his adventures with the powers of Kal-El, but all the while, he’s really Clark Kent. Those principles point him back to the joy and hurt of a love that can die but is as strong as death (Song 8:6)—stronger, even.

That’s why the other “boring” charge against Superman—that he’s too much of a Boy Scout—doesn’t work either. In a 2021 piece in Entertainment Weekly, journalist Darren Franich explores why the concept of an “Evil Superman” keeps reappearing, whether it’s the twisted Ultraman version of Earth-Three, the red kryptonite storyline of the Smallville television series of a quarter century ago, or the diabolical Homelander of Amazon Prime’s The Boys. Franich writes:

The arrival of an Evil Superman is meant to connote adulthood and maturity—the kind of stuff you could never ever get away with in kid stuff. Mature content isn’t the same as maturity, though, and it’s notable how often an Evil Superman is also a character without a supporting cast, a proper job, or even any motivation beyond pure lizard-brain violence.

How often is that version of “maturity”—of the Evil Superman kind—seen right now in this era, both in the church and in the world? Hedonism is maturity. Rage is passion. Propaganda is vision. Cruelty is strength. Intuitively we know this isn’t right, and we have to shut down our consciences to pretend it is.

One of the most striking Superman covers of all time would have to be in the J. Michael Straczynski “Grounded” run of 2010–2011, depicting a little boy wearing a Superman-logo T-shirt as he looks upward. He has a black eye. The story—one of the few in which we see a Superman in his right mind and furious at the same time—depicts the little boy asking Superman, who bears a similar mark of injury, “Does your Dad beat you too?”

No, he didn’t. And that’s why the fury-filled Superman goes to find this abusive father. He knows that this isn’t normal, that it isn’t right.

Much has been made of the religious imagery in the Superman mythos, especially the Old Testament echoes of Moses in the basket. Some have suggested that Superman is a Christ figure, a concept implicit throughout the Superman Returns film and elsewhere.

As a Christian, though, I think we identify with Superman not so much because he is godlike but because he is, underneath it all, so very human. We might be thrilled to see a superhero flying upward in the skies above us, but really, we’re looking past him for Someone else.

We all like to be saved from danger by a real or imagined Superman every once in a while. But Supermen have come and gone. This character has persisted for almost a century. That’s not because we think he can save us, but because we know, deep in our hearts, that a Superman needs a savior too.

Note: This is a revised, expanded, and updated version of “Who Will Save Superman?” published on the author’s website on April 17, 2018, on the 80th anniversary of the creation of the character.

Russell Moore is the editor in chief at Christianity Today and leads its Public Theology Project.