Superman/Headscratchers: Difference between revisions

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******* THIS IS COMIC BOOK WORLD. Nowhere have they ever said that the DC universe felony laws actually work that way (clearly their legal system is very different than ours, given, for example, how mind-boggingly easy the insanity defense works on a jury as compared to its miniscule success rate in the real world). The very fact that they ''do'' try to shoot Superman with nobody making any statement about how they're making it worse for themselves is pretty good evidence that it doesn't worth that way. At the very least, it is ''proof positive'' that in each particular crook's ''mind'', he thinks the trade-off is worth it. Maybe he thinks shooting will make it easier to flee while Superman's distracted. Maybe he thinks he has nothing to lose because he's not aware that "discharing a firearm" would make things any worse. Maybe Metropolis has a three-strikes law, he's on the third strike and he's legally screwed no matter what if he gets caught. Maybe he's just a desperate loser with a lifetime of making bad decisions who's making one more because he doesn't think he's got anything to lose. No matter what reason you want to believe, it's very obvious the crooks generally think it's worth it because otherwise they ''would not be shooting at him''. The very fact that the crook ''is'' shooting invalidates all your hypothetical reasons for why he shouldn't, just by the plain and simple fact that he's actually doing it. You are literally arguing against the likelihood of something that happens on a regular basis in the story.

*** For the most part the status quo tends to be [[Like Reality Unless Noted]], so you'd need a closer look at the DCU's legal system before we can make those kinds of assumptions. And all of those "maybes" are, indeed valid points, and would indeed be good motivation to shoot at Superman. You should've just said those to begin with and we could've avoided this wall of text. And no, them shooting Superman doesn't at all invalidate my, or the other tropers' points for why it's a bad idea, because the whole point was to ask why they would do those ''despite'' those factors. Nobody is arguing that it doesn't happen, they were asking ''for what reason'' it happens in story--so "IT'S A COMIC BOOK!" is not a suitable response--given the obvious and numerous reasons ''not to'' do it. That's the whole point of Headscratchers, to ask ''why'' things happen in fiction despite readily apparent reasons they should not.

**** I didn't say all that to begin with because I thought I was just making an idle comment, not launching the opening salvo in a battle over said comment. This whole thing began with: "On the one hand, they don't have much to lose. They're as good as caught anyway, and they know Superman won't really hurt them, so hey, try shooting him and see if you get lucky." It was just an offhand opening to the question of "why don't they run from Superman" -- I wasn't intending to throw down a gauntlet over the legality of shooting at Superman. Anyway, "it's comic-book world" isn't so much "don't question it" as it's shorthand for "barring a deconstruction story, petty crooks in comic books are typically violent, impulsive [[Stupid Evil]] / [[~~Always Chaotic~~ Evil]] mooks who'd put an orc to shame." While there admittedly are sound reasons for not shooting at Superman, I wouldn't expect the typical crooks in a Batman/Superman story to be savvy enough to think of them. Come to think of it, maybe the smart ones just surrender immediately, but the reader hardly ever gets to see them because there's no story to tell in those cases.

**** I didn't say all that to begin with because I thought I was just making an idle comment, not launching the opening salvo in a battle over said comment. This whole thing began with: "On the one hand, they don't have much to lose. They're as good as caught anyway, and they know Superman won't really hurt them, so hey, try shooting him and see if you get lucky." It was just an offhand opening to the question of "why don't they run from Superman" -- I wasn't intending to throw down a gauntlet over the legality of shooting at Superman. Anyway, "it's comic-book world" isn't so much "don't question it" as it's shorthand for "barring a deconstruction story, petty crooks in comic books are typically violent, impulsive [[Stupid Evil]] / [[Exclusively Evil]] mooks who'd put an orc to shame." While there admittedly are sound reasons for not shooting at Superman, I wouldn't expect the typical crooks in a Batman/Superman story to be savvy enough to think of them. Come to think of it, maybe the smart ones just surrender immediately, but the reader hardly ever gets to see them because there's no story to tell in those cases.

