 So, uh, this one might be kind of controversial, uh, or at least it'll be controversial among people who are big into comic books. Among my fan base, I don't know how many of you are really gonna disagree, a lot of you might agree with me, but either way, the point is, there's going to be a lot of people who hate me for saying this, but at the end of the day, yeah, the title's pretty accurate. I just, uh, I don't like Superman that much, just as a character, whether we're talking him in comics or video games or other adaptations of, uh, comics, because that's pretty much all he is in, I just, I don't like him that much. So at this point, Superman is almost 90 years old, like he's been around for a long time, longer than most of us have been alive. And in a way, he's kind of the prototype superhero, you know, he, or at least the prototype modern superhero, where he's just a guy who has these extraordinary abilities that no one else has, and he uses them to go around and help people. You know, he stops crime, he occasionally saves the world, or helps people recover from various natural disasters, you know, he just is helpful. He's like the prototype superhero, which has spawned a ton of other, uh, well, just a ton of other things. Okay, we're not even gonna go into that because that's a separate discussion. And I just, I don't like him. I don't know if I'd go so far as to say I hate him, but I think he's dumb and boring. So just, let me explain. Superman is boring, and everything that can be done with him and his character has already been done, but he's still around, and he's still being made into things, and people still really seem to like him, at least some people seem to really like him. And the big part of why I think he's boring is just that he is a god. You know, like an actual god. He is invulnerable to basically everything. He has literally infinite strength, like at some point he picked up a pocket dimension which was made up of infinite mass, so he has infinite strength. He can fly through space with no issues, and reach other planets and stuff without needing technological help, just, there's no threats to him whatsoever. And some of his defenders will say, well, it's not really about him being able to punch bad guys, it's about his morality and his difficulties living on earth and that sort of thing. And I think that's fine, it can be good certainly, it's not my cup of tea personally, but I can see some appeal there, I can see why you would like that. But pretty much everyone who writes for Superman seems to know that they can't have every storyline be about that. Or maybe they just don't have the skill to have storylines be about that. Either way, he still winds up fighting a lot, you know? He fights galactic conquerors and shit. He fights common criminals, he fights other superheroes sometimes, or people like Lex Luther, you know, it is still largely about him punching dudes. And the only way they can make this interesting, because again he is a god, he is just too powerful for anyone to do anything against, is they have to either bring him down using one of his weaknesses, like Kryptonite for instance, they literally had to invent that just because he was too strong. It was like, okay, this takes away his powers and it can also hurt him, so let's just throw Kryptonite at him, who cares, we'll do something with it. He loses his powers under the light of a red star, which again, you can do some interesting things with that story-wise, like I remember there was an episode of the Legion of Superheroes, which I used to really like that show when I was a kid by the way, it's pretty good, but Superman has to go to a planet to get some McGuffin to help his friend, and that planet is under the light of a red sun, so he just doesn't have his powers there, and that's a very difficult thing for him to go through, so that is good, but the fact that you have to use things like that in order to make him interesting and in order to make him struggle is kind of a problem, and magic is also something he's vulnerable to, and granted I haven't read a whole lot of DC comics for a long time, but the modern iteration I don't think uses magic all that often anyways, so it's still not a massive threat to him by any means, and the other way they can have him fight someone and not that other person not immediately get destroyed is basically have him fight another God, and these would be people like Doomsday or Imperiax who can actually go toe-to-toe with Superman and not immediately get obliterated, and there's still all of this focus on his fights and his physical struggles because he lives in an expanded universe, you know like he still lives among people like you know not just the villains like Doomsday and Imperiax, but he also lives among people like Wonder Woman and Green Lantern and The Flash and Martian Manhunter and Cyborg and just that whole massive roster of characters that are also all really powerful and can do some really impressive things in their own right even if they're not quite on Superman's level, and you kind of have to put him in occasionally because otherwise you're gonna run into problems where it's like okay Green Lantern needs to go off and save the universe and he's really in trouble and he's having a lot of difficulty and people are just gonna be wondering well why doesn't he just call in Superman you know he's friends with the dude, why doesn't he just bring him in and he'll help him out and they'll just defeat whoever is destroying the universe this week and it shouldn't be too much of an issue for him and so they have to either come up with some excuse for why Superman isn't there or just ignore it and well that doesn't that's not very satisfying and another thing is that Superman just doesn't really feel as godlike when he's surrounded by all these other godlike figures you know and even if it's not people that are on his level the fact that they can get at least sort of close to his level is well it just makes him feel a bit less powerful than maybe he's meant to but at the same time he's still as powerful as he's meant to and so there's just this weird juxtaposition there like it's just not consistent you know I think that's a better word for it than juxtaposition is inconsistency now invincible handled this kind of idea better and if you haven't seen my review of the series you should check that out because I thought it was a really solid comic series overall and the thing is the Viltramites and invincible are definitely kind of a play on the Kryptonians from the DC Comics universe and where they're you know they can fly they're super strong and vulnerable to most things but they're not as strong as Superman and Kryptonians you know Mark and Omni-Man and them are very powerful definitely and but they still have trouble you know like villains both on earth and out in the universe can threaten them you know other heroes can hurt them it just takes a lot of effort and usually some casualties to take them down and then we also have the idea of a lot of the Viltramites being villains so the fact that the heroes are powerful but the villains are just there's so many of them and they already are have their own Empire so they're already kind of cemented in place like they work good as both heroes and villains is the point I'm trying to get at like Superman can just punch through the Sun which would be like taking a million nukes simultaneously every second while he's going through it and not have a scratch on it whereas in invincible Viltramites I'm not gonna try not to spoil this too much but Viltramites can actually go on to the surface of the Sun