A central focus of my book is the morality at the heart of Superman. The jokes about him lead me there, as do the conversations I've had about the character. So I'm glad to see essays like this one, at FaceTheReckoning.com. It's a response the idea that Superman's morality would be shaped by his powers, that he would inevitably give in to the temptation to use them for his own selfish ends and because he doesn't, he's not an interesting character. The response is well articulated.


The list of people given the nickname Superman grows every day. Here's Shane McConkey, extreme skiier. Then there's Dr. Gahl, about whom I know nothing other than that he's associated with the fight against Hermansky-Pudlak Syndrome.


The title for the Dr. Gahl post refers to him as "our Superman." I recently read that superheroes are not so much gods in the sense of a lot of gods whose nature gives them provenance over some force of nature or human institution (i.e., Zeus was god of justice and lightning; Athena was god of wisdom in battle and weaving), but rather superheroes are tutelary deities who protect specific cities. It's not entirely true, but super heroes are first and foremost associated with cities, especiallly Superman. Superman is also associated, with varying degrees of agreement, with "the American way," which makes him a patriotic figure more so than pretty much any other super hero. The iconography supports the argument.


What I'm getting at here is the "god's on our side" attitude. It crops up in sports, in war, and probably in lots of other places. Several religious people have written books on Superman, mostly to point out the parallels with Christ and show us the way, so to speak. John T. Galloway, Jr. wrote perhaps the earliest one of these, The Gospel According to Superman. More recent books attempt to demonstrate that Superman is Christ-like, and that this is a good thing. Galloway goes in the opposite direction, labeling Superman a false god and saying that the best response to his story is to compare it unfavorably to the gospels. In particular, he notes that Superman is "on our side," which he criticizes because of his belief that god is on everyone's side. I've simplified his argument perhaps too much, but I hope the point is clear.

If there's "our Superman" there can be one for other people, too. All of which is sort of beside the point. I think the post I've been discussing labels Dr. Gahl as Superman because of his tireless efforts attempting to find a cure for the disease in question. So "our" here isn't a form of patriotism, and in fact includes everyone. I don't even necessarily agree with Galloway. Just writing and writing and writing. Here's a patriotic picture:







Interestingly, the image came up on a website devoted to stem cell research, something Christopher Reeve advocated, if I recall correctly, because it could lead to advancements in treatment for the injuries he sustained. There was an episode of South Park about this, which pitted Reeve against Gene HackMan. Funny stuff.





Then there's this:

No real link between the different links.

One of the reasons I became interested in Superman, intellectually speaking, is the way kids respond to the character. I'm working on compiling a bibliography for this site, in which I'll have sections devoted to all sorts of topics--one of which will be the way kids pretend to be Superman. This post, from the Examiner.com, is sort of related to that. It's about heroism.

Heroism is perhaps the most important aspect of the Superman theme. Or meme. Or mythos. I'm working on the right term to describe the stories and thoughts that surround the character. I guess it's a mythology, in which there are subversive strains, and in which grow several memes that manifest themselves in oral tradition and popular culture as well as mass-mediated art. I'm thinking of the "superman isn't perfect" meme that has been the subject of most of my writing on Superman so far.

Anyway, one of the things that writers like to do is compare Superman to human heroes. Like this, from the article I linked to above:

We all try to aspire towards our heroes. 'I wanna be like Superman' is usually the types of phrases that we hear. Our children always want to be the cool, superhero types. What if I were to tell you that a modest 'superhero' type of person lived in New York City and did the most unselfish thing in the world? He saved a man's life from the nasty subway tracks.


This is an interesting fan site, Superman Fan Podcast. It's a lot of comics history, very thorough, from all appearances.

Doing all this research reveals something new all the time, little bits of information that may or may not become useful. For example, there are Canadian awards for comics work called The Joe Shuster Awards. Recently, they posted the final interview with Shuster, who, you should recall, was the man who drew Superman. Here's a bit of it, with another interesting slice of information.

Superman, with his heroic physique and glowing optimism, was patterned largely after Douglas Fairbanks Sr. And Clark Kent his name derived from movie stars Clark Gable and Kent Taylor was a combination of timorous, bespectacled Harold Lloyd and pale, mild-mannered Joe Shuster himself.

And I just have to post more about Obama being Superman. Here's a link to a video. I think my favorite part is the Joker.

Truth, Justice, and the Canadian Way

I swear, I'm not posting this just because I'm Canadian.


Joe Shuster was. The visual half of the pair who came up with Superman. And here's a video and brief synopsis of how Superman embodies Canadian values.


On a completely unrelated note...pages you can print and color.


There are a number of fansites out there. People just love some aspect or incarnation of Superman. This one is all about the George Reeves television show...and other stuff.

I read somewhere that somebody was doing a book about blogs that are only one post long. It's a potentially interesting topic. This guy got only seven posts along as of about a year ago, but the essence of the blog, to examine history through comics, was a good one. His first post was about Superman, and he had in it this picture:

I include it here because of the S shield. In my research, I came across a minister extolling the virtues of Superman because, so the argument goes, Superman can bring us closer to the glory of Christ. Part of the proof was the triangular S-shield, which he of course linked to the trinity. I'm not sure when the shield became the more familiar five-sided figure it is today, but it raises lots of questions about where we're supposed to look for meaning. Does anybody look at this and think it's a triangle?