I love stories that are unconcerned with giving Superman arbitrary limits, have him doing utterly insane things, and using his powers/knowledge/abilities to actually progress humankind forward rather than just being some all-powerful keystone barely holding the planet together.
This with elements of Golden Age Superman and Superman for all Seasons. All three act as a natural progression of the character. All Seasons is the guy who genuinely cares about everyone, Golden Age is the one who allows bravado and pride to cloud his judgement, placing all his focus on the symptom of mankind's problem (crime, poverty etc.). All-Star is the culmination of his character; the guy who still cares, recognizes his flaws and works towards treating the disease (greed, ignorance etc.) To me THAT is Superman, the guiding light of mankind, the guy whose willing to show and help us to better ourselves.
Not even close: the Superman that John Byrne's Man of Steel launched. I've never been able to stomach any of the versions that came before or after (least of all the Silver Age). This Superman was powerful, but at least somewhat limited. His Kryptonian origin story was darkened in a way that would become cliché by the '90s, but it made sense for the character and made his story richer.
Best of all, Superman became a human being in all the senses that counted: Clark Kent—not "Kal-El"—was the real him, and proved to be far more interesting & complex than the Silver Age or All-Star Superman alien in Earth drag. His living parents, the Kents, were a huge improvement, and emotionally centered the character. Clark got married, and underwent something resembling a character arc. He was no longer a cheesy sci-fi wish-fulfillment fantasy—he was still drawn in primary colors literally, but no longer metaphorically.
I always felt All-Star Superman made it relatively clear that Clark Kent was still the "real" him in the sense that it kept him grounded with the personal picture rather than the big picture. Other than that, I always saw Man of Steel Superman as dull and ineffectual. Silver Age Superman was ultimately ineffectual as well, but at least watching him sneeze a galaxy into oblivion was entertaining.
Being the son of two immigrants, I've always related to Superman on a personal level, which is why I can appreciate Byrne's Krypton. Its the "Old Country"; it's Nazi Germany, the Spanish Civil War, Occupied France etc. and it drives the idea of Superman as the ultimate immigrant to another level.
Theres sex and death and human grime in monochrome for one thin dime and at least the trains all run on time but they dont go anywhere.I'm with Atom James on this. Other elements that I prefer the character to have are that Ma and Pa are dead (I hated how writers after Byrne's revamp would always have Superman retreat to the Kent farm in times of spiritual trouble); I'd prefer that Superman be the sole survivor of Krypton (I know that pisses off all the Supergirl fans, but what can I tell you) with the only exception being the Bottle City of Kandor, and maybe Phantom Zone villains. I would prefer that Clark and Lois be unmarried; rightly or wrongly, being married would of a necessity change Superman's priorities.
I think Clark Kent is the man in stillness and repose, and Superman is that same man at need; I don't see the two aspects as being at all at odds in a unified personality. He's not an alpha dog who needs to throw his weight around and demonstrate his dominance. He'll back down from a fight if the fight is trivial and inconsequential, but if not then his enemies will deeply regret having roused him.
Golden Age Superman. He was just a man who could do things better than every other man. He was not a demigod or Messianic Archetype, not The Paragon, not a boyscout but something of a jerkass who had power and did whatever he wanted with it. What he ultimately wanted to do was help people though, even if his methods were not always that well thought out.
I can't buy paladin superman and I can't buy super evil Beware the Superman either. Golden age was the best.
Modified Ura-nage, Torture RackI'm gonna take the easy answer and they I like them all.
Superman has been so many things to so many people, and they all have their appeal and logic.
When you're that powerful, why limit yourself to anything, and that includes any interpretation.
I kind find something to like about any version of the character...
... except the Super-dick version that tortures his friends(who try to force him to marry them or discover his secret every five seconds), and even that guy is often good for a laugh.
One Strip! One Strip!Absolutely any Superman story which tries to avert Superman Stays Out of Gotham or Kal-El Is Useless only to succumb to Status Quo Is God will invoke Beware the Superman to some level.
edited 3rd Nov '12 12:57:24 AM by KingZeal
This is somewhat off-topic, but Supes out of Gotham has always made more sense to me than Bats trapped in Gotham.
I always assumed Bats had a specialized skill set that no one else had. Yes, Clark is a reporter and Barry Allen is a detective and they're both very smart but Bruce is the world greatest detective. Crime is just smarter and more perverse in Gotham and Bruce is the only one that can really figure it out.
But if that's true, why isn't he keeping tab on Luthor? Author stress that Bats has a special connection to Gotham and that's fine, but it often comes off as him not giving a damn about crime outside of Gotham. That's just silly.
