Superman and the Politics of Hope
By Will Barber Taylor
Superman is sadly often viewed as a dull figure. He’s the big yellow cheese, the superhero that started the whole industry off but one who is too bland to bother being interested in. He lacks the broody or edgy nature of some superheroes and is too associated with a blind optimism that feels hollow and lacking in relevance to the modern world that we live in.
And yet this is, at its heart, a superficial analysis of the character. It is one born of the 90s “extreme” era of comics that for many truly kicked off with the Death of Superman himself — an event that was seen to signal the waning popularity of more “traditional” superheroes. Superman’s death was motivated by a decline in sales figures but to restrict the character to a mere caricature, a big dumb boy scout as Frank Miller often liked to portray him, does both his creators and the character himself a deep disservice.
From his very origins, Superman was anything but a non-political or dull figure. He was conceived specifically as a champion of the oppressed as the man who would stand up against bullies not because he was consumed with a lust for power but because he knew it was the right thing to do. Superman came from the mind of two American writers of Jewish descent who understood persecution both in the countries that their families came from and in their own country of birth. Superman was born into a world on the brink of world war and one that had suffered a catastrophic depression that most of Superman’s readers had experienced first-hand.
He was not, to those first readers, some bland none entity but rather an exciting crusader for justice — as the comics would regularly refer to him as — who invaded governor’s mansions to free innocent prisoners on death row; who kidnapped crooked arms dealers and forced them to repent of their ways; who trapped equally crooked mine owners down their own mines to force them to improve conditions for their workers.
He was an avenging angel in blue and red, not a lackey — a true social justice warrior as the excellent Youtuber Steve Shives puts it in his own reanalysis of Superman’s early adventures. In these stories, Superman is not some dispassionate outsider who feels he cannot intervene — he actively goes against the authorities in an effort to defeat corruption, fighting the army when they try to stop him pulling down a slum or wrecking seemingly every car in Metropolis to prove how dangerous driving can be. Clark is no shrinking violent in his work as a journalist either, having Superman be a crusader as both the man of steel and as the mild-mannered Clark Kent.
Superman was not some neutral figure against injustice — he was an active combatant against corrupt capitalist and war mongers determined to abuse and use the poor for their own ends. Just before the war started Superman even went as far as to kidnap both Stalin and Hitler and take them to a war crime tribunal in the pages of Look Magazine.
The popularity of Superman was built upon these types of stories; kids and adults alike enjoyed seeing Superman fighting for the public, trying to improve the world for them. It soon became apparent that Superman’s popularity was such that he could not be confined to one medium and with the launch of the Superman on the radio in 1940 proved to be a natural step for the character. Superman was after all larger than life and for most Americans during the 1940s the larger than life mediums were radio and film. Superman would cross over to the big screen in 1948 in the serialised film Superman, but it was on the radio that the core message of Superman being a champion of the oppressed would most resonate. As in the early comic book stories Superman took on corrupt businessmen and back handed union bosses as well. The most noticeable storyline however came in late 1946. Known as Clan of the Fiery Cross, the story saw Superman smashing a stand in for the Klu Klux Klan who were attempting to terrorize Metropolis and in particular members of its Asian American population.
The episodes were inspired by a phone call to the producers of the programme from Stetson Kennedy, a human rights activist from a wealthy Southern family. Kennedy had relatives in the KKK and his hatred for the group derided from an incident during his childhood. Kennedy’s family, like many wealthy southern families of the time, had black servants. One maid Flo was to Kennedy “like a second mother.” One day Flo challenged a white bus driver for over charging her for a bus ticket. Later that day Flo was kidnapped by KKK members, taken to a wooded area, tied to a tree, beaten and raped. The horrific incident gave Kennedy a grounding in how evil the Klan were and made him determined to bring them down. Kennedy infiltrated the KKK and decided that ridicule was as an effective weapon as any. Kennedy copied down many of the strange and ludicrous rituals that the KKK practised and convinced the producers of Superman that an episode in which the Man of Steel fought the KKK would be perfect. The producers agreed and for 16 episodes Superman showed how bigoted and ridiculous the KKK were through the power of radio.
So influential was the series that KKK membership nationwide began to fall and thanks to the work of the show and Kennedy’s other action the state of Georgia revoked the KKK’s national corporation charter, a major blow to a hate group that had prided itself on some official recognition from different parts of American society.
It would be a mistake to think that Superman’s power as a fighter for truth and justice simply became diluted over time. Whilst the 1950s certainly saw the Man of Steel engaged in more fantastical tales than he had done twenty years previously, in part due to the rise of science fiction as a popular genre and in part due to the Comics Code Authority becoming more concerned with the content of comic books not being seen as in anyway subversive, this was ultimately a temporary lull in the Man of Steel’s fight against injustice. Even in the stories in which Superman fought Brainiac or other fantastical menaces he was still at his core fighting against injustice and for a better tomorrow.
