cracked:
Do we really want an incorruptible, nice guy superhero?
3 Reasons It’s So Hard to Make Superman Interesting
Go, read. I’ll be here when you get back.
Let me start off by making it clear that I agree with this guy’s basic premise.
It is resolutely true that for many people — including about 85% of those who approach you when they find out you’re writing a book called SUPERMAN: THE UNAUTHORIZED BIOGRAPHY — the character is “boring,” “a stiff,” “too perfect,” “not relatable,” etc.
And what I’ve been saying to those people is pretty much Bowie’s thesis — which let’s note is a bit more nuanced than “SUPERMAN IS BORING LOLZ.” No, what he’s actually saying is: Superman is difficult to write stories about. And he’s right.
I don’t think, however, that the point he makes in “Reason 1” — that Superman in isolation is not interesting, because he’s too perfect — carries much weight. For the simple reason that no one writes about Superman in isolation. No one writes about Batman, Spider-Man, Achilles, Gatsby, Dracula, or Pippi Longstocking in isolation, either. Fiction, even superhero comics, is always about relationships — relationships that exist to delineate your main character.
His “Reason 2” — that Superman without his powers isn’t Superman — is, I’d humbly suggest, wildly, egregiously, astonishingly, incandescently and provably wrong. Superman’s powers do not define him — they aren’t what make him a hero, any more than a firefighter’s fire-retardant gear make him or her a hero. Over and over and over again, in every media that delivers Superman to us, we have seen that his selflessness and determination — not the powers, the costume, the spit curl, the secret identity, the flying dog — are what make him Superman.
Bowie gets closest to why it’s so difficult to make Superman compelling in what he calls “Reason 3” — though I’d state it slightly differently: In writing fiction, you add tension and interest by keeping your characters from getting what they want in a variety of ways.
But surely it’s tough to keep Superman from getting what he wants, right? With the super-strength and the super-ventriloquism and whatnot?
Wrong. It’s very easy to keep Superman from getting what he wants, and tell exciting, gripping stories about him. A writer just needs to have a good feeling for what drives him, what he wants more than anything else. And here’s what Superman wants:
He wants to save everybody.
He wants no one to die or suffer, no matter the cost to himself.
Which is impossible. Unattainable. Even for him, even with all his abilities. THIS, we can maybe understand? THIS, we can maybe relate to? This inability to achieve what we most want, and the resulting desire to keep chasing it? This is why the best Superman stories deal not with him being robbed of his powers, but with him dealing with their very real limitations.
Because, as Bowie states, there IS a character from Greek myth that corresponds to Superman. He just got the wrong one. It’s not Diomedes. It’s not Achilles.
It’s Sisyphus.
What he said.
