Who exactly is Superman? The quest to give the Man of Steel an edge

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. In a 1957 episode of “I Love Lucy," Superman cracked a joke.

The hero has just rescued the mischievous Lucy (Lucille Ball) from the ledge of her apartment building where she had ended up after dressing up as Superman to entertain the birthday party for her son, Little Ricky. Lucy’s husband, Ricky (Desi Arnaz), starts yelling in heavily accented English before Superman, played by George Reeves, stops him.

“You mean to say that you’ve been married to her for 15 years?" he says, before hitting the punchline: “And they call me Superman!" That gag is evidence that for as long as Superman has been represented in film and television, writers have been trying to find a way to give him a little edge. In his initial screen representations, Superman was an earnest representation of Americana—despite being from the fictional planet Krypton—and tantamount goodness.

But as time has passed, his appearances has been marked by artists and actors wrestling with his godlike nobility and wanting to question his straight-laced nature. The more you look at the arc of Superman’s appearances on screen, in fact, the more the question becomes: Whom do we want this character to be? Should he be relatable to viewers or exist on a higher plane to represent the best of us all? Should his huge amount of power be comforting or feared? And, perhaps most of all, should he be perceived as cool? Or is he inherently sort of dorky? Whereas Batman had his tragic back story, making him moody and tortured, and Spider-Man had the youthful verve of a kid from Queens, Superman was always kind of a square.