SUPERMAN UNCHAINED #2 --POWER LEVELS AND PRAYERS

[alschroeder3]

I've been VERY impressed as an old Superman fan (anybody remember a letterhack from the seventies and early eighties named Al Schroeder III? That's me.) with Scott Snyder and Jim Lee's SUPERMAN UNCHAINED. Superman is shown as a thinking hero, trying desperately to make the best choices in his vast array of powers in a way that will solve the problem with minimum loss of life.

It's a characterization that jibes with Jerry Siegel, or Elliott Maggin, or whoever you fancy as the best Superman writer. Scott Snyder has started to spin a really special story, and Lee here is excellent.

For instance, in Dubai, Superman is trying to stop the world's highest building from collapsing--a building that has, as Snyder has Clark thinking, "roughly the population of Smallville" about to die in eleven seconds. He considers five or six plans, while being interrupted by a giant construction robot, and finally, after falling into a large pool, hits on a solution...

...While evoking a higher power, literaly praying he doesn't screw up.

I'm going to discuss religious belief, often a touchy subject, and I'm trying not to personalize it either way...just seeing what's right for the character. I hope I can do so without giving offense.

There are some heroes who should never pray. Wolverine, never. Batman? I have trouble seeing it.

But others it sits well with, like Nightcrawler. The Spectre, naturally. And Superman? Midwestern, farm-raised, intensely interested in moral questions? (Of course, many atheists and agnostics are also intensely interested in moral questions, and many atheists/agnostics have been farm-raised and Midwestern.) Still, I'd be more surprised if he wasn't quietly a little religious or at least spiritual. I like that touch, although I would never, repeat, NEVER, want to see him evangelize, which I would find offensive in the extreme, whether it was for the Methodist church that the Kents probably attended, or Rao. I like the brief, "Thank you up there. Thank y--"

Speaking of Batman, later he visits Bruce, who has designed a suit (which looks a lot like the Batman Beyond suit) which can cloak Batman against any part of the electromagnetic spectrum that is seeking him---making him invisible even to Clark. He says he made it when he didn't know Clark very well.

Clark says, "But now you're going to get rid of it, now that you do know me."

Bruce answers, deadpan, ironically, "Of course. Any day now." They later address why he will never do that.

Anyway, they discuss the traces Clark found of his new opponent, the Wraith, and in a way that shows how much power Superman has at his command...and how much more the Wraith has.

"You pull in about one hundred and forty megawatts of solar energy at any given moment--"

Actually---that sounds about right. Except for the fact that there's only a horsepower-and-a-half of power in a square yard of sunlight---maybe Superman has some sort of field that extends into space and captures a lot of the solar energy that spills into space, missing earth...but that's about right considering the immense power he seems to always have on hand. Every moment, another hundred and forty megawatts...

One assumes in moments of realtive inactivity, like when he's Clark, he can store it up to gigawatt or even tetrawatt levels. (Interestingly, the total amount of solar power striking Earth is at estimated at 174 petrawatts--a quadrillion watts.)

It shows Snyder has been thinking how Superman "works". He's done his homework.

But the Wraith can pull in a hundred and SIXTY. Every moment.

There are dozens of lovely touches. Clark tells Lois to be careful, and Lois gives a classic answer,

"Never, Smallville."

There's a confrontation between Superman and Sam Lane that actually was almost believable, not kneejerk beilligerant, the first actual meeting of Superman and the Wraith, Lois endangered thousands of miles away at a time when Superman can't help her, and I won't even go into what Luthor's up to...

Recommended. HIGHLY.

Comments

[alschroeder3]

I don't know--140 megawatts per second is pretty high up there, gives you a lot to juggle with...

Anyway, vis-a-vis the Sunspot appearance---not necessarily. A solar panel isn't necessarily jet-black, correct? Yeah, I can understand why they made Sunspot that color when powered up, and black does absorb more heat, but for the full spectrum of solar power, most solar panels are NOT black.

It may be that Superman actually derives his power from say, the neutrinoes from the sun (hmm. Differences in types of neutrinoes from red suns to yellow suns? Is there an astrophyst in the house?) and it in turn is a catalyst to a greater power, like a chain reaction in uranium sparks a much greater power. That would explain why his powers work just fine at night. But that's just speculation.

