Well, 2024 is just about wrapped up–and what a year it’s been! A lot of us find the holidays to be reflective as well as celebratory, and I think it would be fair to say that after this year a lot of us are just downright exhausted. That’s why it’s important for us to turn off the news and work emails and other serious things, and give ourselves some much-needed “brain breaks” as I like to call them. As I’ve been indulging in some time off during my winter break, it’s gotten me thinking about what attracts me to various fictional media and the characters within–and how I can never really escape the things that are most important to me.
Most of you all know me through my natural history work, but hang around me long enough and it becomes glaringly obvious that I’m a pretty big nerd, too. I play D&D and other tabletop roleplaying games a few times a month, my comfort movies include The Lord of the Rings trilogy and multiple Studio Ghibli movies, and I’ve enjoyed comic books since I was in my single digits. I started out with my sister’s old Archie comics and the compendium of Walt Kelly’s Pogo strips that I read near to falling apart every time we visited my paternal grandmother. I’ve since expanded to a variety of comics ranging from the past few decades of DC/Marvel superhero fodder to a hodgepodge of indie titles and even the occasional manga (lately I’ve been borrowing my best friend’s collection of Dungeon Meshi.)
As I’ve gotten older, I find myself revisiting characters I’ve been rather ho-hum about in the past, including the big three DC flagship heroes. Historically I’ve enjoyed the exploits of the Bat-Family (the Cataclysm/No Man’s Land arc will always be a favorite re-read), and Gail Simone’s fresh takes got me interested in Wonder Woman again. But Superman? The Big Blue Boy Scout? I hadn’t really paid much attention to him since Smallville was first on TV (though admittedly I did mock the ’90s mullet a few years prior). I haven’t gotten caught up on the Injustice years, in part because I heard secondhand how much the writers just absolutely slaughtered Superman’s characterization by turning him into an absolute totalitarian. And I haven’t been impressed by what I’ve seen of Zack Snyder’s edgy version of him, either.
To be very honest, I’m rather tired of the tendency to grimdark everything that started out as vaguely wholesome (*coughRiverdalecough*). I can appreciate that sort of subversion from an artistic perspective, but personally I’ve grown weary of tragedy, dystopia, and depressing endings. I guess I’ve spent so much time trying to keep myself buoyed up while working to make this world a better place that I can’t get into vicarious distress via media. Hence my leaning harder into Ghibli movies, re-reading Linda Medley’s Castle Waiting collections (my all-time favorite graphic novels!), and other stories that manage to avoid being saccharine while wrapping up with a happy ending.
So it’s no surprise that when this set of panels from Superman Red and Blue #5 first caught my attention a while back, I was intrigued. I feel that Daniel Warren Johnson–who wrote, drew, and lettered the story–really captured the heart of Superman as a character. In every thing he does, he repeats the words that Ma and Pa Kent raised him with from the first moment, no matter how difficult the situation. What people like Snyder often miss is that Supes isn’t just some overpowered, one-dimensional do-gooder in a black and white world. Sure, his earliest appearances in the likes of Action Comics had him beating up the bad guys, but his lore has been expanded since then.
He’s a being of two worlds; he’s had to balance his Kryptonian nature with his Earthly nurture. He came of age on a farm in rural Kansas, raised by two kind-hearted human beings who taught him compassion and responsibility, and helped him adjust to being one of a kind in a world that often punishes differences. He’s polite and kind, and more sensitive than he’s often given credit for. Like any superhero he finds himself having to make difficult decisions, and villains often use his compassion against him (like the classic “two helpless people are in peril–who will you choose to save?” trope, in which our hero manages to save them both). And he’s had to deal with morally gray areas, in which his desire to do what’s right comes up against the question of what “right” really is in that context.
I can relate to that conflict. When we’re kids, I think a lot of us buy into the black and white, good and evil, right and wrong dichotomy we’re fed not just because before a certain point our brains just have trouble parsing a certain level of complexity, but also because the adults in our lives want to protect us from life’s difficulties as long as possible, knowing what we all eventually have to wrestle with. The older we get, the more apparent it becomes that life doesn’t have a lot of easy answers, and situations are rarely simple. As a kid I was convinced all the loggers who wanted to cut down forests where the northern spotted owl (Strix occidentalis caudia) nested were evil, Captain-Planetesque baddies who just wanted to see the world burn. As an adult, I still disagree with the push to log old-growth and otherwise structurally complex forests because I have an even greater understanding of the ecological implications thereof. But I also have more empathy for my fellow human beings who are afraid of losing their livelihood with no easy replacement, victims of the whims of the market and logging company C-suites. And I have the knowledge to understand that domestic sawmill closures are complex and aren’t solely due to the protection of older forests and their endangered denizens.
But I think what I loved the most about Johnson’s panels above is that they show that Superman, born as Kal-El and raised as Clark Kent, never lost his roots in love. His coming to Earth was a last desperate attempt of love by his biological parents, Lara and Jor-El, to save him from a dying planet. And he grew up enfolded in the love of Martha and Jonathan Kent, which he carries with him into every action he takes as Superman, whether he is saving someone from a burning building, visiting kids in a cancer ward, or sharing pizza with a group of homeless people. When he looks upon the populace of Metropolis, and then zooms out to space and looks back at our blue marble of a planet, all he can think to say in that overwhelming moment is “You are special. I love you. I’m so proud of you.”
I know that can be a hard thing to say to our species at this moment in time, as our actions have caused the extinction of so many other species, destroyed their habitats, caused a catastrophic shift in the planet’s many systems. But my psych training is rooted in humanistic psychology, and Carl Rogers’ idea of unconditional positive regard–the idea that even as we hold people accountable for their actions we always extend compassion to them, and hold space for them to do and become better. And I’m also reminded of deep ecologist Arne Naess’ concept of the ecological self, which includes the parameter “We certainly need to hear about our ethical shortcomings from time to time, but we change more easily through encouragement and a deepened perception of reality and our own self.”
And I see that final panel of Superman–Kal-El–Clark Kent–floating in space, beholding the entirety of the Earth and experiencing its beauty and fragility and sheer miraculous existence in what has been termed the Overview Effect. He is embodying the very best of who we can be, creatures so immersed in our love for our fellow living beings and our beautiful planet that it directs our every action. Even with all the ugliness and violence and sheer, unnecessary horrors he has seen people enact, he still holds and embodies immense hope for a better future for everyone, human and otherwise.
And that’s my Superman, who cynicism and malice bounce off of like bullets. Sure, if you look at the character as just a one-note musclebound power fantasy wrapped up in spandex, he’s boring after a while; you can only have so much “beat up the bad guys and save the day” before it becomes rote. But that’s never who he was in the first place. While, like other characters, he will always be influenced by whoever’s writing him this time around, one of Superman’s most enduring fundamental traits is his perennial hope and optimism that no matter how dark things get we will still rally to make the world a better place. And if not letting Superman down is what it takes to keep me trying in the face of insurmountable odds, well, here’s to truth, justice, and a better tomorrow.
