My biggest Superman/superhero pet peeves
Pet peeve (noun):
A (mostly minor) thing that a particular person finds especially annoying.
I keep referencing these peeves a lot. So, here's a long post to elaborate.
As usual, this is mostly Superman related (big surprise).
Table of contents:
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 can't 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, the story turns depressing. I'm less bothered by big scale destruction in shows like The Boys or Invincible, because I don't care as much for the characters, I think? Or, destruction like that works if the destruction was always part of the plan. Like, "this is a post-apocalyptic series of films, and they take place on a ruined earth", THEN you can start your story that way.
I was really put off by the huge scale wreckage in Man of Steel for example. I understand that you need to show the scale of the threat sometimes. And the hero(es) can't prioritise a building over saving the word, but oh my god, the scale of the destruction in MoS! They sort of learnt from their mistake and had them take the Doomsday battle elsewhere in Batman v Superman, so I'll give the writers 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 isn't as big of a deal, but it still makes me roll my eyes:
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. Come on. If he was landing among bad guys, I could understand he might do it to intimidate them. But he's landing in front of good guys, so there's absolutely no reason why he needs to land that forcefully. I'm sure he has enough control over his flight to land softly. Someone's gonna have to pay to fix that. The only reason he does it is because it looks cool to the viewer!
I know, I know... I'm just not a fan of "cool for cool's sake" I think. See "glowing red eyes" below.
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!
Mind control
Superman gets mind controlled a lot, and I hate it. He might only be mind controlled once per universe (and hopefully learn from it). But ugh, it's such a lazy storytelling device.
Superman's hard to write for. But he's so iconic that it must be veeery tempting to have him cameo in other DC universe stories. 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™! And have him attack the main cast!
My dislike of this has a basis in another topic that I'm really hung up on: Public perception and acceptance of Superman. I want to believe that most of the public accepts Superman being around because he's proven again and again that he's truly here to help. But if it's that easy to "turn him against us", it's reeeally 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 story involving mind control. A magic character tries to control Superman, but he's had training on how to fight off magical attacks, and manages to break the spell fairly quickly. And then all hell breaks loose as a "Superman response team" plus the whole Justice League comes after him, before he gets a second to explain that he's fine.
Angry red glowing eyes
I cringe almost every time I see Superman with red angry eyes. It's not the heat vision itself I have a problem with, or the look of it, it's how and when it's being used.
In my opinion, there's four main reasons for why his eyes would glow red in a story, and only one of them feels right:
1: He's powering the heat vision up or down
This I have no problem with. In this scenario there's a good reason for his eyes glowing, because he's actually firing at something. They do this in Man of Steel and Batman v Superman for example. You see his eyes glow red right before and after he uses his heat vision. You even see the veins a bit. Very cool!
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, talking calmly or whatever. That would be a lot more subtle and cool.
And the action behind making his eyes just 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.
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
This is basically why this is so overdone. Some writer or artist just thinks it looks awesome. In that case - uggghh. 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 sounding speeches about "hope" or whatever, especially when the story never actually shows Superman inspiring anyone.
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 meeeean? This is so vague. If this is supposed to mean that humanity will see how he's always helping, and try to do the same to their best ability, then the plot fails to follow up on it. The story just doesn't show it happening. If you're going to include this kind of dialogue, show his positive impact on people! This feels like it was included in the movie because it sounds cool.
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 has this as a... direct goal or guideline? Sure, he probably wishes that humanity were nicer to each other, to say it simply, but if he starts thinking about what he's doing in terms of "people should follow me into the sun"... Yikes. 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 to really actively think about "inspiring people". He's "just a guy trying to do the right thing", and the inspiring people part happens as a result of that.
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 an 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".
No. Boo. Go write some other character instead, if you think this way!
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, in rage. 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. Neighbours, 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 and rolling my eyes) 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: Aug 27, 2026
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