History Headscratchers / Superman

* Would a Manga/DeathNote affect Superman? And if it did, which name would one use to kill him? Clark Kent or Kal-El? Or would either one suffice?
** Depending on which version of Superman it is, it'd be either. Currently, I'd say Clark Kent.
** Since Death Notes specifically affect ''humans'', it would not affect him.
*** Was it ever even tried on something mortal besides humans? I think Superman is close enough, in which case it would totally work. Superman isn't any more immune to magic than anyone else, after all.
*** If it did work, the name Clark Kent would probably be fine since he was given that name before he was 3 years old, which seems to be the rule. That said, I don't think there's any chance it would work on him at all. His physiology is too different - a heart attack is ''not'' going to kill him, and neither is anything else you are likely to write into that book. Also, notably on Smallville that kid that could see deaths could not see Superman's - so his lifespan is either infinite or unknowable because he's outside of fate - or something like that. At any rate, Superman is not 'close enough' to being human; despite his vulnerability to magic, I don't see any way a Death Note could affect him.
** In a Silver Age story, Superman travelled to the 5th Dimension and harrassed Mxyzptlk, who eventually tricked Superman into saying Nam-Reo-Us, but it didn't work because, as Superman revealed, his real name is still Kal-El.
** Given there has never been a canon crossover, any answer to this question would be WildMassGuessing. The only real answer is "whatever the plot requires."

** Also, we're not necessarily supposed to assume the character in question is literally choking. *CHOKE!*, in this case, is just a shorthand for something along the lines of "I am so amazed/horrified/aghast at the events I am witnessing that I am momentarily unable to fully process them!"

** As of 2006'th Up, Up and Away!, that was no longer the case. He may regain his fortune, but the general public is well aware he's a monter.

** As he started out Humanite was a bit too similar to ComicBook/LexLuthor (balding MadScientist bent on WorldDomination) except that he was an EvilCripple; by the time he became his more famous Man-Ape incarnation, he had underwent a RoguesGalleryTransplant to the Comicbook/JusticeSocietyOfAmerica; in fact originally he seemingly died two issues before Luthor appeared, back in ''1940'', and his subsequent [[UsefulNotes/TheSilverAgeOfComicBooks Silver Age]] fights with Superman were set on Earth-2 and, thus, not the then-mainstream Superman. Basically he's no longer considered a Superman villain and you can do little with him that ComicBook/LexLuthor can't do better anyway, so there is little point. He's just not that famous. Granted, he still deserves better than supporting / minor appearances in ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeagueUnlimited'', ''WesternAnimation/YoungJustice'' and ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheBraveAndTheBold'', but since the Justice Society are his arch-enemies now and ''they'' don't get much media showings, what chance does he have?

* Every time Superman misses with his heat vision, it means he failed to look at the target.

** He calls him that in the same vein of respect he views Batman. He calls Batman "Detective" since Batman is one of the world's greatest detectives and views him as a worth individual. One can take a similar route with Superman. At its definition, icon means "a person or thing regarded as a representative symbol of something." He views Superman as a paragon; an icon of virtue and such. Despite his plans against the world, he does respect the power and strong morals of the Man of Steel. The superhero known as Icon was from a different comicbook-verse before it was assiilated into DC.

** In the Silver Age, since the Science Council would permanently nix ANY scientific program that had any failure no matter what the cause they permanently shelved space travel after a scientist's efforts to show off his latest idea (a rocket combined with a nuclear missile) accidentally went off course and blew up their inhabited moon instead of the worthless asteroid he had in mind. This got him his sentence to the Phantom Zone and recurring villain status with Superman, he's also the same one who created Jewel Krytonite.

** Pre-Crisis, 1981's "New Adventures of ComicBook/{{Superboy}}" #12 shows Congress granted Superboy (very early in his super-career) an honorary American citizenship. Earlier in the story, Superboy tells then-reporter Perry White in an interview that [[ComicBookTime President]] [[UsefulNotes/DwightDEisenhower Eisenhower]] had reassured him that he wouldn't be deported. ("After all, where could I be deported, since Krypton no longer exists?") I'd presume Congress doing something similar could've happened in other continuities, for the reasons others noted above (even a xenophobic politician might find deporting America's most popular superhero troublesome come re-election time...).

** I don't know if it's ever been explicitly discussed (and I'd be surprised if in 80-odd years of super-villainy Luthor hasn't tried magic at ''some'' point), but in the MagicVersusScience debate he tends to take the 'science' side. In his modern incarnations certainly, he also tends to be characterised (and generally seems to be) the kind of humanist-scientist-technocratist type of person who'd view 'primitive superstitions' like magic with a certain degree of disdain; perhaps he views it as being under his dignity.

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[[folder:Comic]]

** I don't know if it's ever been explicitly discussed (and I'd be surprised if in 80-odd years of super-villainy Luthor hasn't tried magic at ''some'' point), but in the MagicVersusScience debate he tends to take the 'science' side. In his modern incarnations certainly, he also tends to be characterised (and generally seems to be) the kind of humanist-scientist-technocratist type of person who'd view 'primitive superstitions' like magic with a certain degree of disdain; perhaps he views it as being under his dignity.

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[[folder: Film]]
* Lex Luthor. The greatest criminal mastermind on earth. And after getting out of prison, his great comeback plan is... boning an old, sick woman? he really couldn't find a more dignified, less pathetic way to get back in bussiness? REALLY?
** The idea of it may seem pathetic, but it's funny for one good reason: No matter how superior he thinks he is, he will sink to any depth necessary to get what he wants. Besides, that is a hell of a yacht.
** Besides, he knew she wouldn't be around long (he might have helped that, too). He even forged her signature (but no one else knew).
** Remember that it's Luthor who says Luthor is the greatest criminal mastermind on Earth. And remember that while he does manage some truly amazing stuff, at the heart of it he's really just a petty scam artist. And big-time plans or no, a scam artist can't work without seed money, and the bigger the scam, the more seed money you need. He was doing a whole ''lot'' of crap in Superman Returns that needed a ton of money to finance, so yes, boning an old woman for her money was both necessary and crafty.
*** You can't deny it, for a man who stole nukes and made pacts with alien conquerors, boning an old woman is a bit degrading.
* Superman Returns picks up from Superman II, and Jason is the son of Clark Kent. I use that name intentionally because Kal-El was de-Kryptonized so that he could ethically marry Lois and live as a human. Boy does their de-Kryptonization suck! In Superman Returns, Jason (late in the game) starts to exhibit superhuman powers. You'd think they would have bothered to do something about possible offspring; otherwise, what's the point of de-Kryponization in the first place?
** He wasn't de-Kryptonized. He was bathed in red sunlight, which took away his powers. Later on, he's bathed in the energy of yellow sunlight, which recharges his powers. He was still Kryptonian throughout the whole thing. There was no changes made to his physiology of DNA. Essentially, he had the batteries pulled out of his powers.
*** Why does depowering him make him human-level? Even without Kryptonian powers he should still have a much more advanced physique than humans.
*** Define "advanced physique". In nearly every version of the mythos since the Silver Age, Clark is more or less human without his powers. Sure, the comic book version is also pretty damn muscular, but that aside, how is his physique any more "advanced" than a human?
*** Beside, Lois (and pre-embryonic Jason) were exposed to the Krypton rays. Sure, it de-powered Zod and co. but...
** On a side note, exactly how were Lois and Clark planning to get back from the Fortress of Solitude? It's in the freaking arctic!!
*** The Fortress/Jor-El.
*** Similarly, how did de-powered Clark Kent manage to make it back there, on foot, with no specialist equipment, arctic clothing, or even food supplies?
*** By being in a movie based off of the Silver Age where no one thought particularly hard about the logic of what they were writing. Think of Spider-Man and consider that Stan Lee seriously thought his powers, including danger sense, were powers spiders had. That sort of thinking was basically across the board among comic writers at the time.
* Okay, so Superman can fly around the world really fast to go back in time. That's plausible enough, considering who we're talking about. But ''Superman: The Movie'' doesn't show him DOING anything different. In fact, it sure looks like the only difference is that Lois's car runs out of gas at a different place. Donner's cut of ''Superman II'' takes this to further heights of ridiculousness. There is no indication that he undid anything. The tough at the bar recognizes Clark as the weakling he downed in one punch, and everyone BUT Lois seems to know something happened.[[note]]If this movie is when Lois's son from Returns [[{{squick}} is conceived]]...[[/note]] The "super-kiss" may have been weak, but the time travel simply makes no sense, let alone the lameness of repeating the exact same gimmick.
** And this is why the Crisis was the best thing to happen to Superman. No more time travel or amnesia kisses after the retool.
*** There was [[AssPull only the one]] amnesia kiss ''before'' the Crisis. And only in the same movie series which brought you Great Wall Of China Vision.
*** Actually, in the aforementioned director's cut of Superman II, he gives Lois another one after Luthor is dragged off to jail. Which means, as far as Lois is concerned, she woke up pregnant one day.
*** Why Superman doesn't just take one for the team and give Lex Luthor a smooch to make him forget his years of scientific research?
** Now if, as Luthor says, even Superman can't fly fast enough to stop both missiles, and if the film proves that he doesn't, how does it then make sense that he later flies fast enough to turn back time? Wouldn't time travel require flying faster than stopping a mere missile?
*** He was probably at the fastest speed he could safely go in the atmosphere while chasing the missiles- he goes into space to turn back time, and could go much faster.
*** ''And'' it is stupid. Atmosphere is not so thick, some kilometers around the Earth. If the atmospheric speed is topped to "Air burst and everyone dies" (''could'' make sense), it's easy to do a vertical climb to space, zoom before the missile and dive to intercept it. It's like having to cover a long space swimming near the shove: you can cut lot of time simply exiting the water, running, and diving back.
*** And how's Luthor supposed to know how fast Superman can move, anyway? All he'd admitted to the public about his powers was what-little he'd told Lois in one conversation.
*** Luther has BatDeduction, as shown by his determination of the Kyrptonite weakness.
*** We're never actually given a solid explanation of the time-travel ability, so perhaps it isn't just a pseudo-relativistic consequence of "going really fast", but should be understood as an ability in its own right that doesn't derive from his other powers.
** The whole thing was summarized fairly well [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yavK0mnE3wI here]]. Kryptonite, red sunlight, and magic are no match for Superman's [[PlotInducedStupidity true weakness]].
** Superman's speed is never consistently shown, but then again, neither are any of his other powers. We sometimes see him appear to strain to lift a bus, but he can lift California from sinking into the ocean or push a Kryptonite continent into space. I think all of his powers can be summed as, "Strong as the plot demands." That said, here's a possible FanWank explanation for the time travel: Superman didn't make the earth spin backwards - he himself went back in time, and the image of the Earth spinning backwards is merely how Superman would have perceived it. How'd he do this? By flying faster than the speed of light. The Earth's about 25,000 miles around, and Superman's flight in TheMovie is a good 2 or 3 diameters larger than earth, meaninging that he was flying in loops anywhere between 50,000 to 100,000 miles - in less than a second. The speed of light is 186,000 miles per second. At the speed at which he's depicted flying, Superman is flying much faster than light, and given the dubbing from Jor-el about relativity, we can probably assume that Supes was just traveling back in time, and seeing events play out in reverse.
** Said FanWank doesn't hold up based on what's present in the actual scene, however. People often overlook that after Superman reveres time / the rotation of the Earth, he then flies in the opposite direction to return the planet to its proper rotation again. If all he was doing was flying back in time at a speed faster than light, and the Earth's reverse-rotation was merely a visual metaphor, then he wouldn't need to fly in the opposite direction once he had already made it back to the point where he could save Lois. He'd just need to stop flying, go down and save her.
*** It's worse than that, even. Ultimately, it makes no difference whether he's reversing time or traveling through time--either way, he lands in the past, right at the moment the earthquake started. But for ''''no discernable reason'''', the earthquake doesn't happen this time. There is just no superpower in the world that can make sense out of this. I don't care what his mechanism for time-travel is; it just doesn't add up.
** One possible explanation for the speed question: Superman is trying to save Lois from death. It's one thing to try to save nameless thousands from doom, but it's another thing to save the one person you love the most. He was just trying harder to go faster, pushed along by his emotions. And it's a good thing he did try traveling in time; in the state he was in, he could've also flown to Metropolis and ripped Luthor apart one atom at a time.
** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMmd58i0IfQ This video]] depicts one possibility of what Superman did once he landed in the past. However, it also adds a moment of NiceJobBreakingItHero that contradicts the Donner and Lester cuts of ''Superman II''. [[spoiler:First, he grabs the missile headed for California. The missile blows up before he can finish hurling it into space, but he at least gets it far away enough so that the destruction doesn't become ''as'' widespread. After he saves Jimmy, he still has enough time to grab the missile headed for Hackensack, New Jersey, since he doesn't have as much damage in CA to repair. The earthquake in CA never becomes large enough to engulf Lois, making her still safe and sound when Superman finds her. Unfortunately, since Superman saves Hackensack at a different time than before, the missile flies into the Phantom Zone, freeing Zod, Ursa, and Non...]]


