How Superman Became a Character for the Ages
The superhero from Krypton has a forgotten superpower: the ability to connect to people across space and time
/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/accounts/headshot/adsheadshotcolor-edit.png)
This summer’s big blockbuster, Superman, marks the latest installment of the Man of Steel — a character whose identity has evolved over the decades, connecting with the concerns and ideas of the day. Even the phrase he may be best known for — “Truth, Justice, and the American Way” — has changed to suit new vibes and new markets.
Superman’s persona transcends any one classification. He is Kal-El, an alien sent to Earth by parents with hopes of a better life for their child. He is Clark Kent, a good ole boy from Kansas who moves to the big city and works a 9 to 5. Completing the trifecta is his identity as a formidable superhero who battles fictional enemies including Lex Luthor and real-life villains like Hitler and Stalin.
Because Superman has alternated between being the mouthpiece of American power and that of the disenfranchised and oppressed, he has often been misunderstood. In this episode, host Ari Daniel speaks with Smithsonian contributing writer Samantha Baskind about what these different “Supermen” have meant throughout history and what it means for his legacy today.
A transcript is below. To subscribe to “There’s More to That,” and to listen to past episodes about the search for the remains of fallen airmen from World War II, the magic of what lies beneath the city of Rome, and a deeper look at lesser-known stories of the American Revolution, find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.
Ari Daniel: I recently met an art historian named Samantha Baskind. She’s a self-described modernist, a lover of Rembrandt, but when she appeared on my Zoom screen, she was showing off the symbol of another art form she’s passionate about. You’ve got a blue T-shirt with the red “S” emblazoned on the front.
Samantha Baskind: I’m wearing the Superman socks right now.
Daniel: Can I see?
Baskind: Actually, I can’t get myself out of this spot right now. My dog’s on my feet, but I do have my Superman socks. I actually have five pairs of Superman socks. And I have Superman tennis shoes. Those were a recent gift for my birthday this year.
Daniel: What do Superman tennis shoes look like?
Baskind: My Superman tennis shoes have the shield on them. And then on the side, Superman flying through the sky, almost like a Nike symbol, like with a swoosh sign. And they’re really great. They’re not that comfortable, but they’re really cute and I’m still going to wear them.
Daniel: Samantha is a professor at Cleveland State University and an expert in the history of comics. She particularly loves Superman, as you can tell, and she recently wrote about him for Smithsonian magazine.
Baskind: I am in Cleveland, Ohio.
Daniel: I grew up in Cleveland.
Baskind: Where did you grow up?
Daniel: South Euclid.
Baskind: I know it well. I’m a transplant. I came here 21 years ago for my job and I would never leave. I love it. And coincidentally, I moved to the city where Superman was created.
Daniel: Really? I didn’t know Superman was created in Cleveland.
Baskind: A lot of people don’t know that, and he was created about three miles from where I live right now. It’s so serendipitous.
Daniel: Samantha and Superman, they go way back.
Baskind: When I was young, I loved comics. I was a girl, and my mom would buy me Archie comics. And I didn’t gravitate towards those and I said, “Can I have a Superman comic?” I would watch Superman cartoons on TV, and I loved his costume, and I just loved when he would soar through the sky. That’s on the most basic level.
But Superman embodies hope. He believes what he’s doing is right, and what he’s doing is right. He has this moral compass. And of course, the stories are exciting, I like science fiction, and I’m so incredibly attracted to Superman everything.
Daniel: I called Samantha recently to talk about the big new Superman movie hitting theaters this week. I wanted to learn more about this iconic character and his enduring appeal.
Baskind: I’ve seen the trailer again and again and again. I’ve watched it, okay, I don’t even want to tell you how many times I’ve watched it, but the tone feels really fresh to me, and more grounded than some of the darker, more brooding Superman movies we’ve seen in recent years.
Daniel: What does it tell you about the version of Superman we might see in this movie?
