Whatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow?

Superman is a product of his time, but does he hold any relevance today? Alex Dueben tracks the influences that informed Siegel and Schuster's creation, and considers where the next Superman might come from.
26 September 2003

Superman used to be important.

He was the man (not "The Man", and I'll explain the distinction later). He may not have been the original superhero, as his roots extend to pulp fiction, the Jewish legend of the Golem and back to the ancient Sumerian saga of Gilgamesh, but as we see it in comics, he's considered the original, and his success paved the way for the genre and the characters we all know so well.

He was a man of his time. Jerry Siegel and Joel Schuster were just two Jewish kids from Cleveland when they thought him up. Superman was an immigrant, an alien. He was a man, but he was more than that. With his mild-mannered façade, he appeared as if but another face in the throngs of people crowding the streets of the modern city of Metropolis. But he had great powers; strength that was his because of his roots.

He was not like the people he walked among, but he understood them. His was not a story of a robot or alien who wants to understand humanity. Superman was raised as a man. He understands people all too well, and he understands that he will always remain apart from them. And so he uses the powers he has been granted by fate to help other people. To uphold truth, justice and the American way.

It sounds corny to us. Those of us who have grown up in a cynical age have a hard time embracing something that simple. But consider when he was created. There was more to the 'jazz age' than images of one long party, with alcohol taking the edge off the sacrifices of the last war and the confusion it wrought. Think of Prohibition, the gang wars, record murder rates, the resurgence of the KKK and other white power groups that targeted blacks and Jews and immigrants. And then came the Great Depression.

Siegel and Schuster believed in the American dream; that America was more than land and people, it was ideas and values. They believed that becoming an American wasn't like being a citizen of other countries, a question of nationality and ethnicity, but that it was about the acceptance of values; it was a belief in America, in its people, in each of us.

They saw it not as a "melting pot", as others claimed, but as a nation that was made stronger by the diverse mass of people competing for space. They believed that it was strengthened, not weakened by the "tired, poor and huddled masses" who disembarked onto Ellis Island. Clark Kent was but another of that huddled mass who had found his place in the US.

It was at this time that the National Socialist Party took control of Germany and began to spread throughout the continent of Europe (you can chose to find significance in Superman coming from a doomed planet if you wish). Part of Hitler's ideology was a perversion of the ideas put forward by Nietzsche in his essay "Man and Superman". What was Superman but a reaction to that? A Superman that was not an Aryan fighting for purity, but an American. An alien who has come to America to fight for the ideals and principles put forth by his adopted country.

It may not be the most thoughtful and nuanced theory ever put forward about the United States, but that's what he was. He's not just some bag of bones to throw punches at a new supervillain every month. He was an expression of hope and identity.

This superhero was the model for others that followed. Not literally. Most came from other ideas and most were far less inspired. Some were fantasy heroes, some science fiction, others urban vigilantes. Some were interesting and some were not. But none of them were Superman.

Marvel Comics of the sixties were dominated by heroes who were irradiated and given strange powers. In the midst of the Cold War and the nuclear arms race, in a world that stared destruction in the face twice in a single year (in Berlin and Cuba), a popular art form found a way to react to it. I don't think this was a conscious act by Stan Lee and his collaborators any more than Mr Siegel and Mr Schuster considered the metaphorical implications of Superman, but it's there in the subtext.

Throughout the Cold War we were overwhelmed with superheroes. Every month they would fight a villain who threatened global conquest or simple destruction, and every month these forces of chaos and destruction were held at bay. The status quo was safe.

But of course, we're not in twentieth century anymore. The superhero is still here and will be for some time. But we're in a very different time, and Superman has significance as a symbol, as an idea, but not in actuality. That's not to say that he doesn't continue to hold relevance, or that the ideas that shaped him are not as important to the world today as they were sixty-five years ago.

But we live in a different world.

A world that is not defined by danger coming from above, but one where it is all around us. Where the issues of identity and assimilation and power are just as relevant, but the questions are no longer the same. And we won't accept the same answers, because the truth is that we don't believe as much in such things.

So if Superman is the past, then what is next?

Dark and cynical superheroes? Anti-heroes with superpowers? "Realistic" superheroes? Ultra violent superheroes? Pro-active superheroes?

Thinking about this in terms of superheroes is worthless, because the truth of it is that Superman was about America. He was about the 1930s and that strain of American optimism and hope you find in Woody Guthrie songs or Frank Capra movies. And maybe it's not as deep or as grand a conception of America as Faulkner or Fitzgerald or others put forth in the same period, but he came from those thoughts and from that time.

He was an original character created by two unknowns who were doing something different. Not the same as everything else on the rack, but something original. It's not something that all companies would embrace today.

When people like Gary Groth, Warren Ellis and Marc Alessi go off on superheroes and talk about the need to create something new, it's because they understand that the next big thing won't be the result of someone thinking, "What if, instead of an arm, he had a gun?" It will be the result of someone with real originality and inspiration, and the company who publishes their work won't see it as a sure thing, but will be willing and interested in taking a risk.

Ultimately, I guess there's no rush. The idea will come and like any good meme, we won't be able to stop it, because it'll infect everyone it touches. For all that it represented, it took until 1938 until the publication of ACTION COMICS #1.

Alex Dueben is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer.

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