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Superman/superhero pet peeves

Pet peeve (noun):
A (mostly minor) thing that a particular person finds especially annoying. 

There are some common "storytelling devices" in superhero stories that I really dislike. I keep referencing them in my posts. So to elaborate, here's a long post about them that I can link to. 

As usual, this is mostly Superman related (big surprise).

Table of contents:

General:

Wrecking public property

AKA "Not the buildings!" – which might be my number one pet peeve.

The hero needs to stop a villain, and bursts through like five skyscrapers in the process. If that doesn't kill hundreds or thousands of people, the cost to rebuild must be astronomical! Who pays for that? Does insurance cover damages made by superheroes? Often this is never mentioned again, or there are zero consequences. At what point does this make the hero too much of a public menace to outweigh the good that they do?

My problem with this is a two part thing. On one side, I get really annoyed if the destruction is brushed under the rug. On the other side, I cannot stand bleak, gritty superhero stories. Or, who am I kidding, I don't like bleak Superman stories. The moment you have to start covering the aftermath of death and destruction, you have a very depressing story on your hands. I'm less bothered by big scale destruction in shows like The Boys or Invincible, because I don't get so hung up on it when I' don't care as much for the characters.

The number one example of this is Man of Steel, and its sequel Batman v Superman. I was really put off by the huge scale wreckage in MoS. I understand that you need to show the scale of the threat. And the hero(es) can't prioritise a building over saving the word. A bit of destruction is fine, but please, have the hero take the battle somewhere else! They sort of learnt from their mistake and had them take the Doomsday battle in BvS elswhere, so I'll give them credit for that. BvS also thoroughly covers the aftermath of the destruction in the first film, but as a result, it's also hella depressing. That's not the kind of story I want to watch. It's even more off-putting because Superman was so heavily involved in the the destruction.

Then there's also smaller scale destruction, like this, that kind of also annoys me:

From the pilot episode of Superman & Lois

Superman has just stopped a nuclear reactor from melting down, and does a "superhero landing" which cracks the ground. I'm sure he has enough control over his flight to land softly. If he was landing among bad guys he might do it to intimidate them, but these are good guys, so there's absolutely no reason why he needs to land that forcefully and wreck whatever the ground is covered with. 🤪 Someone's gonna have to pay to fix that. The only reason he does it is because it looks cool to the viewer!

I do however love the few stories that take a moment to show the heroes helping out with cleanup. For example, in the animated film "The Death of Superman", Superman calls the Justice League to ask if anyone's available to help with cleanup after a robbery he's stopped. Yes! More of this please! 

Superman specific:

Mind control

Superman gets mind controlled all the time, and I hate it. Since DC are infamous for having tons of different storylines that aren't connected, he might only be mind controlled once per universe (and hopefully learn from it). But ugh, it's such a lazy storytelling device.

I realise Superman's hard to write for. But he's so iconic that it's probably very tempting to have him cameo in another DC universe story. Like Batman, Young Justice, Teen Titans etc. But then you got to figure out how to include him without making the main, less powerful heroes seem useless. And there's an easy fix: Mind control him, and have him attack the main cast! This happens a lot.

My dislike of this has a basis in another topic that I'm really hung up on, that might be a separate post at some point: Public perception and acceptance of Superman. I want to believe that the public mostly accepts Superman being around because he's proven again and again that he's purely, truly there to help. But if he's really easy to just "snatch" like that, it's really hard to suspend my disbelief that the public will trust him again after that. 

There's one Superman comic story (issue #664) that I think has a good take on a mind control story. A magic character tries to control Superman, but he's had some training on how to fight off magical attacks, and manages to break the spell fairly quickly. But before he has a second to explain, all hell breaks loose as a "Superman response team" plus the whole Justice League comes after him.

But mostly it just comes off as lazy writing to me. 


Overuse of red glowing eyes

Seeing Superman with red angry eyes just really makes me cringe. It's not the heat vision itself I have a problem with, or the look of it, it's how it's being used. 

I feel like there's 4 main reasons for why his eyes would glow red in a story, and only one feels right to me:

1 – He's powering the heat vision up or down: 

This I have no problem with, and it looks super cool. For example, it looks awesome in Man of Steel, when you can see the veins around his eyes before he uses his heat vision. Or the red light behind his eyelids as he closes his eyes in Batman v Superman.

2 – Threatening people: 

I find it very out of character that he would make his eyes glow to threaten someone. Because he is who he is, with his powers, he needs people to trust him. See the bit about public perception under mind control above. The general public needs to be ok with having him around, and then they need to trust that he's not going to go all vigilante and start burning people. 

But say he still threatens some scumbag that way. Then either they're going to call his bluff (of course he's not going to burn anyone), which makes him look dumb, or he does it to someone who doesn't call his bluff. And then I feel like he either risks this behaviour "leaking to the public", or it just turns him into way too much of a different character. Batman basically. 

I'd much rather see him be more quietly menacing, if he has to be. I'm sure he could be threatening enough just by showing up. Dropping hints or whatever. That would be a lot more subtle and cool.

And the action behind making his eyes glow weirds me out as well. Does he have to heat his eyes up just enough to not fire, and keep them that way, to achieve the look? Wouldn't that require some intense concentration? I assume he has very fine control of it, but it just looks dumb, and it doesn't suit Superman as a character in my opinion.

3 – It's an emotional reaction: 

His eyes glow when he's angry, and this is out of his control. In that case, wouldn't this happen as Clark Kent as well? If he can control it so that he doesn't reveal his secret identity, he should be able to control it as Superman. So that kind of brings us back to him doing it on purpose. See point 2.

