Is Superman Here To Save Us? | Video Essay Script
The origin of superhero comics starts here. Superman is the gold standard of heroism, compassion and responsibility. Action Comics number one, published in 1938 introduced us to a new kind of hero that would soon change the comic book industry forever. His powers and especially his heroic traits were the template for almost every superhero that followed. But it wasn’t by accident that these traits were given to him by his creators Jerry Seigel and Joe Shuster. I’m Kishor and welcome to Moving Images.
To understand how Superman came to be, let’s rewind the clocks to January 1933, where the two teenagers published a short story, written by Seigel and illustrated by Shuster titled “The Reign of the Superman” in their science fiction fanzine. However, in this story the titular Superman is a bald villain who is given extraordinary telepathic powers through a science experiment and tries to take over the world, while also killing his creator. And this is why it is interesting to see that in a few years the duo went from that to this. Superman is the champion of truth and justice. But what makes him Superman. Let’s actually start with the name. It was a term that was popular in pop-culture in the 30s. Houdini, Tarzan, Doc Savage, and a litany of other literary, scifi, and genre heroes were called and advertised as “Superman” at the height of the duo’s teenage content consumption. But interestingly, the term came to the mainstream from the works of Friedrich Nietzsche. In his book “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”, Nietzche explained the concept of the Übermensch, which was later translated as the Overman or Superman. Although there exists no proof that the creators of Superman were familiar with Nietzche’s work when they created him, it is interesting to see how much the ideas are similar. Nietzsche defined Superman as the next step in the evolution of mankind. A being to whom we would seem like how apes are to us. A being who makes his own morals and not controlled by the herd mentality. Although more advanced and powerful than us in many ways, this man of tomorrow, will reform humanity towards pagan values. He will be the ideal for us to strive towards. Mankind is the bridge between the beast and Superman.
A true Nietzche’s Übermensch, Superman’s arrival would be announced by this cover. But does it announce the arrival of a hero? We see men running in terror while a strong man clad in blue tights and a red cape smash a car against a rock. Doesn’t actually inspire hope does it? It is only when you read the actual comic you realise that Lois Lane was kidnapped by a bunch of thugs and is saved by Superman, who after getting the thugs violently out of the car smashes it onto a boulder. The display of power here is done to strike fear in the hearts of the thugs, but there is a deeper meaning to it as well. Scott at the NerdSync channel explained brilliantly how this act of violence is a response to modernism, especially technology and automobiles. It was the 1930s depression era afterall and the industrial assembly line was making human lives miserable, so to see a hero made out of flesh and blood destroy a soulless machine made in a factory might be deliberate imagery. But I see it differently.
Superman’s triumph over man’s technology signifies the advanced nature of his evolution. This was a recurring theme, that it eventually became a way to describe the character. Humans are nothing but apes to him and as such anything we make is indeed inferior. It is exciting and frightening to see Superman defeat every technological advancement we throw at him. Take this idea entirely in a nihilistic route and you get the villain or Alan Moore’s Miracleman and later Watchmen. It is interesting that we now think the recent cynical takes on superheroes as an evolution of the ideas from the golden age of comics where the heroes could only do good and hence worshipped, but it is quite the inverse where the hope and goodness all came from a dark and gritty past. Superman fights for the good. He saves lives but he does it in his own violent ways, with his own morals. It is not how powerful Superman is but what he does with the strength is what separates him from his villainous namesake. And this is what I feel was the key change Siegel and Shuster made to their initial idea that made him a timeless hero. Literary critic Umberto Eco talks in his 1972 paper “The Myth of Superman” about the civic consciousness of the hero. Here is an omnipotent being who could fly into space in the blink of an eye but still restricted his heroic activities to a city, Metropolis. This only serves to prove that Superman isn’t here to just save us or at least solve all of the world’s problems but to give us an ideal to strive towards (Jor-El’s narration). Nietzche declared that God is dead and now the Superman shall live. A being, an ideal that we would like to evolve into and maybe Jerry Seigel and Joe Shuster gave form to that ideal in the form of Superman. Until next time, this is Kishor signing off saying…