*** I added a brief counterpoint to your argument, not the attack on your rights that you seem to have interpreted. It's a ''discussion''. If I see an answer I think is inaccurate or wrong in some way, I'm going to say something about it, simple as that--just because it's "an answer" doesn't mean it's automatically right, or that there aren't counterpoints to that answer. There was no intention to "tear down" anything, or have a "battle"--I made a small contribution to the discussion, and ''left''. Hell, I wouldn't have come back to this discussion right now if you hadn't PM'd me about this perceived slight.

** Force of habit? When you're an armed criminal, a good way of ensuring compliance from the people around you is to point a gun at them; unarmed civilians will do anything you tell them to, and even armed members of the police may slow down what they're doing in order to prevent innocent casualties. It's just an automatic instinct that kicks in, even though it's completely useless when tried with Superman.

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*** Eh, [[This Troper]] disagrees, but [[Your Mileage May Vary]].

**** When you fly ''faster than light'', you are not superstrong and fast, nor you are a God. You are just ''laughing in the face of physics''.

***** Well, seeing that the Silver Age superman

* Wonder how Superman got {{spoiler|circumcised}} if he's a man of steel.

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** 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...

* You know, I actually read a Marvel anthology a few years back where the Circus of Crime finally got the message. It opens with the Ringmaster reflecting that Daredevil never gets to Peoria, and that the Hulk, for all of his tendency to wander, has never been sighted in Poughkeepsie. There's much less money to be had, but the odds of getting arrested are slimmer.

** Well, while Batman has to be on the other side of the city, Superman often has to be on the other side of the planet fighting a giant gorilla with kryptonite vision or on the other side of the galaxy dealing with cosmic villains. He doesn't have time to personally prevent every single robbery.

** Didn't the Ringmaster then promptly get his butt handed to him by ''Howard the Duck?''

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*** In most continuities, Jor-El is the one who discovered the yellow-sun effect while investigating options for saving his family.

* Superman doesn't age at the normal rate, correct? So doesn't that mean he'll eventually have to give up being Clark or reveal his secret identity?

** Depends on the continuity. It's happened in a few stories.

** Due to the [[Comic Book Time|rolling timeline]] it's unlikely to ever come into play in canon.

* How does Superman cut his hair? I know we've seen him shave his beard with his heat ray vision, but how does he actually style the hair on top of his head if scissors couldn't cut it?

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** Superman doesn't keep a secret identity to protect his loved ones, he keeps a secret identity because he doesn't want to be Superman 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. He was raised up as a human and he wants to keep his human lifestyle, and to do that he needs a human identity.

*** Exactly. But the secret-identity does still keep his loved-one's (relatively) safe. If people knew Superman was Clark Kent, and they made the connections to Lois and Jimmy, they'd be in danger [[Up to Eleven|even more than usual]].

* Connor Kent bugs me. Combined clone of Superman and Lex Luthor, right? Created by Lexcorp? Doesn't this mean that Lex has Superman's DNA on file? Then why the heck doesn't he try and use that to discover Superman's secret identity?

** He was made by Cadmus Labs, who were using Lex Luthor's DNA. Presumably Cadmus is good enough to keep their DNA files out of Luthor's hands, although not good enough to stay out of his machinations entirely.

** One, Cadmus security is a running joke, and two, Lex Luthor was at one point President of the United States, and Cadmus is a US government agency.

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** 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.

*** Not exactly. Post-Crisis, green Kryptonite can only be formed by subjecting fragments of Krypton to some sort of nuclear bombardment and fusing it into a new element. At least in the 90s, green Kryptonite just didn't make nearly as many appearances as people assume it does.

*** A couple of explanations have been given, in different eras. Under John Byrne, a hidden doomsday weapon created by the Kryptonian terrorist group Black Zero was slowly converting the planet into Kryptonite and ultimately caused Krypton to explode. A Silver Age explanation had different chunks of Krypton pass through various radiation belts/energy clouds, which transformed them into the various types of Kryptonite.

