Sorry for going into fanboy mode here, but this post “Why Superman Will Always Suck” is just wrong :
Really, what lessons do the Superman comics teach? It says that mankind is full of dull, pointless weaklings and evildoers who can only be stopped by a white ubermensch from another planet, who didn’t work a day in his life in order to achieve his powers. Yeah, you could say he’s a symbol of “hope,” but not hope in human nature - hope in an all-powerful alien who saves the world daily so you don’t have to get off your butt and act like a moral person. What sort of message is that?
Just because Superman comics and movies are almost universally made by people who share this “Superman is boring” attitude doesn’t mean there aren’t any interesting stories to tell. The way I see it, Superman has a number of traits that could be mined for interesting stories :
He’s an immigrant - Although raised on Earth, Superman is constantly aware of the fact that he’s not from here. He tries to assimilate as much as he can, even trying to stand up for “Truth, Justice, and the American Way”, but the mixture of awe and fear he inspires among humans is a constant reminder that he’s different.
He’s adopted - As much as he loves his adoptive parents in Smallville, there’s the part of him that’s always wanting to know about where he came from. Who were his parents? Why was he found as a baby in a fiery hole in the middle of a field? Why is he stronger and faster than anyone he’s ever met?
He’s lives in the closet - It’s hard enough to hide your personal life from your coworkers, imagine how it would feel if your were living two completely separate lives? As comfortable as he feels living life as Clark Kent, he lives in constant fear that his secret life as Superman will be revealed.
He can’t be everywhere at once - How would Superman deal with the fact that while he pulled a cat out of a tree, across town someone got hit by a car? Or that while he stopped a bank robbery, an earthquake killed 1000 people in a country a few hundred miles away?
Moral Complexity - How does someone with the moral code of a boy scout (to use a frequently-cited cliche) deal with an environment in which poor people are dying because they can’t afford health care and there’s a direct correlation between lower-income communities and high crime rates? Superman may see things in black and white, but the real world is much more complex.
There are plenty of ways to write interesting Superman stories as long as you have writers that can break out of the trite, anti-hero stereotypes of the 80’s that pretty much ruined superhero comics. Then again, considering that Superman is owned by DC Comics which is owned by Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc. which is a subsidiary of Time Warner Inc. (NYSE:TWX), maybe it’s safe to assume Superman will always suck. At least, as long as we’re talking about Superman as a globally-recognized brand name and not the guy in blue tights. Interesting ideas and corporate groupthink rarely mesh well together.