Anyway, it CAN'T be just the amount of sunlight impacting his human-sized body. There's only a hoursepower-and-a-half in a square yard of sunlight. That's why things like trees and other plants that derive power primarily from sunlight don't move, at least compared to animals.

Either Superman has some sort of extended field that absorbs sunlight that misses the Earth, or his body uses neutrinoes in a way modern science doesn't know about (the same way an 18th century scientist wouldn't expect two pieces of uranium to create an explosion that levelled a city).

[drexer]

Even if Superman absorbed all the energy for a square meter of 15.5MeV neutrinos around him he would only gain 0.161 Joules of energy per second. A far number from Snyder's.

[alschroeder3]

Right, that's why I said the neutrinoes (if that's the explanation) would have to be used for some process unknown to present-day science---the same way an 18th century scientist couldn't conceive of two pieces of uranium creating enough energy to demolish a city. I didn't pretend the neutrinoes, just by themsevles, would give him anywhere enough energy.

[drexer]

If you're going to mention Neutrinos you have to mention some possible method so that this might bhappen, otherwise you're not having the minimum respect for science or science-fiction, you're just waving a flag of pseudo-science and goddidit as a way to pretend that the explanation is anything thoughtful instead of a simple handwave with little or no intellectual method.

The reason the default Superman explanation works ("he's powered by the sun") is that it leaves enough things open that a slew of different sience-fiction explanations can be worked into that although might stretch the creidibility are thought enough that do not break the suspension of disbelief. Once you start using terms of modern physics to justify such things because we have relatively small understanding of such things and demand to be proven a negative it just makes the writing seem silly and as honest as homepathy.

[alschroeder3]

"He's powered by the sun" just by itself is lacking, if you leave it at that, since the horsepower-and-a-half (a little less really--google what a square meter of solar power is in horsepower, I'll wait.) is a fact known since the article, "Those Impossible Autotropic Men" an article published long ago in ASTOUNDING in 1956-- and cited by no less an authority on sf as Hal Clement in his article, "The Creation of Imaginary Beings" in SCIENCE FICTION, TODAY AND TOMORROW. (Well, you wanted the source for that.)

Byrne tried to work with that, saying it took young Clark years to become truly "super" in his post-Crisis rewrite of Superman. That might work, except the first time Superman lifted a truck over his head--would be his LAST, for he would need years more to store up enough power to do that.

The reason I mentioned neutrinoes, is that in the Silver Age, ENB cited as a source "ultra yellow solar rays" that went through the Earth so there was no deminishment of Superman's power at night. Nonsense, of course, but the closest thing to that in real science is neutrinoes, which pass through the entire earth like a sunbeam though VERY clear glass.

Oh, and I wouldn't write off the infared frequencies. True, a Kryptonian is relatively powerless under a red sun (although I think Busiek had Batman say that red solar radiation blocks the powers a Kryptonian has, rather than depleting them) but even so, they can stand up and function under a gravity anywhere from 5 to 33 times Earth's, (depending on which author you go to) without seeming to spend every spare moment eating, so even under a red sun, they are getting a LOT more energy than earthlings from SOMEWHERE.

(Speculative aside: probably Superman's infared vision is his "natural" vision, and his ability to see in what we would consider normal wavelenths is an added ability, somewhat like his x-ray vision. Kryptonians in their own enviornment probably can't see green and blues, and see other colors in the infra-red. That might explain some of the loud color combinations of Kryptonians' dress--the loud green in Jor-El's Silver Age costume probably looks like a tame gray to him.)

[ensiform]

Boy, this is a fascinating discussion. (Not sarcasm. I'm actually admiring it.) You've really thought this out. I like the idea that Superman's "normal" vision is an alien power, and his real vision is what we would consider alien.

[alschroeder3]

Yeah, Superman is probably what originally got me intersted in science ficiton.

Of course, that may make me the world's expert on why someone from a high-gravity, red-sun world should be a dwarfish octoped who dies of intense sunburn at the first hint of ultraviolet in the sunlight...*Grin*

[quatoria]

Batman said 140 gigawatts, not megawatts.

[alschroeder3]

Oops. Right you are. My bad.