Am I the only one who thinks Supe's backstory should get retconned a bit...

Am I the only one who thinks Supe's backstory should get retconned a bit? I mean Superman being super strong because he is an alien made sense when he was able to jump over buildings, but now that he can throw planets around I think there has to be more of an explanation than that. Maybe have some cosmic event happen to him on his way to earth or some magical force bind to him like what the Flash has.

How is being a solar fucking battery not enough?

No, you're stupid user. Its alien bullshit biology charged by a yellow sun, thats enough for me

Supes is the first generation of Kryptonians who were genetically engineered to be as strong as he is when under a yellow sun. It only works when under a yellow sun so that the super-kryptonians couldn't seize control of Kryptonite from the previous ordinary generations, it explains why Krypton, a space faring generation, didn't just all go to systems with yellow suns and conquer everything, and it explains why people purposely blew Krypton the fuck up and Supes' generation was the first AND last generation of super-kryptonians. It also explains why Kara is on a colony and is super powered to before coming to earth, she's stationed there as an invasive force. Supes is also one of the only surviving super Kryptonians because Jor-El has a moral crisis as one of the scientists who helped design these super soldiers and sends Kal away not as a soldier but as a savior.

Maybe he shouldn't be that strong in the first place?

Also if he's strong because of a cosmic event or whatever, then you'd also have to explain why half of his villains are as strong as him. Their only explanation is "alien" as well. Brainiac, Zod, Mongul, Kalibak, Non...

because then he should only be as strong as a tree

That doesn't explain why he is dense or why he able to output far more energy than he absorbs.

He hasn't been able to throw planets around since Byrne's MAN OF STEEL, which was like 3 decades ago. His powers have been cooked down a lot over the past few decades...and people are STILL screaming OVERPOWERED like a scrub losing a fighting game.

>Expecting these faggots to read comics
Expect some retard to post Lobdell shit ignoring how Lobdell then made Clark job to H'el the H'ellord

> I require an explanation that is acceptable to me for my flying men in underwear in a world without snipers or the military controlling supers

You require my foot up your ass

Go tell Sup Forums that tomboys aren't cute tsunderes while you're at it you autistic faggot

>Am I the only one who thinks Supe's backstory should get retconned a bit?
No

You and the majority of DC writers have been thinking about that shit for years

I'm sick of origin stories and retcons

But then you'd have to make up that reasoning for all the super beings who are also as strong as him.
Other Kryptonians like Supergirl or Zod, or other species like Daxamites or Mongul's race.
You'd also have to rewrite a lot of his weaknesses like kryptonite or the varying effects of other degrees of sunlight

Really you're throwing away so much to change Superman, why even want to call it Superman?
Why not make it a whole new character like Captain Marvel or The Plutonian.

He's not all that dense.

>then you'd also have to explain why half of his villains are as strong as him. Their only explanation is "alien" as well. Brainiac, Zod, Mongul, Kalibak, Non...

Chalk it up to coincidence, there happen to be people as strong as him in the universe, they only become HIS villains by default because he's the only one strong enough to take them on

If they were weaker, they might end up the villains of Batman or something

Byrne's only fuckup in MOS was demonizing Kryptonians for no reason beyond hamfisting the point that Clark was nurture, not nature. Everything else in that origin and characterization worked completely INCLUDING him coming out to Lois who'd figured it out already.

> But the Barda porno and killing
For the cherrypicking faggots ITT: DC wanted Byrne so bad they agreed to let him have no editorial veto on anything he wanted to do.

Short of Superman explicitly nude, raping a child bloody while uttering obscenities, DC was contractually bound to let Byrne have his way with the book. And with the book's swan song being Superman as executioner, he blackballed himself at DC despite excellent sales on the book.

>because he's the only one strong enough to take them on
Remember that prior to Flashpoint this man was in the League so people like Clark didn't have to worry about him.

What about Eel?

I don't think other than freezing him supes can win

> what about Grant Morrison's Silver Age OP wank
He tried to give Superman back superintelligence, didn't read the Batman stories dealing with Talia, and ignored Jack Cole's own canon of Plas deliberately avoiding being cut by knives.

He's a great writer but an egotistical destroyer of canon whenever it suits him.

The average Kryptonians are as strong and durable as your average Marvel Asgardian. Kryptonian soldiers are genetically enhanced to be capable of absorbing solar radiation in order to boost their physical attributes and grant a new array of powers. They can absorb red sun radiation but at a significantly slower pace. They are vulnerable to Kryptonite because Kryptonite are hyper-invasive solar absorbing rocks. It will passively and aggressive absorb solar radiation from its surrounding.

The reason why Zod and the other Kryptonians have powers is because they are ex-Kryptonian soldiers. The reason why they were placed in the Phantom Zone was because of the fact that they refused to conform to Kryptonian norms and rebelled.

