He has inspired storytelling, critical analysis and even scholarly research in a dozen different media and a hundred languages worldwide — comic books, songs and symphonies, novels, short stories, movies, television series, animated cartoons, radio, even a Broadway musical. He's been portrayed on screens both large and small by more actors, more times than any other comic-book character, bar none. He has inspired writers, artists and other creative types to produce works of soaring quality...and attorneys, doctors, firefighters and many others to enter into professions where saving lives and helping others is part of the job description. He is one with all the other great champions of myth in human history:
Gilgamesh, Samson and
Hercules (the two who inspired his creators,
Jerome Siegel and
Joseph Shuster)
, John Henry, Paul Bunyan, Doc Savage, John Carter, Luke Skywalker, Indiana Jones and beyond. He is the embodiment of an archetype, as they were, and he is not the first nor the last—but he may well be the greatest of them all. He is the most admired fictional character this side of
Santa Claus...and many feel he is just as real (in a "yes, Virginia" sense) as old Saint Nick.
He can leap tall buildings in a single bound. He can run faster than a speeding bullet...or stand in a hail of them and smile as they bounce off him. He can change the course of mighty rivers and bend steel in his bare hands. Yet his greatest "superpower" may well be none of these, but something far less visible yet no less potent: the love, loyalty and faith he inspires in the bystanders he saves, other DC Universe super-heroes and his readers by the billions; the wish he fulfills that we all have to be something nobler, stronger, better than we are; and the belief he embodies in what
Abraham Lincoln called "the better angels of our nature." He truly believes, as one of his most illustrious chroniclers,
Elliot S! Maggin, put it, that "there is a right and a wrong in the Universe, and the distinction between the two is not that difficult to make." He makes us believe a man can fly, that there is such a thing as hope even when all seems irretrievably lost...and that maybe, just maybe, humankind might be worth all the time and effort he expends (and the colossal risks he takes) in saving it from harm on a daily basis.
As you have no doubt deduced by now, I'm talking about the Metropolis Marvel, the Action Ace, the Man of Tomorrow, the first and most beloved of the unique breed of character today known as "super-heroes." Yes, The Last Son of Krypton, the Man of Steel—the one and only Kal-El, son of Jor-El, better known as
Clark Joseph Kent— and even better still as
Superman. He is my absolute favorite comic-book character of all time, and I don't give a good goddamn who knows it.
Yet no one, it seems—not even at
DC Comics Inc., the company that has published the chronicles of his exploits since June of 1938; not Wikipedia, its character-focused cousin
Supermanica, or any other source I can find—can answer one key question about him: On what day and date was he born? We know his middle name (see above); his Metropolis home addresses, both before and after his epochal marriage to longtime sweetheart/colleague/competitor
Lois Lane (344 Clinton St., Apt. 3-B before, 1938 Sullivan Place after—wonder what Metropolis' ZIP code is?); his favorite food (beef bourgignon with ketchup); and a whole host of other minutiae about him...but not when to break out the birthday cake and candles for him.
How do you even figure Superman's birthday? Do you count it from the day
Action Comics #1 appeared on newsstands, all those decades ago (assuming you can even find the exact day of that month)? Do you peg that as the then-present day, count back two or three decades from there to the actual day of his birth on Krypton, then convert it to the Earth Gregorian calendar? (And how do you account for the necessarily faster-than-light Krypton-to-Earth transit time?) Do you even count it from that day at all, or is it better to start from the day his spacecraft crashed near the Smallville, KS farm of
Jonathan and
Martha Kent? What time of year was it — spring, summer, fall, winter? (Most depictions of the event fail to show snow on the ground or the Kents wearing winter coats when they find the boy, so this may be a partial clue.) And do we give him one birthday party for both (all three?) of his identities, or a separate one for each?
Thoughts? Anyone? (C'mon,
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
filkertom, I know you must have one or two at least.)
