Why does everybody hate Superman?

[WolfThomas]

I like Superman, as Grant Morrison once eloquently summarised:

"Somewhere, in our darkest night, we made up the story of a man who will never let us down."

 

[viranimus]

Simple really, hes a grossly overpowered char that is devoid of personality and embodies unrelatable character qualities of a bygone era.

 

[theevilgenius60]

Don't know bro. I love Superman. I get all his comics(even Supergirl), and I hope DC can eventually get his movie career back rolling and give him his own breakout video game like Arkham was for Batman. I guess you could call him the ultimate Mary Sue, but with his collection of enemies he needs to be OP. Not just any superhero can face off with the brains of a Lex Luthor or Braniac and also the power of a Doomsday, Mongul or Anti-Monitor. If someone were to harness what makes his story worth telling(kind of like Ezio in Assassin's Creed in that he's overpowered from the get-go, thus more incredible things can be asked of him) into video game form, again like Arkham Asylum was for Batman, I'd preorder it tomorrow.

 

[malestrithe]

I don't hate Superman, nor do I think that he is the most powerful creation ever. I can easily name a dozen characters easily more powerful than Superman. Excluding actual gods, people who are stronger include: Sentry, Thanos, Brainiac, Amazo, Icon, Doctor Who, Doomsday, Doctor Doom, Megan Braddock, etc. In addition to having the loosest interpretation of what empathy really means, the last one conquered Hell though the power of good thoughts and positive thinking. When Superman can do that, I'll change my mind about whose stronger.

The thing is that he is a difficult character to write for. Character development is about overcoming conflict? How can you put flaws into the perfect man? He is either going to be so good that he will not hurt a fly, so trusting that he will be easily fooled, or so naive that he can easily be manipulated.

Even this new 52 iteration of Superman is kind of a boring read. He does not belong in this world, so he does not even try to fit in? He just protects it and nothing else. That's got to be the most silly cop out way of doing things because it only makes sense in that 90s cynical sort of way. What's keeping him from crossing the line and enslaving the planet, like the Authority? You know, atleast before when he was raised by Ma and Pa Kent, he understood that humanity is flawed and needs to be set on the right path. This iteration of Superman is inherently distrustful of people, so what is preventing him from enslaving the world?

The best use of Superman I've seen recently is to recast him as something of an absentee father figure and as someone that is not really ready to be one. In Young Justice, he is conflicted by the existence of Conner. He wants nothing to do with his teenage clone, so he pawns the responsibility off onto the rest of the league, mostly Batman, Black Canary and to an extent Captain Marvel. Throughout the first season, Superman did his best to ignore the boy, only talking to him a few times, making excuses to get away from him, and ignoring him when they are in the same room. It was only at the end of the season that Superman made an attempt to talk to the boy, much to their mutual satisfaction.

 

[drosalion]

To me he's a completely boring, bland character (both as clark kent and as superman). Theres nothing interesting or compelling about him in the slightest. He's played off as this perfect, innocent guy that has no flaws and cant do anything wrong. His character is completely unrealistic and unrelatable.

The additional problem is that his powers are completely 'over-powered' so to speak. He can do everything - freeze breath, laser eyes, invincibility, super-speed, super-strength, fly, hell even turn back time by flying around the planet. His only weakness is some other made up object that has no real relevance or anything and it simply comes down to whether or not the enemy has a piece of it or not.

Think about spiderman, iron man, etc and how much more interesting and deep their characters are. How flawed they are in a number of ways. And then think about their powers, they are definitely 'super' but they have severe limitations. Their weaknesses come from themselves, the enemies they verse, and a whole range of other things which makes every battle they're in more exciting.

 

[geK0]

I'm pretty ignorant to the majority of Superman lore; you pretty much covered the main reasons I'm not a huge fan of superman in the OP. He's probably a much deeper character than a lot of people give him credit for, but limited exposure to the series gives the impression that he is bland and overpowered.

