A person can respond to superior virtues and abilities in another either with inspiration or resentment. This is true whether the virtuous and able figure is a real person or a fictional character.
For some, Superman’s “godlike powers and righteous attitude,” as Dani Di Placido wrote in Forbes, are “too alienating.” I suspect this reaction stems from an attitute problem, as I explained in my essay “How to Make Superman Relevant”:
“If you look at excellence in others as something to envy, resent, and attack, then a symbolic figure like Superman will be a standing insult that only makes you feel worse about yourself.
But if you look at human excellence in others as something to admire, celebrate, emulate, and aspire to, then you will more likely see Superman as inspiring and uplifting. You know you can never achieve his superhuman perfection, but you embrace the fantasy as a symbolic ideal, a guiding star.”
Many writers have sought to make less “alienating” and more “realistic” by powering him down.
“But more perniciously,” I wrote, “they have weakened him morally. Over and over again, they have depicted Superman as a morally compromised government stooge or a power-mad would-be dictator. Zak Snyder’s Superman is a mopey, tormented figure whose inner conflict and hesitancy lead to catastrophic failure and mass casualties.”
What makes All-Star Superman such a definitive Superman story is that Grant Morrison takes the opposite route.
In the very first scene, Morrison powers Superman up by sending him into the sun, the source of his powers. And, as Superman explains in the second issue:
“My trip to the sun did more than triple my strength, Lois. It tripled my curiosity, my imagination, my creativity.”
While many writers regard classic Superman as “too perfect” and seek to “deconstruct” him, Morrison made the Man of Steel even more perfect: physically, intellectually, and morally.
This contrast is no accident. In his book Supergods, Morrison said that he set out to rescue the character from the “overemotional and ineffectual” portrayals that had become standard and to restore Superman as the “ideal paragon of human physical, intellectual, and moral development that Siegel and Shuster had originally imagined.”
He succeeded. Fourteen years after its final issue hit the stands, All-Star Superman remains one of the most beloved and widely read Superman comics ever. For millions of readers, Morrison’s pure, “triple-strength” Superman is not “alienating” or demoralizing, but inspiring and encouraging. Some have even credited it with saving their lives.
As Morrison wrote, Superman is “a perfectly designed emblem of our highest, kindest, wisest, toughest selves.” A Superman story done right, read or watched with the right attitude, can help us tap into our best selves and bring out “our best moods and deeds.”
Morrison described how creating All-Star Superman had that very effect on him and his artistic collaborators:
“The attempt to be true to the underlying spirit of Superman, as we saw it, had brought out the best in all of us. Like a monk contemplating the deeds of a saint, I was elevated by the time I spent imagining how Superman might feel.”
I re-read All-Star Superman at least once a year, and it inspires me every time. I highly recommend having a copy grace your shelves as a ready source of uplift.