Superman/Headscratchers: Difference between revisions

*** Actually they have more to lose by using guns. Discharging a firearm during a felony automatically gets you bonus jail time. Quite a lot of it, actually; as in 25-to-life instead of 5-to-10. It doesn't matter if the person you're shooting at is bulletproof. Sure, the mass murderer who's going to get the chair anyway might as well try it, but your average bank robber would be better of surrendering. Or, you know, moving to a new city.

**** And how many armed and dangerous criminals hold back from shooting at the cops because firing a gun would mean extra time behind bars? If the crooks are already committing armed robbery, it's a pretty safe bet that discharging a firearm is an acceptable course of action in their minds.

*** Not necessarily. The ''threat'' of the gun is why most criminals bring it, not that they actually think they're going to ''use'' it.

**** And yet people, especially cops, ''do'' get shot by criminals every day. Only the most suicidally reckless person would ever act on the assumption that a criminal with a gun drawn on him is bluffing, especially in a comic-book setting where mooks firing guns at cops is part and parcel of any crime.

** Everyone may have heard that bullets can't hurt Superman, but what exactly does "can't hurt" mean? A superhero who was merely invulnerable, not impervious, might be driven back or slammed around by bullets even if he isn't wounded by them. Not that the criminals are thinking it through that much, but if that's what they pictured when they heard the story ...

*** Because trying to punch him would be an even worse idea.

** As put in Lorne Michael's (really pretty awful) 1988 TV special celebrating Superman's 50th birthday, "There's just something about that "S"...you just want to shoot it..."

** Maybe they're just checking to make sure he's really Superman and not just another, weaker DCU flyer in disguise.

*** Especially if killing Batman would ''[[The Only One Allowed to Defeat You|piss off]]'' the Joker....

** Villains and random thugs rarely think that far ahead. All they care about is that right now some large man in colored underwear is standing between them and what they want, and they can't allow that now can they? If they gave a damn about the greater good, they probably wouldn't be involved in villainy in the first place.

** From an economic standpoint, there's probably more money in Metropolis banks due to both the presence of Lexcorp and of the world's greatest hero. As such, some enterprising criminals are willing to take the (high) risk of being stopped by Superman on the off chance he might be somewhere else doing League business, in which case they make off like ''kings''.

*** In JLA/Avengers a Genre Savvy criminal named Loophole actually takes advantage of a Justice League emergency to knock over a few Metropolis banks, knowing Superman will be occupied for the time being. A good plan, and it would have worked if the Avengers didn't happen to coincidentally pop out of a boom tube right next to them...

*** If I recall correctly, most of the efforts to create Superboy were secretly spearheaded by Dabney Donovan (the mad genius who cloned Luthor's new body once he developed cancer by Kryptonite poisoning). Donovan was basically the Mister Sinister of the DCU; seriously, half the Cadmus freaks are Donovan's creations. If anyone could figure out how to kludge together a human-Kryptonian hybrid, it'd be him. Also, Luthor had his agents secretly substitute his DNA for that of Project Director Westfield, who was intended to have been the human "parent."

* Where do all these villains keep getting [[Kryptonite Is Everywhere|Kryptonite]]? It's a chunk of a planet that exploded on the other side of the galaxy more than three decades ago. Even if a good sized piece of Krypton followed Kal-el's pod, it should not be so easy to find or cheap enough to afford. Is Lex Luthor manufacturing and passing out the stuff for free just to screw with Supes or something?

** See above--Luthor still hasn't managed to synthesize Kryptonite, but early in Post-Crisis continuity, he tried to collect every piece on Earth that he could find once he discovered its effects on Superman. Post-Crisis, most appearances of (green) Kryptonite existed either as Metallo's power source (which Luthor later stole and fashioned into the original Kryptonite ring) and Bloodsport's bullets (supplied by Luthor).

