Marjorie Liu Reflects On the Immortality of Superman

I grew up in the Age of the Apocalypse, along with the rest of my generation. The Second World War had come and gone, but the survivors remained; the Vietnam War, still fresh, had broken minds and bodies; the Cultural Revolution had finally finished killing millions, along with the Korean War; and the Cold War with its threat of nuclear annihilation was hot, hot, hot.

What a time to be a kid! You think we were playing hopscotch and hide-and-seek? Sometimes—but we were also playing war-games, shoot-first-ask-questions-later games, decide-what-to-take-into-the bunker games. When I was seven years old, on my own, I made a ‘go-pouch’ filled with my grandfather’s pocket-knife, matches, band-aids, and pilfered cash from my mom’s purse—and I brought that with me to school every day for years in case the bombs fell and I had to ‘survive’.

I was very aspirational.

But throughout those years, it wasn’t all gloom and doom. We had cartoons. We had films. We had books and comics. We had heroes. I was born in 1978, the same year Superman: The Movie was released.

Just over three years later ABC broadcast a two-night special edition of the film—and you bet my family watched it. I was little, but not so little that formative memories couldn’t be blasted white-hot into my mind—and I remember what it felt like to watch Superman fly. I’d been exposed to the Man of Steel before that, I’m told—through glimpses of the 1940s cartoon—but here was a real person, flesh and blood, Christopher Reeve at his dark-haired finest, soaring through the clouds above the planet, red cape whipping behind him in the wind, his eyes soulful and kind.

First and foremost, the Superman of my early memories was always kind—utterly, earnestly unselfconscious and brave in expressing that kindness, whether he was Clark or Kal-El—and that stuck with me, inspired me throughout my childhood, into adulthood—forming the backbone of all I create to this day. And not just Superman, but also Lois Lane (for one cannot really exist without the other, in any universe). Brave and gritty Lois, with her own demanding, righteous morality—ready to go to any lengths for the truth.

Why did this matter to me, as a child? Why does it still matter to me now, perhaps more so than ever before?

Because in a world as fearful and sensational as the one I grew up in—a world we all still inhabit—we, the children of many apocalypses, were slowly, inexorably taught to fear strangers, to fear our communities, to break all solidarities except for those of the family. Because the unfamiliar, we were told, was dangerous. Kindness was for saps, for those who didn’t want to survive. Reach out a helping hand, expect it to get bitten… off. It wasn’t that heroes were dead—just the opposite—but it seemed heroism was becoming something for other people: larger-than-life types, and fantastically unrealistic. Heroism in this context was less about saving others, and more about how much harm you could inflict on an endless supply of malefactors.

Entertaining to consume, but nonetheless born from—and re-inforcing—the unsettling idea that except for the select privileged few, humanity was either predatory or useless, usually both. A perspective that I didn’t, even as a young person, want to agree with—even if almost everything around me, from the adults to the media I consumed, told me otherwise. I didn’t want to feel powerless to change the world around me. I didn’t want to hear or feel that being open and kind to strangers might be some fatal weakness or flaw. I didn’t want to be either a foolish victim or a cruel killer hero.

Not much of a choice, right? Societal abysses almost never are. But what helped keep me from succumbing to those beliefs, falling into those depths, was Superman.

Yes, the Man of Steel was bullet-proof and endlessly strong—meeting in every way the criteria of the perfect impossible hero—but with a wrinkle, a defining caveat that I am convinced has kept Superman beloved across the decades.

Because from Superman there was always the expectation, both implied and explicit, that his heroism was not, in fact, the exception. Indeed, this was how everyone should act—with courage, decency,  and kindness—no matter what. That humanity, as a collective, should always take care of each other, watch out for one another. Superman, after all, might be super, a birthright of his Kryptonian ancestry—but he was also impossibly human, a product of us, a gift of his humble hardworking salt-of-the-earth adoptive parents (For that alone, Martha and Jonathan Kent should be anointed the true heroes of the DC Universe), and his own immigrant sensibilities. Clark wasn’t just a disguise, Clark was the suit that Superman’s humanity wore, his glasses its blazon.

What an extraordinary, hopeful view of humanity’s promise. Kindness can beget kindness. Great power does not necessarily corrupt, but instead can be turned into an even greater good. Humanity’s capacity to love—precious and world-changing, worthy of protection. These are the lessons I took from Superman. And Superman, through those lessons, saved my young self, and preserved my optimistic hopeful heart from the withering radioactive orthodoxies of my nuclear childhood. As he has for so many others.

I know I’m not saying anything particularly new. That Superman is a good person, the best of all heroes, is almost taken for granted at this point. But in this day and age, perhaps it’s worth a pointed reminder of why that still matters.

Because we are all we’ve got. Humans, inhabiting a little world, in the vastness of an indifferent cosmos, alone except for each other. And Superman, alone more than the rest of us, the last child of an extinct people and a destroyed world, both a symbol of what we can be if we turn towards each other and a warning of what we will become if we turn away.

Here’s another Superman story.

When I was in middle school, during an overnight school trip with my class, in a place far from home, I fell backward down an open stairwell, fell hard. I don’t remember the impact, but I woke up sprawled on the stairs, breathing impaired, dazed and confused. Worst of all, I was alone. No one, it seemed, had noticed the fall. Not surprising, really. I was a shy awkward nerd, who never attracted much attention.

True to form, it took a while for anyone to realize I was at the bottom of the stairs, in trouble. When my friends finally found me, they did their best to help. But the adults, my teachers, who had not seen the fall and must have thought I was exaggerating, told me to sleep it off. So I hobbled back to my cabin, head pounding, ribs feeling like shards of glass against my lungs—vomiting a few times on the way. Still, none of the adults seemed to pay it any mind. Later, I found out I had a concussion and other injuries, but that night I lay on a cot, every breath an agony, unable to move. My friends checked on me as much as they could—thank goodness for them—but I was more or less alone, helpless, afraid I might actually be dying.

