What Makes Superman Super?

What Makes Superman Super?

Superman has many amazing powers. He can fly. He has super strength. He is invulnerable to the kinds of things that hurt you and me. He can even see through walls. But what makes Superman super?

I have studied the writings, and I know the answer from the comics. Superman was originally from the planet Krypton, which orbited a red sun. When he came to Earth and its yellow sun, he acquired his astonishing abilities.

That answer is true, but it’s not the whole story. Recently, I realized what it is that really makes Superman super: no one else on Earth can do what he can do. In other words, it's not so much what Superman is able to do, but what he is able to do compared to the rest of us.

For example, what if Superman had arrived on the imaginary planet Super-Earth instead? Things might have been very different for him. On Super-Earth, everyone flies, has super strength and invulnerability, and is able to see through walls. On Super-Earth, Superman wouldn't be anybody special, just an ordinary guy, no different from anyone else. In fact, he might actually be inferior to some of the super-folks on Super-Earth.

And, if he had landed on the even more imaginary planet of Super-Duper-Earth, he’d be even worse off. On Super-Duper-Earth, people can super-duper-fly, and have super-duper strength and invulnerability and vision. Superman would be less than nothing on Super-Duper-Earth. Maybe, if he was lucky, he might get to be the sidekick of one of many Super-Duper-Men.

So, Superman is fortunate that he landed on just plain Earth, where what he can do is so far beyond what we can do. However, what’s even more interesting is the fact that any of us can develop super powers, just like Superman’s. We can do it in the same way Superman does, too.

For example, when I visit the nursing home where my mother lives, I acquire amazing powers. I can take a step forward almost three feet, without using a walker, a cane, or a wheelchair. I have the ability to lift suitcases and carry boxes. I am able to read small printing on a prescription bottle, and see things far across the room. I am Superman.

Sometimes, I volunteer at the local food pantry, and I obtain super powers there, also. I can lift a bag of groceries in each hand, and carry them to a client’s car. I possess the uncanny ability to read the expiration date on a donated can of soup, and decide whether it should go on the shelf or in the trash. I have those abilities, and, believe me, not everyone does. I am Superman.

When I help out in the church nursery, I gain truly astonishing powers. I can build a tower out of blocks, and it doesn’t fall down – until someone knocks it down. I am able to wipe a runny nose with a tissue. I can find a toy lost under a crib. I possess the ability to take goldfish crackers out of a box and put them in a bowl next to a sippy cup of juice. And I can change diapers. I am Superman.

You, too, may possess remarkable super powers, but you may not be aware of them. Make no mistake: there are things that you can do that not everyone can do. When you become aware of all that you can do, remember to use your powers only for good. Because everybody is somebody’s Superman.

Funnybooks

Funnybooks.

That’s what my Uncle Ralph always called the comics he brought me. He’d show up at the back door of our home in suburban Cranston, Rhode Island, carrying a brown corrugated cardboard box. “It fell off the back of a truck,” he’d say.

I was six years old, and didn’t know that “fell off a truck” meant “stolen.” All I knew was that Uncle Ralph worked for a shipping company, and how lucky we were that he was there to catch the things that fell off the trucks and share his good fortune with us.

Sometimes the carton would be full of envelopes, and I’d spend hours writing letters to imaginary friends in far-away places. Other times they had paper – what my mother called “stationery” – that I drew pictures on with crayons or pencils. But many times, the best times, he brought comic books, in colorful piles like autumn leaves. “I got funnybooks for Eddie.”

Because the comic books were only for me. My parents might use the envelopes and paper, but they had no interest in funnybooks, and my little sister Debra couldn’t read yet. I could read, though, voraciously, insatiably. When I tired of my children’s books, I would pull down the thick burgundy volumes of the encyclopedia my parents somehow managed to afford. I would read the entries and look at the pictures. A few years later, teachers at my school would test my reading skills – and many other abilities – then exchange bewildered looks and, the next day, make me line up with the fourth graders instead of the third graders.

Not all the funnybooks were the good kind. Some were about characters like Baby Huey, an oversized duckling who innocently caused chaos with his unsuspected strength, or Millie the Model, a pretty blonde woman who wore a different extravagant outfit in every frame. Some were even about real people, like Bob Hope and Jerry Lewis. I only read those when I was desperate, when I was finished reading the good kind.

