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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9678691" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Nope! He isn't the most boring superhero ever. He is, in fact, the most popular superhero ever. So clearly, he can't be "the most boring superhero ever" if that many people are into it. Note, this is not saying he is the best, nor that popularity indicates anything other than popularity. But it is a perfectly valid argument to appeal to popularity to counter the claim that something is the most boring thing ever.The problem is that half his writers think that the way to write him is that he has to either (a) fight other supers in direct combat (which he will always win. and which is thus boring) or (b) he will be """challenged""" by asking if he'll choose to do the right thing in a situation where he could do a very very bad thing (which he will never do, and which is thus boring).It's actually quite simple to write stories for Superman that are frequently very interesting; you literally only need to do one of three things (there may be other options, these are just reliable ones):(1) Put him in a situation where his moral compass tells him to do something that his allies outright oppose; no matter whether Supes or his allies are the PoV characters, you've instantly got an interesting conflict by doing this, so long as you avoid the lame stupid version of "disagreement" where it only arises from a misheard conversation or similar BS(2) As noted above, put him in a situation where innocent bystanders and collateral damage are the concern; that way, instead of the boring and instantly-answered "can Superman fight Fluffy the Terrible???", we have the unknown and variable "can Superman protect these people AND fight Fluffy the Terrible?", because even if Superman is indestructible, humans aren'tor (3) challenge him with forces or issues that aren't vulnerable to being punched, superspeed-flummoxed, heat-vision'd, freeze-breath'd, or whatever other powers Superman has in a given context; e.g., a drug problem, or political corruption in the legitimate politics of some context, or, I dunno, a super-powerful ultra-genius businessman getting up to illegal shenanigans, where shutting down one operation does nothing to the overall conflictYou can't write superman the way you'd write Spider-Man or Batman or Daredevil or the like. He isn't like those superheroes, and the kinds of conflicts that would trip them up simply bounce off his bulletproof chest. That doesn't mean he's boring; he's only boring if you force him into stories where he doesn't fit.Superman also fails. Can you believe it? He fails!My favorite version, the DC Animated Universe version (voiced wonderfully by Tim Daly), is a heavily flawed paragon hero. He doesn't trust other people to get things done because he's keenly aware that he is nearly invulnerable and they aren't (and he knows how much more powerful he is than them). Lex Luthor knows how to push his buttons almost flawlessly, and even though Superman is almost always right to distrust Lex, it's hard for him to actually combat what Lex does.Superman isn't perfect. That's the thing here. He's not. The best versions of him are in fact deeply flawed men. They're just deeply flawed men with a genuine commitment to doing the right things for the right reasons, and a crapload of power--the power to act as they think right, even if the world tells them they're wrong...and sometimes, they are. Just like adventurers, once they've got some adventures under their belt.But...that's...still a thing??Just because you got to the top of the cliff doesn't mean your friend is suddenly safe! You've just gotten there in time to--possibly--do something.I just...I don't understand. Why are you so committed to interpreting everything in the worst, most harmful, most antagonistic light? Why is it you can't give even one charitable interpretation?</blockquote>

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