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** Krypton being much more massive than Earth was mainly just used pre-crises when there was less emphasis on the whole yellow sun radiation thing and more on Kryptonians just being much more evolved.

* Why did Jor-El send Kal-El to Earth,when the technologically more advanced and probably safer Rann was in the same region (distance about 4.3 LY form Earth).Also:Why weren't Jor-El and Lara in Argo with Zor and Allura when Krypton blew?

** For the first, remember that Krypton hadn't had much of a space program for millenia; he had no idea where inhabited planets were, and its rather impressive that he happened to find one, period, by sheer luck-its unreasonable to expect him to find ''every'' inhabited planet in 2814 with so little manpower and such little time. As for why they were where they were... ''they saw the End coming''. They wanted to spend their last moments on Krypton with family,

*** Neither of those answers are reasonable.Krypton had an [[Inter Galactic]] Empire within living memory,and probably within Jor-El's lifetime (ended by the peace party winning the elections),and Earth and Rann at the time were within seconds or minutes of each other at the speeds needed to have an intergalactic empire.And a desire to be with family would be a reason for Jor-El to be in Argo,not out of it.

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** Depending on which version of Superman it is, it'd be either. Currently, I'd say Clark Kent.

** Since Death Notes specifically affect ''humans'', it would not affect him.

*** Was it ever even tried on something mortal besides humans? I think Superman is close enough, in which case it would totally work. Superman isn't any more immune to magic than anyone else, after all.

* Superman gets his powers from yellow sunlight. On Krypton he's just like any other human. Does this mean that if we travel to say, Antares, we can get superpowers?

** No. Kryptonians get powers from yellow suns because their own red sun was so cold that they needed to store heat in their cells. When they come to Earth, they get powers because the much hotter sun supercharges them.

* So, in quite a few of the old Silver Age comics, Superman goes to talk to the citizens of the bottled city of Kandor, apologizing for not being able to return them to their former size. However, he enters using a shrink ray, and leaves using a ''ray specifically designed to make things that have been shrunken down larger''. Does he not see how he could use that on them, or is there something I'm missing?

** Is it not possible that Superman's growth ray only works on things shrunk by HIS shrink ray?

* If someone wanted to use [[I Know Your True Name|True Name Magic]] on Superman, would they need to use Kal-El (his birth name, but not one he uses often IIRC), Clark Kent (his adopted name), or Superman?

** Silver Banshee is this Irish ghost chick who has the power to kill you if knows your real name and screams at you. She needed to find out Superman's real birth name to be able to wipe him out.

* Is there an in-universe explanation to Superman's costume? Doesn't he find it embarrassing to wear his underwear over his pants?

** The suit is mostly symbolic, intended to convey a sense of hope or comfort. Bright primary colors, so you can see him coming a mile away and dont feel threatened by his presence, no mask to convey a sense of trust, cape to convey authority and dignity, etc... The shorts are a result of the times, I believe. From what I understand, they were created so that characters like Superman and Batman would look less naked when printed in black and white. They became part of the iconography and stuck.

** Actually, they're taken from old school circus strongman outfits, which were the original inspiration for the Superman costume. Then it just sorta stuck as a 'superhero' thing once circus strongmen became a [[Forgotten Trope]].

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== Film ==

* Lex Luthor. The greatest criminal mastermind on earth. And after getting out of prision, his great comeback plan is... boning an old, sick woman? he really couldn't find a more dignified, less pathetic way to get back in bussiness? REALLY?

** The idea of it may seem pathetic, but it's funny for one good reason: No matter how superior he thinks he is, he will sink to any depth necessary to get what he wants. Besides, that is a hell of a yacht.

