Superman the Badass

Something I like to write about is Superman.  I love Superman, mainly because he has so much in common with myself; with the exception of the flying thing and the weird outfit, of course.  So here are two comments I left at entirely differently places on Facebook yesterday, though it's the same sort of thing I often write about Superman.

The first was in regards to a meme I saw showing how Superman, Spiderman, and Batman all strive to keep their identities secret, while Iron Man does not; so as to imply that Iron Man is cooler than the other three.  Here's what I wrote:

With Superman, it's different. Batman, Spidey, and Ironman are just normal dudes who can do super things.  

Superman, on the other hand, is a bad ass alien who wants a little downtime by pretending to be one of the dorky humans he's surrounded by. Kinda like a king who walks among his people to see how the other half lives. And if his secret was discovered, he'd have to get a new job and a different pair of glasses, which he'd rather not do because he's comfortable with what he's got and apparently has a thing for uptight professional girls with poor facial recognition skills. 

So Superman's not hiding who he really is, because he's not really Clark Kent. He's Superman. He's just keeping his alias secret.

And then on a post from a guy saying he was going to make Superman cool again and mentioning how good the Christopher Reeve Superman was.

You can't make Superman cool again, because he never ceased being cool. Superman's main problem is that he's such a badass that it's not very easy to write dramatic situations for him; thus you end up with films like Superman III and IV, which killed the franchise. I mean, when a dude can fly around the globe so fast that he can reverse the rotation of the earth and thus reverse the flow of time, there's really not much suspense left any more.  

And as a note: Superman II was meant to be part of the first Superman movie, but it got too long. So there was really only enough material for one amazing Superman movie. And even the supposed reboot just rehashed much of the first movie again, with a Superman so lame that it just reminded us how perfect Christopher Reeve was.  

And the problem is that Superman can't really be a drama anyway. It's a comedy about this amazing guy who's ridiculously superior to everyone, yet kindly puts up with them while solving their worst problems, which are like child's play to him. And as the kicker, they all think he's a big dork, which is an act he puts on so he doesn't frighten them. They all think they're the cool slickers from the city and he's just a hayseed from the sticks, when he's really a bad ass from another planet and the very guy they admire most. 

Comedic gold. It can't be done any other way, and anyone who tries is a fool.