"An Unlikely Prophet brings up an important question about Superman: What makes people want to meet him so badly? [...]Superman is different because he doesn't really belong to the writers who've created his adventures over the last 68-plus years. He has evolved into a folk hero, a fable, and the public feels like it has a stake in who Superman "really" is.

From The Myth of Superman, by Neil Gaiman and Adam Rogers.

I've always been more of a Batman guy than a Superman guy. (I'm sure someone's come up with a bullshit pop-psych theory to explain such things, but the reality is that the first time my parents left me with a babysitter they brought me home an 80-Page Giant comic featuring Batman.) I'm not going to bother getting into the iconic parallels between the Superman and Batman — day/night, strength/intellect, justice/revenge — as there are many, many, many essays on-line if you are into such things. With the release this month of the new live action Superman film, the Kryptonian PR machine is ratcheting up to maximum, and I am a little reluctant to add much to that (although I am looking forward to seeing the film, however misguided that may be).

The linked essay by Gaiman and Rogers, though, struck a chord with me, and gave me pause to think about the relationship of Superman to our world today: the Man of Steel embodies the elusive ideal of America. He's an immigrant orphan sent away by his parents for the hope of a better life, who used this opportunity to make the world a better place. His unparalleled strength is used not for conquest or to remake the world in his own image, but to defend his adopted home from its enemies. And obove all, Superman is tolerant of those who are who hold differing views, choosing to allow the example of his own actions speak for him, rather than forcing them to change to fit his own philosophy.

Superman, I suspect, would not be comfortable in American today.

The Crash Test Dummies had it right in Superman's Song: "Sometimes I despair the world will never see another man like him." But we still have the mythology, and some of us still hold on to the dream.