Baskind: Well, I think there’s this real emotional core in the trailer, especially in the snippet that shows Clark as a young man struggling to understand where he is and where he belongs, especially when he is talking with his dad.
Trailer: Your choices, that’s what makes you who you are.
Baskind: And he seems to feel out of place, and I think these quieter human moments should make viewers care about Superman beyond just the powers or the costume.
Daniel: Superman’s been part of the public consciousness for the better part of a century now, and yet, as Samantha explained, his complex identity still lends itself to new story making.
Baskind: He’s not static. We have Superman the superhero, and Clark Kent the reporter for the Daily Planet, and then Kal-El of Krypton. How can you not love a man or an alien who has this bold and powerful and principled persona? And you wrap great stories around that and he’s just endlessly appealing in that way. He’s so embedded in world consciousness.
Daniel: From Smithsonian magazine and PRX Productions, this is “There’s More to That,” the show that reaches beyond the glossy pages to bring you stories you haven’t heard about some of our most famous cultural icons. In this episode, it’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s a podcast about Superman’s ever-evolving identity, and what we can still learn from the comic book hero today. Stay tuned.
Daniel: It’s hard to imagine a time without superheroes, but, lo, there was one, until Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel teamed up.
Baskind: They are two Jewish teenagers in Cleveland who come up with this revolutionary icon. They loved science fiction. They came together as friends. They were doing fanzines in their high school, just mimeographed kinds of magazines.
Daniel: What year was this?
Baskind: The 1930s. And legend goes that Jerry came up with the idea one night and was so excited, he ran to Joe’s house and said, “Here’s the concept, we need to get on this immediately.”
Daniel: At first, the two had difficulty getting “Superman” published until 1938.
Baskind: DC Comics, which was then called National Allied Publications, agreed to publish “Superman” in the first issue of Action Comics. So the character’s an instant hit. The origin story is really interesting because what we know of Superman today is not exactly how Superman began. There’s a huge evolution from comic book origins to radio shows to cartoons and, of course, the blockbuster-movie era that’s ushered in with 1978 Christopher Reeve film. But early Superman, Siegel and Shuster Superman, begins during the Great Depression.
Superman was a champion of the oppressed. He’s fighting corrupt landlords and abusive employers, and domestic criminals rather than cosmic threats. He’s a working-class hero for the working class, essentially, and he’s giving hope to Americans who are struggling. He’s like a mythic protector at that point. But then World War II begins and Superman evolves into a patriotic symbol. He appeared on war bond posters, he battled the Axis powers, he’s rounding up Hitler and Mussolini on bright Technicolor covers.
Daniel: Superman’s biggest weakness would become the mineral kryptonite, but before that, his biggest limitation was being fictional.
Baskind: Superman can’t end the war because he’s not real, so he doesn’t end the war in comics because of course that’s unrealistic. But his role is clear during World War II. He has real enemies. We have him fighting a real battle, and as America is in that real battle.
Daniel: Once the war ended, Superman needed new foes, so the plotlines leveled up.
Baskind: In the 1950s and the Cold War era, Superman’s stories become more fantastical and science-fiction-driven, so he fights robots and aliens and bizarre creatures from other dimensions. The villains of the time weren’t just criminals; they were threats to the entire planet itself.
Daniel: The villains became more menacing.
Baskind: So Lex Luthor, his oldest foe and my favorite, transitions from a mad scientist at this time to the corporate man, the importance of him and capitalist power. So Superman’s image is more polished and idealized in comic books during this time. He’s sort of reinforcing traditional family roles and American superiority in sort of a global ideological battle.
Then we get to the 1970s and ’80s where Superman begins to face more sort of existential and personal challenges. Writers start to explore what it means to be Superman in a world that isn’t always black and white. We have villains like General Zod and Brainiac and Darkseid, and then we have moral ambiguity and philosophical conflict. It’s more sophisticated.
