Why Does Superman Make Me Cry?

Understanding why the Big Blue Boy Scout is still my favourite

A few years ago I was in bed with my then girlfriend, now wife, explaining to her why I wore a Superman costume all the time when I was a child. And I started to cry.

It was strange, it wasn’t an emotional topic, at least I didn’t think it was, but as I explained why I liked the character so much as a kid and as an adult, there I was, being emotional. In the years since, I have been back to some of the old comics I read as a kid and the original Richard Donner Superman movie, and I find myself still getting emotional. It seems obvious why. The character was a big part of my childhood and I probably mourn the loss of that innocence etc. I have written previously about how Indiana Jones was able to manipulate me based on this kind of nostalgia. But there’s something else to Superman that really hits a deep part of me, that other, similar, media doesn’t touch. Why is that?

The character of Superman feels rather silly today. An all-American superhero, clad in the red white and blue who is functionally invincible and more mobile than any other of his kind. He can fly, is bullet proof, is super strong, super fast, has laser eyes, there’s pretty much nothing he can’t do. He’s that kid who constantly says “no but I have a bullet proof vest” when you’re playing pretend ‘cops and robbers’ or whatever. Nothing can beat him. Ultimately that robs Superman of any sense of threat or danger. He can’t be harmed, he can’t even be physically damaged and his one weakness (kryptonite) has always been a lazy way of undoing these impracticalities for story telling purposes. Because for a story to work, it needs risk. When Superman arrives, it’s all over. There is no risk. As such, on paper, he doesn’t work as a character, he’s more of a ‘get-out-of-jail-free’, deus ex machina plot device. So why was he developed this way in the first place?

When writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster developed the character of Superman over the course of 6 years from 1932–1938, he went from a bald hobo, to the last son of Krypton. Undeniably influenced by Edgar…