You'll believe a man can fly the flag ... Superman Returns
So the Man of Steel is Jesus in a pair of tights. Or he's a revolutionary outcast. Or possibly he is a handsome homosexual who opts to hide his nature from the world at large. It seems that we had Superman all wrong; that we owe him a super-sized apology. Hitherto he had always seemed the blandest of all the superheroes.
Last week's US release of Superman Returns has led pundits to ponder the true identity of the costumed do-gooder; excavating his origins as the brainchild of a pair of Jewish teenagers in the years after Hitler's rise to power. In the meantime Bryan Singer's film has been credited with adding a little shade and complexity to his square-jawed persona. All of which is a natural part of the creative process. Since his arrival back in 1938, Superman has existed as a kind of stencil to be coloured in by the various artists, writers, actors and directors who have interpreted him down the years. It was inevitable that he would shift and change to reflect whatever era he was operating in.
The trouble is that there is a limit to these changes. Taken as a basic template, Superman remains drab and unwieldy. He is more super than human and too self-righteous and omnipotent to be properly interesting. Whatever his immigrant origins (his Krypton name, Kal-El, roughly translates to a Hebrew term meaning "the voice of God"), he was swiftly installed as a straight-backed champion of the status-quo, battling dastardly foreigners during the Eisenhower era and saluting the flag at every opportunity. Embarking on his career as a superhero, he takes inspiration from his earthling father, who orders him to stop the "evil men" who are threatening "decent folk" - an exhortation that oddly echoes the current president's rhetoric in the wake of 9/11.
Compare him to the Marvel characters that followed and Superman looks even more straight-laced. The likes of Spider-Man, Daredevil, the X-Men and the Silver Surfer were genuine outlaws, flawed modern-day heroes who found themselves hounded by the very people they were trying to help. Superman, by contrast, is a pillar of the establishment, a paragon of patriotism, a temple to American might.
This is a perception that has proved hard to shake off. I'm not lobbying for an openly gay Superman, nor even an obviously Jewish one. But if the Man of Steel is to survive into the 21st-century, he has to find some way to reconnect with his public, to show a little vulnerability, to convince us (despite his extra-terrestrial origins) that he is at least halfway human. But I can't help feeling that this is a task too far. The template is too rigid and the hero is past his sell-by date. After seven decades of dull supremacy, it seems that Superman's greatest enemy is himself.