So Superman’s invincibility isn’t questioned through his physical strength alone by villains, but he’s dealing with his identity. I think a crucial comic book during this time is “The Man of Steel.” It’s a reboot by John Byrne in 1986, and it modernizes Clark Kent’s Superman’s origin story. It focuses more on Clark Kent as a real person, not just as Superman in disguise. And the shift made the character more relatable.
Clip: It all started because I wanted to lead a normal life, friends, a job, girl. Lois, I knew that I couldn’t do that if everybody knew.
Baskind: Superman connects to the current moment, to every era. The ’90s brings this dramatic change. We have so many other ways that Superman’s being shown. There was the television series that starred Dean Cain and Teri Hatcher. And in that series, we have a whole different Superman. There’s a quote from that TV show. It’s my favorite Superman quote, really.
Clip: Lois, Superman is what I can do. Clark is who I am.
Baskind: It reflects the duality of the character. And in that TV show, it was about the relationship between Clark and Lois. And in fact, the name of the show wasn’t Superman, it was “Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.”
Daniel: Meanwhile, in the comics, the 1990s Superman became so human, so unguarded that he actually dies.
Baskind: He battles Doomsday who kills him. It’s the death of Superman. This event shocks fans. It made national headlines, actually, and reflected the vulnerability of even the most powerful hero and what we can face in uncertain times. That’s a cultural moment of cynicism and change where institutions and icons are being questioned. It’s a story not just about loss, but about legacy.
Daniel: Which brings us, more or less, to the new film.
Trailer: Are you being serious right now? / Yeah. / You’d let me interview you as Superman? / Sure.
Daniel: There’s this scene in the trailer where Lois Lane is interviewing Superman. And it starts off in a somewhat friendly way, but then her questions get very pointed.
Trailer: You seemingly acting as a representative at the United States. / I wasn’t representing anybody except for me and doing good.
Daniel: So I’m wondering, can you describe what’s going on there and what do you make of it?
Baskind: It’s intense, right?
Daniel: Yeah.
Baskind: Superman agrees to be interviewed as Superman by Lois, his lover, and Superman definitely gets defensive. He’s frustrated. He’s being maligned, but he says, “I stopped a war. Why is this happening?” This is not a totally new take on Superman. He’s frequently portrayed as a beacon of hope and moral clarity, but he’s often also misinterpreted and feared by those around him because of this immense power.
I think a powerful example appears in the 1996 comic, “Kingdom Come,” by Mark Waid and Alex Ross. And in this story, Superman retreats from the world after being rejected by the public for adhering to an older moral code. His traditional values seemed outdated to this new society. And when he arrives to restore order, his intervention is not met with gratitude, as it has been traditionally, but with suspicion and fear. And authorities see him as a godlike force imposing his will in this particular 1996 comic.
Clip: He has the power to wipe out the entire human race. Now I have to destroy him.
Baskind: Also, in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, which is a movie from 2016 some people might’ve seen, and in this film he’s publicly celebrated as a savior by some but harshly criticized by others who see his unchecked power as a threat.
Clip: The world needs to know what happened and to know what he stands for. That kind of power is very dangerous.
Daniel: So this way in which Superman is sometimes misunderstood or seen as a bad actor, what about his character lends itself to this kind of predicament?
Baskind: Well, of course, no one knows that Superman is the mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent. Don’t we all fear that which we don’t understand, the idea of the alien being, and the idea of otherness and difference? And it kind of comes round to the idea which has also been explored in comics and other Superman media, of Superman as an immigrant.
Daniel: An immigrant from an alien planet in Superman’s case?
Baskind: Exactly. And that’s really interesting too because Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were the sons of immigrants. Superman is born on Krypton, a distant planet, and Krypton is doomed. So his parents, Jor-El, and Lara decide to send their baby off to some place where he can survive, the sole survivor of the planet Krypton.
