Why the World Needs Superman

By J. Bryan Jones

It is easy to say that the world we call Earth needs more good people.  Any one person on this blue rock who exhumes intrinsic good does much more than improve the course of our interconnected lives.  If anyone who ever existed in reality or fiction were to be such a person, it would be Superman.  And the world needs Superman for more than that.

If Superman were to become existent in our present reality, it would do much more than add another good person to the population.  Superman’s mere presence as a superhuman and alien being adds many layers to the complexity of human existence.  How significant can we mortals be in the shadow of a man who bears the power of a sun in his hands, is invulnerable, and can fly?  People would no doubt feel impotent and indulge into more reckless behavior with the sense of triviality.  Our religions, technology, laws, and anthropocentric perspective must be completely reassessed in such a case.   People may purposefully put themselves in danger or become in-genuine villains just to meet him.  If a superman’s presence could do all that, then whether or not it would result in something better requires many more layers of analysis to reach a philosophical and subjective answer.

A fictional case of such a super-human becoming realized in a grounded reality has been explored before in Alan Moore’s Watchmen.  In Moore’s world, the presence of Dr. Manhattan, whose powers are like a god, stirs up all of the thus-far mentioned issues and more.    Manhattan’s presence creates an inherit unbalance in the world’s superpower nations, the United States and the U.S.S.R. and raises political tensions just by being there.  The US military performs acts of a war with increased abandon, knowing that such an unequaled force is there to bail them out in the case of failure.  The course of such events enviably approach global disaster.  But Superman is not Dr. Manhattan, and that is not all of what Superman’s being here would do.

Despite being alien and isolated, Superman chooses to be a part of his earthly world.   Clark Kent, the man who would become and is Superman underneath the figurative red & blue mask, must be alone because of who he is and what he can do.  No matter whether the people see him as a savior, a hero, a villain, or not at all, he is without peer.  Even many of those who read his adventures do not find him relatable.  The responsibility he bears and decisions Clark has to make will change the world no matter what they are, and this kind of life keeps him completely alone.  Clark is still a very tragic character full of eternal, internal struggle even without the typical background of loss.  He sees electromagnetic waves that are invisible to us and in colors that we cannot imagine.  Concrete and steel are non-obstacles to him, and all the physical constructs that ground humans are only abstract concepts to him.  He has every reason to see humans the same way –like inconsequential shadows in a world without boundaries, but he does not.  Clark Kent is not Dr. Manhattan.

One thing that makes Superman what the world needs is his belief in humanity.  Without it, every fear and every one of the worst possibilities for a super-human’s appearance becomes realized.  When everything he does not do matters as much as what he does do, belief in humanity makes him a leader rather than a ruler.  Superman in fiction rebuts to being the savior, saying that you (humans) are the saviors.  He takes to being miscalled a human by other DC heroes a compliment.  As much as people would feel trivial compared to Superman, the Man of Steel himself considers the people to be the most important.  Hearing that sort of speak from a being with absolute power would reassert mankind’s confidence and understanding that we are the shapers of our universe.  Through him, our growing belief in humanism will be paramount to all of us building a better world.  Superman would give us hope.

Superman’s legacy would be the impression he leaves in the hearts and minds in the human race.  Outdated –say the people of his values so much so that DC actually made a title called “What’s so funny about Truth, Justice, and the American Way?” –which is a point that should be agreed upon.  Granted, the “American way” means many different things to people, but in Superman’s case, it is congruent with Truth and Justice.    The term alone makes Superman a man out of time in the contemporary setting.  First conceptualized in 1933, his values may not be consistent with the laws of his era that kept women and minorities down, but they are nevertheless timeless.  Truly, he belongs in no time that has yet come, and he is virtually alone in a world without a moral compass.

World leaders today do not have the character of Superman.  Our elected leaders seek reelection solely for power and power’s sake instead of what is best for the people –a truth that their voting records verify except in some extreme cases.  In America, there are two political parties that fight for ground but do nothing with it once they have it except to grab more power.  But power itself is not an end, it is a tool.  The most powerful being in the universe, Superman, Kal-El of Krypton, is reluctant to use his power and does not seek more.  If Superman were to enter our reality, the people and the government would at first fear and try to neutralize him.  They would worry that he would do what they understand people to do –corrupt absolutely under absolute power.  The apprehensions of the people will later become wishes, wanting a benevolent dictator who has character and is feasibly capable of solve all our problems.

Superman is the exception.  Every other version of Krypton’s Last Son, whether it is from the Red Son (2003) timeline or the “Justice Lords” alternate reality, is a corrupt malformation of the Man of Steel.  The constant conflict in having to make the wise and proper decision makes Clark Kent a tortured soul.  The choice he eventually takes makes him a hero.  In the DC Universe, he co-founds a self-monitoring legion of superheroes called the Justice League.  Superman saves the people without making their decisions for them.  While political tensions will rise with his presence, Superman makes it clear that he is there for the good of Earth and not just the United States.  In Superman: Earth One (2010), Superman comes face to face with a foreign totalitarian who is slaughtering his own people and letting the rest die in famine.  While Superman is unable to help the people without putting them in danger, he eventually finds a way.  His touch is enough to instill truth and justice, but not so much that he becomes a dictator.

There are those who would relentlessly accuse him of aspirations to become a tyrant and an affliction on this earth.  Where Batman has taken precautions, Lex Luthor has to challenge him.  Such a man as Alexander “Lex” Luthor would surely exist and have the jealousy and tenacity to become him and the benevolent dictator Superman chooses not to be.  Luthor is modeled after a kind of person that exists in real life, and is Superman’s antithesis.  In a world with Superman, his presence would cause all kinds of problems like escalation in collateral damage from evil men’s amplified rampages.  Political tensions would rise and our way of life will have to be rethought.  These, however, are difficulties that already exist and would not simply be aggravated by Superman but instead finally addressed and solved.  Ultimately, it would not be Superman facing these crises but us.

Fictional character Lois Lane in many fictions wrote an article called “Why the World Needs Superman.”  Several people have thought to say the world needs Superman’s fiction, but what we truly need is a physical, living, breathing Superman.  We need Superman because he will make us better men.  If a man such as Superman can exist with all his power, tact, and character in this world, then it is proof that this Earth can be saved.  Having borne our own redemption, it would justify human existence.  The planet needs a guide, not a king.  This is not a movie, and we do not know in the end if truth and justice will win the day, so we need Superman.   Until then, we will just have to settle for him being real in our hearts.