Hi all. I'm new here, and I've been in and out of comics for the last 10 years, but one thing that I've always had was my love for the Superman mythos and what he represents.

Through the years, I've observed that there has been a noticeable decline in how the casual audience perceives Superman with a lot thinking he's boring or overpowered and yada yada. Of course we Superman fans know he's definitely not, but I can understand why they do and I think some of it has to do with the times we are in with most readers enjoying more shaded heroes (anitheroes). However, I do think most of it has to do with the writer's room. Make no mistake, I don't mean to belittle them, but I feel they don't do enough to energize the Superman mythos either through his powers or more importantly, his personality traits.

Regarding his powers, I read a lot of fantasy and within that genre, there is a discourse on magic systems, specifically hard magic systems and a popular author you may know, Brandon Sanderson suggested 3 laws (more like guidelines) that I think would do a lot to revitalize the Superman mythos (for Superman is in all sense fantasy although he is a being of science ironically) and if you will bear with me (it's a long essay), I'd like to elaborate on why it can:

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The 1st law states: an author's ability to solve conflict with magic is directly proportional to how well the reader understands said magic. This essentially means that if the audience thoroughly understands how magic works, they are never left feeling that it is an asspull or deus ex machina when a protagonist solves a conflict. This relates mostly to the fact that even now, there isn't a solid basis on how Superman's powers work. Why can he fly? Why is it that he unleashes heat vision through his eyes and then cold breath through his mouth? Why does he have super strength or super hearing or super smell. I'm not gonna lie, regarding Superman, this law is difficult to overcome, but maybe the question is should it really? I know people have postulated that when he gets solar radiation, it mutates his body so he can have these powers. I think Bendis recently showed that Kal is a solar battery that can initially expend his energy through his eyes, hence heat vision and then all through his body at maximum. Others have suggested tactile kinesis for flight etc.

I really don't think that fully explains the problem. Sure, having a basis for his power would be cool, but a factor that should always be inherent in Superman is that he has superpowers hence his name. He was created as an analogy for a strongman for that reason. We don't necessarily need to know the fundamental explanation for his powers, but we do need to be guaranteed that it will remain consistent---just like for the average person, we understand that an apple will fall downwards from a tree due to gravity, but even now we still don't know what gravity truly is. As ill-defined as Superman's powers were in the earlier eras, his powers now have really been narrowed to 8: flight, super strength (includes invulnerabilty to most things), super hearing, super smell, heat vision, telescopic vision, x-ray vision and cold breath! I hope they keep sticking with that. I'm going to go a little bit more into this when addressing the third law of a hard magic system which will assuage the first law. Nevertheless, like I said, it's more important that his powers are consistent and there are constraints/risks to using these powers hence the second law. Fortunately, writers don't really have a problem with the first law as his powers has been pretty consistent recently.

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The 2nd law states: weaknesses, limits and costs are more interesting than powers. Weaknesses are things that hurt him; limits are things he can't do; and costs are the consequences he has if he does use his powers. Funny, I mentioned in the earlier paragraph that superpowers are crucial to the Superman mythos, however think of having these constraints as a way to appreciate the fact that he has superpowers. We all know that Superman's main weakness is that inherently, he is a good guy more than his weakness to kryptonite. But sometimes good guys do bad things for the right reasons if that makes sense. Perhaps the general audience needs to know that Superman has limits beyond the scope of his personality or a stupid green rock (that is supposed to be rare, but rarely is). More importantly, perhaps the audience needs to know that there are situations were his powers would not help him, but infact they will do the opposite and hinder him from solving a conflict, leading to him knowingly choosing to use some other method such as his Clark Kent persona to solve a conflict. Let me give some other examples below and how some of these might also influence his personality:

Weaknesses (things that hurt him):

a.) Alien weapons will hurt him. We all know Superman has a weakness to kryptonite and a vulnerability to magic. That's nothing new. But he should definitely be vulnerable to alien weapons. It just so happens that he is invulnerable to man-made weapons that can only be created with materials that are only viable on planet Earth. Weapons from Apokolips or New Genesis should f*** him up just as easily as bullets would f*** humans up.

