Official Superman Poster

[Umbran]

sure but if you include magic then pretty much half of the DC Heroes can fly, if you cut it then theres suprisingly few innate flyers.
I love Shazam but he is just Magic Superman

Specifically with regards to flight, there's some ambiguity there...

• In the comics, first flight within a story actually goes to Shazam (Whiz Comics #5, June, 1940), where Supes officially gets that power in Action Comics #65, October 1943).
• In Superman #10, March 1941, Superman looks like he might be flying, but that was an error on the artist's part - later in the same issue they establish that he cannot actually fly - he's still in "leap tall buildings in a single bound" mode.
• There is a radio program (The Adventures of Superman, second episode, "Clark Kent, Reporter" Feb 1940) in which Superman is described as "hovering" at one point, but he doesn't otherwise fly in action.

I think discarding the first superhero to actually fly in a comics story due to his being "magic" is unfair.

We might discuss excluding wizard/sorcerer characters from "innate flight" in that their power to cast spells leads to them to display arbitrary powers. But Shazam has at this point a mostly a fixed set of powers that happens to include flight among them.

 

[Morrus]

I think discarding the first superhero to actually fly in a comics story due to his being "magic" is unfair.

Unfair to who?

 

[Tonguez]

Specifically with regards to flight, there's some ambiguity there...

• In the comics, first flight within a story actually goes to Shazam (Whiz Comics #5, June, 1940), where Supes officially gets that power in Action Comics #65, October 1943).
• In Superman #10, March 1941, Superman looks like he might be flying, but that was an error on the artist's part - later in the same issue they establish that he cannot actually fly - he's still in "leap tall buildings in a single bound" mode.
• There is a radio program (The Adventures of Superman, second episode, "Clark Kent, Reporter" Feb 1940) in which Superman is described as "hovering" at one point, but he doesn't otherwise fly in action.

I think discarding the first superhero to actually fly in a comics story due to his being "magic" is unfair.

We might discuss excluding wizard/sorcerer characters from "innate flight" in that their power to cast spells leads to them to display arbitrary powers. But Shazam has at this point a mostly a fixed set of powers that happens to include flight among them.

I can accept that, especially as Shazam gets the 'Divine Boons' trait like Wonder Woman et al (both getting flight from Hermes) - so Divine Flight is in but we can still exclude the 'non-God' magic users

I've always been intrigued about what Superman movie would be like if he was limited to "Leaping Tall Buildings" - would it look something more akin to Hulk Leaping? I also really liked the Wonder Woman movies use of Wonder Woman swining on the lightning version of 'flight' it helped differentiate from typical flying by making it more 'super 'cloud' leaping".

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I agree with this, I absolutely hated the Peacemaker character in Suicide Squad

Yes same. Like, I was viscerally angry with Peacemaker at the end of The Suicide Squad and refused to watch the Peacemaker TV show for several months as a result. Like, how can they make a show about this moronic wanker who killed an actually-decent person and nearly others? And then the show started and I was very doubtful.

After watching the show I kind of love him and certainly get his struggle.

I'm not confident that will translate to a nuanced exploration of the Heroic Boy Scout (but I'm willing to be proven wrong)

Superman has some real trauma from being the Last of a Dying Race, an alien and adopted (albeit with excellent adoptive parents), and dealing with a world that alternately loves and loathes him. I mean, it can hardly be less nuanced than the Snyder movies of all other Superman movies except the very original (and maybe Superman II? I forget).

 

[Umbran]

Unfair to who?

Less who, more what.

Mostly, the cultural construct that pioneered the superhero genre. Certain bits of cultural history deserve some respect when doing such analysis.

 

[TiQuinn]

Here’s a weird question that occurred to me.

The tagline is “Look Up”. In the original Superman movie it was “You’ll believe a man can fly!”

So flight is still portrayed as an amazing thing, despite the fact that we’ve seen a thousand people fly in the intervening years.

But then I thought. Most of them fly because of equipment. They don’t have flight innately. There’s a bunch of magic users who can fly of course.

So my question is this — offhand, which characters can innately fly, without the use of special equipment?

I’m just trying to get a sense.

That I’ve seen in movies that I can think of:

Vision, Magneto, Captain Marvel, Human Torch, Black Adam

Namor, and Angel/Archangel depends if you count their wings or not. I don’t count them because there’s a visual source for why they fly, and I’m kind of taking this question as “they can fly just because, not because of wings.”

 

[Paul Farquhar]

That I’ve seen in movies that I can think of:

Vision, Magneto, Captain Marvel, Human Torch, Black Adam

Namor, and Angel/Archangel depends if you count their wings or not. I don’t count them because there’s a visual source for why they fly, and I’m kind of taking this question as “they can fly just because, not because of wings.”

At least in movies, Magneto flies because he is standing on a metal disk that he is magnetically levitating, he doesn't fly "just because".

 

[TiQuinn]

At least in movies, Magneto flies because he is standing on a metal disk that he is magnetically levitating, he doesn't fly "just because".

Not what I saw in the Fassbender Magneto movies…

 

[Mannahnin]

Not what I saw in the Fassbender Magneto movies…

Pretty sure when possible he does away with a metal disc he needs to stand on and just has metal built into his costume.

 

[Reynard]

Pretty sure when possible he does away with a metal disc he needs to stand on and just has metal built into his costume.

If he is lifting himself by the iron in his blood, does that count as "having flight"?