Super Powers
This essay was originally posted to Twitter between May 2, 2021 and May 7, 2021. It was composed of 1,376 words across 30 tweets.
When I was a young reader of Superman comic books, they were a few years into the post-Crisis period. The story was retold from square one. His history and his powers were revised.
One of my favorite characters from this period is Professor Emil Hamilton.
In his early appearances, Hamilton is a mentally unstable scientist, recruited and manipulated by Lex Luthor into attacking Superman with his inventions. After being defeated and rehabilitated, Professor Hamilton is enlisted by Superman as his personal scientific advisor.
Not only is this an apt demonstration of Superman's faith in the goodness of even the most troubled people, but it's a handy way for the writers of these comic books to explain how the science fiction stuff works in this new-and-improved retelling of the Superman mythology.
Hamilton builds Superman's gadgets, but he also studies Superman's physiology. Much about Superman's health and his powers remains a mystery, even to Superman himself, so he (and the writers) turns to Professor Hamilton to explain the scientific background behind it all.
The SUPERMAN movie has no such mouthpiece character, no one to tell Superman about the science of Kryptonian technology and biology. The faith is in us, the audience, to interpret the evidence. To understand it by inference, to whatever degree we need to.
So, what can we infer?
SUPERMAN may not have a Hamilton to serve as its scientific mouthpiece. But, however briefly, Jor-El stands in. In one of the most understated, best written dialogue sequences in any superhero movie, Jor-El and Lara argue about baby Kal-El's fate as they prepare to send him off.
Lara worries about the danger. Jor-El reassures her (and himself): "His dense molecular structure will make him strong." Zod expands on this in the sequel: "The closer we get to a planet with only one sun--a yellow sun--the more our molecular density gives us unlimited powers."
It's not immediately apparent what "dense molecular structure" means, other than there's something different about him from humans at the cellular level. We also know that there's something special about yellow sunlight that activates them, sort of like dry yeast in warm water.
The powers he demonstrates in the movie are flight, super strength, super speed, invulnerability, super hearing, and x-ray vision. We'll address some of these in turn. We'll also address the powers he demonstrates in less obvious ways, which necessarily operate in the background.
There are other powers in later movies that are a part of this movie's universe--SUPERMAN II, SUPERMAN III, SUPERMAN IV: THE QUEST FOR PEACE, and (in a sense) Superman Returns. Aside from, say, heat vision, I'm inclined to ignore them. Even by Superman's standards, they're silly.
We know that Superman can fly. (Or, per the tagline, at least we believe it.) There are three hypothetical reasons why this might be possible. One is that he is simply weightless, as though in constant freefall. From watching the movie, this explanation doesn't seem likely.
Another reason might be that he exerts some kind of exotic propulsive force, invisible to us, but analogous to rotors on a helicopter or rocket boosters on a spacecraft. This sounds more likely, but we never see the secondary effects of propulsion--kicking up debris, for example.
A third reason might be anti-gravity, or a non-gravitational field. In fiction and in speculation, anti-gravity is different from propulsion or repulsion, which push back against gravity. In the presence of an anti-gravity substance or technology, gravity just doesn't apply.
For example, in the H.G. Wells science fiction story The First Men In The Moon, gravity is negated in the presence of an exotic material called cavorite.
Is there an exotic anti-gravity substance or technology in SUPERMAN? Yes, in fact--it's Superman himself. He's the substance.
What's hard to swallow about this explanation is that it isn't much of an explanation at all. But think of how many of our great stories rely on equally murky pseudo-science to justify improbabilities like teleportation or faster-than-light travel. SUPERMAN is one of these.
The human body isn't an aerodynamic object. When Superman runs fast, or flies fast, he must somehow contend with air resistance, solid airborne particles, inertia when maneuvering or stopping, and the vulnerability of any objects or romantic love interests he might be carrying.
John Byrne, the author of the mid-'80s Man of Steel miniseries that revised Superman's powers in the post-Crisis comic books, hypothesized that Superman has (in Byrne's words) a "bio-electric aura." Simply put, Superman's skin is covered by an exotic shield of pure energy.
This shield allows air to slip around him. It cancels out inertia and evenly distributes physical force, a protection that extends to whatever objects or people he might be carrying. This is an automatic process, rather than something he does on purpose like flight or speed.
Byrne reasoned that this isn't so different from humans. We emit our own low-level electrical field as a byproduct of our bodies' natural processes. One nice effect is that it has a way of repelling dust and other airborne particles, so that we're not constantly covered in dirt.
While the movie doesn't propose this explanation, it doesn't contradict it, either, and it's consistent with how the laws of physics seem to behave whenever Superman is around. Or, at least, it's more consistent and requires fewer exceptions than any alternative explanation.
Such an exotic field of energy would help him steady a falling plane, catch Lois Lane in mid air without breaking her in half, repel bullets with his body, and perform a number of other super-feats without any inadvertent destructive consequences. There may be more benefits yet.
When Superman flies into the upper atmosphere, whether alone or with a friend, perhaps this shield insulates them from the cold and the thinness of the air. Perhaps this emanation of energy is related to his laserlike ability to direct x-rays and infrared heat with his eyes.
We know Superman eats. (When he's hungry.) We sometimes catch him heaving a sigh of relief, or taking a breath to steady his nerves, so we know he breathes. These are the ways that humans nourish themselves. But, on their own, they couldn't satisfy Superman's energy requirements.
We live our lives beneath an atmospheric blanket, suffused with radiation in the form of ambient heat and electricity. When Superman consumes energy at a higher rate than he can take in through food, drink, or air, he must be somehow gathering other energy from his surroundings.
That's the core power that makes Superman work: his body is a filtration system for ambient energy. Maybe he doesn't even need to eat or breathe. But, given that he comes from a world where powers weren't the norm, he can still do those things, and possibly craves them.
This enables his body to resist damage and perform any kind of work it needs to, both voluntarily and involuntarily. It also serves as an explanation for why he doesn't blow everyone off the street when he sneezes, or why he doesn't twist doorknobs right out of their moorings.
If the power works when it has to, and recedes when it isn't needed, what ways might it be working that aren't as readily apparent as super speed or super strength? Our bodies run on all kinds of automatic processes that are highly subject to the nourishment we have access to.
Our aging process is the accumulation of damage to our bodies over time, at both the macro level (ex. the weathering of our skin) and the micro level (the wear and tear on our DNA, the shortening of our telomeres). The degree varies depending on genetic and environmental factors.
If Superman has a constant supply of exotic energy that makes him impervious to damage, does this mean that, upon maturation, his aging process comes to a halt? If his cells aren't damaged, if they can replicate in perpetuity without error, will he be physically 30 forever?
Maybe he'll live until the heat death of the universe. Or maybe, after bearing witness to the lives and deaths of generations of loved ones, after constant heartbreak, he'll retire to a planet with a red sun and live out the rest of his days, ordinary, mortal, and grateful.
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Published 3/9/2024
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