b.) Superman is always energized. Another thing I feel would build way more tension is that Superman is always in power, that is to say his power is always ON. However, he has trained himself during adolescence to unconsciously keep his power in check except in extreme cases which are further explained below:

Limits (things he can't do):

a.) He loses control of his powers when he gets very emotional or in a heightened state of mind. I feel this is very important. We need to know why Kal El is usually a calm and collected person. The audience would appreciate it more when we know there are stakes involved when he is not in a normal state of mind. Now mind you, I don't mean to say he should be portrayed as a killjoy, but he should usually be portrayed as generally cool-headed. When I say 'emotional', I mean it in the extreme sense, like you killed his dog (sorry Krypto) or when he is really worried about his friends or I don't know maybe getting busy (I kid I kid). Can you imagine the drama to the reader when something truly bad happens in front of Clark with civilians around and although he remains calm on the outside, we know (or suspect) a storm rages inside but he can't allow himself to lose control, or things may get worse? Can you imagine the tension or the surprise to the reader when he actually does get angry?! I've sometimes thought Superman might have a special place where he can allow himself to truly get angry.

b.) It takes significant concentration for him to not only touch but feel things like normal humans without the risk of damaging them. This has fortunately already been addressed in media, although occasionally. With careful study through adolescence, he can feel things, but it takes time and careful study to appraise how much strength he needs to touch (and feel) something. As such, he is not a touchy person and often keeps himself at a distance so people don't feel how hard his skin is. This needs to be foreshadowed so we know when Superman holds his hand on your shoulder or he stays close to you, that means you're important because he cares enough about your well-being and he wants to be around you respectively. It can also illustrate another reason why his Clark Kent persona is sometimes portrayed to be wary in social gatherings.

c.) Just like he can't feel others easily, he experiences other things differently such as taste. There needs to be a sense of adventure with Superman comics that has been severely lacking recently. I wouldn't put super taste as one of Clark's powers because essentially it might be the opposite for him that is 'not super'. Basically, he needs to continually test how things are different for him than others like foods and drinks. Perhaps he needs to eat spicy or highly seasoned foods because they can only generate a sense of taste for him. Even Superman has to eat sometime. Perhaps some alcoholic drinks affect him while others don't. This was going to be discussed later but I'm a big believer that Clark Kent should occasionally be a travelling reporter/writer of somekind. Can you imagine the stories where he uses his job to travel to different cities, countries, worlds just to experience new things with his pal photographer, Jimmy Olsen. I'll expand on this further below.

d.) He can't fly in empty space. I truly believe Superman should not be able to fly in space. He can somewhat fly in space granted he is close enough to a planet with sufficient gravity or proximity, but it should be impossible in empty space. This is where he can use his knowledge and the bank of information that is his heritage from Krypton. Perhaps he uses a gravity slingshot maneuver to travel from planet to planet. I don't know, writers should get creative.

Costs (the consequences of using his powers):

a.) He gets extremely tired after using his powers for long periods of time. I play soccer and I know that as fit as I am, after a long and stressful bout or tournament day event, I can barely use my legs the next morning. Do the same. It might humanize him.

b.) He needs to recharge before he can use his powers. If he doesn't recharge for a sufficient amount of time, it limits how much of his powers he can use. And if he knows that, it only makes sense for him to specialize and strategize before he runs out. That would show combat intelligence.

c.) Using some of his powers hurts him. Gosh I loved that in the Man of Steel movie, it seemed like it somewhat hurt his eyes to use heat vision.

NB: Even with these cost suggestions, I do feel a writer shouldn't use all 3 of them, but maybe 2 of them.

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The 3rd law law states: The author should expand on what is already a part of the magic system before something entirely new is added. This truly relates with the wacky Golden and Silver age of comics where Superman was continually given powers. It was great then but it sure as hell wouldn't be great now. As aforementioned, Superman's powers have been narrowed down to 8 specific powers. Don't add new ones, but expand on how he uses these current and hopefully mainstay powers in uncanny ways to solve his conflicts.

