Word: supermans
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Clark Kent personifies fairly typically the average reader who is harassed by complexes and despised by his fellow men . . . any accountant in any American city secretly feeds the hope that one day there can spring forth a superman who is capable of redeeming years of mediocre existence...
...Although Superman's adventures were a fairly crude story, fairly crudely illustrated, their overnight success not only earned millions but also created shoals of imitators, such as Batman, Captain Marvel, Hawkman, Green Lantern and Wonder Woman. "Oddly enough," says Cartoonist Jules Feiffer, "the Depression enlivened the American dream that anyone could make it, and that's what Superman did. I loved the fantasy of this guy who had all this strength. While Superman went around beating up crooks, in my dreams I was beating up authority figures...
...Superman was a reassuring hero for troubled times, for the Depression and the coming World War, why has he endured so long? Partly because troubled times have endured in other forms, and partly because he has always had qualities that go beyond the flying fists. He was orphaned, and thus forced to rely on himself, just like Little Orphan Annie or Huck Finn. He is a foreigner from outer space in a land built by foreigners. And he is one of the good guys, fighting for "truth, justice and the American way," which seems to many people a very good...
...some ways, Superman's relentless virtue goes even beyond virtue. In his extraterrestrial origins and the shining purity of his altruism, some commentators have detected a divine aura. "Superman, I've always thought, is an angel," says Andrew Greeley, gadfly Roman Catholic priest and best-selling novelist. "Probably the angel stories found in all of the world's religions are traces of the work in our world of Superman and his relatives. Who is to say I'm wrong?" Proponents of the angel theory believe it is no accident that when Superman is in full flight, his flared collar...
Such speculation goes even further. Experts have pondered the fact that Superman's original Kryptonian name, Kal-El, resembles Hebraic syllables | meaning "all that God is." Greek and Norse mythology have been invoked to show that Superman resembles a god who comes to earth and walks among men in mortal guise. Screenwriter Newman sees yet more exalted implications in the legend. "It begins with a father who lives up in heaven, who says, 'I will send my only son to save earth.' The son takes on the guise of a man but is not a man. The religious overtones...