* Superman Returns picks up from Superman II, and Jason is the son of Clark Kent. I use that name intentionally because Kal-El was de-Kryptonized so that he could ethically marry Lois and live as a human. Boy does their de-Kryptonization suck! In Superman Returns, Jason (late in the game) starts to exhibit superhuman powers. You'd think they would have bothered to do something about possible offspring; otherwise, what's the point of de-Kryponization in the first place?

** He wasn't de-Kryptonized. He was bathed in red sunlight, which took away his powers. Later on, he's bathed in the energy of yellow sunlight, which recharges his powers. He was still Kryptonian throughout the whole thing. There was no changes made to his physiology of DNA. Essentially, he had the batteries pulled out of his powers.

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** The whole thing was summerized fairly well [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yavK0mnE3wI here]. Kryptonite, red sunlight, and magic are no match for Superman's [[Plot Induced Stupidity|true weakness]].

** Superman's speed is never consistently shown, but then again, neither are any of his other powers. We sometimes see him appear to strain to lift a bus, but he can lift California from sinking into the ocean or push a Kryptonite continent into space. I think all of his powers can be summed as, "Strong as the plot demands." That said, here's a possible [[Fan Wank]] explanation for the time travel: Superman didn't make the earth spin backwards - he himself went back in time, and the image of the Earth spinning backwards is merely how Superman would have perceived it. How'd he do this? By flying faster than the speed of light. The Earth's about 25,000 miles around, and Superman's flight in [[The Movie]] is a good 2 or 3 diameters larger than earth, meaninging that he was flying in loops anywhere between 50,000 to 100,000 miles - in less than a second. The speed of light is 186,000 miles per second. At the speed at which he's depicted flying, Superman is flying much faster than light, and given the dubbing from Jor-el about relativity, we can probably assume that Supes was just traveling back in time, and seeing events play out in reverse.

** Said [[Fan Wank]] doesn't hold up based on what's present in the actual scene, however. People often overlook that after Superman reveres time / the rotation of the Earth, he then flies in the opposite direction to return the planet to its proper rotation again. If all he was doing was flying back in time at a speed faster than light, and the Earth's reverse-rotation was merely a visual metaphor, then he wouldn't need to fly in the opposite direction once he had already made it back to the point where he could save Lois. He'd just need to stop flying, go down and save her.

** One possible explanation for the speed question: Superman is trying to save Lois from death. It's one thing to try to save nameless thousands from doom, but it's another thing to save the one person you love the most. He was just trying harder to go faster, pushed along by his emotions. And it's a good thing he did try traveling in time; in the state he was in, he could've also flown to Metropolis and ripped Luthor apart one atom at a time.

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** Zod a bad leader? This surprises you why, exactly?

** Well, the Kryptonians judged him and his henchmen to be ''so'' dangerous that only exile to the Phantom Zone would be suitable punishment. ''These'' are the idiots that posed a danger to the very fabric of Kryptonian society? Come on.

*** Same group of super-advanced aliens that died because of an easily predicted earthquake on one planet.

**** Their planet ''exploded''. Earthquakes were a mere sideeffect.

*** More to the point, Zod and his cronies ''caused'' the explosion. ''That'' is why they were sentenced to the Phantom Zone.

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* Considering how happy Sir Richard Branson was to let the producers paint the Virgin logo on the shuttle in the rescue scene of Superman Returns and get a cameo, am I the only one who thinks they really screwed him over? The system isn't anything like what Virgin Galactic's actually going to do, the flight is stated as being controlled from Cape Canaveral and never indicated to be private spaceflight at all, if Superman hadn't showed up, it would have ended in a horrible disaster, and you can't even see the logo without freezing the frames!

** That poor, abused billionaire. How awful it must be for him to have such anguish heaped upon him.

*** I see his point. Being a dick to a rich person doesn't change the matter of fact of said dickery.

* Here's a real head-scratcher. Point 1: We know that at least ''some'' Kryptonians are aware of the fact that yellow sunlight gives them fantastic super powers. Point 2: We know there are ways of simulating yellow sunlight (Supergirl's rocket was specially designed to emit solar radiation so she'd be fully-powered when she made it to Earth, Superboy-Prime built himself a suit that stores solar radiation and channels it into his body, etc.). So...''why didn't the people of Krypton take advantage of this?'' Why doesn't every Kryptonian household come pre-installed with some kind of solar radiation emitter? Why doesn't every citizen of Krypton walk around in a solar suit? The things should be as common as coffee machines.