Remember earlier when I stated that Superman must have trained himself to control his powers because they are always on. Well this leads nicely into the 3rd law. I had hoped writers would foreshadow what Superman went through in his childhood to control his powers. Many people think Superman was gifted his powers, but not many people think about whether it was truly a gift when he was younger. I mean, this is a child who probably thought he was a normal kid and then BAM, he suddenly gets powers that not only put him in danger but his family and friends. Therefore, he needed to learn to control his powers. Maybe he learned fine control through playing instruments like the guitar since he obviously couldn't play sports with others to train.

Suddenly, it's not about training to get your skills like Goku or Batman but more about training to control your powers which is a skill in itself. Suddenly the audience has no choice but to sympathize and empathize with the character. It would be like being the smart guy in the room, but not wanting to put yourself in the spotlight so you stay quiet.

For example, I was watching the Naruto anime the other day, and I saw an episode where the second Hokage, Tobirama used his finger on the ground to observe how many enemies were around his team that he couldn't see. And I kept thinking to myself, why can't Superman do that? Scratch that, shouldn't Superman be able to do that? I mean this is a guy who grew up on a farm. I'm sure there were times when there were farm animals missing and if he can train himself to feel people, then he should be able to train himself to feel vibrations in the earth to locate things. Like I wish some writer could foreshadow this and then use that in a conflict where Lex Luthor uses lead to shield his building from Superman's x-ray vision but Superman is able to estimate to some limit how many people are in the building. Then it wouldn't feel like an asspull because it was already foreshadowed.

Like be creative with Superman.

Let's say there is a hostage situation and for some reason Superman needs to calm down the threat to deescalate a situation, show him using his super hearing to observe the attacker's heartbeat so he can have a sense of what he/she might do. Are they getting more agitated and therefore trigger-happy. I imagine so in Superman's presence. Show him subtly using his cold breath to make the place colder as people generally become more idle when the ambient temperature lowers. Show that he can strategize using his intellect and not just his fists when solving a problem but limit them in a way that there is a risk that they might not be useful in every situation. For example, he has used his x-ray vision enough to generally understand the weak points of objects. Suddenly he can descalate a situation quickly by using pressure points on humans or machines. But that may not work on aliens or otherwordly machines.

Given the previous example, someone like a seasoned combatant might not waver as easily so he has to use some other method like words to stall or arrest a problem. Words can be powerful and Clark Kent should be a master at it. For god's sake, he is a topnotch reporter/journalist/writer, that's how they do their job in order to investigate things. He should be able to disarm you in conversation as much as with his fists but writers rarely show that. Perhaps he regularly uses his super hearing while interrogating someone in a noncombat situation. He either calms or agitates them enough to get favorable results. Now that I think about it, he should be a master interrogator---he has words, super hearing, super smell, telescopic vision and x-ray vision. How is he not??

Really, it's all about being consistent with his powers; having constraints; and expanding on the ones he already has without adding to them. If you do this, the audience might still think he is overpowered but they would understand why it's not such a good thing and relate to that!

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Whew, I know that was a lot. It may seem like a rant but it's been getting annoying how authors regularly drop the ball with Superman stories for some time now in my opinion. I'm not afraid to admit that Superman stories have been getting boring as of late not because of the character but because authors aren't willing to think beyond the box with his stories and keep using the same plots just illustrated differently. I love the character enough to say that. There are so many story beats I feel the Superman mythos hasn't explored. I know its somewhat presumptuous to be speak like this without being a writer myself, but c'mon being a nonwriter I know it can be better.

This is just talking from the context of his powers. I plan to write another blog concerning his personality traits that I feel could be written better (or expanded on) for the modern audience without removing the essential and fundamental aspects of what makes Superman super---that he is a good man willing to make the universe a better place with or without his powers.

Thanks for reading this if you did. I don't expext any official writers to read this but I guess I just needed an outlet to release my frustrations with the Superman mythos currently. If they do, I hope they can gain some insight into how Superman might be written better from the opinion of a Superman fan reader.

Let me know what you think in the comments below and be gentle with me (not really) lol. I do read a lot of blogs here but it truly is my first time writing here. Cheers!!