* Now that I think about it, did General Zod actually have a plan in ''Superman 2''? He busts into the White House and demands that the President kneel before him, which he does. Later on, we see him and his goons lounging around in the Oval Office, bored out of their minds. Governing takes work, and Zod was just sitting around. Did the governments of the rest of the world submit? If so, would anybody actually obey them?
** If I recall correctly, the President announced that he was submitting on behalf of all governments, after conference with all heads of state.
** Zod a bad leader? This surprises you why, exactly?
** Well, the Kryptonians judged him and his henchmen to be ''so'' dangerous that only exile to the Phantom Zone would be suitable punishment. ''These'' are the idiots that posed a danger to the very fabric of Kryptonian society? Come on.
*** Same group of super-advanced aliens that died because of an easily predicted earthquake on one planet.
*** Their planet ''exploded''. Earthquakes were a mere sideeffect.
*** More to the point, Zod and his cronies ''caused'' the explosion. ''That'' is why they were sentenced to the Phantom Zone.
*** Nowhere does it say Zod and co had anything to do with Krypton exploding. It's implied they attempted some sort of hostile coup d'etat.
*** It's a lot easier to wreck a society than to run one. Zod & Co. could have easily had the capacity to do the former on Krypton and lacked the ability (or inclination) to do the latter on Earth.
** When you have yourself and two more evil Kryptonians vs. a normal planet Earth and one depowered Superman, do you really ''need'' clever plans?
*** No, but you do need them when you have yourself and two non-powered Kryptonians against a whole bunch of other non-powered Kryptonians. As above, how exactly did they threaten Krypton again? Or plan to run it afterward?
*** So far as we know, Zod might've been a brilliant leader and military tactician. He just never needed to use any of those skills on Earth, since he could wipe out any threat apart from Superman by just scowling at it.
** I would have loved to see what would really happen with Zod after he "takes over" Earth. Next scene: "Supreme Leader, what do you want to do about the price of gasoline? Or our health care system? Or the roads? Or inflation? Or the fact that riots have broken out in every major city as people refuse to recognize your leadership? The newspapers are calling you a tyrant, and the military is refusing to submit to you. What do we do?"
*** Ignore the complaints and single-handedly put down any insurrections? The idea of people's voice in government relies on the supreme leader not being able to personally beat up all of his subjects combined.
*** Of course, he can only beat up a few people at a time. Nobody, not even a superhuman can single-handedly bully six billion people into compliance. At least, not for long. It just can't happen.
*** And, as soon as he realizes that, he'll just reduce the human population to something more manageable.
*** "Kill all those who oppose Zod" would probably work sufficiently well. He might not be able to kill everyone, but he can make examples of enough people at a time to make people think twice about organising that protest march or writing that snide article about his lack of effective economic policy. Totalitarian dictators without solid ideas for social management have been able to quell resistance and opposing voices ''without'' be able to reduce entire protest marches to ash with a single look or knock down entire armies single-handedly. And he also has Ursa and Non right next to him, and between them they could probably destroy an entire city, possibly more.
*** You're forgetting heat-vision. [[NightmareFuel He could just burn everyone who protests against him into ashes.]]
*** Zod seemed so uninterested in humans that, so long as everyone's paying tribute to him, he most likely wouldn't even bother with ruling the world himself. Lex was already lined up for Australia, so Zod probably would've just set up similarly loyal autocrats all around the world and just let them handle things while he sits around eating grapes and getting fanned.
*** Of course, if Kryptonite was nearly as common in the movie universe as it was in the comic-book universe of the day, all it would take was an underground military working in secret making a few hundred Green-K-radiation bombs to bring Zod's reign to an end.
** This issue doesn't strike me as particularly problematic. 1) Power-hungry egotistical villains land on a planet and discover they now have super powers that render them invulnerable and able to [[CurbStompBattle curb stomp]] any and all military forces sent against them. 2) Having demonstrated their power and threatened to exterminate any cities belonging to anyone who resists them, they whole world capitulates. 3) [[WantingIsBetterThanHaving They then discover that ruling the world is actualy rather boring]], especially conquering it (and putting down any potential rebellion) isn't actually a challenge, and when you don't actually care about the world enough to want to do anything with it.
** Exactly right. Zod's InformedAbility is that he's a military genius, right? Once he's on Earth, he wins any fight merely by showing up. Ruling the world can't possibly be interesting for him, which is why he's screaming for Superman to fight him. Without Superman, there's no threat to him. Even if there's a lot of Krptonite on the planet, no one except Lex and his minions seem to know that it could harm Zod - and it's apparently hard to find even for Lex Luthor, since he knew about it but didn't try to get it in Superman II as trump card to contain Zod. The one sample known to exist was probably confiscated from L's lair by the FBI after Luthor's arrest in the first movie, and neither Luthor nor Superman would be eager to explain exactly what was going on with the big green necklace. Long story short: Without Superman, Zod can do anything he wants on earth. No rebellion could succeed, since those 3 had all the same powers, meaning that they could hurl continents into space and travel back in time. Only Superman (or similarly powerful hero) could stop them.
** Who says Zod even had any intention of ''staying'' on Earth, in the first place? Zod grew up on Krypton. So far as he's concerned, Earth is like some primitive tribal village in the middle of the jungle. He only bothers bullying the natives long enough to play out his petty revenge fantasies with Jor-El's kid; most likely, if they'd defeated Clark, he'd have let his thugs trash the planet for kicks, then headed back into space to conquer a more-civilized planet or ten.

* Considering how happy Sir Richard Branson was to let the producers paint the Virgin logo on the shuttle in the rescue scene of Superman Returns and get a cameo, am I the only one who thinks they really screwed him over? The system isn't anything like what Virgin Galactic's actually going to do, the flight is stated as being controlled from Cape Canaveral and never indicated to be private spaceflight at all, if Superman hadn't showed up, it would have ended in a horrible disaster, and you can't even see the logo without freezing the frames!
** That poor, abused billionaire. How awful it must be for him to have such anguish heaped upon him.
*** I see his point. Being a dick to a rich person doesn't change the matter of fact of said dickery.
*** 'Dickery' is probably being a bit harsh. I'm fairly certain that Branson, who is by no means an imbecile, was (a) savvy enough to at least read the script in advance to get a sense of what he was in for and could easily refuse permission if he disapproved, (b) is probably familiar enough with the overall character of Superman to realize that if a plane / space jet / whatever has a significant role in a Superman movie, it's probably going to involve Superman rescuing it from disaster at some point, (c) realize that he and his proposed flights were appearing in a superhero movie (which in turn was going to involve some creative license with how they were being presented), (d) realize that he and his proposed flights ''weren't'' appearing in a commercial for said flights and that he ultimately had little say in how it was presented, (e) clearly believes that [[NoSuchThingAsBadPublicity any publicity is good publicity]], given his rather flamboyant approach to public relations and (f) if he didn't like any of the above was perfectly and rightfully able to refuse permission for his brand to appear in the movie. So chances are that Branson himself was fine with how he and Virgin Galactic was being portrayed, or at least was able to take being 'screwed over' in relatively good humour. Not least given that Virgin Galactic is still pretty much in the development phase; he's not exactly going to be too upset about his product being tarnished when he doesn't even have a product yet.

