10 Stupid Arguments About Superman That Don't Make Sense
10. Why Can't He Just Fix Everything?
Superman is the bermensch. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster based their comic creation on the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche's goal that he believed humanity should set for itself - a platonic ideal of our species that would be able to fix all problems and be morally perfect. Superman does that not with widespread social change, but by having all the superpowers possible to fix everything. So... why doesn't he just fix everything already? The Man of Steel spends all his time getting cats out of trees and fighting giant robots in low Earth orbit. Important things, admittedly, but there are many more important things in the world: ending world hunger, perhaps, or brokering peace between nations, scrapping nuclear weapons, that sort of thing. He certainly has that power. An edition of the webcomic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal looked at a world where Superman has fought of all enemies, and is then installed as the power source for a perpetual motion machine that gives the world free electricity. And he does that forever. Until he dies. Superman could fix everything, but it'd be at the expense of other stuff, as well as treating him like a machine. And it'd be boring.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
