8 Comic Book Characters That Broke Superman
How do you bring the Man of Steel to heel?
Superman, to many, is DC's most impervious figure. The Last Son of Krypton possesses boundless strength and power, and wields those abilities with a strict moral code, defending humanity from those who would seek to do it harm.
Clark Kent is a working class hero, and in truth, he's also the best of us. Whenever his fellow heroes step out of line - or even contemplate doing so - he's there to remind them of their responsibilities, and he's also there to lift up every day people when they need a helping hand. So yeah, he's kind of the best.
But here's the thing - not even Superman is perfect. In fact, if you were to consult the vast majority of the Man of Steel's stories over the last thirty-or-so years, you'd probably come to the conclusion that he's actually quite fallible. The DC Universe is home to all sorts of horrors, and even someone as inspirational as Superman can be susceptible to a moral lapse in character, or even a complete breakdown, given the right conditions.
This doesn't always result in the now sadly familiar site of a dictatorial Übermensch. Sometimes, Kal's lapses can manifest in explosive bursts of anger, a depressive spiral, or even the not-so-super-y site of jettisoning his pet monkey into space because it's so annoying, an act I'm sure every reader can relate to.
Either way, there's something uniquely unnerving about seeing the Man of Steel lose his cool, either in the mainstream DCU, or in the many nightmarish vestiges of its 52 alternate worlds...