That’s when they put him in the little spacecraft and they send him to Earth. He doesn’t know much about that part of his identity at first, but it’s slowly been revealed over time. There’s been lots of conversation about: is Superman Jewish? There’s little signs. Moses is sent to a strange land in a basket when he is sent to Egypt, and Superman is sent in a small spacecraft to a strange land.
Daniel: Whoa.
Baskind: Exactly. And Superman’s name, Kal-El. El in Hebrew means deity, and Superman is godlike.
Daniel: In a true mark of an immigrant’s tale, the young space alien named Kal-El must take on a new identity once he arrives at his new home in Smallville, Kansas.
Baskind: He’s found by a lovely couple, Martha and Jonathan Kent. They take him in, they raise him, they instill in him their American-as-apple-pie values, and it’s those values that help guide him as he tries to use his superpowers for good.
Clark Kent is what enables him to learn about humans, learn about people. He eventually wants to leave Smallville. He goes to Metropolis and he becomes a reporter. Being a reporter is very helpful if you want to know what kinds of crises are going on in the world because the headlines and the news come to you in the newsroom. And we have the introduction of important characters that we’ve seen through the ages: his editor, Perry White of the Daily Planet, and the photographer, or the newsboy, Jimmy Olsen, and of course, Lois Lane. And then the stories take off.
There’s other characters that are dropped in along the way, but it’s that core that really carries the comic books forward and the animated series forward. And of course, there’s the love triangle of Superman, Clark Kent, and Lois for so many decades.
Daniel: There are multiple entry points for fans of Superman. There’s the romance, the action, and the sci-fi.
Baskind: He’s been a patriotic American symbol. He’s been a global humanitarian. He’s been an aspirational myth. And I think in the end, Superman continues to represent the best of what we hope to be.
Daniel: One aspect of Superman that recently captured Samantha’s attention is his oft-used slogan, “Truth, justice, and the American way” — particularly the American part of it.
Baskind: It was not Siegel and Shuster’s original invention. Originally, their tagline, it reads something like, “He’s a physical marvel and a mental wonder. He’s destined to reshape the destiny of the world.” The phrase, “Truth, justice, and the American way” first becomes widely associated with Superman during the 1940s, particularly in the 1942 radio serial, “The Adventures of Superman.”
Clip: Superman, who can change the course of mighty rivers, bend steel in his bare hand, and who, disguised as Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper, fights a never-ending battle for truth, justice, and the American way.
Baskind: The motto gains even more prominence in the ’50s with the television series “Adventures of Superman,” which starred George Reeves. We hear the motto in every episode.
Clip: The United States Treasury Department presents: “The Adventures of Superman.”
Baskind: So during the Cold War era, the motto aligns Superman with American democratic ideals and anti-communist values of national strength and righteousness. He’s like a super-powered guardian of I think American exceptionalism at a time when the U.S. positioned itself as a global leader and moral authority. But the motto is memorably used in the 1978 movie starring Christopher Reeve. And there’s a famous scene, I love this scene, where Superman tells Lois Lane that he’s here to fight —
Clip: Fight for truth, justice, and the American way.
Baskind: And Lois laughs in disbelief. She says—
Clip: You’re going to end up fighting every elected official in this country. / Sure you don’t really mean that, Lois?
Baskind: So this moment is charming and revealing, I think. It shows Superman’s sincerity in believing in old-fashioned ideals, but then Lois acknowledges the cynicism of the era. This is when it’s cemented in American culture and then world culture. It takes us back to Christopher Reeve’s incredible portrayal in this hopeful, idealistic hero trying to make people believe in goodness again, even if the world’s grown skeptical.
Daniel: So does Superman remain this representation of American power over the decades or is it increasingly questioned?
Baskind: So by the 1980s, the meaning of the American way becomes complicated and contested. Comic book writers and filmmakers begin to explore what this phrase means in a world increasingly aware of systematic injustice and inequality and global interdependence. So Superman is reimagined less as a nationalist symbol and more as a universal protector. He’s distanced from political institution s so his core identity remains the same. And we see this in the 2006 movie Superman Returns, which elides the classic mantra. Superman comes back. He’s away for five years from Earth to search for any remains of Krypton and his otherworldly roots. So he comes back, and the Daily Planet editor, Perry White, asks his staff, cause he needs them to get this story…
Clip: Does he still stand for truth, justice, all that stuff?