** My own fan theory is this: Kryptonite is a substance. It's stuff, it gets formed by natural processes, so any place where those natural processes exist should produce Kryptonite. It's like helium in real life--helium is formed in the sun, was first discovered in the sun, and it was even named after the sun. Does that mean that the sun is the only place where it comes from? Of course not. Besides, every so often someone makes artificial Kryptonite. If that's possible, it should exist in nature too.

***** Human eyes change their focus using little muscles that change the shape of the lens. If Superman's eyes work the same way, no problem -- the lenses are super-tough, but the muscles are correspondingly super-strong.

**** If Superman's skin can function perfectly as well as skin despite being rigid enough to stop nukes, then why are we worried about his eyeballs?

** It's not Superman's skin. His invulnerability comes from an extremely thin but nigh-unbreakable forcefeld he projects just over his skin. It wasn't bouncing off the actual eye, just the field around it. Yes, that's the in-canon explanation for his invulnerability.

*** Not anymore. The current canonical explanation is that he's just that tough. Not to mention that the whole electrochemical field was never really an explanation of his invulnerability, but of why his supersuit doesn't get destroyed. In Byrne's day, his uniform was Earth-made, not kryptonian. That's why you often saw him with his uniform intact but his cape ripped to tears - his field protected the uniform because it was skin-tight, the same didn't happen to the cape.

** Okay, those are some good attempts at explanations, but they don't explain why someone like Lois or Jimmy would ever be fooled. If you're close to either Superman or Clark and then you see the other, you'd have to have some seriously-impaired skills of observation to not tell they are the same person. Sure, Clark can slouch, wear his hair differently, and wear glasses, but that doesn't change the structure of his face or the shape of his eyes or the general tone of his voice. I think someone who was supposedly a trained investigative reporter like Lois would have figured it out immediately, especially with all the times Clark is present and Superman isn't and vice versa.

*** This troper has a personal theory that some people do notice, in the same way you notice someone resembles a how a friend resembles a celebrity. But with all them Superman robots flying around, and with Clark going out of his way to act differently, it might just make them see the physical resemblance as just that: a physical resemblance. As for Lois, Jimmy and everybody else......[[Too Dumb to Live|maybe they're just stupid.]]

** Seriously, just watch the first Superman film, then come back, look me in the eye and tell me that Christopher Reeve as Clark Kent and Christopher Reeve as Superman look the same. Facial features matter some in recognition and they, of course, are the same. Posture, attitude, demeanor, clothes and voice also matter, and they are completely different. At best, someone might think "Hey, Clark looks kinda like Superman", but since Clark and Superman are, and act, so fundamentally different, there is no way someone is even going to consider that they might be the same person.

*** I'm pretty sure everyone watching the movie says, "Hey, that's the same person." If the audience isn't fooled, even a little bit, how can someone standing two feet away be fooled? My suspension of disbelief can only go so far.

*** He doesn't even need to be born there, just ''found'' there. US Code, Title 8, Chapter 12, Part 1-1401: "The following shall be nationals and citizens of the United States at birth: [...] (f) a person of unknown parentage found in the United States while under the age of five years, until shown, prior to his attaining the age of twenty-one years, not to have been born in the United States." Since Kal-El was a foundling infant discovered on US soil, of unknown parents, and nobody ever challenged his legal status (with proof of his extraterrestrial birth) before he turned 21, he is by law a natural-born US citizen.

*** For that matter, the laws regarding maritime distress state that an unknown infant found adrift on a boat within US territorial waters, if their place of birth is not positively known to have been outside US territorial waters at the time of their discovery, is a US citizen.

*** From 1948 to the End of the Silver Age the anonymous motorist was replaced by the Kents discovering the child, reporting to the proper authorities the finding of one foundling, male, and a desire to adopt said foundling. Different versions of that part of the origin exist, in the original Kal-El survived the crash, while the rocket was totally destroyed, later on the rocket survived and so on, but Clark Kent became that way a citizen of the United States of America. He had as Superman for part of the Pre-Crisis Age honorary citizenship of all members of the United Nations.