I won’t bore you with my fear—or my anger at the adults—but I’ll tell you this: hour after hour, during that wretched terrifying night, I found myself imagining my favorite heroes. I summoned up their best qualities, building my resolve, fixing my will, trying my hardest to make myself feel bigger than anger or fear.

And when all the other heroes fell away, consumed by pain, only Superman remained.

By that age I had watched the 1978 Superman film so many times I could stream it in my head, scene for scene, line for line. I did that again, in the darkness, with particular, aching attention to those moments of Superman’s solitude when he seemed most alone—and, perhaps, lost. I myself felt utterly alone, desperate to have someone swoop in and save me—knowing, at the same time, no one would.

But it was what followed those scenes that I compulsively replayed, over and over.

Superman’s openhearted return to humanity. His efforts for connection, whether through Lois and Jimmy, or complete strangers. His attempts to be part of something bigger than himself. A superhuman humbled by loneliness—capable of forgiving others for not caring, or understanding, just how lonely he might be.

When you’re desperate, in need of solace and resolve, you form connections and find meaning in things that might make sense only to you. And I remember, so clearly, my obsessive focus on what felt like Superman’s antidote to loneliness—which I made my antidote, my cure, to feeling more alone and abandoned than I ever had in my life.

Understand: I was already wrestling with social anxiety and in-security, a profound sense that I didn’t belong. Looking back on it now, I suppose this moment could have made me more socially phobic and distrustful—could have turned me into the kind of person those childhood war-games wanted us all to become.

But that’s not what happened. Instead, over and over through the night, I told myself, ‘I only feel alone, but I’m not. I am not alone.’

I had friends nearby who cared, and family at home who loved me. I’d get back to them.

I was mad now, but I refused to stay mad.

I was afraid, but I refused to stay afraid.

This would all pass. I’d return to Earth, and start over.

Because that’s what a hero would do.

A thousand years from now, when archaeologists are picking over the fragmented, decayed remains of our cultural ephemera, no doubt there will be two immensely popular areas of study based on the sheer volume of material left behind by us, the future ancient dead.

The first will be cats.

And the second, I’d guess, will be Superman.

I suspect, too, that those archaeologists will know exactly what they’re looking at when they dig up our faded broken collectibles—or uncover a precious archive of vacuum-sealed comics—or find, preserved in mountains of polyester, the traces of that iconic red and blue ‘S’. Because if there is one superhero who will remain immortal, passed down from generation to generation, it will be Superman.

I don’t believe that’s an overly optimistic notion. If the gods of ancient Greece have survived human memory for thousands of years, then the gods of our popular imagination—everywhere, all around us, consuming us as much as we consume them—will survive into the deep future.

And perhaps they will think kindlier of us—that future humanity—for creating and loving and embracing a hero like Superman, the antithesis of our voracious indifference and our pitiless violence.

What you just read was the foreword to the Folio Society’s DC: Superman, a new collection of 12 essential stories from across generations of the Man of Steel’s comic book history. Curated into a hardback edition by Former DC Comics President Jennette Kahn, the release also includes a rare 1934 letter from Superman’s co-creator Jerry Siegel, outling the first details for Superman as a character, as well as a replica copy of Superman #1. Here’s a breakdown of the stories included in the release:

• Action Comics #36 (May 1941) – ‘Fifth Columnists’ by writer Jerry Siegel, artists Wayne Boring and Joe Shuster, and cover artist Fred Ray.

• Superman #30 (October 1944) – ‘The Mysterious Mr. Mxyztplk!’ by writer Jerry Siegel, artist Ira Yarbrough and Stan Kaye, and cover artist Jack Burnley.

• Superman #96 (March 1955) – ‘The Girl Who Didn’t Believe in Superman!’ by writer Bill Finger, artists Wayne Boring and Stan Kaye, and cover artist Al Plastino.

• Superman #149 (November 1961) – ‘The Death of Superman’ by writer Jerry Siegel, artists Curt Swan and George Klein, and cover artists Curt Swan and George Klein.

• Superman #400 (October 1984) – ‘The Living Legends of Superman – Chapter Four’ by writer Elliot S. Maggin, artist Marshall Rodgers and Terry Austin, and cover artists Howard Chaykin and Frank Miller.

• Action Comics # 583 (September 1986) – ‘Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?’ by writer Alan Moore, artists Curt Swan and Murphy Anderson, and cover artists Curt Swan, Murphy Anderson, and Anthony Tollin.

• Superman Vol. 2 #2 (February 1987) – ‘The Secret Revealed’ by writer John Byrne, artists John Byrne, Terry Austin and Keith Williams, and cover artist John Byrne.

• Superman Annual #2 (August 1988) – ‘Love’s Labors …’ by writer Roger Stern, artists Ron Frenz and Brett Breeding, and cover artist Ron Frenz.

• The Adventures of Superman #462 (January 1990) – ‘Homeless for the Holidays’ by writer Roger Stern, artists Dan Jurgens and Art Thibert, and cover artists Dan Jurgens, Brett Breeding, and Tom Ziuko.

• Superman #75 (January 1993) – ‘Doomsday!’ by writer Dan Jurgens, artists Dan Jurgens and Brett Breeding, and cover artists Dan Jurgens and Brett Breeding.

• Peace on Earth (January 1999) by writer Paul Dini and artist Alex Ross.

DC: Superman will be available exclusively from the Folio Society for $100, starting next week at 11am ET on February 4.

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