** An entire civilization where absolutely anyone can obliterate a continent with a single punch? That's going to be easy to police/govern. It's clear that access to yellow-solar radition and the means to generate it would be strictly limited, and probably banned outright for the civillain population. Granted, that doesn't explain why no one thought to apply it to military or emergency services (and of course criminal) applications, but I think "common as coffee machines" is a bit unlikely. It's for the same reasons (aside from logistical/economic) that everyone in the Western world doesn't have their own nuclear reactor for their home- it's too much power to trust with just anyone.

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'''Alice''': No! It's ''Superman''! }}

*** This was how it was done in ''[[Superman Returns]]'', by Jimmy, Perry and Lois.

** They see something they can't identify flying around and are trying to figure out what it is.

* Okay, so why hasn't anyone mentioned the fact that after so many encounters with Superman and Clark Kent, no one ever says, "Hey, those two guys look alike. I think they're the same person."?

** We've gone over this. A lot and often. No, you're not the first person to cleverly think of this. Short answer: There's probably about a dozen or so people, ''tops'' who know Clark Kent personally in Metropolis. Of those people, three or four probably have semi-regular contact with Supes. Longer answer: Superman deliberately cultivates the persona of Clark Kent as a major dork specifically to throw out the idea that he might be Superman. Just watch Brandon Routh as Kent, and your first overriding impression will be, "Dear gods, he's a friggin' ''dork''." Superman, by contrast, is the physical ideal of Man. Basically...could you see [[Saved by the Bell|Screech]] as Superman? There have been incidents in the comic books where someone has thought about it. Hell, once, Luthor hired a private investigator who ''did'' conclude that Superman was Clark Kent. Luthor laughed it off because the idea was simply ridiculous that Superman, a [[Physical God]], would go around posing as that dork Kent. There's also the subtler implication that, as a man who doesn't wear a mask, Superman doesn't ''have'' a secret identity to hide, so some people won't even think about it.

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*** [http://superdickery.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&catid=28:superdickery&id=66:lana-and-lois-owned&Itemid=54 "I'll tell you why I'll NEVER marry YOU, Lana, or YOU, Lois! Who wants a wife so STUPID she doesn't realize I'M SUPERMAN when I take off my Clark Kent glasses?"]

** 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.

*** That's because you're ''watching the movie''. You know, the movie that you heard about before ever seeing it as featuring Christopher Reeve as Clark Kent/Superman, and the franchise for which you ''already know the secret identity''. They're not trying to "fool" the audience because the cat's been out of the bag since 1939. You already know the secret. '''The people in Clark Kent's world do not'''. They have little reason to suspect that there's ''any'' connection to the [[Physical God]] Superman and the clumsy, whimpy, pathetic country bumpkin Clark Kent.

** All-Star Superman does something similar: Clark Kent is clearly the same size of Superman, and has the same color hair, but that's where the resemblance ends. Clark is noticeably pudgier and his face is less chiseled. He slouches. He stutters and trips over his own two feet. And as Lex points out, Clark may look similar to Superman, but lots of people purposely emulate Superman, like cutting their eyebrows in the "Superman Swoosh."

** Most people, upon seeing someone who looked like, say, Brad Pitt, dressed in a t-shirt and bermuda shorts with a bad haircut, at a hot dog stand in Peoria, Illinois, aren't going to immediately assume "Hey, that's Brad Pitt! Incognito!" They're going to assume it's some dork who looks like Brad Pitt. Humans are creatures of expectations.

