Superman Is Not Jesus

(Note: The first sentence of this article contains the only spoiler for Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice not already revealed by two solid years of marketing.)

“Remember this as long as you live: Whenever you meet up with anyone who is trying to cause trouble between people—anyone who tries to tell you that a man can’t be a good citizen because of his religious beliefs—you can be sure that the troublemaker is a rotten citizen himself and a rotten human being.” —Superman, in “The Hate Mongers Organization,” April 16, 1946.

Superman dies at the end of Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, the victim, perhaps, of a decade of jealousy toward Marvel’s unprecedented and invincible movie franchise success even as his own films have struggled. I don’t spoil things for people unless an unspoken statute of limitations has passed or the work in question has received abysmal reviews, and, well. While there are plenty of criticisms to level at Superman’s portrayal in the Snyder era, for me it boils down to something pretty simple—I’m kind of tired of seeing Superman taking lumps for all the wrong reasons.

I love Superman. I don’t collect the book or own any of the movies, but I don’t have to. I will readily agree with anyone who says he or she is a “bigger fan” of Superman than I am, because in my estimation, that’s a meaningless label in relation to the character. You can be a fan of Malcolm Reynolds or Jessica Jones, but one can no more be a fan of Superman than a fan of Hercules. No other comic book character lifts me up like the man from Metropolis.

Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice marks the third straight film in which Superman’s might doesn’t keep him from suffering on the proverbial cross for the sins of an increasingly ungrateful mankind. This approach is lazy, it is baffling, it is incorrect, and I am not paying money to see it again. Superman—who is invincible—cannot be a stand-in for bodily sacrifice and societal scorn.

Besides, he’s totally Moses.

Let’s compare origin stories:
·         A helpless child from a doomed home
·         is placed into a fragile receptacle
·         and jettisoned off to a safer place
·         where he discovers his true heritage,
·         initially rejects his woeful destiny
·         before shaking it off and grasping his wondrous powers,
·         which he uses to lay epic grief upon the bullies who push around the weak,
·         to whom he provides protection and moral leadership.

This is not in the least bit coincidental and no, I am not nearly the first to remark upon it—see Superman Is Jewish? by Harry Brod and Up, Up and Oy Vey! by Simcha Weinstein. But today, in the shadow of the critical train wreck of Superman’s latest film and on the 70th anniversary of the Superman radio episode quoted above—in which he uses his super powers to stop a Neo-Nazi plot—I think it’s worth looking at where this character comes from and appreciating how totally his current corporate wranglers misunderstand him.

“The most enduring American hero is an alien from outer space who, once he reached Earth, traded in his foreign-sounding name Kal-El for a singularly American handle: Superman,” writes Larry Tye in Superman: The High-Flying History of America’s Most Enduring Hero.

Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster, two nebbish-y Jewish kids from Cleveland, sold the character to Max Gaines in 1938 for $130—great money for 13 pages of work, but in hindsight one of the most colossal rip-offs in the history of art. Siegel wrote the character’s first story shortly after his father—a tailor and Lithuanian immigrant—died of a heart attack in his own store during a robbery. The physically slight, dorky Siegel and his severely myopic friend Schuster were regularly picked on. Decades later, Siegel would recall that: “At an early age, I got a taste of what it means to be victimized.”