* Here's a real head-scratcher. Point 1: We know that at least ''some'' Kryptonians are aware of the fact that yellow sunlight gives them fantastic super powers. Point 2: We know there are ways of simulating yellow sunlight (Supergirl's rocket was specially designed to emit solar radiation so she'd be fully-powered when she made it to Earth, Superboy-Prime built himself a suit that stores solar radiation and channels it into his body, etc.). So...''why didn't the people of Krypton take advantage of this?'' Why doesn't every Kryptonian household come pre-installed with some kind of solar radiation emitter? Why doesn't every citizen of Krypton walk around in a solar suit? The things should be as common as coffee machines.
** An entire civilization where absolutely anyone can obliterate a continent with a single punch? That's going to be easy to police/govern. It's clear that access to yellow-solar radiation and the means to generate it would be strictly limited, and probably banned outright for the civilian population. Granted, that doesn't explain why no one thought to apply it to military or emergency services (and of course criminal) applications, but I think "common as coffee machines" is a bit unlikely. It's for the same reasons (aside from logistical/economic) that everyone in the Western world doesn't have their own nuclear reactor for their home- it's too much power to trust with just anyone.
*** That's a horrible example. People don't keep nuclear reactors in their homes because ''no nuclear reactor on Earth would fit into any person's home''. The safety issue is entirely secondary to that. A yellow sunlight generator would be completely safe and very easy for any ordinary citizen to create, given the level of Kryptonian science. In order for your suggestion to work we would have to assume the Kryptonian government is most dystopian, fascistic, totalitarian regime in the history of the universe. Not that that's ''impossible'', mind you, but I'm not sure there's enough evidence to support that conclusion.
*** I think he's more referring to [[BewareTheSuperman everyone on the planet being powerful enough to destroy entire cities]] than to how safe the technology itself would be. Even with superpowered police, if Superman's battles with Kryptonian-level powerhouses are any indication, giving everyone access to these powers would be completely catastrophic.
*** If I recall correctly, in the modern age, it took time for Superman to absorb enough yellow sun radiation to get powers, so you couldn't just turn on a device and get them instantly. In UsefulNotes/{{the Silver Age|OfComicBooks}} and UsefulNotes/{{the Bronze Age|OfComicBooks}}, it was instant--but ''everything'' was affected. You couldn't gain super-powers and smash a city because the city buildings would become super-tough just like Superman's costume did. (And Krypton had such high technology that you wouldn't need superpowers just to do things like fly.)
*** Also, in this connection, the Silver Age and Bronze Age had X-Kryptonite, which gave non-Kryptonians super-powers. A tiny piece gave powers to Streaky the Super-Cat. But then, there was a Supergirl story in ''Superman Family'' where a girl exposed to this substance went into a coma for years because her body couldn't handle the super-powers. It may not necessarily be safe to just get powers.
*** I'd be skeptical of just about any detailed description of Krypton [[ArmedWithCanon these days]], but since they've always seemed to have a global government, I can see why they'd want to keep the yellow light effect secret. Think of it this way: if the Earth's government (and let's pretend there's only one) discovered that simply exposing humans to a certain microwave frequency turns them into {{Physical God}}s, there's no way in hell they'd let that knowledge go public. Every would-be bank robber, spree killer and terrorist would suddenly be unstoppable. Even giving the police the same powers would end up wrecking entire cities every time a suspect resists arrest. Turning every single citizen into a PersonOfMassDestruction would be the end of civilization: for the sake of the human race, the government would have to make sure the public never, ever finds out about it. Krypton's leaders probably kept it secret as well, with only a select few academics and leaders knowing about the effect. Jor-El happened to be one of them.
*** Thinking about it further, it wouldn't even be in the Krypton government's best interest to have their own squad of supermen or sanctioned superhero. The moment they let one man fly around and perform superheroics, people would start asking how that's possible. And when the answer's as simple as "shine a certain color of light on you", that's the one question they can't afford to let anyone wonder about.
*** It's not the ''color'' of the light, it's the ''radiation'' of a yellow sun. The color is just a handy way to tell which is which. Shining a flashlight with yellow saran wrap on it isn't going to supercharge Superman, nor is a flash light with red wrapping over it going to de-power him. It has to be the special radiation from either type of sun.
*** Color's just another way of describing the wavelength. Any society that's invented lasers can create a beam of light with the right wavelength easily enough. It's just a matter of figuring out exactly what the right one is. One possible explanation for the secret being so well-kept on Krypton is that it's a very, very precise wavelength that doesn't naturally occur there (but does naturally occur in solar light), one that's nearly impossible to create by accident.
*** The only thing I can think of is that it's hugely time consuming and easy to lose the powers. If it takes years for a kryptonian child growing up in a sun rich Kansas farm to develop superpowers, it must take even longer on Krypton with the potentially power draining red light. Even if it's only "does not recharge" as opposed to actively weakening, it would mean anyone(s) wanting superpowers would basically have to live in climate controlled rooms and walk around in environmental suits to avoid losing their nascent powers-- ''for years'' -- before the first signs of power manifest. Granted, with such a huge payoff there would be those willing to make the sacrifice, possibly even making their brainwished TykeBomb children go through this. On the other hand, the time and energy required to pull this off would at least give the authorities time to detect the "[[PersonOfMassDestruction PMD]]" threats before they're ready, but this is still an imperfect deterrent.
** My first thought was to agree that lack of superpowers on Krypton was pretty ridiculous, but Krypton apparently is something of a facist state, at least in the movies. Although Jor-el could build a spaceship in his house, the Council could apparently stop him from leaving until the planet was about to explode. They probably had the ability to stop people from building solar suits to gain superpowers, if such things could even be built. The bigger question is why Kryptonians weren't already immigrating to similar stars. I can only imagine that the Yellow Sun phenomenon just wasn't very well known by anyone, except for Jor-el.
** It's really not all that hard to guess why not: what else comes super powers under a yellow sun? A crippling weakness to Kryptonite. What is the planet Krypton apparently full of?
** In some versions it is said that Jor-El is the one who found out the power of a yellow sun right before Kal-El is sent to Earth.
** In one Elsworlds story, Superman's ancestor Gar-El figured out the solar radiation gives you superpower, and traveled to Earth in the 18th century and ruled it with an iron fist after helping the British defeat the colonial forces.
* In ''Superman IV: The Quest For Peace'', Clark and the landowner come across a crib with a hole through it, which according to the landowner was baby Clark's. Is it just me, but when the Kents found Clark in the first film he didn't look like the age kids sleep in cribs.
** You're pointing out a hole in ''Superman IV''. How is this fact surprising?
** Hate to come to the defence of ''Superman IV'', but note that it is the ''landowner'' saying that it's Clark's childhood crib, not Clark himself. It is possible, if not likely, that Ma and Pa Kent, in order to keep up the ruse that Clark was their child, bought or made up some baby furniture in order to keep up the pretence that Clark was their natural-born child, and that the landowner merely assumed it was Clark's.
* The scene from Superman returns in which a bullet bounces off of Superman's eye kind of bugs me. I understand that it's justified by RuleOfCool, but seriously... what is his eye supposed to be ''made of''? In order to deflect a bullet like that, it would have to have been completely solid... so if his eye is made of steel, how can it contain any photoreceptors? And why do Kryptonians have eyelids?
** The whole "Man of Steel" thing...isn't literal...but Kryptonians have eyelids for precisely the reason humans do: to protect their powerless eyes (assuming they are powerless, which they are on their own planet).
*** I know he's not literally made of steel, it's just a common hyperbole. My point was that if his eye is rigid enough to deflect a bullet, it would have to be too solid to be functional as an eye.
*** Oh god, not a debate on Superman's physiology... okay, ''why'' wouldn't something rigid work for an eye? Cameras aren't exactly viscous, yet they work fine.
*** "My point was that if his eye is rigid enough to deflect a bullet, it would have to be too solid to be functional as an eye." Um, why? I mean, yeah, an eyeball is full of fluid but it still resists a certain amount of pressure (that's why you can push gently on your eyeball without puncturing it). Superman's super-eyeballs are just a few million times more resistant to pressure than a human being's.
*** Human eyes change their focus using little muscles that change the shape of the lens. If Superman's eyes work the same way, no problem -- the lenses are super-tough, but the muscles are correspondingly super-strong.
*** If Superman's skin can function perfectly as well as skin despite being rigid enough to stop nukes, then why are we worried about his eyeballs?
** It's not Superman's skin. His invulnerability comes from an extremely thin but nigh-unbreakable forcefeld he projects just over his skin. It wasn't bouncing off the actual eye, just the field around it. Yes, that's the in-canon explanation for his invulnerability.
*** Not anymore. The current canonical explanation is that he's just that tough. Not to mention that the whole electrochemical field was never really an explanation of his invulnerability, but of why his supersuit doesn't get destroyed. In Byrne's day, his uniform was Earth-made, not kryptonian. That's why you often saw him with his uniform intact but his cape ripped to tears - his field protected the uniform because it was skin-tight, the same didn't happen to the cape.
*** I'll have to say I prefer the kryptonian fibre explanation. But more on topic, I've never doubted his disguise, but how in the name of Rao could you hide ''invulnerability''? A friendly slap on the shoulder would feel as jarring as striking steel with bare hands.
*** For what it's worth, there was an episode of ''Series/TheAdventuresOfSuperman'' where Clark did that classic "finger to a crook's back to make him think you have a gun" routine. When Clark admitted that it was only his finger, the crook didn't believe him: "I know what steel feels like!"
*** Well, no. His skin and flesh still clearly has some give to it, like yours or mine would. You'd have to slap him really, really hard to notice the difference, to the point where you're probably trying to actually hurt him.
*** I always imagined that like his hair, his flesh couldn't be cut but it could bend; when he wants to look extra badass, he tenses his muscles so bullets bounce off him without making the slightest dent.
*** Superman also has SuperSpeed and the RequiredSecondaryPower of super reflexes. If someone's hitting him and he's maintaining his cover, he just "rolls with the blow" so that they don't break their hand. Say, if someone were to give Clark a friendly-but-forceful slap on the back, Clark would pitch his body forward as the blow connected, making it look and feel like he was really affected by it.

