[Superman] has hardly more than his name in common with [Friedrich] Nietzsche's blasphemous and iconoclastic phantasm; in fact one suspects that he originally owed his "super" to the "super-duper," the "ne plus ultra and then some" of advertising usage. This Superman is a Li'l Abner without Mammy Yokum and without popular background, a hillbilly without the fertile background of folklore or remnants of creed. He is a Goliath rather than a David, but a Goliath who has joined the side of the conventionally right. The most serious objection to him I have heard from the mouth of a child: that he is immortal, and therefore the amazing things he does are not miracles.
The emblem of his supermanhood is inscribed on his chest, not on his forehead. He is as guileless as Li'l Abner, but he lacks the primitiveness of the country boy; the old magic that flows from the contrast between city and country is missing. Li'l Abner is at home in Dogpatch, Superman in the universe—that is, nowhere. Superman is on the side of the right as well as of hygiene. He uses violence against violence. His eyes penetrate granite walls and steel plates, but he does not see what Mickey Mouse always sees: reality. Plants serve him and the elements lie at his feet, but in the main his accomplishments are limited to smoking out a small gang of criminals or outsmarting some master mind. The mountain labors and—with the help of modern technology—brings forth a stunt.
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