Superman’s association with progressive politics was such that prior to his assassination in November 1963, President Kennedy and his team were working with DC to publish an issue of Action Comics in which Superman would meet the President and help him with a keep fit programme. Whilst the story itself is somewhat more flippant that previous times that Superman dealt with the evils of the world, it is still an important testament to the relationship between Superman and a forward looking President that he saw the character, like his namesake Stetson Kennedy, as a vehicle for real change.
Decades later Darwyn Cooke in his miniseries Justice League: The New Frontier would intertwine the emergence of the Justice League with Kennedy’s election, each reflecting in the story the beginning of a brighter tomorrow that set aside racial discrimination and bigotry in favour of a united determination to improve the world.
Superman’s image as a vehicle for change was most prominent in the 1970s during his famous fight with Muhammad Ali. Ali, who had been a loved and hated figure for millions of Americans since his emergence on the boxing scene and his later conversion to Islam, was by 1978 no longer heavy weight champion of the world — he lost a fight against Leo Spink just prior to the publication of the comic though would regain the title later that year.
To have Ali face Superman in a boxing match and win was an incredibly significant moment for millions of readers. It showed that despite all the bigotry Ali had faced he was still a true American champion who could go toe to toe and win against one of America’s most iconic fictional characters. The story ends with Ali and Superman both raising their gloves and Ali declaring “We are the greatest!” It was a touching moment for millions of Americans, particularly young African Americans to see their two heroes united.
By the 1980s, thanks to the multiverse shattering storyline Crisis on Infinite Earths and the deft hands of John Byrne that Superman was once again facing off against corrupt politicians, this time in the form of his old arch enemy Lex Luthor. Luthor’s transformation post Crisis from a mad super villain into a corrupt businessman, obsessed with destroying Superman as well as amassing as much wealth as possible helped to ground the book in the era of “Greed is Good” that was sweeping nationwide. To have Superman, a champion of America, fighting against a corrupt representation of its newest love, unrepentant wealth accumulation was a stark message to readers as to who were the good guys. Luthor’s later run for President and his Presidency in the late 90s early 2000s was another opportunity for Superman to face off against some deeply unpleasant home truths about the politics of his adopted home.
At the turn of the 21st century, the politics that lay at the core of Superman’s was set out in its simplest terms in the iconic story What’s So Funny About Truth, Justice & the American Way? that was first printed in Action Comics 775. The story saw Superman face up against the Elite, a new group of violent vigilante super heroes who did not obey any kind of rules and killed super villains indiscriminately. Superman of course wins the day by showing how destructive it would be if he followed their lead and descended into the same kind of unrepentant violence that the Elite favoured. It is a core story in understanding who Superman truly is and why he stands for what he does. Superman understands he has great power and his goal is to use it not forcefully against those who don’t — that he cannot stand as judge, jury and executioner and that he shouldn’t.
Whilst this is slightly different from the more interventionist Superman of the very earliest appearance of the character — you’d be unlikely to see Superman kidnapping a governor now — Superman in this story proves, despite the decades that had passed since his first appearance that he was far more relevant than the edgy 90s “superheroes” who were obsessed with being extreme. He is at his heart an active participant in the world’s problems, one who wants to see things change who wishes to inspire hope and change through his actions by setting an example.
In 2009 the intertwining of politics and Superman would become more explicit when Grant Morrison introduced Calvin Ellis, a black Superman from another universe who was also President of the United States. The optimism of the election of Obama was a powerful one and perfectly appropriate to be combined with the inherent progressivism of Superman.
At the start of the 2010s this would be further emphasised in the well-intentioned but not altogether consistent Superman: Grounded, a year long story arc that would see the Man of Steel walk across America in an attempt to reconnect himself with the country that he had grown up in and felt disconnected from after recent events. Whilst the execution of the story was not always entirely subtle it did attempt to convey Superman’s connection to the wider public as a champion of the oppressed — that he was not some remote god or some strange creature from an alien world completely connected from Earth.
Superman’s greatest trait is and always has been his compassion and his optimistic belief in the goodness of others, a belief that there are millions of people out there with a goodness and charity to act as his adoptive parents did and take in a stranger from a distant land and make him feel welcome.
Today Superman is even more engaged with politics that at any other point since his creation. The title is now shared by Clark and his son Jonathan Kent, with Jon Kent’s run as Superman seeing the son of the original Man of Tomorrow standing up for refugees and exposing corruption with his partner Jay Nakamura. DC’s decision to make Jon bisexual was a brave one particularly given the backlash that the company faced from some fans as a result.
What is without question is that Superman is and always will be a figure of aspiration and hope. The character is motivated by compassion and hope, ideals that aren’t dull or boring but are in the cynical age we live in the necessary constituents to ensure a better tomorrow. If we had a little more Superman in all of us, the world really would be a better place.
