Examples of characterization changing dramatically Depending on the Writer in Superman.
Comic Books
- Superman's powers. He's the Trope Codifier of the Flying Brick. When handled at his most popular, his powers are fairly straightforward: Flight, Invulnerability, Heat Vision, Ice Breath, and the super abilities of Super-Senses, Super-Speed and Super-Strength. That was the main thing that made Superman II fail for the fans, because he was given random powers that had never appeared before. Power Creep, Power Seep aside, writers would give him the most bizarre super-"whatever" power (including super-marble playing and the "S" saran wrap shield). This is probably what gave fan Jerry Seinfeld his thoughts about him having "super humor." One strip has him use super-puppeteering to put on a play for Lois, and super-memory to learn the script quickly. Superman's powers were never really set in stone during the Golden and Silver Ages. Superman was rife with New Powers as the Plot Demands up until John Byrne's post-crisis revamp gave a definite set of powers for Superman, removing some like freezing breath, forgetting others like "Super Ventriloquism" and "Super Elastic Facial Muscles" (this is not a joke), and limiting others like his super strength and speed. (Seriously, how else could a mook like the Toyman be even kind of a threat?) Other writers have since crept his power up and down, with freeze breath eventually showing up again and various applications of other powers being used.
- At the Superman rollercoaster at Six Flags Great Adventure, there are giant plaques hung up that you can read while advancing through the line. Superman's plaque lists one of his powers as "Super-Intelligence". Now, we are talking about a guy who, canonically, built functional android duplicates of himself realistic (and powerful) enough to take his place if he's indisposed. He actually is supposed to be scary smart. But plenty of comics characters are just as smart without it being a superpower. His weaknesses suffer this too. Kryptonite is often shown to have him on the ground in pain in seconds just from waving it in front of his face while red sunlight shuts his powers off instantly. Then he'll turn around and fly through a Kryptonite asteroid belt (he is the Trope Namer for Fight Off the Kryptonite) and a red star and still somehow survive a crash landing on a planet before his powers completely fade.
- Though some of this is genuine retconning. Red sunlight was changed to cause rapid power depletion instead of instant powerlessness for a couple of decades before it went back to being his off switch.
- His vulnerability to magic can be even more confusing. Do you have a pencil that's magically enchanted to write what you say? You can stab Superman with that even though nothing about the magic actually makes it a better weapon. On the other hand, some writers have him able to square off with Thor and Captain Marvel, who should be able to tear him apart if the above was true. His weakness to magic was originally supposed to be lack of resistance to spells that violate the laws of nature so he can be turned into a frog as easily as the next guy, but magic super-strength is no better than regular super-strength against him.
- With some writers, it's implied that if Superman is alert and ready for magical attacks, he can resist it actively but if he's not expecting it, magic will affect him worse. In the JLA/Avengers crossover, Superman is taken off guard and struck by Thor's magic-fueled hammer, knocking him out. Later, however, Superman fights Thor one-on-one, catches his hammer swing, shows less vulnerability to Thor's mystical powers, and ultimately knocks Thor out. In another Justice League story, Superman is de-evolved into a primitive Hulk-like Kryptonian form when he wasn't expecting it by the villain Jerome Cox, aka Disciple. However, once the League gets it together for round two against Disciple, Superman, now knowing he's dealing with a magical opponent, tanks Disciple's de-evolution attack head-on even as the other Leaguers are affected by it, closes in on Disciple, and destroys his mystical artifact, defeating Disciple and saving the day.
- Another issue is his mortality; the pre-New 52 modern comics (as well as Smallville) basically said that he'll live forever as long as no one kills him. However, this is certainly not true in the Silver Age: for instance the Earth-2 Superman is obviously in late middle-age.
- His character in the comics tends to vary as well, from being completely content identifying as a human to being all too aware of his status as an outsider. Among other heroes he's generally optimistic and upbeat but still serious whereas his solo titles tend to show him brooding and angsting over his role, whether or not he's doing enough, balancing his heroic and personal life (at least since the Bronze Age), and so forth. Its possible that he outwardly projects optimism and confidence to fulfill his role as a leader while keeping his doubts to himself.
