Why does everybody hate Superman?

[game-lover]

My brother and I go over this. There's no hatred towards Superman at all.

But we do believe he has a tendency to be a bit of an idiot...

Like he'll already have established that a certain thing like magic is a weakness or that crashing into something headfirst didn't work the first time he did it, so what makes him think it's gonna work this time. And yet, he seems to forget this stuff.

He could probably learn to dodge. Yes, normal stuff won't make a dent but when things that aren't normal come out of the woodwork, let's not assume they're the same thing. Chances are, they aren't.

The TV show Smallville had a point in an episode that we thought was just typical Superman.

Lana had been overtaken by this magic witch *****. Now, Clark knows that magic can hurt him. And yet when Witch Lana tossed from friggin' magic things at him, what did he do? He stood here! Like he forgot that MAGIC HURTS HIM.

Maybe it's not stupidity. Maybe he just lacks common sense. Relatively often.

 

[EclipseoftheDarkSun]

Plus how about some commentary on the tv shows featuring superman.. it's been a while since a batman tv show - it's not just about the movies and comics..

 

[Raika]

Superman doesn't. At least, not to my knowledge.

None of Batman's rogues' gallery can compare in any way to Lex Luthor, just sayin'.

OT: I don't care what anyone says. I fuckin' love Superman, and unless DC decided to bring back the Supermullet, I always will.

 

[Durgiun]

I don't hate him, I just find no appeal in him. He's nigh-indestructable and super-powerful. I don't find that interesting.

Batman is a Mary Sue, for sure, but he at least has no super powers that make him god-like.

 

[TheDrunkNinja]

Oh right! Also, don't forget that people in our age group and generation can only channel two emotions: gushing, fanboy love and pure, raging HATE. People don't hate Superman because there's nothing to hate about him. They're just indifferent to him, but they can only express that through HATE.

 

[thiosk]

Because superman is a

[HEADING=1]SUPER DICK[/HEADING]

Spoiler: also, this one

 

[axlryder]

Big Superman fan over here. I've always loved the character study pieces that involve Superman, especially some of the Elseworlds stuff.

Seriously, read Kingdom Come, Red Son, and, for a laugh Superman; True Brit. All the stories touch upon the psychology of the Man of Steel in different ways that show what his role in the DCU actually is.

I especially love his interactions with Batman in their crossover stories. Superman/Batman; Public Enemies sits proudly on my shelf as one of my favourite pieces.

And i just realized; i'm actually wearing Superman boxers as i type. *Nerd*

And Superman has more than a few equals this guy included;

And this is my favourite scene in Kingdom Come.

Spoiler: Thar be Spoilers ahead!

EDIT; also, if we're talking overpowered, the modern Flash is possibly the most ridiculous in the powers department. He can vibrate through physical objects and run at light speed. Not to mention punching you a million times a second, while travelling at speed.

This article, while filled with more bile than my statements, probably explains it better.

http://cheesebadger.xanga.com/650384722/why-the-flash-is-the-most-overpowered-superhero-ever/

Flash's powers inherently make him OP though. Just by their very nature. That post didn't even mentioned some of the shit flash is potentially capable of. The dude is potentially omnichronological and multidimension. I mean, he's no pre-retcon Beyonder or Living Tribunal, but the dude is fuckin' nuts. The issue is that some writers tend to take character's abilities closer to their logical conclusion (such as modern flash) where as others will reign in their capabilities for the sake of drama and story telling. It's sort of like seeing the obvious difference in powers when you juxtapose Silver age or Prime Supes (who could move many, many times the speed of light) against the nerfed modern version.

Another obvious issue is that the writers usually can't keep up with the potential ramifications of the powers they bestow upon their creations. Totally understandable, but it makes nitpicking the scientific implications of certain things somewhat pointless.

 

[Wintermoot]

I haven,t read any comics about him (except for superman Red Son) and well it,s kinda boring if your super hero has only one weakness (two if red son is cannon). Overall from what I heard about him he,s a pretty cool guy.

 

[Agayek]

He's the epitome of "boring", as far as superhero characters go, IMO.
The most interesting anything I've seen him in was a war-propaganda cartoon called "11th Hour".

Red Son is also a very good take on Superman. Base concept is Superman lands in the USSR instead of Kansas. Ultimately ends up conquering the world in the name of Communism, and is haunted by his one major failure in saving Stalingrad (which somehow got shrunk and he keeps it in a bottle as a reminder).

It's really, really cool take on Superman.

 

[AgentCooper]

Superman is really bad ass and I like what some modern writers have done with the character. But, I can also see why people dislike him and totally understand why.

With that said the only person that annoys me is when Frank Miller has to take jabs at the Man of Steel and proclaim how awesome Batman is... Serious all you have to read is All Star Batman and Robin. I doubt Miller understands Superman at all.

Seriously, Its like Frank Miller never stopped writing Sin City.

 

[katsumoto03]

I find him so boring that I can't even hate him. He's completely irrelevant to me.