4 – It looks cool to the reader: 

I have a feeling this is why this is so overdone. Some writer or artist just thinks it looks awesome. In that case - ugh. There's a bit in the comic "Superman: Unchained" where he's swimming/flying underwater, with his eyes glowing. There's nobody around to intimidate, and he's not about to fire his heat vision. So why does his eyes glow?? I love Jim Lee's art, but he is way too fond of the red eyes. Or his writer or colourist is. 


Messiah metaphors and/or cheesy motivational dialogue

I'm not a fan of those vaguely religious type speeches about how Superman is supposed to inspire. Like this one from Man of Steel:

You will give the people of Earth an ideal to strive towards. They will race behind you, they will stumble, they will fall. But in time, they will join you in the sun, Kal. In time, you will help them accomplish wonders. 

Ugh. What does that mean? This is just too vague for me. I mean, humans can't literally do what he does, for obvious reasons. If it means that humanity will see how he's always helping, and try to do the same to their best ability, then I feel like the writers never follow up on this. The plot just doesn't show this happening. If you're going to include this kind of dialogue, show his positive impact on people!

I have more issues with it as well:

One: It doesn't make sense that this kind of dialogue comes from Jor-El. Surely he couldn't have predicted what kind of personality and life his son would have on earth, to turn him into who he is today. 

Two: I don't like it if Superman himself has that outlook on things either, at least not "on the surface". Sure, he probably wishes that humanity were nicer to each other, to say it simply, but if he starts thinking about it in terms of "people should follow me into the sun"... Yikes. That's just... pompous? If some people on earth see him as a messiah character, that's fine, that's out of his control. But I don't want Superman in any way to think like that himself. He's "just a guy trying to do the right thing". 

And three: Clark should be who he is because of himself and his experiences, thank you very much. I think he should be Superman because he can't bear to not help, when he's able to. Nobody should tell him to be Superman. He should make that decision himself.

This bit from a reddit post about the comic "Superman: Earth One" is also in the same spirit as what I'm trying to say:

"I like that he doesn't fetishize humanity like other interpretations sometimes do. When Clark stops being an elitist ass and becomes the truly altruistic Superman he's not like ''Humanity is beautiful because they're capable of such wonders and I must provide an example so that they will one day, follow me into the sun'' is more like ''Holy shit, this guy needs help! Here buddy. You alright? Good. Have a good day.''

 

Evil superman

From a very interesting article on Entertainment weekly called "Whatever Happened to the Men of Tomorrow?" Illustration by Laurie Greasley.

AKA "He turns evil if Lois dies". Or "Truly good characters are boring, and therefore we need to make Superman evil". Apparently. I hate this attitude.

I am a huge fan of the concept that Superman just happens to be both truly good, and insanely powerful. Really. Nice people exist. I don't need him to be portrayed as 100% the "all loving hero", but I really think that he is the way he is because of his upbringing, his experiences, his relationships with people. And because I think he's a really kind, good person, I don't buy that he'd literally turn evil if Lois dies. He might go right to rock bottom, sure. Stop saving people maybe. Or if he must kill anyone for the story to feel "realistic", maybe I'd accept that he might kill her murderer. But turn proper "burn everyone to death that opposes him" type evil? Nononono. His core personality and beliefs wouldn't - shouldn't - be purely tied to Lois.

I read a great fanfic that I think had a great take on this, called Number 821. Lois dies, and Clark basically loses all interest in keeping anything a secret. Here he's talking to Lois from parallell world:

"I mourned you. Publicly, openly, loudly. Not very heroic. That line between what was secret and what was not, what I kept from the world, what I didn't- it blurred and then it disappeared. And I didn't care."

After a long mourning period, he prepares to re-enter society. By then, his identity is public knowledge.

"I'd spent a year out of commission. I prepared myself for public reaction- opprobrium, condemnation, contempt, intrusion, pity, fear. And it was the strangest thing; I was welcomed. Like family. By everyone. Neighbors, strangers in the street, anyone I met. It was like someone had flipped a switch somewhere and, suddenly, I was not above them, apart from them, outside of them. I was just a kid, hurt and grieving after a great personal tragedy."

I really, really like this. It's also a really interesting take on a scenario where the public knows who he is, and trusts him more because of it. 

I like optimistic stories though. Lots of people seem to prefer more gritty, bloody, "realistic" (I'm making sarcastic finger quotes here) stories. And because of that, we've been getting tons and tons of "evil Superman" stories lately. If it's not Superman himself, it's some Superman inspired character, like Omni-Man in Invincible, or Homelander in The Boys. I... just... I hate it. Either it's a spin on the character where he turns evil (see "Lois dies" above"), that I feel makes no sense, or it's a mind control thing, which I also talked about why I don't like above. But it's everywhere! You've got the flash forwards or whatever they are in Bvs/Justice League, various comics, Injustice, even Superman & Lois is doing it! Ugh. Give me more optimistic stories.


Barging in before using his head

I like to think that Superman has got a bit of a head on his shoulders. Not like, super smart level intellect. But smart. At least enough to think before he barges right into a room! Especially when there's as much kryptonite around as there is in Smallville (the TV show). That one always annoyed me. 

However, I'm pretty sure that he'd probably be fairly dependent on his powers, and not be very useful the first time he ends up powerless. But then he'd definitely be smart enough to learn after that first time, and learn at least some basic self defence. From Batman maybe. So that he could manage at least decently in situations where his powers are gone. 


Last edited: 8. oct 2022

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