Baskind: ... to figure out what kind of Superman has come back to Earth. And this marks a clear shift from this traditional wording. It reflects the desire to modernize Superman’s image and reach global audiences without tying him too closely to U.S.-centric ideals. We’re getting closer to this really big change. And then Action Comics No.900 came out in 2011 and Superman renounces his American citizenship.
Daniel: Oh, really?
Baskind: It’s such a good issue. He wants to act as a more impartial force for good, free from geopolitical influence.
Daniel: Wow. I’m sure also it doesn’t hurt to reach a global market?
Baskind: You are absolutely right. In 2021, actually, DC Comics officially changes the motto. And this was maligned by traditionalists and embraced by those who felt that it was more inclusive. So his new motto: “Truth, justice, and a better tomorrow.” This change signaled this forward-looking inclusive approach to Superman’s mission. He’s not bound by the American way anymore.
Daniel: With this new film and beyond, where do you think the character of Superman is headed? And what version of him do you think we’re going to see in this film?
Baskind: In this film, it really seems that we’re going to have some of the best parts, the best parts of Superman. I’m really energized whenever I look at the trailer. We have Superman with his family. We have Superman with Lois, and their banter is just great. The chemistry between Rachel Brosnahan and David Corenswet is tremendous. This Superman has unlimited power, it looks like. This Superman has a heart and has doubts. This Superman intrigues, but we’ll have to wait and see as the movie unfolds.
Daniel: You know, it strikes me how wonderful that you can devote your career and adult life to thinking about these incredible characters and imaginative possibilities. It’s not something that’s just confined to our childhoods, but these characters really propel our interests and dreams.
Baskind: You are absolutely right. I feel very lucky that my hobby is my job, that I get to incorporate my love of comics and the visual in comics, the Technicolor. I find comics to be endlessly intriguing, and especially Superman comics. Don’t get me wrong, I like Captain America too, but Superman is my true hero and my true love.
Daniel: Samantha, thank you so much for your time and for welcoming us into this incredible world of Superman, past, present, and future. Thank you.
Baskind: Ari. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.
Daniel: To read Samantha Baskind’s reporting on Superman, fly on over to smithsonianmag.com. We’ll put a link in our show notes.
Our team at “There’s More to That” is taking a summer break. We’ll be back with new episodes in the fall. If you’re new to the show, we’ve got a lot of past episodes for you to explore, so don’t forget to take us on your summer road trip, hike, or on your leap over a tall building in a single bound. And while you’re thinking of it, please consider leaving us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you get your podcasts. We’d really appreciate it.
“There’s More to That” is a production of Smithsonian Magazine and PRX Productions. From the magazine, our team is me, Debra Rosenberg, and Brian Wolly. From PRX, our team is Jessica Miller, Genevieve Sponsler, Adriana Rosas Rivera, Sandra Lopez Monsalve, and Edwin Ochoa. The executive producer of PRX Productions is Jocelyn Gonzalez.
Our episode artwork is by Emily Lankiewicz. Fact-checking by Stephanie Abramson. Our music is from APM Music. I’m Ari Daniel. Thanks for listening.
Who is your favorite Superman?
Baskind: My opinion is not the popular one at all. My favorite Superman is actually Dean Cain. I was at FAN EXPO in Cleveland earlier this year, and I met five Supermen.
Daniel: What, the actors who played Superman?
Baskind: Actors, I met the actors. I have a picture with them.
Daniel: Ooh.
Baskind: But Dean Cain was supposed to be there, and he canceled at the last minute.
Daniel: Maybe that’s why he’s your favorite. He’s like the one you can’t get.