 

[WolfThomas]

I like Superman, as Grant Morrison once eloquently summarised:

"Somewhere, in our darkest night, we made up the story of a man who will never let us down."

 

[viranimus]

Simple really, hes a grossly overpowered char that is devoid of personality and embodies unrelatable character qualities of a bygone era.

 

[theevilgenius60]

Don't know bro. I love Superman. I get all his comics(even Supergirl), and I hope DC can eventually get his movie career back rolling and give him his own breakout video game like Arkham was for Batman. I guess you could call him the ultimate Mary Sue, but with his collection of enemies he needs to be OP. Not just any superhero can face off with the brains of a Lex Luthor or Braniac and also the power of a Doomsday, Mongul or Anti-Monitor. If someone were to harness what makes his story worth telling(kind of like Ezio in Assassin's Creed in that he's overpowered from the get-go, thus more incredible things can be asked of him) into video game form, again like Arkham Asylum was for Batman, I'd preorder it tomorrow.

 

[malestrithe]

I don't hate Superman, nor do I think that he is the most powerful creation ever. I can easily name a dozen characters easily more powerful than Superman. Excluding actual gods, people who are stronger include: Sentry, Thanos, Brainiac, Amazo, Icon, Doctor Who, Doomsday, Doctor Doom, Megan Braddock, etc. In addition to having the loosest interpretation of what empathy really means, the last one conquered Hell though the power of good thoughts and positive thinking. When Superman can do that, I'll change my mind about whose stronger.

The thing is that he is a difficult character to write for. Character development is about overcoming conflict? How can you put flaws into the perfect man? He is either going to be so good that he will not hurt a fly, so trusting that he will be easily fooled, or so naive that he can easily be manipulated.

Even this new 52 iteration of Superman is kind of a boring read. He does not belong in this world, so he does not even try to fit in? He just protects it and nothing else. That's got to be the most silly cop out way of doing things because it only makes sense in that 90s cynical sort of way. What's keeping him from crossing the line and enslaving the planet, like the Authority? You know, atleast before when he was raised by Ma and Pa Kent, he understood that humanity is flawed and needs to be set on the right path. This iteration of Superman is inherently distrustful of people, so what is preventing him from enslaving the world?

The best use of Superman I've seen recently is to recast him as something of an absentee father figure and as someone that is not really ready to be one. In Young Justice, he is conflicted by the existence of Conner. He wants nothing to do with his teenage clone, so he pawns the responsibility off onto the rest of the league, mostly Batman, Black Canary and to an extent Captain Marvel. Throughout the first season, Superman did his best to ignore the boy, only talking to him a few times, making excuses to get away from him, and ignoring him when they are in the same room. It was only at the end of the season that Superman made an attempt to talk to the boy, much to their mutual satisfaction.

 

[drosalion]

To me he's a completely boring, bland character (both as clark kent and as superman). Theres nothing interesting or compelling about him in the slightest. He's played off as this perfect, innocent guy that has no flaws and cant do anything wrong. His character is completely unrealistic and unrelatable.

The additional problem is that his powers are completely 'over-powered' so to speak. He can do everything - freeze breath, laser eyes, invincibility, super-speed, super-strength, fly, hell even turn back time by flying around the planet. His only weakness is some other made up object that has no real relevance or anything and it simply comes down to whether or not the enemy has a piece of it or not.

Think about spiderman, iron man, etc and how much more interesting and deep their characters are. How flawed they are in a number of ways. And then think about their powers, they are definitely 'super' but they have severe limitations. Their weaknesses come from themselves, the enemies they verse, and a whole range of other things which makes every battle they're in more exciting.

 

[geK0]

I'm pretty ignorant to the majority of Superman lore; you pretty much covered the main reasons I'm not a huge fan of superman in the OP. He's probably a much deeper character than a lot of people give him credit for, but limited exposure to the series gives the impression that he is bland and overpowered.

 

[malestrithe]

Flash's powers inherently make him OP though. Just by their very nature. That post didn't even mentioned some of the shit flash is potentially capable of. The dude is potentially omnichronological and multidimension. I mean, he's no pre-retcon Beyonder or Living Tribunal, but the dude is fuckin' nuts. The issue is that some writers tend to take character's abilities closer to their logical conclusion (such as modern flash) where as others will reign in their capabilities for the sake of drama and story telling. It's sort of like seeing the obvious difference in powers when you juxtapose Silver age or Prime Supes (who could move many, many times the speed of light) against the nerfed modern version.

Another obvious issue is that the writers usually can't keep up with the potential ramifications of the powers they bestow upon their creations. Totally understandable, but it makes nitpicking the scientific implications of certain things somewhat pointless.

Bruce Timm had the same problem with Flash in Justice League and JLU. In writer's room meetings, the writers would come up with brilliant scenarios involving death traps for most of the team. Then they would ask, can Flash get out of this running really fast? If the answer was yes, they had to shelve the idea for later. Superman they had less problems with.