- Then there's the role of Clark Kent. Some writers take the view that Clark Kent is more or less just a disguise for him that lets him live a normal existence and ground himself, while others take the view that he considers Clark Kent to be his "true" identity and the person he's been his whole life. Quite a few comics, like Superman: Birthright, seemingly Take a Third Option in suggesting that neither Superman nor Clark Kent are "the real one", with both being exaggerated personas to some degree, and the closest thing to "the real one" is how he acts when around people who know his identity, like his parents or Lois Lane. And how Clark Kent himself acts fluctuates quite a bit; in some comics, he's The Ace who's respected by everyone and more or less acts like Superman if he didn't have powers and was a reporter, while in others, he's a borderline Ditzy Genius who baffles people in his ability to uncover massive corporate conspiracies, then trip over his shoelaces.
- This one is so contentious that John Byrne claimed that anyone who didn't understand Superman to be the disguise and not Clark Kent would never understand the character. Mark Waid fired back by pointing out that this would put Jerry Siegel, who co-created Superman and kept writing him well into the Silver Age, in that category.
- Even his eating habits are subject to this. Some writers have claimed he's a vegetarian, with the justification that his Super-Senses make it hard for him to enjoy eating any kind of farmed meat. (or, in one case, that growing up on a farm with Aura Vision made him very disturbed about killing animals). Other writers show him having no problem with meat, and his canonical favorite food is beef bourguignon.
- Superman's reality warping enemy, Mr. Mxyzptlk, flips back and forth between sociopathic pest and Stealth Mentor. In Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?, he explained that he gets bored and switches personas every so often.
- Much of this owes to something of an Armed with Canon debate, with some writers preferring the pre-Crisis Superman, others preferring the John Byrne reboot, and constantly tug-of-warring between the two. He's usually somewhere in the middle-ish.
- This was a major issue with the New 52 Superman, and likely a major reason for why the guy didn't take. Grant Morrison wrote him as an arrogant, inexperienced hothead in the past, but going through Character Development into a well-rounded Ideal Hero with an aggressive and anti-authoritarian streak by the modern day. Thing was, a lot of writers, including George Perez and Scott Lobdell, didn't get the memo on the second half, and wrote the modern Superman as a straight-up self-righteous Jerkass who punched people for no good reason. And then you had writers like Scott Snyder, who basically ignored both approaches and just wrote him like his pre-New 52 counterpart...
- Is Lex Luthor a Card-Carrying Villain, a Noble Demon, or a Well-Intentioned Extremist? Considering he started as a Mad Scientist and was rectonned into being a Corrupt Corporate Executive, he has legitimately fallen into more than one of these categories but even within his incarnations, writers have different takes on just how much Lex really wants to help mankind (to the exclusion of aliens) and how much he's in it for himself or at least his pride. His hatred of Superman is consistent but the motivations for that hatred have varied considerably. His scientific abilities fluctuate from writer to writer as well. Sometimes a businessman is all that he is, sometimes he's also the most brilliant scientist alive. He's also either an eccentric Deadpan Snarker Insufferable Genius or a Perpetual Frowner who is almost completely humorless. More often than not though, this discrepancy is because he's partnered up with The Joker and the writer wants to present a nice contrast between the two villains.
- Do Kryptonians use Uterine Replicators or have standard pregnancies?
- Superman's super speed is especially susceptible to this. Sometimes his speed is so great that he can pull off amazing feats like tagging speedsters like The Flash or Professor Zoom, flying down from Earth's atmosphere to save a woman and a baby precisely one split second before they're about to get hit by a crashing spaceship, and disarm and locate The Joker's bombs hidden all across Metropolis before Joker could even finish his sentence. Then other times... he's shown to be somehow not fast enough to stop a supervillain from executing a bunch of captured soldiers with ordinary machine gun bullets.
- Whether or not he needs to breathe in space changes depending on the author and time era. Sometimes he'll be able to fly through the cold of space just fine and can breathe normally there as he would on Earth. Other times, he'll be written as having to wear an oxygen mask whenever he's out in space. Some writers split the difference and have him only wear the oxygen mask on long-range space missions.
