It bothers me, a bit, about Superman. He fights crime under one personae and then under another personae .... writes about it. Talk about controlling your own message. No wonder everyone in his world thinks of him as being super ... he was the media ... he told them he was super and they believed him. A bit fascist, don't you think?
Two Jewish teenagers from Cleveland, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, created Superman in 1933. This was during the height of fascism in Europe and antisemitism, not only abroad but in the states as well. Surely what was going on in the world had some influence on them. Superman was clearly a leftist in the early days taking on the KKK and promoting the New Deal. It is unclear whether they took the name of the character from the Nietzsche concept, the Superman, but the fact that Nietzsche was also a major influence of Hitler always seemed ironic to me. The name Clark Kent comes from the movie stars Clark Gable and Kent Taylor (a B movie star from the 50's). Many of the other names they took from Hebrew with Superman's real name, Kal-El resembling the Hebrew word for "the voice of god" while his childhood mythos resembles Moses in that they were both cast out by their parents to save him. Moses was sent down the Nile in a basket, while Kal-El sent in a pod to Kansas. So maybe, Superman isn't a fascist, but perhaps, he's just Jewish.
I have always been more of a Marvel fan than a DC fan anyway. Spiderman is more my style. He worked for a newspaper too, but he just took the pictures. Others were open to interpret what he was doing in them. He didn't control his own message ... it controlled him.
Check out this Archive of Studio 360. It was a good one:
http://www.studio360.org/americanicons/episodes/2007/01/05
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