** And of course, unless Superman intends to run for President (at which point the 'natural born' distinction becomes relevant), the point is entirely moot. Regardless of prior status the US government can turn Superman into a US citizen any time they feel like by simply handing him some naturalization papers, and unless they are all denser than neutronium that is the first thing they'd do if 'Superman is not a US citizen' somehow ever became true. When the world's most powerful being moves into your country and says "I like it here; I think I'll stick around and help you guys out, and save you from disasters, and defeat any supervillains that come at you, and on top of that do it all for free", the ''only'' sane response is for the government to go "We ''like'' this plan! This is a great plan! Stick around all you want!"

** 300 megatons is nothing to sneer at, but there've been plenty of more powerful explosions in history. Mt. St. Helens was a bigger blast, for example.

** The real problem with this plan is that, even assuming he had managed to destroy California without irradiating the new coastline, what makes him think he's going to profit from it? Has Luthor never heard of Emminent Domain? Even though the Constitution requires "*just compensation" for property, Luthor's already a known criminal - Otis was being tailed to the lair so police could catch Luthor before Superman is even on the scene. There's no way he's going to keep the new coastline if Phase 1 of his plan worked.

* How did Lois live to adulthood without the aid of Superman to save her from her gross disregard for personal safety? In the movie, she would have been dead three times in the few short weeks after she met Superman, so how did she manage before? Superman saves her from being shot by a mugger. Her purse was obviously more valuable to her than her life (and Clark's). Next, she falls from a helicopter. Finally, Superman turns time back to save her, which leads to my next gripe...

** In the comics, at least, its said that she lets herself get into so many insanely dangerous and fatal situations ''because'' Superman is around to save her. Before she met Mr. Perfect Fallback Plan, she did have survival instincts, its just that she's smart enough to know that with Big Blue around, ''she doesn't need them''.

** It's not clear how long it's been since I, but II could still have Luthor in the midst of his criminal trial. This makes particularly good sense after [[Superman Returns]], where we learn that Luthor is free because, without Superman's testimony, he was acquitted of his crimes. So in II, Lex is probably just in prison while the government tackles the insanely difficult problem of building a case against a guy whose crime was at least partially undone by time travel.

*** As mentioned on [[Hollywood Law]], one of the problems with ''Returns'' is that an appeals court doesn't ''take'' eyewitness testimony -- all it does is review the original trial record. So long as Superman testified at Lex's trial (which he did), his not being there for the appeals hearing would mean nothing.

* I know this is a minor gripe, the kind of thing you put in a Justbugsme page but when other Kryptonians show up on Earth why are they instantly a threat to Superman in physical combat? Here's the thing they get equal strength, sure I get that. But they don't get equal experience and skills, or rather they shouldn't. Zod's a good example of someone who should have gotten curb stomped because of his military experience. The vast majority of martial arts in the real world and presumably on Krypton where they were more or less ordinary humans is based on the idea of gravity and "solid" opponents. Learning a punching combination loses a lot of it's usefulness when your second punch launches the guy three hundred feet and you gotta catch up. Likewise a wrist lock doesn't work if you can fly. Superman (and other similiarly powerful charachters) should be destroying these guys in curbv stomp battles until they at least acclimate to the difference for the same reason why a martial artist is more than capabable of beating opponents physically on par or even superior to them. I suspect that boxing would be a vastly different sport if everybody could shoot lasers from their eyes move close to the speed of light and use buses as weapons. So different in fact that any experience you had going in would work against you for all the reasons just listed.

** The fact that he's trying to avoid collateral damage and civilian casualties likely limits what he can do. In a fair fight, he probably could wipe the floor with other Kryptonians but in a typical, mid-Metropolis super-fight, they can distract him by flinging a bus full of orphans at a puppy dog factory or lasering away the support cables on a nearby bridge. Also, they're usually trying to kill him, using the full extent of their powers to do so, whereas Clark will have to pull some punches.

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