* So, in ''Superman II'', Superman renders Zod and his minions powerless in the Fortress of Solitude. Then he and Lois throw the powerless enemies into bottomless pits. I can't remember if they survive or not, but either way, Supes tried to kill them and then everyone laughed about it. Helpless enemies much? What happened to ThouShaltNotKill?
** I believe there is a deleted scene of Zod and the others being led away in handcuffs by police, so they just fell down some shafts and were defeated but alive.
** And that's not even counting his going back and humiliating the diner bully. The end of Superman II was a bit of a wall banger for many viewers.
*** People complain about him humiliating the same diner bully who completely beat the crap out of Clark? The guy who was a complete jerk and had it coming?
*** Yes the bully was a jerk, and yes he deserved it, but that's beside the point. This is a case of the Man of Steel taking petty personal revenge on somebody weaker, i.e. being a bully.
*** Not really; there's a bit of a difference between 'taking revenge' (petty and personal or otherwise) and 'being a bully'. If Clark ''routinely'' went to the diner to pick on the same guy, or if he routinely went around picking on people who were weaker than him just to enjoy being able to beat them up (and oh, guess who that description actually fits better? Hint: between Clark and the guy in the diner, it's not Clark), you'd have a point about him being a bully. It's fairly clear he's ''not'' doing this, however, but is taking the opportunity to settle a score -- which, considering the guy very seriously beat the crap out of Clark on very-flimsy-to-no-pretext-at-all the first time they met, isn't ''that'' petty -- and maybe teach him a lesson or two, which he certainly had coming. Teaching a bully a lesson they won't soon forget is a valid reason to do what Clark did, and despite having superstrength Clark still leaves the other man in a ''much'' better condition than the guy left Clark in the first time they met.
*** And it's not just petty personal revenge, either; if that diner bully is willing to pick on and severely beat up Clark Kent just because the guy happens to cross his path and looks like a bit of an easy target, then he's willing to do the same to any innocent bystander who happens to cross his path and who he thinks he'll get away with picking on, and he'll keep on doing it. Unless, of course, someone -- say, a prior victim -- goes back, stands up to him, hands him his ass in turn and shows him that picking on people and throwing your weight around might backfire unpleasantly on you. Clark's teaching him that no, you really ''won't'' get away with pulling that kind of shit on innocent people while he's around. Who would expect anything less of Superman?
*** The very idea that some people seem to think ''Clark'' is the bully in that situation is the real headscratcher here.
*** If memory serves, didn't the diner bully also make some very off-color remarks to and about Lois? It was sanitized for a "kids" film, but still, the guy was easily a sexual assault charge waiting happen.
** And something of a wasted opportunity. Though the writers probably just didn't want to deal with the WeWillMeetAgain potential of leaving them alive, how much more humiliating a defeat would it have been for Zod and his gang to be brought to justice by Superman, to face a trial and find themselves powerless and now at the mercy of the puny humans they'd brushed aside like gnats? And how much more appropriate would it have been for Superman to reaffirm that nobody, not even his fellow Kryptonians, is above truth, justice and [[strike: all that stuff]] the American way?
*** Not to mention that he could have, using the crystals containing Kryptonian knowledge, re-create the PhantomZone and re-imprison Zod & Co. for eternity. It would have been a great conclusion to the "father and son" theme of the movie.
*** The Directors Cut had a slightly better ending. Superman saw the scars of his battle and decided to undo the whole thing with Time Travel, effective putting the Zod and Gang back in the Phantom Zone and making sure the bomb from the beginning didn't detonate it's vicinity. Granted, its the ResetButton and thus a copout but at least he doesn't kill (of course, he goes back far enough to undo his encounter with Lois, so it doesn't mesh with ''Superman Returns'' but decanonizing that movie would be good for the franchise.)

* The original line. You know the one. "Look, up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! No, it's Superman!" I understand finding Supes exciting, at least the first couple times, but...come on. Even for tourists, "Look, it's a bird"? Really? And who registers shock at a plane since there were commercial airlines?
** I think it's meant to be said by two or more people. Sorta like.
-->'''Person1''': Look, up in the sky! ''[points]''\\
'''Person2''': ''[looking]'' It's a bird.\\
'''Person3''': ''[looking too]'' It's a plane.\\
'''Person1''': No, it's Superman!
*** In fact, that's ''exactly'' how it's performed in the original radio and television shows. For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2l4bz1FT8U
** Except they still shouldn't be cheering for the bird or the plane. Though one could assume early on it was just a nice quote and then it [[MemeticMutation mutated memetically]]. I always imagine the original like this:
--->'''Alice''': [excited] Look! Up in the sky!\\
'''Bob''': [dismissive] It's a bird.\\
'''Charlie''': [Nah, i]t's a plane.\\
'''Alice''': No! It's ''Superman''!
*** This was how it was done in ''Film/SupermanReturns'', by Jimmy, Perry and Lois.
** They see something they can't identify flying around and are trying to figure out what it is.
* Okay, so why hasn't anyone mentioned the fact that after so many encounters with Superman and Clark Kent, no one ever says, "Hey, those two guys look alike. I think they're the same person."?
** We've gone over this. A lot and often. No, you're not the first person to cleverly think of this. Short answer: There's probably about a dozen or so people, ''tops'' who know Clark Kent personally in Metropolis. Of those people, three or four probably have semi-regular contact with Supes.\\
\\
Longer answer: Superman deliberately cultivates the persona of Clark Kent as a major dork specifically to throw out the idea that he might be Superman. Just watch Brandon Routh as Kent, and your first overriding impression will be, "Dear gods, he's a friggin' ''dork''." Superman, by contrast, is the physical ideal of Man. Basically...could you see [[Series/SavedByTheBell Screech]] as Superman? There have been incidents in the comic books where someone has thought about it. Hell, once, Luthor hired a private investigator who ''did'' conclude that Superman was Clark Kent. Luthor laughed it off because the idea was simply ridiculous that Superman, a PhysicalGod, would go around posing as that dork Kent.\\
\\
There's also the subtler implication that, as a man who doesn't wear a mask, Superman doesn't ''have'' a secret identity to hide, so some people won't even think about it.
*** It's also explicit that Superman vibrates in place whenever a picture is taken of him, so that his picture comes out blurry and indistinct.
*** Wait just one minute. Superman can ''vibrate''? Lucky Lois!
*** You need to read this: http://www.rawbw.com/~svw/superman.html#Reprinted
** Okay, those are some good attempts at explanations, but they don't explain why someone like Lois or Jimmy would ever be fooled. If you're close to either Superman or Clark and then you see the other, you'd have to have some seriously-impaired skills of observation to not tell they are the same person. Sure, Clark can slouch, wear his hair differently, and wear glasses, but that doesn't change the structure of his face or the shape of his eyes or the general tone of his voice. I think someone who was supposedly a trained investigative reporter like Lois would have figured it out immediately, especially with all the times Clark is present and Superman isn't and vice versa.
** In some stories, he have the precise muscle control to subtly change the structure of his face and the tone of his voice is an octave higher as Clark.
*** I have a personal theory that some people do notice, in the same way you notice someone resembles a how a friend resembles a celebrity. But with all them Superman robots flying around, and with Clark going out of his way to act differently, it might just make them see the physical resemblance as just that: a physical resemblance. As for Lois, Jimmy and everybody else......[[TooDumbToLive maybe they're just stupid.]]
*** [[http://superdickery.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&catid=28:superdickery&id=66:lana-and-lois-owned&Itemid=54 "I'll tell you why I'll NEVER marry YOU, Lana, or YOU, Lois! Who wants a wife so STUPID she doesn't realize I'M SUPERMAN when I take off my Clark Kent glasses?"]]
** Seriously, just watch the first Superman film, then come back, look me in the eye and tell me that Christopher Reeve as Clark Kent and Christopher Reeve as Superman look the same. Facial features matter some in recognition and they, of course, are the same. Posture, attitude, demeanor, clothes and voice also matter, and they are completely different. At best, someone might think "Hey, Clark looks kinda like Superman", but since Clark and Superman are, and act, so fundamentally different, there is no way someone is even going to consider that they might be the same person.
*** I'm pretty sure everyone watching the movie says, "Hey, that's the same person." If the audience isn't fooled, even a little bit, how can someone standing two feet away be fooled? My suspension of disbelief can only go so far.
*** That's because you're ''watching the movie''. You know, the movie that you heard about before ever seeing it as featuring Christopher Reeve as Clark Kent/Superman, and the franchise for which you ''already know the secret identity''. They're not trying to "fool" the audience because the cat's been out of the bag since 1939. You already know the secret. '''The people in Clark Kent's world do not'''. They have little reason to suspect that there's ''any'' connection to the PhysicalGod Superman and the clumsy, whimpy, pathetic country bumpkin Clark Kent.
** All-Star Superman does something similar: Clark Kent is clearly the same size of Superman, and has the same color hair, but that's where the resemblance ends. Clark is noticeably pudgier and his face is less chiseled. He slouches. He stutters and trips over his own two feet. And as Lex points out, Clark may look similar to Superman, but lots of people purposely emulate Superman, like cutting their eyebrows in the "Superman Swoosh."
** Most people, upon seeing someone who looked like, say, Brad Pitt, dressed in a t-shirt and bermuda shorts with a bad haircut, at a hot dog stand in Peoria, Illinois, aren't going to immediately assume "Hey, that's Brad Pitt! Incognito!" They're going to assume it's some dork who looks like Brad Pitt. Humans are creatures of expectations.
** Jim Carrey rather famous pulled off a bit of ClarkKenting at an awards show, where he showed up dressed (and acting)like a hippie caricature with waist-length hair and full beard. Until he went up on stage to accept his award, no one, not even the people sitting next to him in the audience, knew he was there. If he can do it, so can Superman.
** Except that every time I see Clark Kent or Superman, I say, "Yep, that's him." I can't pretend that I don't recognize him. The same goes for Wonder Woman, especially in the 1970s TV series. There are times when she's standing in a crowd, runs off, changes into Wonder Woman, comes back, and no one even suspects it's her. I just think there's a different level of suspension of disbelief when something is in a comic book and when something is on a TV or movie screen.
*** Again, you already know the secret--that renders your point of view on whether or not you can "see through it" invalid. The fact you're seeing the Wonder Woman TV series means you know and ''expect'' that Diana Prince is Wonder Woman, and you ''know'' the camera wouldn't be on Diana Prince at all if she weren't Wonder Woman. It's like how a joke isn't funny when you already heard it once. You really can't judge how well Lois Lane should recognize Clark as Superman based on your own point of view, because you already know the secret, and that's going to skew your perceptions dramatically.\\\
As the previous troper pointed out, people have pulled this in real life, just by not being expected. Just because you, the reader/viewer, who A. knows the secret already and B. know that the top-name actor is playing the role(s) of Superman and Clark Kent, can tell who he is, doesn't mean someone in the verse should.
*** Although I still can't agree, I will say that you've put forth some good arguments and presented as good examples as I've ever heard.
** I've thought about this a lot, and these are the several reasons that I've come up with: 1. People noticing that Clark Kent looks a bit like Superman will assume that this is exactly how things are; Clark Kent is a person who resembles Superman and that's all there is to it. 2. The fact that he could spend his time working as a reporter out looking for crime and stopping it will make people think "Why would Superman be sitting in an office working when he could be out saving lives?" This is my best argument; nobody who knew what a caring and self-sacrificing person Superman is could possibly believe he'd spend a single second writing newspaper articles if he could have been using that second saving an innocent child. 3. There are other people whose facial features resemble Superman's. There's no reason at all to pick Clark Kent as the guy to compare to Superman; surely there are other men who look a bit like the Man of Steel. 4. With Clark Kent's different way of speaking, behaviour, and hairstyle (plus the specs), the difference just isn't noticeable unless you've spent time with both Clark Kent and Superman for a long time. You'll just assume that Kent and Supes share certain characteristics, but not more since you don't ''know'' that there is anything to look for. 5. I think there has been stories where [[IdentityImpersonator Clark Kent has been seen together with Superman]] through some trick or other. 6. Can't mention this enough: One doesn't notice that kind of thing unless one's looking for it! If you're at a party and you've been told that one of the guests is Al Pacino in disguise, you'll find him after a while. But if you haven't been told, you'll probably just miss it. 7. If people notice he looks ''exactly'' like Superman, they won't think "Wow! It's Superman in disguise!" They'll think "Wow! A normal man who looks just like Superman!" The idea of a normal man being Superman is just too darn implausible unless they see some superpower-related activities.
*** Ironically enough, many of the people who look sort of like Superman are {{Franchise/Batman}}, [[{{ComicBook/Shazam}} Captain Marvel]], ComicBook/BlackAdam and other guys who are themselves superheroes or supervillains. Clark might have the strongest physical "resemblance" of course.
** Beyond what's been said about people finding nothing exceptional about the similarity in appearances between celebrities and normal people, consider that no one even seems to know that Superman *has* a secret identity. Remember, Superman just appears one day and starts saving lives. His first public communication is an interview with Lois Lane in which he announces that he's from another planet. To almost everyone, there's no reason to suspect he's ClarkKenting because no one on the entire planet has done it before. Further, everyone knows that Superman has supervision, superhearing, and superspeed, so there's no reason for them to think that he needs or uses a human alias to find out when people need saving. Since Clark can dash off and become Superman instantly, it looks to normal people that Superman is simply always around, and probably wouldn't even have time for a secret identity.
** The pilot of Lois & Clark offers an amusing possibility that has the added value of explaining the point of his costume's most baffling aspect: he wears tights, so nobody ever looks at his face.
** This was canon for a time during the Curt Swan era: Clark Kent's glasses, with lenses made from the glass from the rocket that brought him to Earth as a baby, enhanced a form of subtle super-hypnotism that Superman himself didn't realize he was subconsciously emitting. He finally realized it when a criminal who had tried to attack him from behind in his Clark Kent identity later told the cops that he thought Clark looked bigger from behind than he did from the front. The glasses were made from those lenses in the first place because they wouldn't melt when Clark used either his heat vision or X-ray vision when he was in disguise. [[FridgeLogic So, yeah, Superman had a super-hypnotism power he wasn't aware he had and couldn't control.]]