I don't think it has anything to do with smarts. Superman is usually portrayed as being just as intelligent as Batman, but with a different skill set. Batman is "more suited" for Gotham because he can understand the psychotic criminal mind while Superman only has basic knowledge on it. On the other hand, Superman knows how to handle PR, which means that he can get most of the world to trust him—but not Gotham.
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Let's not go there; for the world he lives in, Batman's actions make as much sense as anything else. And it's been frequently stated in the comics that he wastes his enormous fortune bankrolling the Wayne Foundation to try to improve Gotham and the lives of Gothamites, not just to make his toys.
Essentially, Batman is a cop and Superman is a fireman (also, he can kinda be the National Guard). This is not to say that Superman won't stop a mugger, or that Batman won't take on a rampaging giant robot, just that these are the roles into which they most often fall.
I have yet to read All Star Superman or Man of Steel. The Superman I was exposed to the most was the DCAU Superman but he was a bit off and while I have read the Golden Age Superman, he was a bit too simplistic for my tastes.
The best Superman for me is the one from Birthright: human, powerful, relatable and overall a very enjoyable character and great story.
I agree that Batman's advantage is skill and not innate qualities. Batman supposedly has one of the greatest analytic minds in the DC world. You would think he'd use that ability outside Gotham more often. To be fair, he did do more of this sort of stuff pre-boot, i.e Tower of Babel.
Anyway, I think we've established consensus that Supes just doesn't understand Gotham. I think that's a pretty good explanation of why DC heroes stay away from each other. Supes doesn't have the kind of personality that can deal with rogues, and he probably doesn't understand gods very well either.
Getting back on-topic, my original point was that stories which involve Superman trying to overstep his "bounds" will usually have some sort of Beware the Superman aesop.
So by "oversteps his bounds" you mean where he tries to become an authority? A king rather than a knight errant? If so then yeah, that does seem to be tone such stories adopt, the most glaring exception that I can think of being The Dark Knight Strikes Back, where Frank Miller seems to posit that a world ruled by a totalitarian Superman would be a pretty good idea (but then, given the nature of the world Miller's Dark Knight mythos inhabits, he may have a point).
But then, Superman has never been portrayed (not canonically, anyhow) as a man desirous of authority.
So by "oversteps his bounds" you mean where he tries to become an authority? A king rather than a knight errant? If so then yeah, that does seem to be tone such stories adopt, the most glaring exception that I can think of being The Dark Knight Strikes Back, where Frank Miller seems to posit that a world ruled by a totalitarian Superman would be a pretty good idea (but then, given the nature of the world Miller's Dark Knight mythos inhabits, he may have a point).
But then, Superman has never been portrayed (not canonically, anyhow) as a man desirous of authority.
But again, that's the rub. Superman is usually delegated to fighting the symptoms of the world's problems and never its causes. Whenever he tries, it's usually to fulfill some greater aesop to Hand Wave why Status Quo Is God. If Superman is faced with an unjust system or legal loophole, it's very, very rare that To Be Lawful or Good will swing in the direction of Good. And when it does, it's during one of those rare stories where Superman has lost the public trust or is treated as a fugitive. In most incarnations, Superman swore to uphold the laws of human society specifically to avoid a Beware the Superman situation.
edited 3rd Nov '12 8:06:00 PM by KingZeal
I don't know of any stories where Superman tries to rule the world.
In All-Star where he gets Super-intelligence and tries to work on a bunch of things to help but there he's an action-scientist, not a Tyrant.
In Red Son he rules the Soviet Union but that's only because he's upholding the Soviet way of life.
Even in that dark age story where he gets super-intelligence tries to cure evil, he's really more of an action-scientist than a genuine ruler.
A lot of Deconstruction Expies of Supes take over the world, but a lot of people have pointed out that the goodness of the character is more integral to him than the Superpowers are.
You're overthinking what I'm saying.
Beware the Superman does not just mean a story where the superbeing tries to take over the world. It's about situations in which a superbeing tries to impose his personal brand of order, law and justice because he can. There are a lot of Superman stories where he uses his powers to act outside of the law, or beyond his "authority" in order to achieve a greater good only to have the story punish him for it just to Hand Wave why he doesn't try it again in the future. For example, Superman will invent a cure for cancer using Kryptonian science, only to discover that it turns people into giant earthworms or something. Thus, he vows never to try it again (or that he can abuse his super-science so foolishly again).

Golden Age Superman was always made the most sense to me. He's a normal guy who sees injustice in the world and tries to correct it. His powers seemed more or less metaphorical: we all have skills and talents, it's what we chose to do with them that matters.
How about you tropers?