I'd say Superman can be as powerful as the writers want him to be, with a few conditions:
1. Superman must have very clearly defined limits to his durability, strength, and superpowers in general, his REAL limits, no "World of Cardboard" speech showing he's been holding back the whole time. Demonstrate in the first couple issues, or episodes, or whatever "This is what Superman can do, and that's all he'll ever be able to", and STICK TO THAT. No jacking up Superman's strength so he can push planets around if he couldn't before, no tanking a nuclear bomb after he can barely handle a regular ballistic missile, and most importantly of all, don't just give him new powers out of the blue. Confront Superman with something and have him use what he can already do to get around it, with some ingenuity on the side if necessary, don't give him more to get out of the situation. Don't try to justify it with some hack spur of the moment explanation either, like "this villain just killed Lois! SUPERMAN MAD!!!" or whatever, at least if it hasn't been established already that being really really pissed off increases his power. At the very least fall back on that explanation barely at all, and not to such an extreme extent it invalidates those previously established limitations, more like "I could lift 50 pounds before, now I'M MAD and can lift 52," keep it plausibly within the limits.
If the writers want to jack Superman up or give him new abilities, JUSTIFY IT. Show him working on discovering new powers, show him pushing around moons to work his muscles up, whatever, and then go through the process of clearly defining what Superman can do all over again. Also, if possible foreshadow just how powerful Superman can potentially get long before, have him uncover a database from the spaceship he came in as a baby showing a Kryptonian pushing a planet or something.
Last, keep reestablishing Superman's powers and limitations every so often, so new viewers can know it and old viewers will remember it.
2. Make sure to use Superman's weakness of Kryptonite very sparingly if at all, and don't have villains from Big Bad to mooks rely upon it to be a threat to Superman at all. Kryptonite is a weakness of Superman that was played out more than half a century ago, and it has always been a pretty pathetic and poorly used weakness anyway. Kryptonite is one of those weaknesses which really should have become like say, Power Girl's weakness to natural materials, one of those weaknesses that was ignored and dropped entirely not long after it was introduced simply because it was so incredibly stupid. Particularly because Kryptonite is one of those weaknesses that should have been extremely rare but pops up pretty much everywhere now, defeating the point of a weakness to begin with. The magic weakness is much more reasonable since Superman isn't a magical character himself, but it would be much more effective to simply have magic be something that can enhance or innately make the beings that use it as strong or stronger than Superman himself.
Speaking of Superman's weaknesses, don't ever, and I mean even once, have the villain be a threat only because they threaten Lois, the Daily Planet crew, or any random innocent. Sure, the writers can still have the villains threaten these, but don't have the only reason the villain is even an issue is because they threaten these people. It's just passing the buck on to someone far weaker than Superman and it just cheap and extremely terrible lazy writing. Have the villain do this but also be a real physical threat to Superman on their own, without needing Kryptonite either. It ramps up the tension a thousandfold to do this and makes it so much more plausible that the ones being threatened could actually die, especially if they are some no named nobody instead of a long established named character who we all know will survive (or will get revived/retconned if they actually DO die).
3. Probably what is easily the most important of all: Make the villains Superman's equal if not somewhat exceed him, both combatants must be able to defeat each other in a straight out, no holds barred fight where both are fighting at their best. I am talking physically not just mentally here BTW, though both is preferable the former MUST be there. If Superman can push around planets, give say Lex Luthor a Supersuit that can do the same, if not be able to push around even bigger planets. If Superman can turn back time to reverse the damage the villain can do, give the villain the ability to either time travel as well to try and prevent it, or prevent Superman from using said power under most circumstances. Mooks too not just the Big Bad, Superman likely can still take Mooks by the hundreds, this is the very nature of the Mook, but each individual ones still needs to be powerful enough to cause at least a little damage to Superman on their own, thus potentially killing him in numbers otherwise there is no point in their existence. The Mooks acting as a distraction for each other of the Big Bad so they can commit villainy doesn't work as a justification for weak Mooks that can't actually hurt Superman either, for the same reasons as threatening a weak character to create a threat to Superman on it's own doesn't work.
In a video game context this would mean a Superman game where the Mooks are a bunch of robots with super strength and durability and/or sci-fi tech weaponry that can hurt Superman, heavily mutated human freaks that can use a combo of powers, warlocks and witches that can use their magic to reach Superman's level, aliens with comparable strength and durability to Superman, and so on and so forth, doing the same for the main Supervillains.
Sorry if that got ranty, I'm just so sick of Superman never reaching his actual potential as a character and people even actually DEFENDING the way he's been. Superman is easily among one of the worst characters in all of fiction and could be SO much better it's beyond belief.
Samtemdo8 said:
Animated Series Superman and Snyder Superman so far are no where near as ridiculously powerful as Silver Age Superman who destroys whole Solar Systems by sneezing
Sorry for being pedantic, but Superman destroying a solar system with a sneeze was actually caused by Mr. Mxyzptlk, who can rewrite reality at a whim so it's not actually a feat of Superman.