* In the first film, Jor-El's recording mentions, during Kal-El's space flight, Einstein's theory of relativity. By way of confirming this theory, he later states, in the Fortress of Solitude, that he has been dead for thousands of years. So...how did he know who Einstein was?
** TranslationConvention, and he was referring to a Kryptonian physicist?
*** The "recording" also acts more like a holographic AI in later movies. In Superman 3, the Jor-El recording steps out of his crystal to have a heart to heart with his son.
*** Or maybe a "year" on Krypton is kinda short. Look how close it is to their sun toward the beginning.
*** "Thousands of ''your'' years" is what he says, actually. TranslationConvention, it's gotta be.

* Superman can time travel.He uses it to save,basically,one woman (and incidentally save millions of other people) on Earth. ''Why doesn't he use it to save Krypton?''
** What, exactly, could Superman do, once he got there, that his dad couldn't?
*** "Hi, I'm from the future. In my past, Krypton exploded. I came back to stop it."
*** How, pray tell, would he do that? With the superpowers that ''don't work under a red sun''? With all the science at Jor-El's disposal that didn't do any good the first time around?
*** Besides, in current continuity, you'd still have to contend with Brainiac outright lying to the ruling council about Jor-El's findings. You they'd believe "Guy from 'The Future' who happens to be wearing Jor-El's family crest" over the supercomputer who runs the entire planet?
*** I do believe you mean "Guy ''Claiming'' to be From The Future", since the lack of a future for Krypton and its destruction means he won't have all that much foreknowledge that couldn't be obtained by sufficiently advanced subterfuge by a native of the era.
*** Yeah, any attempt by Superman to try to convince the council that he's from the future is probably going to be answered with "wow Jor-El, we know you're really obsessed with your pet doom-and-gloom theory, but hiring this guy to pose as your time-traveling son from the future? That is just ''sad''."
*** The Silver Age comics used to be better about that. Superman could travel back in time, but once he got there, he couldn't interact with anything, being completely invisible and intangible. The few times he thought he did physically go back to Krypton, it turned out to be either a dream or an elaborate hoax.

