10 Different Ways Superman Has Been Defeated

The Man of Steel isn't invincible.

Superman is powerful, but he isn€™t invincible. With Henry Cavill€™s Superman set to clash with Ben Affleck€™s Batman next year, people are chattering away about the omnipotent being€™s Achilles heel - Kryptonite - but there are more ways to defeat the Man of Steel than just throwing the glowing green rock in his direction. The powers of Superman are well known - heat vision, flight, superhuman strength, speed, ice cold breath, impenetrable skin and x-ray vision. Being endowed with such powers would make the character a god amongst men, so it is necessary for the publishers at DC to implant weakness and vulnerability into the character, otherwise the stories would be mundane and repetitive. If Superman was infallible then the hero would lose his popularity - nobody wants to read a comic where even the strongest nemesis cannot pose a danger to the titular hero. You want to see a challenge, so without some latent weakness Superman€™s veritable smorgasbord of spin-off material would have fizzled out years ago. This is perhaps best highlighted by The Death Of Superman storyline, which increased sales in the dwindling comic by thousands. Weakness sells, and DC are aware of this. The Kryptonian powerhouse has been beaten many different times by many different people €“ one storyline back in the Eighties saw him beaten by a teenager (check out The Sinbad Contract) while the aforementioned The Death Of Superman gave the comic unprecedented media attention. With this in mind, we count down ten different ways Superman has been defeated.
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A 21 year old History graduate looking for someone to listen to his ramblings. Lover of comic books, movies and all other superhero related things. Published in The Independent, always looking for interesting things to write about...Follow me on Twitter at @samclements1993, and check out my blog: http://samuelclements.wordpress.com/