Welcome back to The Clubhouse!

This week, we’re going to be talking about the biggest trailer from last week: Superman. Specifically, we’ll be delving into the importance of Superman as a paragon of goodness. If you haven’t seen the trailer yet, here’s a link.

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Please let Superman be good

by Liam Nolan

In the early part of my writing career, I focused primarily on comic books, a subject that it’s virtually impossible to make money doing journalism on. Initially, though, I didn’t really understand Superman, so I didn’t focus much on him.

DC’s Big Blue Boy Scout felt like something of an anomaly to me. He didn’t have the intelligence and grittiness of Batman, the humor and fun of The Flash, or even the massive-loser-doing-his-best energy of Booster Gold. From the outside, Superman seemed too good and too powerful. He didn’t have what I looked for in a story.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that the appeal of Superman is precisely that he is good and powerful.

I don’t really want to get caught up in the idea of Superman as Christ/Moses/whatever symbol, because I’ve had to read about it on a dozen different occasions. I would prefer not to. Instead, I want to focus on him more as an exemplar of truth, justice, and — uh — a better tomorrow.

In 2016, a specific person came to power in the United States of America, and we entered what felt like a new era of people abusing their positions for their own benefit. With great power came great irresponsibility. That’s likely to continue into the next administration. Superman is an antidote to that mentality of “me above all.”

Superman is, generally speaking, one of the most powerful being on Earth, if not the most powerful being on Earth. He could easily kill us all, or come to dominate us as a sort of authoritarian overlord. There’s no end of alternate versions of Superman who do precisely that. However, the real Man of Steel stays a paragon of virtue.

Superman enriches others, showing that true power is using your abilities to help others. He inspires us to be better both as people and to each other. When you read a Superman comic, you’re meant to understand that you have the capacity to do and be better. Being better means pursuing truth, justice, and a better tomorrow, all of which lead to a better tomorrow.

There are a lot of interpretations of Superman that also don’t really get that about him. Zack Snyder’s version of the Man of Steel is gritty, and there’s an almost obsession with him as a godlike figure whom humans worship. That sort of imagery is all over Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice.

There’s a lot in James Gunn’s first trailer for Superman that has me optimistic. And while I hate to be specifically optimistic because of a trailer — I’ve been hurt before — I really do want to believe. There’s a moment in the trailer that absolutely stunned me, which is when Superman protects a child from an explosion.

There’s something so quintessentially Superman in the moment. It emphasizes that he’s there to protect those who need help, and at the same time, he’s not brutish in the moment. Even going at an unbelievably fast speed, he takes time and care to shield the girl with his body and protect her head.

That’s not the only scene in the trailer that stuns me. There’s a lot in there to suggest that Gunn wants to be more attentive to the human people and the Clark Kent side of the hero, which is a massively important part of his humanity. In a lot of ways, Superman can’t succeed without Clark Kent, because Clark Kent is the human that we are, while Superman is the person we should strive to be.

The trailer for Superman has made me believe that maybe, just maybe, Gunn gets something that so many other people to helm the Man of Steel have missed, and the DC Universe might be great.

Here are some recent posts over at TMS that you shouldn’t miss:

INTERVIEW SPOTLIGHT

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James Marsden and Tika Sumpter talked their family of animals and Sonic the Hedgehog 3!

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