* Ok, this is a bit silly on my part, and I'm sure you can you guess I just finished watching an episode of ''Robot Chicken'', but while when Superman was first created, a random couple in Kansas could reasonably expect to claim they had a child, and set up paperwork for their son without anybody worrying. Especially if it was winter, and they were on a farm. Maybe they spent some time isolated on their farm in the snow, and then brought the boy to town after a few weeks. Not too impossible for the early 1900s, even up to the 1920s. But here's the problem, Superman is on a sliding scale, with his arrival continuously pushed forward to closer to modern times. At this point, you wonder about his records. I suppose if he didn't get his invulnerability till later he could at least get his shots, but still, I suppose that's why ''Smallville'' had Kal-el arrive during a meteor shower, so they could handwave past it by having everybody believe that his parents were just unlucky blokes passing through who got blown up. The same could be applied to all other versions of Superman if you wanted. And I believe that some DC comic declared Superman had honorary citizenship as an international gesture of support. However there's one slight issue, Clark Kent's never officially become a citizen. Would a lawful good type like him vote with his status being in doubt? So...
** In at least one version of the comic origin, he was technically a fetus while in-transit, and the spaceship doubled as an artificial womb, so from a medical standpoint, his exit from the spaceship counted as being "born", giving him American citizenship. I know that was the main story post-Crisis, and I think they've changed it since, but nevertheless.
** Yes he'd still vote. Being a "lawful good type" doesn't mean he has to strictly adhere to every letter of the law Or Else. He is not (repeat: '''Not''') a [=DnD=] style Paladin, or a [=DnD=] character at all. Ergo, '''''CharacterAlignment means exactly nothing'''''.
*** Character alignment is a reasonably useful shorthand for communicating the idea that Superman is committed to certain principles without having to go into details. For most people, I thought it would have some meaning. But if you found what I said confusing, or to have no meaning, well, it can be rephrased as "Would a person like Superman who is so openly committed to honesty and integrity be willing to vote when his status is so much in justifiable doubt?" He was adamant in refusing to state any position in the last comic I read about an election, perhaps it had a deeper reason. Like not actually voting because he didn't consider Clark Kent to be a lawful citizen.
*** It probably meant more that the publishers didn't want to risk offending part of their fanbase by having Superman, who generally serves as the paragon of all that is Right and Good pick a political party and thus imply that whoever he ''didn't'' pick was wrong. What irked me before is that I see people taking the [=DnD=] alignment as if they're actual constrictions that apply to the character in question. Useful shorthand? Yes. Rules a non-[=DnD=] character has to follow? Not at all.\\\
As for the US-citizen-or-not question? Whether or not he was technically born on US soil, he's spent his entirely life in the US. It takes 14 years (I believe) to qualify for citizenship, and if anyone's going to know enough to pass the citizenship exams, it's the big blue boyscout himself. Even if Clark won't take the exam, he clearly considers himself an American (truth, justice, the American way), and would likely think those qualifications were close enough.
*** Indeed, the superficial reason for him not taking a position was a refusal to influence the outcome at all. But there could be a deeper reason for that commitment. And sure, if Clark Kent were to fill out the appropriate paperwork, he could certainly become a bonafide American Citizen, heck I'm sure if he asked he could get Congress to declare him (as Clark Kent) a citizen. But he hasn't done that, so with his given commitments to principles of abiding by the law and general quality of integrity, he may feel it appropriate to avoid exercising certain prerogatives of that status. Besides voting, he'd probably avoid Jury Duty, though as a journalist he could probably expect to be excused anyway. I wonder if it's ever been a story though. As for use of alignment terms? No different than use of the term decimate.
*** I could see Clark refusing to let himself get too strongly into politics, though, for the same reason Batman won't let himself cross the line and kill criminals. Superman has the power to easily enforce his opinion onto the world. If he decides that any particular political cause is absolutely just and ''needs'' to happen, he can effortlessly turn it into an ultimatum. To hold onto his ideals of democracy and respecting the public will (even in cases where he totally disagrees with it, like President Luthor), he may have a self-imposed taboo on getting too strongly attached to either side of a political issue. Just like Bruce Wayne knows how easily he could become a SerialKillerKiller if he lets himself cross the line, Superman is aware of how easily his patriotism could lead to a BewareTheSuperman dystopia if he lets himself get too personally involved.
*** Yes, see Red Son for an example where Superman does take that role.
*** The mini-series published around the 2008 election, where all the superhuman community start announcing their political preferences and kind of acting like partisan dicks towards each other, follows the 'Superman should be above partisan politics' model, but has him add in a pointed fashion that in a society like America 'freedom of thought' also means the right to ''not'' have to express your own political preferences just because everyone's loudly demanding and hectoring and bullying and cajoling you to do so. In short, Superman also seems to take the 'it's none of your damn business what I think about this if I don't want to tell you' approach as well.
** During the ''Comicbook/{{Millennium}}'' crossover, part of this plot hole was fixed: the Manhunters tried to capture his spaceship and created a blizzard to keep people from reaching the crash site, but the Kents found him anyway and ended up stuck in a blizzard for five months. It was plausible that Martha could have given birth during that time.
*** I thought I had seen that idea somewhere, thanks.
** In the ComicBook/PostCrisis Superman reboot, he was sent to Earth in a "Kryptonian Birthing Matrix". He never was a baby on Krypton; he was born on Earth in the United States which would make him a US citizen. This means that Superman is technically an anchor baby.
*** "Anchor baby" implies that the parents are illegal aliens, and that the fact that the baby is a citizen benefits other members of the family. Neither of these is true for Superman.
*** Whether or not he is an anchor baby, if the birthing matrix is still canon, if Superman was indeed born on American soil, he ''is'' an American citizen. It's automatic. If you are born on American soil you are an American citizen.
** Little known fact: In the very first Superman comic baby Supes wasn't actually adopted by the Kents. He was [[http://xroads.virginia.edu/~UG02/yeung/actioncomics/page1.html found on the side of a road by a passing motorist who took him to an orphanage]]. Under federal immigration law, that makes him an American citizen. Incidentally, the comic you're thinking of where Superman has an honorary US citizenship is ''probably'' World Without A Superman. Short Version: After Doomsday "kills" Superman Cadmus tries to take possession of his body since studying alien lifeforms is their mandate. But a bureaucrat from Washington shows up and gives the Cadmus director a major dressing down, saying something to the effect of "Superman may be an alien, but as far as the President is concerned ''he's an American!''"
*** From 1948 to the End of the Silver Age the anonymous motorist was replaced by the Kents discovering the child, reporting to the proper authorities the finding of one foundling, male, and a desire to adopt said foundling. Different versions of that part of the origin exist, in the original Kal-El survived the crash, while the rocket was totally destroyed, later on the rocket survived and so on, but Clark Kent became that way a citizen of the United States of America. He had as Superman for part of the Pre-Crisis Age honorary citizenship of all members of the United Nations.
** Reality check, here: Under federal law, a living infant who's found abandoned inside the United States, and whose identity or place of origin can't be verified, is legally considered a native-born American by default. So long as the Kents don't mention that he was lying inside a space capsule at the time, they can openly confess that they found Clark rather than gave birth to him without imperiling his American citizenship.
*** Actually, under the laws about castaways they could actually admit that they found Clark in a space capsule and ''still'' not imperil his American citizenship. An infant found on a boat already within American territorial waters at the time it was found, whose exact time and place of birth or country of origin couldn't be verified, would also be granted American citizenship by default.
** In addition to all of this, the point is entirely moot. Let's assume that some nefarious individual, who we shall call "Wex Wuthor" for convenience's sake, manages to find out the exact legal circumstances of Superman's birth. And that US law is so different in the DCU that it actually ''does'' qualify Superman for loss of citizenship, when IRL it wouldn't (see the bullet points directly above). And then Wex manages to get proof of it he can take to the authorities. And then Mr. Wuthor takes it to the authorities, and actually gets a federal court or the INS to agree to invalidate Superman's citizenship and order him to be deported. Let's assume that all this happens. ''So what?'' If you're the President of the United States and you get up one morning and see on the TV news that the INS has issued an order of deportation for Superman, how quickly are you going to just grab your pen and sign some immigration paperwork for Superman? Two seconds? Three? Superman is so off-the-charts powerful that him changing nations of residence is a major shift in the global balance of power all by itself. Any government with an IQ above that of a herring's, if confronted with the situation "Hey, you know that part where the world's most powerful superbeing likes living in your country, likes helping save your citizens from supervillains and natural disasters, and doesn't even charge you for it? Well, he's about to not be doing that anymore." is going to immediately grab whatever bureaucrat signed the deport order in the first place, [[ReassignedToAntarctica find him a new position more suited to his (lack of) talents]], and very apologetically hand said superbeing a green card, a thank-you card, and maybe a complimentary fruit basket, and beg him to stick around a little while longer. Like, for the next hundred years or so. No government will screw itself blatantly against its own self-interests just because the letter of the law allegedly requires it -- not when it would actually be easier for the government to just ''change the law''. (Or, in this case, simply issue an individual waiver to it, as they already have the power to do.)
*** Of course, during the time period Lex Luthor actually ''was'' the President, it was a good thing for Superman that Lex didn't know about any of this. But that's a special case.
*** In the hypothetical situation that President Luthor did decide to do this, in addition to the same thing happening above he'd very quickly see his popularity polls drop to 0% and pretty much all his political allies suddenly desert him in the face of ''their'' popularity polls starting to quickly head the same direction. Even a VillainWithGoodPublicity has limits, and it's been shown time and time again that in the battle of popularity between Superman and Lex? In the DC Universe, Superman wins every time.
*** And even if President Luthor stubbornly refused to sign such an order, how long do you think it would take Russia, China, North Korea, and any number of enemies and rivals of the United States to seize upon such a pig-headed and nakedly spiteful move to graciously and gratefully extend the offer of complete and permanent citizenship to the brave global hero Superman? I mean, Russia was happy to give Edward Snowden asylum just to embarrass the United States, and he was basically just a whistle-blower; even if Superman wasn't exactly rushing to embrace them with open arms, it'd be the geopolitical propaganda coup of the millennium just waiting to happen, and even making the offer would be sufficient enough to diminish the US government in the eyes of the world. And even if that wasn't enough to change President Luthor's mind and Superman wasn't exactly happy resettling to an authoritarian state, then America's allies would be more than happy to seize a chance to change the balance of power a bit by offering ''the world's most powerful man'' a new home, and it's not like President Luthor can stop ''them'' from offering citizenship to whomever they like.
** Besides, where would you deport Superman ''to''? His home planet is a radioactive asteroid belt in another galaxy.
** Pre-Crisis, 1981's "New Adventures of ComicBook/{{Superboy}}" #12 shows Congress granted Superboy (very early in his super-career) an honorary American citizenship. Earlier in the story, Superboy tells then-reporter Perry White in an interview that [[ComicBookTime President]] [[UsefulNotes/DwightDEisenhower Eisenhower]] had reassured him that he wouldn't be deported. ("After all, where could I be deported, since Krypton no longer exists?") I'd presume Congress doing something similar could've happened in other continuities, for the reasons others noted above (even a xenophobic politician might find deporting America's most popular superhero troublesome come re-election time...).

* In the first movie, why does Lex Luthor plan to set off a ''300 megaton'' nuclear bomb right next to where his new premium ocean-front property will be? The fall-out of such a bomb would probably contanimate the entire continental US, and then some. Why was the military testing such a weapon anyway? The most powerful thermonuclear device ever test-detonated by the US in real life was Castle Bravo at 15 megaton (and any tests done inside the continental US never even got into the megaton range). The most powerful device ever detonated, period, was the Russian Tsar Bomba at 57 megaton. A 300 megaton warhead detonated in California would probably break windows in New York! And Jimmy Olsen sees this thing go off at a distance where he should've been hit by the blast (even if it was a more reasonable size, like maybe 20 kiloton, which is what the mushroom cloud size he sees suggests), but he isn't even phased! In fact, the nukes appear to have ''no consequences whatsoever'' besides breaking the fault line. SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale, I guess.
** ...He's insane.
** Honestly? Because none of the Superman movies are all that well written. It's especially obvious with Lex Luthor, who in the comics is a shrewd and calculating genius but in the movies is, frankly, a bumbling idiot with a thirst for power who just happens to have a ton of money to play around with.
** 300 megatons is nothing to sneer at, but there've been plenty of more powerful explosions in history. Mt. St. Helens was a bigger blast, for example.
** The real problem with this plan is that, even assuming he had managed to destroy California without irradiating the new coastline, what makes him think he's going to profit from it? Has Luthor never heard of Emminent Domain? Even though the Constitution requires "just compensation" for property, Luthor's already a known criminal - Otis was being tailed to the lair so police could catch Luthor before Superman is even on the scene. There's no way he's going to keep the new coastline if Phase 1 of his plan worked.
*** Probably he'd bought all that desert property through a whole series of shell companies, to ensure its ownership can't be traced back to him. Naming everything after himself could've just been a private ego-stroking joke, not an actual plan; that, or the bogus "owner" of his shell companies might've had "Luthor" as his ''first'' name of record.

