In recent years Superman has been changing…. When we discarded our old legacy of rugged individualism and self-sufficiency, we also abandoned the view that a heroic super-powerful individual might solve all our problems with some magnificent gesture. But what is important about Superman is not that he is changing…. It is what Superman represents, as a symbol, before he started changing that I am most interested in; and it is his symbolic significance that is most important, I feel, for our pur...

[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 ...

[The] Man of Steel, with his super-hearing, super-sight and super-vitality, has become all things to all boys. He has shaken the pedestal of many a classic boyhood idol: Tarzan, whom he can outleap and outfight; Nick Carter, whom he can out-sleuth; Galahad, whose purity is as tarnished brass compared to his. More than this Superman accomplishes with casual ease feats that are common to every boy's daydreams…. And to top it all, his motivating traits are "super-courage, super-goodness an...

The saga of Superman takes on an entirely different cast if we regard it psychologically…. In this light, the character of Superman becomes simply the elaborate fantasy wish-fulfillment of mild-mannered Clark Kent. Imagine Clark, a frail child, raised in the claustrophobic atmosphere of Smallville. He is an only child, introverted by nature; his parents are straight, old and remote. Although little is known of his early childhood, somewhere along the way Clark seizes upon the idea that he is "...

The particular brilliance of Superman lay not only in the fact that he was the first of the super-heroes, but in the concept of his alter ego. What made Superman different from the legion of imitators to follow was not that when he took off his clothes he could beat up everybody—they all did that. What made Superman extraordinary was his point of origin: Clark Kent. Remember, Kent was not Superman's true identity as Bruce Wayne was the Batman's or (on radio) Lamont Cranston the Shadow&#...

Superman is the most fabulous of the comic book heroes—part of our folklore already, one might argue. And the most engaging feature of the Superman stories was surely not the fellow's prowess at bending bridges into pretzels or dispatching felons with a flick of his cuticle—for, by definition, he was invincible, so what suspense could there be over the outcome?—but the fruitless romance between Lois and Superman-Kent. First, any good logician would have to question the assumption...

Superman (with the big S on his uniform—we should, I suppose, be thankful that it is not an S.S.) needs an endless stream of ever new submen, criminals and "foreign-looking" people not only to justify his existence but even to make it possible. It is this feature that engenders in children either one or the other of two attitudes: either they fantasy themselves as supermen, with the attendant prejudices against the submen, or it makes them submissive and receptive to the blandishments o...

Superman, the ultimate expression of human aspirations to power and pure freedom, was an instant triumph, a concept so intense and so instantly identifiable that he became perhaps the most widely known figure ever created in American fiction. Almost immediately it became apparent that he was too super to ever lose his war against crime. Once it was known who he was, it was known what would happen to him—for all intents and purposes, nothing. Consequently, it might have been possible that his very inv...

[By 1942, the critics were in action, pro and con, regarding Superman.] Superman was the ideal outlet for youth's unruly instincts; Superman was in the tradition of the American hero; Superman was a force for good in a world of evil. Or: Superman expressed an irresponsible social philosophy in which the average citizen abjured his own duties and let the marvel fulfill them; Superman was a glorification of the physical; Superman represented absolute power, which is ultimately corrupting. While the bat...

[Superman] is a national figure, perhaps the most worshiped and adored of our time. (p. 256) The simple and marvelously effective idea back of "Superman" was to take one of the interplanetary heroes who … had added supernormal powers to their sex-bursting physique, and allow him to whip through the setting of our place and time….

It was only two years ago that Superman was first revealed to the youth of this country…. But the response which greeted his appearance was so enthusiastic and so immediate that already Superman has surpassed such long established classics as Little Orphan Annie, Dick Tracy and Popeye…. [It is not], to those versed in primitive myth or to students of the blacker arts of modern demagogy, difficult to understand why this new comic should have become so generally and so fantastically popular. For...

[The] real Superman controversy has always centred on his assumed identity of Clark Kent, a decidedly faint-hearted reporter. Kent adores Lois Lane, who has no time for him. Lois is nutty for Superman, who in true 'aw shucks' tradition has no time for any woman…. [The significant factor in this is] the Canadian psyche. Yes. Superman was conceived by Toronto-born Joe Shuster and originally worked not for the Daily Planet but for a newspaper called The Star, modelled on the Toronto Star. ...

[Superman's] popular appeal is due to the fact that America is a land of hero worshippers. Superman is the ultimate in heroes. He outdoes everybody in everything, even to bursting through steel doors and catching bullets between his teeth. Superman is for the right and against the wrong. With two-thirds of the world at war people take delight in following the adventures of a fictional being who can dictate to dictators and make tyrants say "uncle." He's a comforting fellow to hav...

I do not personally believe that the hollow, self-gratulatory note of the Superman comic means that the USA has a bad conscience; rather I think it may suggest that the publishers of the stuff cannot help but be a little queasy in their consciences at the dilapidation of taste they are so systematically perpetrating. War-mongering? I wouldn't know. But I have found in the Superman ethic undeniable signs of that philosophy I best describe to myself as Jim Crow While U Wait. (p. 86) Geoffr...