 

[malestrithe]

Flash's powers inherently make him OP though. Just by their very nature. That post didn't even mentioned some of the shit flash is potentially capable of. The dude is potentially omnichronological and multidimension. I mean, he's no pre-retcon Beyonder or Living Tribunal, but the dude is fuckin' nuts. The issue is that some writers tend to take character's abilities closer to their logical conclusion (such as modern flash) where as others will reign in their capabilities for the sake of drama and story telling. It's sort of like seeing the obvious difference in powers when you juxtapose Silver age or Prime Supes (who could move many, many times the speed of light) against the nerfed modern version.

Another obvious issue is that the writers usually can't keep up with the potential ramifications of the powers they bestow upon their creations. Totally understandable, but it makes nitpicking the scientific implications of certain things somewhat pointless.

Bruce Timm had the same problem with Flash in Justice League and JLU. In writer's room meetings, the writers would come up with brilliant scenarios involving death traps for most of the team. Then they would ask, can Flash get out of this running really fast? If the answer was yes, they had to shelve the idea for later. Superman they had less problems with.

 

[AngleWyrm]

I don't hate Superman, I hate kryptonite. Seriously.

Did you watch the pilot episode of Battlestar Galactica? The Cylon Six comes and meets a guy at a neutral space station, and then she willingly bombs the space station to oblivion with her still inside it! Immortal! Totally bad ass, right up there with the liquid metal Terminator.

But the movie guys couldn't figure out what to do with a god. They had to make them "have a weakness." Utterly lamed out.

That's what I think of kryptonite. What story could you tell if Superman were invulnerable? Oh nevermind, we'll just use kryptonite.

Kryptonite sucks.

 

[Daniel Ferguson]

Here's my take on it:

You know how in ancient Greek plays, amateur writers who'd painted themselves into a corner would summon some god or other to fix everything? Dues ex Machina? That's cheating. What I've heard is that Superman originally didn't have weaknesses, and so they added kryptonite to give him one. What people hate is when a character doesn't struggle for anything, just shows up and fixes everything. Or characters are painted into a corner and someone all-powerful and awesome shows up at just the right moment to bail the main characters out.

A lot of negativity is towards his "perfect" personality. People SAY he has no struggles based on personality, that he's divine and perfect, and a lot of people don't like that. There's different interpretations of him, of course.

Most of the criticisms aimed at Superman's powers could be aimed at Batman's devices, too, at least in the camp-gay era, where he had things like shark spray (unless that was Atomic Man in the Simpsons) etc and tools for EVERYTHING. Such as a credit card in Batman and Robin (blatant product placement).

Human characters need flaws, because humans have flaws. It's all about being perceived as flawed in some way, which is what people are quick to say he is, citing that his personality is "too boyscout" or whatever.

Until they get the mixture perfect - powers and outstanding personality but with physical, mental and character weaknesses - there'll always be criticism. Hell, even then there'll be criticism because our society is so hard to please sometimes.

 

[Daniel Ferguson]

Hancock is a great take on Superman, in my opinion. Hell, so's Metro Man from Megamind.

 

[xPixelatedx]

Yeah the whole 'superman is too invincible' thing is nonsense spouted by children who don't know anything about the subject matter. Sure, Superman is overpowered if depicted in stores where the main villain is a mob boss or common crook. But often the guy is fighting baddies who destroy entire worlds, in which case he is like the American version of Goku, (only less retarded because he doesn't get stronger indefinitely). I also like that one of his main and worst villains is someone who is just a man; a man is considerably smarter then he is. That is hilarious in all the right ways.

 

[somonels]

Hate is way too strong of a word for too small or a character. I find him an uninteresting character outside of the Bryne era. I don't remember a good representation of him in the last handful of years outside from the brief appearances in YJ and the ending in JL: Doom. That could pretty much sum up how interesting I find him in the DC universe.

Miller, Bryne, on TV! Boy are those "the 90s sucked" guys out of touch.

 

[redrefugee]

One of the biggest problems with Superman is the his rogue gallery. Every time he beats a villain, the writers have to source a new more threatening enemy to ensure they are considered a threat. This leads to enemies with ludicrous power levels which Supes has to somehow overcome, and reduces the credibility of the previous villain in retrospect.