* How did Lois live to adulthood without the aid of Superman to save her from her gross disregard for personal safety? In the movie, she would have been dead three times in the few short weeks after she met Superman, so how did she manage before? Superman saves her from being shot by a mugger. Her purse was obviously more valuable to her than her life (and Clark's). Next, she falls from a helicopter. Finally, Superman turns time back to save her, which leads to my next gripe...
** In the comics, at least, its said that she lets herself get into so many insanely dangerous and fatal situations ''because'' Superman is around to save her. Before she met Mr. Perfect Fallback Plan, she did have survival instincts, its just that she's smart enough to know that with Big Blue around, ''she doesn't need them''.
*** In the good-ol-days of the Golden and Silver Ages, yes, that was the explanation. Lois became a suicidal risk-taker because she knew Superman would be around to save her (also, in the Silver Age it was often the most convenient way to kick off one of her [[ZanyScheme zany schemes]] to trick Superman into marriage). However, in modern continuity Lois has always been a risk-taker willing to go to any lengths to get a story.
*** Even some Silver Age stories pointed out that Lois' curiosity has led her to get into risky situations her entire life.
*** The film in question was released at the tail end of the Silver Age, so it still fits.
** To be fair, in the movie through no fault of her own ''she falls out of a helicopter which has crashed into the side of a building and is dangling over the street''. Hardly seems fair to berate her for her lack of survival instincts in that case; that's an out-of-the-ordinary calamity which has befallen her, it's not as if she was being careless or planned for that to happen.

* How is it that Superman turns back time (forget the science behind it for a minute), but then when he moves time forward again, how is it that Lois doesn't die, but nothing else changes? All we see is Superman turning time back, then forward again, then he lands near Lois and she's still alive. How does that happen?
** Don't question it. Just...don't. [[Film/AustinPowers You'll go cross-eyed]]. It doesn't make sense. To anybody. Even Richard Donner probably wakes up scratching his head thinking "That made no sense! WTF was I thinking?!"
*** How's this? As others have theorized, Superman didn't turn back time; the shot of the Earth turning backwards was his point of view as he ''himself'' went back. He went back well before the moment of Lois' death, then went forward to a more precise moment before. Then, all he has to do is get her out of the car, so she won't get swallowed up by the crevice, which he does. The aftershock occurs after he leaves her and Jimmy. As for not changing the rest, he's not dumb enough to try and alter history to such a major extent.
*** As pointed out above, doesn't work. The "it's just a visual metaphor" excuse fails because once he's turned the Earth backwards enough, he flies back around it to get it going the right way again. They literally had him turn back time by spinning the Earth backwards, end of story.
*** Possibly he just overshot his intended date, so had to reverse course to move ahead in time a bit?

* In ''Film/SupermanII'', we find Lex Luthor in prison making license plates after the crime he attempted in Superman I. All well and good except for one little problem: '''HE THREATENED THE STATES OF CALIFORNIA AND NEW JERSEY WITH NUCLEAR WEAPONS!!!!''' At the risk of understating the matter, being threatened with nuclear annihilation isn't something people will easily forgive or forget, so I'm rather baffled that no one in either state was screaming at the feds to sit Lex down in Old Sparky and give him the juice.
** It's not clear how long it's been since I, but II could still have Luthor in the midst of his criminal trial. This makes particularly good sense after ''Film/SupermanReturns'', where we learn that Luthor is free because, without Superman's testimony, he was acquitted of his crimes. So in II, Lex is probably just in prison while the government tackles the insanely difficult problem of building a case against a guy whose crime was at least partially undone by time travel.
** Forget the state criminal courts: if ''Returns'' was supposed to have retooled the storyline to take place in recent times, why wasn't his ass tossed into Guantanamo as a freakin' ''nuclear terrorist''? Even if Superman erased the damage, he still stole those nukes and set up the means to launch them.
*** Because you can't send a US citizen to Guantanamo, even if he ''is'' a terrorist. Even Jose Padilla never actually made it there, the court system put in an injunction to keep him in custody within the continental US while his case spent all those years being argued back and forth. Of course, there's still several plot holes in this sequence - a prisoner who committed nuclear terrorism on the scale that Lex did would be in the single worst cell in the entire US prioson system even if he had the IQ of a carrot. Given the escape risk posed by someone as brilliant as ''Lex Luthor'', they should have had him in isolation 24-7, in a "supermax" facility like Marion or Leavenworth, and quite possibly surrounded by half a battalion of Marines.
*** Also, the retcon of 'without Superman's testimony, he walks' makes no sense. If the events of Superman 1 are still canon, then there's at least half a dozen US soldiers who can pick Lex out of a police line-up as the guy who helped steal their nuclear missile truck; Lex wasn't wearing any kind of facial disguise during that one scene, just a silly truck driver's hat. Also, Lex Luthor is on record as the guy who bought all that 'useless desert' property, so even his motive is traceable. And lastly, ''Miss Tessmacher face turned to help Superman'' -- what, she wouldn't turn state's evidence too?

* I know this is a minor gripe, the kind of thing you put in a Justbugsme page but when other Kryptonians show up on Earth why are they instantly a threat to Superman in physical combat? Here's the thing they get equal strength, sure I get that. But they don't get equal experience and skills, or rather they shouldn't. Zod's a good example of someone who should have gotten curb stomped because of his military experience. The vast majority of martial arts in the real world and presumably on Krypton where they were more or less ordinary humans is based on the idea of gravity and "solid" opponents. Learning a punching combination loses a lot of it's usefulness when your second punch launches the guy three hundred feet and you gotta catch up. Likewise a wrist lock doesn't work if you can fly. Superman (and other similarly powerful characters) should be destroying these guys in curb stomp battles until they at least acclimate to the difference for the same reason why a martial artist is more than capable of beating opponents physically on par or even superior to them. I suspect that boxing would be a vastly different sport if everybody could shoot lasers from their eyes, move close to the speed of light, and use buses as weapons. So different in fact that any experience you had going in would work against you for all the reasons just listed.
** The fact that he's trying to avoid collateral damage and civilian casualties likely limits what he can do. In a fair fight, he probably could wipe the floor with other Kryptonians but in a typical, mid-Metropolis super-fight, they can distract him by flinging a bus full of orphans at a puppy dog factory or lasering away the support cables on a nearby bridge. Also, they're usually trying to kill him, using the full extent of their powers to do so, whereas Clark will have to pull some punches.
** Plus, he's just plain outnumbered. Three against one is bad odds. And while he's had more experience using his powers himself, confronting those same powers ''in other people'' is just as new of an experience to Clark as it is to the villains. If anything, they might have a major edge in experience at super-vs-super combat, if the trio'd spent part of their off-camera time tussling ''each other'' to test what they can do.
** While it's true that the talented amateur who doesn't know what he's doing can be the greatest threat to someone skilled in specific style, the point remains that, in a fight, knowing how to fight is better than not knowing how to fight. Superman's just never needed to bother to learn how to fight, since if he threw even a starter boxing punch properly, he'd turn someone's head into red mist. Superman definitely gets a leg up in the massive fight in Metropolis because he knows the limits and uses of his powers better than Zod and company, but Zod and Co. know how to fight and are used to working together as a unit. The real deciding factor in that battle is that none of them can actually hurt each other, and meanwhile they're wrecking the city, so Superman decides to move the fight elsewhere. Superman's greater facility with his powers couldn't mop the floor with Zod, and Zod's superior military experience couldn't mop the floor with Superman, because they're all ''completely invulnerable''.

* In Fortress of Solitude, in the first film, Jor-El says that he has probably been dead for thousands of years. Later, Luthor says that Krypton was destroyed in 1948, and that it took Superman's spaceship 3 years to reach Earth. So who was right and who was wrong? Let's see our options:
** a) Jor-El sucks at math. Unlikely, considering he is a genius scientist.
** b) Jor-El intended for his son to hear the message after already living on Earth for thousands of years. Makes no sense.
** c) Luthor confused Krypton's destruction with that of another planet, closer to Earth.
** d) Krypton's destruction opened a wormhole which transported Kal-El's ship closer to Earth.
** e) When he said "many thousands of your years," he meant Kryptonian years. While it's still hard to believe that a year would be THAT MUCH quicker on Krypton, it would make sense for it to be at-least a little shorter if Krypton is closer to its sun as seems to be the case.
*** You forgot f) there were two different answers in two different drafts of the script and no one paid enough attention to notice that conflicting facts from both of them made it into the final cut.
*** g) Jor-El knew that Earth was mostly covered in oceans, so his son's space capsule would most likely splash down and sink upon arrival. Baby Kal-El would be placed into suspended animation by the capsule's safety systems, to be discovered many centuries later, when humans' technology advanced to the point where we can image thousands of square miles of seabed well enough to spot a spaceship the size of a compact car.
** h) Krypton exploded thousands of Earth years ago, but it's far enough away that the ''light of the explosion'' didn't reach Earth until 1948. Luther is either clueless about the sheer magnitude of distances involved or is oversimplifying to avoid getting sidetracked with exposition re. the speed of light. Baby Kal-El only experienced 3 years' life during the trip because of relativistic speeds and/or the ship keeping him in stasis most of the way to conserve life-support resources.

