10 Superman Questions That Always Confused You
9. What's The Deal With His Symbol REALLY?
In Zack Snyder's 2013 film Man of Steel, Amy Adams' Lois Lane asks the Man of Steel (Henry Cavill) why he's sporting a giant 'S' on his chest. Amused by the question, he simply replies that it's Kryptonian in origin, and that it stands for 'hope'. It was also the crest of the House of El, but there's a lot more to it in the comics than Snyder's film let on.
Naturally, as you may have guessed already, the original explanation as to why Superman had a giant 'S' on his chest was because it stood for his heroic alter-ego. Kal-El first dons it in pre-Crisis continuity as Superboy because, well, it stood for Superboy. It had nothing to do with hope - or even the House of El - until much later.
That 'much later' came in 2003 with the release of Mark Waid and Leinil Francis Yu's Superman: Birthright, which eventually served as the inspiration behind Man of Steel's iconic exchange between Lois and Clark. Geoff Johns went one step further too in Superman: Secret Origin, revealing the part Martha Kent had to play in fashioning her son's first costume after understanding the symbol as something that probably stemmed from Clark's alien family.
Still, the point is that it hasn't always been about hope, and that it wasn't until recently that DC created a Kryptonian connection to his costume.