** Jim Carrey rather famous pulled off a bit of [[Clark Kenting]] at an awards show, where he showed up dressed (and acting)like a hippie caricature with waist-length hair and full beard. Until he went up on stage to accept his award, no one, not even the people sitting next to him in the audience, knew he was there. If he can do it, so can Superman.

** Except that every time I see Clark Kent or Superman, I say, "Yep, that's him." I can't pretend that I don't recognize him. The same goes for Wonder Woman, especially in the 1970s TV series. There are times when she's standing in a crowd, runs off, changes into Wonder Woman, comes back, and no one even suspects it's her. I just think there's a different level of suspension of disbelief when something is in a comic book and when something is on a TV or movie screen.

*** Again, you already know the secret--that renders your point of view on whether or not you can "see through it" invalid. The fact you're seeing the Wonder Woman TV series means you know and ''expect'' that Diana Prince is Wonder Woman, and you ''know'' the camera wouldn't be on Diana Prince at all if she weren't Wonder Woman. It's like how a joke isn't funny when you already heard it once. You really can't judge how well Lois Lane should recognize Clark as Superman based on your own point of view, because you already know the secret, and that's going to skew your perceptions dramatically. As the previous troper pointed out, people have pulled this in real life, just by not being expected. Just because you, the reader/viewer, who A. knows the secret already and B. know that the top-name actor is playing the role(s) of Superman and Clark Kent, can tell who he is, doesn't mean someone in the verse should.

*** Although I still can't agree, I will say that you've put forth some good arguments and presented as good examples as I've ever heard.

** I've thought about this a lot, and these are the several reasons that I've come up with: 1. People noticing that Clark Kent looks a bit like Superman will assume that this is exactly how things are; Clark Kent is a person who resembles Superman and that's all there is to it. 2. The fact that he could spend his time working as a reporter out looking for crime and stopping it will make people think "Why would Superman be sitting in an office working when he could be out saving lives?" This is my best argument; nobody who knew what a caring and self-sacrificing person Superman is could possibly believe he'd spend a single second writing newspaper articles if he could have been using that second saving an innocent child. 3. There are other people whose facial features resemble Superman's. There's no reason at all to pick Clark Kent as the guy to compare to Superman; surely there are other men who look a bit like the Man of Steel. 4. With Clark Kent's different way of speaking, behaviour, and hairstyle (plus the specs), the difference just isn't noticeable unless you've spent time with both Clark Kent and Superman for a long time. You'll just assume that Kent and Supes share certain charasteristics, but not more since you don't ''know'' that there is anything to look for. 5. I think there has been stories where [[Identity Impersonator|Clark Kent has been seen together with Superman]] through some trick or other. 6. Can't mention this enough: One doesn't notice that kind of thing unless one's looking for it! If you're at a party and you've been told that one of the guests is Al Pacino in disguise, you'll find him after a while. But if you haven't been told, you'll probably just miss it. 7. If people notice he looks ''exactly'' like Superman, they won't think "Wow! It's Superman in disguise!" They'll think "Wow! A normal man who looks just like Superman!" The idea of a normal man being Superman is just too darn implausible unless they see some superpower-related activities.

** Beyond what's been said about people finding nothing exceptional about the similarity in appearances between celebrities and normal people, consider that no one even seems to know that Superman *has* a secret identity. Remember, Superman just appears one day and starts saving lives. His first public communication is an interview with Lois Lane in which he announces that he's from another planet. To almost everyone, there's no reason to suspect he's [[Clark Kenting]] because no one on the entire planet has done it before. Further, everyone knows that Superman has supervision, superhearing, and superspeed, so there's no reason for them to think that he needs or uses a human alias to find out when people need saving. Since Clark can dash off and become Superman instantly, it looks to normal people that Superman is simply always around, and probably wouldn't even have time for a secret identity.

** The pilot of Lois & Clark offers an amusing possibility that has the added value of explaining the point of his costume's most baffling aspect: he wears tights, so nobody ever looks at his face.