* Upon finding Lois' body trapped in her car during the first film, why didn't Supes attempt CPR? I mean, it probably would have failed, but wouldn't it have been worth trying?
** He'd blow her up with his super breath.
** Less hilariously, his compressions probably would have shattered her ribs and pulped her internal organs. Broken ribs and heavy bruising are commonplace when ''normal'' people do CPR, even with fine control Superman would probably have a hard time... even if he wasn't emotionally devastated when trying to do so. Plus CPR as we know it wasn't even beginning to be promoted until the seventies, which is when the movie was made, the "big blue Boy Scout" would have learned an entirely different and not very useful method when he was in the Boy Scouts. Alternately, with X-ray vision he would have seen that she was already dead and was smart enough to know that CPR isn't really [[CPRCleanPrettyReliable a resurrection ritual]]. Alternately alternately, the filmmakers considered it, but decided it would make the film drag and decrease the drama to have him huff and puff and do some compressions for a few minutes before his wail of anguish and turning-the-Earth-backwards.
** Lois wasn't just suffocated, she was physically ''crushed'' by dirt and the collapse of her car's chassis. Superman would have used X-ray vision to locate her, so he'd probably already seen that her internal organs were too damaged for survival. He was only so frantic to dig her out because he was in denial.
** And CPR doesn't really work that way in real life, is generally a way to keep the air flow to the brain until more advance medical care can be provide to avoid brain damage, but almost never "resurrects" people as is often shown in media. Unless some more help comes in their way there's no real reason to do CPR. Is unlikely that the writers of the movie knew this, but let's say Superman does knew it.
* First film again, and easy to miss. When Superman arrives for his "date" with Lois Lane, she interviews him and asks a few very minor questions - his age, weight, where he's from, and what color underwear she's wearing then they fly around for a while and Superman leaves the moment Lois gets dropped off. The next morning the editor drops the ''Daily Planet'' on his desk with a full article written by Lois Lane - ''how the heck did she stretch what she had into a feature piece?'' Man, Lois must REALLY be some journalist to do that.
** News articles, especially feature pieces, aren't just what the person told you. Her article probably spoke a lot about Superman's manner, what he did, and her own experiences in flying around the city. It probably also included a lot of background along the lines of, "I first met Superman when he caught me falling out of a helicopter," or "We've all seen Superman going around the city, such as blank blank and blank."
*** You get an A+ in journalism. Also, we don't know that they didn't engage in a bit more Q&A while they were flying around.
** Related question: the article includes a photo of Superman with his arms folded, but she was never seen to photograph him onscreen. How was that picture obtained?
** She took the photo offscreen. Or it's a stock photo. Or he gave her the photo.

* In the first film, there's a scene where Clark jumps out of a window and he suddenly ''morphs'' into his Superman outfit. And I mean literally morphs, he regular suit just changes to his Superman one. Just... how?
** He's changing at SuperSpeed, and as a result, it looks like his clothes morph into his supersuit to the naked eye?
** Plus, again, the movies are pure Silver Age, they pulled that sort of crap all the time.
** One of the really neat things about the entire body of work is that they never showed Clark changing to Superman the same way twice.

* The scene where Lex figures out about Kryptonite is one part ScifiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale, one part InsaneTrollLogic, with a dash of BatDeduction and ContrivedCoincidence. Based solely on the evidence of Krypton exploding, Lex figures out that 1. Bits of Krypton are deadly to Superman and Superman alone (with no explanation as to how he would know that) 2. A piece somehow drifted all the way to Earth in a couple decades despite the vast distance between the two planets (stated to be in separate galaxies), 3. Managed to hit Earth instead of missing, burning up in the atmosphere or simply heading in a different direction altogether ([[ScifiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale guess he forgot that]] [[Franchise/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy space is big. Really big]]) and 4. it would just happen to be the unidentified meteorite that landed in Addis Ababa. Oh, and 5. It would kill him AND [[RequiredSecondaryPowers sap his strength while doing so]] (as opposed to hurting him long enough for him to throw it into orbit.). That's a lot of assumptions that just turned out to be accurate. Those kind of odds can't be explained away by Lex's intelligence either; to know all that one would have to be omnipotent. That many coincidences simply stretch the suspension of disbelief to the breaking point.

* One that can't be stressed enough: The whole time-travel thing. Let's see how it plays out:
** Superman takes care of one missile, but the other missile still hits the faultline, causing a LOT of damage, which Superman at least attempts to repair.
** After the earthquake is all done, Superman finds Lois, who has been crushed to death.
** Superman then interferes with Lois's body. There is no indication that he is able to re-set everything here.
** In fact, it seems as though he leaves right after laying the body out. He then briefly ''removes himself from the space-time continuum'' to get back to a point where he can get at the second missile. We're never told whether or not he does this any other way.
** Now, no matter whether or not the second missile actually hit, shouldn't the damage he didn't repair still exist? And what of the first missile, which he managed to get away from Earth's orbit beforehand? This gets dumber in the Donner cut, where a second go-around makes it so ''Zod, Ursa and Non never escaped the Phantom Zone''.

* In the Richard Donner cut of ''Film/SupermanII'', Superman does the whole spin the Earth backwards thing --- BUT! He goes back to that diner to beat the bully up! If he reset history, then the diner fight doesn't happen in the first place! So how does the bully (and the diner owner) remember Clark from a fight that never happened? And by that point, Zod, Ursa and Non had done MonumentalDamage, including knocking down the Washington Monument and knocking down most of the White House -- so did Superman only undo the stuff that happened to Metropolis? But then, Lois no longer remembers that Clark is Superrman, so he would have had to undo EVERYTHING. So, again, how does the diner bully remember Clark?
** What must have happened in the "final" timeline is that first Clark did everything he did originally, and towards the end of his "original" actions his time-travelling self shows up elsewhere and saves Lois. Then the first Clark leaves to go back in time, leaving only time-traveller Clark.

* The fight between Evil Superman and Clark Kent... was it all in his head? Was Superman lying on the ground the entire time, screaming and yelling at nothing like a crazy person?
** Possibly. Or the "synthetic Kryptonite" with "tar" in place of the "unknown element" was the movie-verse version of the comics Red Kryptonite, which can do all kinds of wacky things to Kryptonians, including splitting them into two different versions. Depending on how you look at it, Clark/Superman had to fight a BattleAtTheCenterOfTheMind to throw off the evil influence of the fake Kryptonite, or it made him evil and eventually split him into Good/Evil halves, and Clark had to literally kill Evil Superman to triumph.
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** The whole point of Clark Kent is that he's a weak, sickly dork. No one is surprised when Clark Kent suddenly and unexpectedly takes ill, because Superman spends a lot of time convincing people that Clark Kent is the kind of person who frequently falls ill for numerous reasons. When people see Clark Kent fall ill when in the near proximity of Kryptonite, they simply assume that one of his many weaknesses or allergies is playing up, not that he's Superman.

** I think it was more like the Lobo versus Wolverine fight in Marver Vs. DC -- you are being forced to write it, there is no reason to put too much effort into explaining it. If you were a writer and the higher ups decided that you need to write something that you know is going to royally annoy the fans, would it really be worth your time to try really hard to explain it? Even if there was a well written, rational reason for it, the fans still knew that it was just another publicity stunt.

*** Wait just one minute. Superman can ''[[FetishFuel vibrate]]''? Lucky Lois!

** They could just simply be panicking; this is a high-stress, high-adrenaline situation they've got themselves embroiled in, they've already committed a major felony and have the police on their tail, and now the most powerful superhero in the world, the guy who can punch through concrete and incinerate things by looking at them and freeze things by breathing hard at them, standing right in front of them? Under such circumstances, their mental processes are much less like to be a calm, rational stream of solid logic like "Right-ho, well, I haven't got a chance of stopping Superman with this pea-shooter of a gun I have, might as well just give up quietly, hey?" and much more likely to be something more along the lines of "Ohshitit'sSupermanfuckingSupermanisfuckingstandingrightinfuckingfrontofmedosomethingdosomethingDOSOMETHING!!!!" BANG BANG BANG.

** Because they were the company’s two most popular franchises, Batman and Green Lantern were not rebooted, but we’re supposed to believe that the events in their comics took place over a period of about five years instead of ten or however it works.
** As with the 1986 reboot, Superman’s origin is set in the past (as are many if not most) but aside from the comics doing a poor job of establishing that, there are few continuity snarls so far, except that the PowersThatBe inform us that the famous 1992 death of Superman “still happened.” But of course, Steel and Superboy were introduced in the aftermath of this story, and yet they’re re-introduced as fully different characters, so the particulars of the story must be very different like in so many post-Crisis stories.

** After the Bryne relaunch, it was revealed that Superman has an '''Aura of Invulnerability'''. (Cadmus tried to replicate this power when they cloned Superboy from Paul Westerfield, not Lex Luthor, this is how he had '''Tactile Telekinesis'''.) It is possible that when his hair gets too long, it goes past the aura, and thusly can be cut. That, or Jor-El packed a Kryptonian Flowbee in the rocket ship...

** I don't know if it's ever been explicitly discussed (and I'd be surprised if in 80-odd years of super-villainy Luthor hasn't tried magic at ''some'' point), but in the MagicVersusScience debate he tends to take the 'magic' side. In his modern incarnations certainly, he also tends to be characterised (and generally seems to be) the kind of humanist-scientist-technocratist type of person who'd view 'primitive superstitions' like magic with a certain degree of disdain; perhaps he views it as being under his dignity.

* Putting aside the possible Doylist explanation that doing so would make him too much like a certain Doctor over at Marvel, magic is one of Superman's few actual known weaknesses, so it seems odd that his greatest enemy always relies on the other two, kryptonite and red solar radiation, and completely neglects the third. Has Lex Luthor ever tried learning magic, or given a reason why he doesn't or can't?

*** Its actually worse for Superman- if Batman kills the Joker, then he goes from a crimefighter to a vigilante killer; if Superman kills Luthor, then he goes from a superhero to a god smiting a puny impudent mortal. In other words the temptation might be much worse for him, not to mention that since Lex is generally seen as a VillainWithGoodPublicity and, at the very least, less hated and feared than TheJoker, Superman might have to either cover the crime up (which wouldn't be hard but could fall into CrimeAfterCrime territory) ''or'' try and explain to the public that this supposed HonestCorporateExecutive is actually an evil, mass-murdering sociopath. Like the Joker too, Lex mocks Superman for not killing him because he knows damn well that Superman would see that as a moral victory for evil, and that destroying anyone in his way is exactly the sort of thing Lex himself would do if ''he'' had Superman's powers, which is one of the main reasons Lex feels Superman doesn't deserve them- because he is too "weak" or "alien" to have such "human" responses.