The snap judgment might be that today’s creators view cynicism as hand in hand with sophistication, or misunderstand the character’s classic incarnation and assume it lacks the depth to interest an adult audience. But how did our popular imagining of Superman gain this reputation as conflicted and reluctant? Naive and unwitting? As a stooge of the silent majority? Or as a tyrant in waiting? And it’s not that you can’t find the benevolent Superman out there - in comics and on the CW he’s a father and truth teller. It wasn’t always this way: Back in 1978, Christopher Reeve and director Richard Donner delivered a Superman worth believing in. Smaller productions like Brightburn have even made a bad guy out of the super child. The shadows of breakthrough graphic novels of the 1980s like The Dark Knight Returns (Superman as a loyal tool of American imperialism) and Watchmen (Superman as a being so powerful he ceases to care about humanity) loom over Hollywood nearly three decades after their publication. The last few years have seen The Boys, with its mercurial demagogue-in-the-making, Homelander the neck-snapping Superman of Man of Steel through Justice League the laser-eyed unstoppable force of Ikaris in Marvel’s Eternals. The dark, conflicted Superman, or even a Superman who’s gone fully over - Superman as the bad guy - commands the current zeitgeist. Prepare yourself for Polygon's Who Would Win Week. One eternal question spans all of pop culture: "Who would win?" That's why we're dedicating an entire week to debates that have shaped comics, movies, TV, and games, for better and worse.
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