The Superman Dilemma: Aspiration, Impotence, and Emotional Triage
James Gunn’s Superman premieres this weekend, and by all accounts it draws heavily from Grant Morrison’s All-Star Superman. I’ll be there in the theater, hopeful, because the idea of Superman has been on my mind a lot lately — and not just because he’s about to fly across the screen again.
I have a complicated relationship with Grant Morrison’s work. Some of it hits me like revelation, some leaves me cold, but when it lands, it lands hard. All-Star Superman wasn’t my favorite rendition (give me Jeph Loeb’s Superman for All Seasons any day), yet listening to Morrison talk about it changed my entire perspective. (I won’t go into detail here, but there’s a surprising overlap in the DNA of All-Star Superman and A Pleasant Fiction in how grief motivated their writing — largely, if not consciously, in response to the loss of his father.) If you’ve never heard Morrison speak, do yourself a favor: his Scottish cadence has an almost musical quality, lending his thoughts a gravity that stays with you long after.
In his book Supergods, Morrison argues that superheroes are our modern mythology. They’re the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of who we are, what we value, and what we might become. Superman matters not because he’s like us, but precisely because he’s not — he represents the best of us, the maximal aspiration of our humanity.
Superman is, by definition, an ideal—one we invented to solve problems. In much the same way classical philosophers defined God as the supreme being—an all-good, all-powerful entity—Morrison describes Superman as the epitome of moral and physical perfection. He’s what we should strive to be. (And again, from what I’ve heard about the new film, Gunn has chosen to lean more into his goodness than his power.)
That’s beautiful in theory. But it’s also why, over the decades, writers and fans sometimes found him boring. Too powerful, too unassailable, too clean. There was a trend to diminish him — strip down his powers, find more exotic ways to harm him, make him “relatable.” John Byrne’s Man of Steel reboot famously reduced his power set for precisely this reason. Who wants to watch a character who can move planets solve every problem in three panels?
But Morrison flipped that idea on its head. In an interview (see the link below), he explained that people who complain Superman is too powerful or too perfect completely miss the point. Superman still faces the hardest conflicts — the emotional ones we all understand.
Because Superman is fundamentally good, his defining characteristic isn’t his overwhelming power. It’s his existential dilemma: he still can’t save everyone. His mission is inherently Sisyphean, his singular goal forever out of reach.
That hits me right in the chest. Because that’s what life is, isn’t it? A series of impossible calculations, emotional triage performed daily. Who do you help, who do you let down, what do you give of yourself, and what price do you pay for doing so?
It’s the same thing I wrote about with Calvin’s mother, Lyanna, in A Pleasant Fiction. Her life was a living embodiment of triage. With Jared, her profoundly disabled son, she gave everything — her time, her money, her emotional reserves. And that meant Jack, Calvin, and Ryan got only what remained. Was that fair? Maybe not. But it was human. It was all she could do.
Superman feels that too, just on a cosmic scale. He hears every scream across Metropolis, every tragedy unfolding around the globe, and with all his powers, he still can’t be everywhere at once. That’s why, for me, the most poignant line in all of Superman cinema comes not when he’s soaring above the earth, but when he stands by his father’s grave in the original Donner film and says:
“All those things I can do, all those powers... and I couldn’t even save him.”
That’s Superman’s truth. And it’s ours too. For all our hopes, all our abilities, we can’t save everyone we love from pain, from sickness, from death — not even ourselves.
So I’ll see Superman this weekend, maybe with a little more reverence than usual. Superman isn’t my favorite hero, but I’m starting to accept that he might be the most important. Because he isn’t compelling despite his power — he’s compelling because, like us, he lives with the burden of knowing it will never be enough.
That’s the human condition. That’s the tragedy. And maybe, paradoxically, that’s the hope.
Javier
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For Further Viewing
Grant Morrison explains why Superman is relatable and interesting
Superman (1978) - All those powers... and I couldn’t even save him
