I wouldn’t call myself a fan of comic books. I collected them when I was young, but it was mainly for their art. There are some stories that I still treasure the memory of, and there are even some I’ve thought of revisiting for the Cannonball, but I haven’t really felt the need to do so. These days, most of my superhero interactions come from whatever the latest release from the MCU is. But, the other day a friend of mine posted a hypothetical choice on Facebook about whether $50 billion would be preferable to the powers of Superman. This led to a lengthy and far too academic of a discussion in which I spent a good 5,000 words stating my point of view (which was that the money would be the more sensible option). All of this is a long-winded way of saying I’ve found myself to be suddenly obsessed with Superman.
And because Alex Ross remains one of my favorite artists:
…this seemed like a pretty good place to start.
Told in the first person, this is Superman’s attempt to end world hunger. After rescuing a young, starving homeless woman in Metropolis from a crowd of people, Superman is inspired to ask Congress to spread the food surplus of the United States to the misbegotten corners of the world that frequently don’t have enough in the hopes that this act will drive the wealthiest nations of the world to act. It’s a fairly simple story, and is a simple plea to do better.
On the one hand, I liked it for it’s direct simplicity, if for no other reason than it’s complemented by some stunning artwork:
But at the same time, I wanted something deeper. Superman stories are best when they deal with grand themes that get at the very core of what it means to be human.
Part of what I argued in my discussion was that Superman is not a cure for what ails us – which is why villains had to be invented to challenge him. Against disease, and world hunger, and global warming, Superman is powerless. It doesn’t matter how hard you can punch an asteroid when illiteracy stunts the intellectual growth of millions of people. There are some things that Superman simply cannot fight. And world hunger is one.
While this book does show that, I don’t think it really explored the idea of his failure, and what that means for us: that because he is so often our savior, he is actually stunting our development and ultimately presages our doom. When God walks the earth in human form, we lose the ability to learn how to cope with the problems in the world. When he isn’t there to stem that tide, we are left with nothing to prevent our inevitable drowning.
The failure, here, is not in the book’s message. Nor is it the execution. This book has a message, and it lays it out clearly and concisely. But it wasn’t the deep existential exploration of Superman that I wanted.
But it sure is pretty to look at:
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