Someone posted this somewhere. I have my own reasons but this merits posting:
"First: Superman and his cast and his world represent an incredibly unique pastiche of golden age sci-fi and American fantasy elements. Flying men in beautiful capes and colors! Rockets carrying babies from doomed planets landing in small town farms! The dynamic buzz of the big city! Deadly poisonous, glowing green rocks! Vindictive Fifth-Dimensional Imps! Creepy, backwards-talking zombie versions of virtuous heroes! It's a shame that modern takes on the character tend to bog this world down in common sci-fi tropes and aesthetics; it really is a strange, cartoon fantasy land that he inhabits.
Second: Superman is fucking rich as a vehicle for telling stories about the nobility of humanity. Here is a man with extraordinary powers. He could, in the span of a day or so, easily take the world by storm and bend it to his will. But he chooses not to. Instead, he decides to help people at every chance he can get. Not because he wants to live up to some kind of archetype or because he intends to profit off of it or because he's seeking validation or vengeance, but because he believes that it's the right thing to do.
Third: In All Star Superman, a book that effortlessly succeeds in creating the surreal beauty of Superman's universe, Morrison includes a panel of Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola delivering a verse from his "Oration on the Dignity of Humanity." Said oration is a core text in humanist philosophy and said panel can be seen attached to the left of this post. I think Morrison succeeds in his literary allusion magnificently. Superman is an ideal. He's humanity at its best. Should we wish to be as strong and as fast and as smart and as kind and as super as Superman, we only need to imitate Superman's methodology. Okay, we probably won't be flying around or shooting lasers out of our eyes anytime soon, but by doing simple acts of kindness, by living through good deeds, by thinking selflessly, we can be Superman. And that's fucking beautiful."
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