The reason why Kal-El and Kara-El have powers is because of the fact that their parents genetically enhanced them in order to improve their survival on Earth. The reason why they didn't genetically enhanced themselves is because of the time that they lacked sufficient time and resources to do so. Krypto was accidentally genetically enhanced when Jor-El was working out the kinks of the genetic enhancement.

Daxamites are an offshoot Kryptonian soldiers that settled on Daxam. And because of the unique genetic makeup of the native Daxamites, they inherited the genetic enhancement of Kryptonian soldiers. They are weak to lead because the native Daxamite are weak to lead.

>yellow
Whatever you say.

NO FUCK OFF

This is what they were thinking when they depowered him and gave him that stupid t-shirt. No more retcons, just make new stories.

God that is retarded.

That's wrong though.

Comic books will always have retcons. DC rebirth is one.

IMO Superman shouldn't be this strong.

Yup. Superman should be even stronger than that.

The thing that needs to be retconned is Kryptonians as a spacefaring race. It doesn't make any logical sense and they've been trying to explain it in the comics for decades.

There's a belief that, being highly technologically advanced, Kryptonians MUST be spacefaring, but in reality actually colonizing planets outside of our own galaxy is probably hundreds of years ahead of our current technology, so even when we have flying cars, are genetically engineering our children in artificial wombs, and colonizing the moon it's unlikely we're gonna have FTL travel.

So I'd probably put Krypton about one hundred years or two ahead of our own technology. They have a moon city, they've moved beyond the need for sex and natural reproduction, and the ability to synthesize natural resources has eliminated the need for war, but they still have a specially bred warrior caste, who have fallen to the lowest rung because of the lack of necessity, which leads Zod and friends to try and overthrow the gubmint.

Now forgive this bit of libcuckery, but there's the obvious analogue between Kryptonians choosing to ignore the problem with their planet's stability because of their inability to actually do anything about it and our own world's environmental problems, which adds to the realism that they all ignored Jor-El's warnings. Add to that Krypton's disinterest in space exploration, the lack of funding leading to Jor-El developing a prototype FTL rocket in secret.

Now, Kryptonians are aware of their ability to harness yellow sunlight, and they've attempted to replicate the effects of a yellow sun. But not only do you need massive amounts of light, you also need very longterm exposure over several decades, and if you're exposed to red sunlight, you're quickly powerless again.

So members of the warrior caste begin yellow sun treatment from birth, but even at peak power max out at Golden Age Superman's power level and can only operate for a couple hours and only at night.

This is why when Zod and his JO buds come out of the Phantom Zone, they can pretty quickly nearly match Superman's powers. They can't lift white dwarf stars like him but can hurt him and keep up with his speed on Earth.

>Now forgive this bit of libcuckery, but there's the obvious analogue between Kryptonians choosing to ignore the problem with their planet's stability because of their inability to actually do anything about it and our own world's environmental problems, which adds to the realism that they all ignored Jor-El's warnings
I had this exact same idea and it's something that DC should really go for if they ever wanted to retcon Superman's origin. You know, again. There are some rather obvious parallels there.

Otherwise, I do like your ideas a whole lot.

yeah, it could be at least redone to where there's some slim possibility that a creature like that could exist; say, some multiple, intersecting dimensions or universes with differing physics whereby superman is a point of their intersection able to interact with the physics of our universe

but the yellow sun thing is crap

solar battery?

superman's a plant

To me, the real problem people have with Superman is WHY it seems like fans love sucking his dick. They don't get Superman. They only see what is on the surface.

And realistically, the bar set with Superman is so high, so much expected of it because he is Superman, writing him presents a challenge.

The power behind Superman is really the IDEA behind him and the influence he had for so many years. Superman became popular in a time of America's vulnerability, so of course people latched onto the idea of a hero who fought for the common man, wrecking wife beaters, punishing corrupt bosses, helping a random guy down on his luck, and so on...

I just bought Volume 1 of the Golden Age. (He actually threatens to break a man's neck. Jesus...)
And I gotta say, it reads massively different from what we have to day. His encounters with the Ultra Humanite had epic potential. I can see the appeal he had then, and today's stories just seem to struggle to recapture that FEELING.

That's what's missing, that feeling of awe, which was lost when the industry became over saturated with other heroes following that theme. What Superman symbolized got lost in there, but he never lost his status as an icon, which many never take the time to understand.

Superman is never going to be as great as he was in his beginnings. Writing outlandish exploits for him isn't going to do the trick. Writing Superman has to be in such a way that it touched our deepest senses of what is just and right, especially with current events, where everything pretty much sucks.

Hot opinion here: there's nothing in the Krypton mythos that adds anything of value to the Superman character.
He'd be better served coming from some mistery planet we never find anything about.

You're the only one who's dense

I don't necessarily disagree with that but you can't really put the rabbit back in the hat in that regard.