Superman appears to have either stopped aging or his aging has slowed to an almost imperceptible amount. In the long run, this will lead to two highly dangerous traits in the Man of Steel. First, near-immortality allows Superman to plan in the extreme long-term. Whereas a human has at most fifty years to run a plan from beginning to end, Superman will have centuries. This type of long-view thinking will cause Superman to detach from the present and position his thoughts far into the future. What will it matter to Kal-El whether the crime rate is high today or if two nations go to war now when in just a few decades things will be different? He will increasingly come to focus only on what he judges to be the Great Moments of history. Second, Superman's agelessness will lead to him eventually see us all as pets. After a few centuries of life, he will have seen all of his loved ones age and die, hardening his heart. Sure, he will still care for us, but not as equals and never as close as it was the first time. Each cycle of love and death will push him further away from being empathetic and emotionally entwined with us. Eventually, it might get to the point where he may even have his sick or injured loved ones put down to ease their suffering when they become ill rather than loving them enough to suffer with them through to the end.
Born and raised in Appalachia, Brent now lives in rural Wisconsin. He is a practicing attorney with a dozen years of experience as both a prosecutor and a defender. He has collected comics for decades and at one time had almost 8,000 in his collection.