* In the first film, Jor-El's recording mentions, during Kal-El's space flight, Einstein's theory of relativity. By way of confirming this theory, he later states, in the Fortress of Solitude, that he has been dead for thousands of years. So...how did he know who Einstein was?

** [[Translation Convention]], and he was referring to a Kryptonian physicist?

*** The "recording" also acts more like a holographic AI in later movies. In Superman 3, the Jor-El recording steps out of his crystal to have a heart to heart with his son.

* Superman can time travel.He uses it to save,basically,one woman (and incidentally save millions of other people) on Earth. ''Why doesn't he use it to save Krypton?''

** What, exactly, could Superman do, once he got there, that his dad couldn't?

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**** I do believe you mean "Guy ''Claiming'' to be From The Future", since the lack of a future for Krypton and its destruction means he won't have all that much foreknowledge that couldn't be obtained by sufficiently advanced subterfuge by a native of the era.

**** Yeah, any attempt by Superman to try to convince the council that he's from the future is probably going to be answered with "wow Jor-El, we know you're really obsessed with your pet doom-and-gloom theory, but hiring this guy to pose as your time-traveling son from the future? That is just ''sad''."

***** The Silver Age comics used to be better about that. Superman could travel back in time, but once he got there, he couldn't interact with anything, being completely invisible and intangible. The few times he thought he did physically go back to Krypton, it turned out to be either a dream or an elaborate hoax.

* Ok, this is a bit silly on my part, and I'm sure you can you guess I just finished watching an episode of Robot Chicken, but while when Superman was first created, a random couple in Kansas could reasonably expect to claim they had a child, and set up paperwork for their son without anybody worrying. Especially if it was winter, and they were on a farm. Maybe they spent some time isolated on their farm in the snow, and then brought the boy to town after a few weeks. Not too impossible for the early 1900s, even up to the 1920s. But here's the problem, Superman is on a sliding scale, with his arrival continuously pushed forward to closer to modern times. At this point, you wonder about his records. I suppose if he didn't get his invulnerability till later he could at least get his shots, but still, I suppose that's why Smallville had Kal-el arrive during a meteor shower, so they could handwave past it by having everybody believe that his parents were just unlucky blokes passing through who got blown up. The same could be applied to all other versions of Superman if you wanted. And I believe that some DC comic declared Superman had honorary citizenship as an international gesture of support. However there's one slight issue, Clark Kent's never officially become a citizen. Would a lawful good type like him vote with his status being in doubt? So...

** In at least one version of the comic origin, he was technically a fetus while in-transit, and the spaceship doubled as an artificial womb, so from a medical standpoint, his exit from the spaceship counted as being "born", giving him American citizenship. I know that was the main story post-Crisis, and I think they've changed it since, but nevertheless.

** Yes he'd still vote. Being a "lawful good type" doesn't mean he has to strictly adhere to every letter of the law Or Else. He is not (repeat: '''Not''') a DnD style Paladin, or a DnD character at all. Ergo, '''''[[Character Alignment]] means exactly nothing'''''.

*** Character alignment is a reasonably useful shorthand for communicating the idea that Superman is committed to certain principles without having to go into details. For most people, I thought it would have some meaning. But if you found what I said confusing, or to have no meaning, well, it can be rephrased as "Would a person like Superman who is so openly committed to honesty and integrity be willing to vote when his status is so much in justifiable doubt?" He was adamant in refusing to state any position in the last comic I read about an election, perhaps it had a deeper reason. Like not actually voting because he didn't consider Clark Kent to be a lawful citizen.

*** It probably meant more that the publishers didn't want to risk offending part of their fanbase by having Superman, who generally serves as the paragon of all that is Right and Good pick a political party and thus imply that whoever he ''didn't'' pick was wrong. What irked me before is that I see people taking the DnD alignment as if they're actual constrictions that apply to the character in question. Useful shorthand? Yes. Rules a non-DnD character has to follow? Not at all. As for the US-citizen-or-not question? Whether or not he was technically born on US soil, he's spent his entirely life in the US. It takes 14 years (I believe) to qualify for citizenship, and if anyone's going to know enough to pass the citizenship exams, it's the big blue boyscout himself. Even if Clark won't take the exam, he clearly considers himself an American (truth, justice, the American way), and would likely think those qualifications were close enough.