 

The good kind were the adventures of superheroes: Batman and Robin, Green Lantern, The Flash, Wonder Woman, Green Arrow, Challengers of the Unknown , Doom Patrol. Reading these comics, I learned of radioactivity and centrifugal force, magnetism and refraction, chemicals and electricity, airplanes and rockets, red suns and yellow suns. I first read the word “scientist” in a comic book, and knew that this was the job I wanted most in life, a childhood revelation that eventually led to a doctorate in theoretical physics.

And the best, the most wonderful, the greatest of all the superheroes, was Superman.

Superman!

Just speaking his name brings his image to my eyes. Tall, muscular, handsome, with wavy hair so black, it was blue. Clad in his blue uniform with red boots and trunks, the red and yellow S symbol on his chest, the cape flowing down his back.

Superman could fly. Lift cars and ships. See through walls . Vaporize hurricanes with his heat vision. Hear bad guys plotting in their hideouts. And withstand their bullets and bombs with no harm whatsoever. He was perfect in every way, and in a way that never conflicted with my understanding of God – a distinction that many grown-ups, even now, cannot grasp.

I wanted to be Superman. Not surprising for a small, skinny boy with no athletic ability at all. I wanted his super-strength to fight the battles I had to run away from. I wanted his invulnerable skin to withstand the daily attacks of life. I wanted his Fortress of Solitude, so I could escape the world and have a place to be just me.

I didn’t have any of those things. But I did have a red vest and a blue shirt and blue pants, and whenever I wore them I was, for a time, Superman. Even now, if I happen to wear something red and something blue at the same time, I feel that I am, somehow, Superman. Disguised in my secret identity, perhaps, but still Superman. When I’m working out at the gym in my blue shorts and red t-shirt, struggling to move a fifty-pound weight, I am also, in some way, the Man of Steel who bench-presses planets. It helps.

My first significant mathematical insight also occurred because of comic books. Comics cost ten cents each in those days, and I would save up twenty cents to buy two at once. The problem was that if you spent twenty cents, the store charged a penny tax. So, I would do my thorough research at the rack of comics, and select two to buy. I would pay my ten cents for the first one, then return to the rack for the second one, which I would also pay ten cents for. Two comics: twenty cents: no tax. Later, in college, I became a math major, took many courses in abstract mathematics, and even taught calculus. But few achievements in math gave me such satisfaction as devising this strategy that meant a free comic book every ten trips to the store.

These days, it’s amusing to see vintage issues of comics selling for five-figure prices, knowing that I used to own those very issues. I never saved my funnybooks. When I was done reading them enough times, I would give them away or trade them to my friends or cousins. For me, their value was never how much they could be sold for: it was how much they meant to me.

Funnybooks taught me more than science and math. Even though Superman had amazing powers, even though he could do anything – even though he was Superman! – he still had problems. He had to deal with everyday life, with people, with complications, with the unexpected, with a world that often didn’t make sense: he was like me. And if he was like me, even if just a little, then that meant I was like him, even if just a little.

Clearly, superheroes have had a great influence on my own life. But I believe that these amazing characters and their stories have important lessons for everyone – lessons for the mind, the emotions, and the spirit. They show us good and evil, greed and generosity, courage and cowardice, betrayal and loyalty, cleverness and deception, selfishness and self-sacrifice. The toil and the triumph of ordinary life, as well as worlds and possibilities beyond the everyday. Why the struggle is worth it, and where to find the strength to continue the struggle for one moment more. 

Maybe even how we can become super ourselves.

And it all began with funnybooks.

Origin Story

I know. Ridiculous, right? Super powers in real life?

Super powers are, by definition, impossible. Because if they were possible, if people could really do these things, they wouldn’t be super powers. Right?

Therefore, super powers are impossible.

So what?

The thing is, there are people out there who can do amazing things. Clearly, what they can do is possible—they’re doing it. But it’s still pretty amazing. They are stretching the limits of what is possible. They are pushing back the boundaries on what human beings can do. They’re expanding what it means to be human.

Part of this blog will be to talk about those people, the ones doing impossible things. The ones redefining what’s possible for humans to do.

But what about those super powers? And the (imaginary (?)) beings who have them? What is the fascination with superheroes? Why do they captivate the imagination? Why are there so many movies and TV shows about them?

Part of this blog will talk about superheroes, too. Where they live in our imagination. The parts of human experience that they tap into. The examples they might offer. The paths they might open up for us all.

I’m hoping this will be fun and interesting and ridiculous and thought-provoking and absurd and inspiring.

Let’s see now. Where to start?