Supes cant really be beaten by X-men-esq superpowers (i.e. the ability to shoot fireballs, the ability to control electricity etc.), meaning more conventional powers are used, in turn leading to his enemies becoming increasingly getting stronger / smarter and he is facing enemies that are incomparable to others faced by the rest of the DC heroes making the universe seem imbalanced.

Another issue is Supermans complete immunity to any attack a minion can dish out. Unless every minion is super powered, or kitted out with kryptonite rings it becomes silly to even bother sending a minion to attack Superman (and no minion in his right mind would be stupid enough). This eliminates most of the danger to the character and also eliminates any suspense in the comic / film / game etc.

His patriotism is another major issue, which makes him difficult to relate to in countries outside of the US. In the UK, we do not pledge allegiance to our flag and we can find this type of blind allegiance to our country to be a foreign concept. I presume it is the same in a number of other countries (mainly due to the Stone Cold Steve Austin feud with Bret Hart back in the old days of WWE. Austin was acting like a bad guy(heel) but the American crowd were supporting him because he was a patriot, however in shows abroad the crowd were firmly behind Bret) and characters like Batman are more popular because they do what they think is right rather than what the government tells him to think.

 

[Airsoftslayer93]

I've never disliked him, but if you look at his history, 30 years ago when he could aquire a new power every issue to solve any problem, and there were countless varietys of kryptonite, that he always seemed formulaic.

 

[wicket42]

One theory I like is that when kids were growing up in the 40's death was a much likelier possibility, with diseases like polio still uncured and their parents off fighting in wars and the such.

Nowadays kids don't relate to/fantasise about an invincible superhero as much. They pretty much already perceive themselves as invincible (or at least don't think about death as much). The invincibility therefore isn't a fantasy and is "OP" and boring. If they want to fantasise, they want their characters to get into life threatening situations, rather than conquer death completely.

 

[Little2Raph]

I wonder if it's due to people these days wanting heroes they can relate to, whereas in the past (decades ago) it seems as if people preferred heroes they could aspire to.

I've just been wondering this lately as I'm reading for the first time the Barsoom novels which the movie John Carter was based on. I've noticed that in the movie he was started off kind of cynical and unsure of himself and only later stepped up, figuratively speaking. In the book however, from beginning to end, he's the archetypal heroic "manly" man kind of character. The book version is less relatable to than the movie version, but at the time (1912) that was the kind of hero people wanted; someone you could look up to and aspire to rather than someone you can just relate to. It was the same in the Lord of the Rings as well - Aragorn (and hell, even Frodo) was much bolder and sure of himself in the books than he was in the movies.

I think maybe it's the same with Superman - he's more the kind of hero you'd try and aspire to rather than relate to.

 

[ultrachicken]

Superman is simple: born with superpowers. Weak to kryptonite. Has upstanding morality. He's too often presented as just a cardboard cut-out of your typical superhero archetype. He also comes across as far too bright and colorful for most people (myself included).

Batman sees more popularity because he has tangible flaws and traits that actually make his status as a hero contested. Questions like "wouldn't Gotham be better off if he just offed the Joker?" come up in the more popular Batman products, and he's better off for it. He is the product of tragedy and the inability to move on from that tragedy, he is a self-made man in many respects, and he has to approach problems using his head as well as flashy fighting techniques.

Ultimately, the largest reason why Superman lacks the popularity of Batman is that he hasn't been written as well recently. If Rocksteady's hints at a Superman game prove true, and they manage to pull it off, that might change.

 

[AngloDoom]

Yeah the whole 'superman is too invincible' thing is nonsense spouted by children who don't know anything about the subject matter.

I don't mean to be a dick, but here's a list of Superman's powers:

Superhuman Strength - Strength much greater than that of a normal Human and even most Metahumans [...] While not infinite, depictions of the upper limit of how much weight he can lift have ranged from being able to do the work of several laborers in half the time [...] moving entire planets. After being saturated with yellow solar energy in All-Star Superman, his strength was tested as exceeding the force of 200 quintillion tons (or 2x1020 tons, in scientific notation, i.e., two hundred billion billion tons).