and they won't die instantly but they'll be pretty badly hurt by the time they get out you know like they're very very powerful so we do still have that feeling of almost God-like superiority but they're not well they're not invincible they just they're just not so they can work as both heroes and villains and they talk a lot about how Viltramites can possibly live among humans and among these other lesser races or lesser races that sounds that sounds odd please do not take that out of context everybody but it actually talks about that in interesting ways and you realize like can our societies really coexist properly and what does it mean to be somebody who can destroy the whole world not without any trouble but without too much trouble and it wouldn't really be possible for us to do it like what what does all that mean what is our place here what should we be doing about it and it explores that in an interesting way mostly in the second half of the series and especially at the end and you may disagree with the conclusions that the series comes to but at the very least it is neat you know it is it did make me think quite a bit which I think a lot of people who are super into Superman they that's what they think of when they think of Superman is like oh what does it mean to be a god living amongst men and I just don't think it's done very well so basically Superman in order to be good you have to tweak his character somewhat like a good example of this would be man of steel which I know that movie has a lot of detractors especially among people who are super into Superman but I don't know I really liked it because it for a big chunk of the movie it's Clark Kent's trying to figure out like who am I and what does this mean because he knows he's an alien but he doesn't know like why he came here or anything about his home or his people or anything like that he just is this guy who has these crazy powers and he doesn't know what to do with them or what to do with himself and so that's why he's a drifter at the beginning of the movie and then Zod and the other Kryptonians come in and he realizes like okay humans are gonna die if I don't do anything to help them so I have to help them and he is actually pushed to his limit while doing so and he does have to break his own moral code when he decides to kill Zod at the end so in a weird way Zod kind of won at the end of that movie and also it's pretty much the closest thing we've ever had to live action Dragon Ball Z where the characters are flying around and smashing into each other and shooting lasers and stuff that that's just a hell of a lot of fun I can't pretend it isn't and you know while I'm on the subject I don't like the Dragon Ball franchise either it is way too stretched out it should have ended 20 years ago and obviously there's been a lot of people who have tried to kind of subvert the trope of Superman whether we're talking Watchmen which I think is a good example of this where Dr. Manhattan is not just physically a god like Superman but he's also mentally a god where he just straight up has lost his ability to connect with humans on any significant level and he doesn't really understand them or their society anymore he just it's in Cape he's incapable of doing so which is really neat to look at and explore and then there's also stuff like Steelheart where Superman is just evil and I think that's kind of overdone by now it's not to say it can't be done well anymore but it it's happened a lot like in Steelheart I think it works pretty well because Steelheart is well one again he's the villain and the heroes are mostly just regular humans who are going up against insurmountable odds so that works pretty well as a conflict but we also just don't see him that much he's more of a looming presence in the background for pretty much the whole book so when it finally gets to him he really does feel like this overwhelming godlike force and it works really well and then there's stuff like The Boys where Homelander fits into a similar mold yes but they go into a deep dive into him and what makes him tick and why he is the way he is so he still works really well as a villain but that doesn't change the fact that Superman except he's evil has been done a lot of different times by now now I know a lot of really big Superman fans are going to disagree with me they they just like how he's this boy scout who always wants to help people and always wants to do the right thing and I mean hey that that's fine you know like I really don't care that much how you feel about it if you like him you like him that's that's not a big deal to me I kind of hate that I have to specify that but this is the internet and well you know how people get on here but I don't know to me it's just Superman that whole thing with him being a boy scout and always wanting to do the right thing it just gets kind of old after 90 years and I don't think there was much more that they could do with his character and I know there obviously never going to do this but they should kind of just retire him and just write him out of everything you know the DC Comics Universe and whatever else he happens to appear in and again I know they're never going to do that but still and for one final quick point if you don't believe me that Superman is just a boring character and kind of makes everything he interacts with worse just watch the most recent two Justice League movies both the Joss Sweden one and the Zack Snyder cut the thing is both of those are considerably better when Superman is dead like at the beginning of the movie when they think there's this threat coming and they have to stop it the other members of the Justice League really have to struggle and fight in order to do so whereas Superman as soon as he shows up just saves the day he fixes everything like you know they bring him back to life and then he fucks off to do his own thing and then so they're all alone in the final battle and that's the only reason that there was a final battle because as soon as he shows up he just mops the floor with the main bad guy and it's very unsatisfying it's kind of like at the end of Return of the King when the ghost army shows up and just saves the day instantly and it's like well if they had shown up five minutes earlier there not only would they have saved a whole bunch of trouble and a whole bunch of time but there just would not have been a battle there wouldn't have been any struggle whatsoever so yeah I don't really have a greater point that I'm working towards here I just kind of wanted to talk about how Superman is boring and dumb and he makes everything worse and I just I just don't like him that much or at all I should say I don't like him goodbye hello and aloha thank you so much for watching this far if you see all these names here these are my patreon guys over on patreon they send me money once a month and they get access to stuff like early videos and get to vote on polls and you know other fun stuff and all their names are here my $10 and up patrons are Aposavalanan, Eris Targaryen, Olivia Rayan, brother Santotys, Buffy Valentine, Carolina Clay, Dan Anceliovic, Dark King, Echo, Carcat Kitsune, Liza Rudikova, Lord Tiebreaker, Madison Lewis Bennett, Marilyn Roxy, Matthew Bordrow, Michael Weingartner, microphone, Peep the Toad, Return of Cardamom, Sad Martigan, Sillier the Vixen, Tobacco Crow, Tom Beanie, and Vavictus they're all great if you want to get your name up here consider donating to my patreon if you don't feel like doing that you could also become a youtube channel member or just rate the video comment 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