The Cassutt Files
Poor Superman

I went through a comic-book phase. What a surprise—every male who writes or even reads sci-fi went through a comic-book phase. (Some of them are still going through it, but let's not get into that.)

Yes, from the age of 10 to 14, I read them all. Spider-Man. The Hulk. The early X-Men. Fantastic Four. Batman. The Avengers. Not only superheroes, of course. I also liked the war books, Sgt. Rock and especially Sgt. Fury. (Given the events those two non-coms went through, I'm not sure they weren't super-powered.) It wasn't just Marvel and DC books. I read Gold Key comics, even Charlton.

Naturally I had a good-sized collection. And no, I don't harbor simmering anger at my mother for throwing my comic books away: I had the habit of re-inking the pages. I literally spent hours tracing the figures inside the panels, even re-lettering the balloons. So those comics were ... distressed. They would never have been worthy of plastic wrappers.

Even past the age of 14, I would still read the occasional book—and later on, graphic novels by Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman. I've gone on to write scripts for various superhero projects, too. One of these days I hope to write a comic or graphic novel of my own.

So why is it that I don't like Superman?

Maybe it's the relentless hype surrounding the new movie, which opened last week. You have to be a member of the Taliban to avoid the magazine cover stories, the "interviews" on Extra or Inside Hollywood, not to mention the barrage of promos, billboards and print ads, and the insidious podcasts and viral invasions.

Complaining of the media machinery supporting a $100 million product is, I know, like complaining about global warming. It's inevitable, and there's not much I can do about it.

Besides, I've lived through it before, on Lord of the Rings and the Bat-, Spider- and X-Men, and even MI:III, which is another superman story. (All Tom Cruise needs is a mask or a cape.)

So it can't be the hype.

A man too super for his own good

I never liked the original comic book ... assuming I ever saw an issue of Superman, and not Superman's Friends or Superboy or Supergirl or The Adventures of People Superman Met at College. (Media saturation didn't start with George Lucas and Steven Spielberg: DC Comics knew how to use every part of the pig, even the whistle, a long time ago.)

It isn't the core character ... infant Kal-el, launched from the dying world of Krypton, fetching up in the American Midwest and raised by the kindly Kents. (Could it be the proliferation of Ks that bugs me?) There's potential here.

And I like The WB's Smallville—to my mind, the only really successful superhero series in television history. At least, the only one to be based on a hero from the Golden Age of comics. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was pretty heroic, and successful, too. But she came from a different era.

My first problem with Kal-el/Kent is the secret-identity business. When you're 12—or 52—there is something quite attractive in being able to act without being known. Yes, you can be irresponsible ... but you can also be selfless. Isn't it somehow holier to do good without expecting a reward or praise? Isn't it more fun to read about a heroic exploit in the newspaper as the only human who knows the real story?

Secret identities are not unique to Superman, of course. But even at a young age I concluded that you had to be especially stupid not to figure out that Clark Kent was really the dude of steel.

I suspect what really irked me was Superman's powers, the sheer impossibly broad spectrum—the original wish list of two young sci-fi fans (Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel) amplified by dozens of later writers and artists.

Superman could do anything. He could not only leap tall buildings ... he could transport the building to another planet, and do it in less time than it would take Spider-Man to separate his blues from reds at the dime laundry in Brooklyn. In the Christopher Reeve movie, he even turned back time.

He had no real limits. Yes, yes, yes, there was kryptonite in all its colors and flavors. (Do they have mango yet? Who knew that an exploded planet untold light-years away could deposit as much junk on Earth as Krakatoa?) But it's always seemed a writer's convenience to me.

The Smallville version of Clark Kent does have limits—if only being a teenager in a small town.

I need limits. To me, that's where real stories are found. Every time I find myself involved in a superhero project, I can't help asking questions: How does the hero's tricked-out car work, anyway? Who changes the oil? Where do you go to get the dents pounded out of the Batmobile?

Are there side effects to all those battles? Doesn't Spider-Man have some hellacious scars?

Who pays for the damage to Gotham City?

Faster than the average athlete

Given my dismal record as a writer of superhero TV—and given the popularity of Superman—I'm in the minority. And wondering why.

There's an undeniable attraction in being stronger than everyone else. Being faster. Being able to face a villain and know that he can't beat you.

It's having the kind of life no one actually has ... unless you're Michael Jordan on the basketball court, or Tiger Woods on the first tee.

Maybe this is where I went wrong. Because by the standards of sci-fi writers and comic-book readers, I qualify as a jock. My father played pro baseball and coached. I spent far more time playing sports than I did reading. I still golf and play tennis.

I'm not the only jock in the field, of course. Kim Stanley Robinson, author of Red Mars and Forty Signs of Rain and many others, could hike me into the ground. I've dueled with Alan Dean Foster and John Kessel on basketball courts and come up the loser.

I'm nowhere near world-class as an athlete. I'm merely above average.

Is that enough to render Superman uninspiring and uninteresting? To find it too fantastical, too lacking in realism for my hybrid sense of fun?

Probably.

In any case, I won't be in line for Superman this week.