Invulnerability - Immunity to almost all forms of harm and ailments, including extreme force and extremely high temperatures [...] being completely unharmed at ground zero of a nuclear explosion

Superhuman Speed - Another one of Superman's signature abilities is his superhuman speed, allowing him to move, react, run, and fly extraordinarily fast [...] Top speeds have ranged from nearly a hundred miles per hour when he was first created in the 1930s to speeds far greater than the speed of light.

Superhuman Hearing - Can hear far more sounds with far more detail at far greater distances than normally humanly possible, including sounds on frequencies undetectable by humans such as dog whistles. [...] He can even hear sounds on other planets.

Superhuman Vision - His senses grant him the ability to see farther and with greater accuracy and detail than humanly possible. Sometimes includes the ability to see EM frequencies invisible to humans, such as radio transmissions, infrared light, the bioelectric aura which surrounds all living things, even in pitch-black darkness. Offshoots of this power include Telescopic Vision, which allows him to "zoom in" on far away objects, sometimes hundreds of miles away, and Microscopic Vision, which allows him to zoom in on objects that would normally be too small to see, like those on a cellular or molecular level.

Eidetic Memory - Superman is occasionally shown to have flawless, total recall of everything he has ever seen, read or heard. In turn, he is often depicted as being fluent in many of Earth's languages and cultures.

That's pretty invincible.

I understand that Superman regularly fights people stronger than him but, at least to someone such as myself, making someone more invincible than 'ridiculously powerful' doesn't even the playing-field but makes it worse. Each one of the above abilities could make a badass superhero, but they tied them all together (plus others I left out) into one stunningly-attractive man who almost always does everything right and by the book. Hell, the one returning flaw they give him is that he feels disconnected from humans, which probably has something to do with the fact that he regularly fights toe-to-toe with deities.
I understand the man has weaknesses that have been exploited before, and that he's even died, but the biggest problem is that every attempt to harm him feels like deus ex machina because of the fact that he's an absolute titan.

To me, the character isn't just inhuman, but inorganic. He's a force of nature. Reading and watching Superman for me is like watching videos of an avalanche repeatedly - the first time or so you can appreciate it's destructive power, but after that I feel there's little to appreciate.

Again, this is all my opinion, but I find it odd that you consider anyone childish for seeing a man who can fly faster than speed of light and who's eyelashes are strong enough to withstand a thermal-nuclear warhead and thinks "wow, overpowered"

 

[Olas]

I'd say it's the fact that he's almost invincible.
Being super hard to defeat forces the writers to come up with strange (often kryptonite involving) gimmicks to add suspense. For this reason most of his enemies have to be god like, which inherently limits their range of character and the types of conflicts he can have.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

Because he's boring quite frankly. He used to have no weaknesses whatsoever until the man who voiced him on the radio show took ill. The radio show writers invented kryptonite to weaken such that it would explain his sick, gravelly voice. He also used to leap tall buildings with a single bound, but the writers though it too complicated and thought it would just be easier if he flew.

That he's alien from another species makes him harder to relate to. That he's all alone and can't relate to others is something we can all relate to. But he has no real weaknesses, his power grows with each telling (used to be the strength of 5 or 10 men I believe, now I think it's pretty much unquantifiable).

Clark Kent is much more interesting than Superman. A journalist with a secret identity? In love with a woman in both his guises? Raised on a farm with his abilities hidden? That's interesting. Superman being the upright, patriotic, no mistakes, immune to everything, blah blah, boring. The best parts of all the movies were when Clark had to pretend to hurt himself or be a dork, contrive a reason why he was never in the same place as his alter-ego and so on.

Wolverine is a deeply flawed character who drinks, smokes, brawls, swears and has made terrible mistakes. He can fly into an uncontrollable, berserker rage. That is an interesting character. Deadpool and Gambit are two of the other best Marvel characters, also both flawed, and not really "heroes" in the strictest sense. One's a mercenary, the other a thief. That is interesting.