**** Indeed, the superficial reason for him not taking a position was a refusal to influence the outcome at all. But there could be a deeper reason for that commitment. And sure, if Clark Kent were to fill out the appropriate paperwork, he could certainly become a bonafide American Citizen, heck I'm sure if he asked he could get Congress to declare him (as Clark Kent) a citizen. But he hasn't done that, so with his given commitments to principles of abiding by the law and general quality of integrity, he may feel it appropriate to avoid exercising certain prerogatives of that status. Besides voting, he'd probably avoid Jury Duty, though as a journalist he could probably expect to be excused anyway. I wonder if it's ever been a story though. As for use of alignment terms? No different than use of the term decimate.

**** I could see Clark refusing to let himself get too strongly into politics, though, for the same reason Batman won't let himself cross the line and kill criminals. Superman has the power to easily enforce his opinion onto the world. If he decides that any particular political cause is absolutely just and ''needs'' to happen, he can effortlessly turn it into an ultimatum. To hold onto his ideals of democracy and respecting the public will (even in cases where he totally disagrees with it, like President Luthor), he may have a self-imposed taboo on getting too strongly attached to either side of a political issue. Just like Bruce Wayne knows how easily he could become a [[Serial Killer Killer]] if he lets himself cross the line, Superman is aware of how easily his patriotism could lead to a [[Beware the Superman]] dystopia if he lets himself get too personally involved.

***** Yes, see [[Red Son]] for an example where Superman does take that role.

***** The mini-series published around the 2008 election, where all the superhuman community start announcing their political preferences and kind of acting like partisan dicks towards each other, follows the 'Superman should be above partisan politics' model, but has him add in a pointed fashion that in a society like America 'freedom of thought' means the right to ''not'' have to express your own political preferences just because everyone's loudly demanding and hectoring and bullying and cajoling you to do so. In short, Superman also seems to take the 'it's none of your damn business what I think about this if I don't want to tell you' approach as well.

** During the ''[[Millennium (Comic Book)|Millennium]]'' crossover, part of this plot hole was fixed: the Manhunters tried to capture his spaceship and created a blizzard to keep people from reaching the crash site, but the Kents found him anyway and ended up stuck in a blizzard for five months. It was plausible that Martha could have given birth during that time.

*** I thought I had seen that idea somewhere, thanks.

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** Don't question it. Just...don't. [[Austin Powers|You'll go cross-eyed]]. It doesn't make sense. To anybody. Even Richard Donner probably wakes up scratching his head thinking "That made no sense! WTF was I thinking?!"

*** How's this? As others have theorized, Superman didn't turn back time; the shot of the Earth turning backwards was his point of view as he ''himself'' went back. He went back well before the moment of Lois' death, then went forward to a more precise moment before. Then, all he has to do is get her out of the car, so she won't get swollowed up by the crevice, which he does. The aftershock occurs after he leaves her and Jimmy. As for not changing the rest, he's not dumb enough to try and alter history to such a major extent.

** To be fair, she falls out of a helicopter which has ''crashed into the side of a building and is dangling over the street through no fault of her own''. Hardly seems fair to berate her for her lack of survival instincts in that case.

* In Superman II, we find Lex Luthor in prison making license plates after the crime he attempted in Superman I. All well and good except for one little problem: '''HE THREATENED THE STATES OF CALIFORNIA AND NEW JERSEY WITH NUCLEAR WEAPONS!!!!''' At the risk of understating the matter, being threatened with nuclear annihilation isn't something people will easily forgive or forget, so I'm rather baffled that no one in either state was screaming at the feds to sit Lex down in Old Sparky and give him the juice.