This came from my old blog, and I still believe it today.
If a writer lets POWER LEVELS get in the way of telling a good story...
then, no offense, but he's a bad writer, and not worth the money he's being paid.
Superman's not an easy character to write. No. He's not. And the more powerful he is, the harder he is to write. And why shouldn't he be?
Superman should be the hardest character in all of superhero-dom to write. Superman should be one of the hardest characters in all of fiction to write. Writers should look upon him as the ultimate challenge. Writers should put their total, absolute best into him, because the character deserves that.
So let him be a god. That's who Superman is supposed to be, to me. He should rise above humanity, and be there for them to catch them when they fall. He should NOT be the everyman. Which is not to say you can't give him human qualities, but you should, first and foremost, ensure that Superman does the right thing, not because he's driven by some trauma, but because it's the right thing to do. Screw psychological deconstructive motivation.
And anyone who says Superman is a dick is too high on that Superdickery website. I love that site too, but you have to realize that any instances of superdickery is out of context. Pre-Crisis Superman was never a dick. He did the right thing at the right time because it was the right thing to do. Those pre-Crisis Silver Age stories may be simplistic now, a product of their own era. The morals there may not even really apply in this new, complex world of ours. But the message is there.
To paraphrase the father of another great comics character, who may as well have been a god*...
"Don't take no shit off fools. And you judge a person by what's in them, not how they look. And you do the right thing. You gotta be one of the good guys, son. 'Cause there's way too many of the bad."
That's Superman to me. It's not complicated. It's simple. It's the kind of simplicity you look for as little kids and spit upon as teenagers and wish for again as adults. It's the kind of simplicity that makes you wish you're the most powerful man alive, with the power to move mountains and shoot suns from your eyes and shift your muscles with the power of tectonic plates, just because you would be able to do right by the world.
It's so simple. And to me, that's Superman.
*From Preacher. Well worth a read.
