[quote=@AndyC] To sort of tie OP Supes, unbeatable Bat-God, untouchable faster-than-instant Flash, too-cool-to-kill Punisher, etc together (as well as a lot of today's comics where Carol Danvers or Squirrel Girl or whoever beats an ineffectual silly-billy villain in one page and then spends the rest of the issue being emotionally validated), the inherent problem with all of them in those iterations is the lack of danger. At no point do you ever feel like the hero might lose, or that they might be tainted or changed by the experience. There's no stakes, no cost or consequence for their actions, no price for victory or penalty for defeat. There's also usually no [i]reward[/i] for victory, either, just a reinforcing of the status quo. This I think is where the superhero genre really needs to get back in touch with its original DNA in the pulps. Superman may be secular-Jesus in a lot of people's eyes, but his lineage also includes Doc Savage and John Carter and Conan the Barbarian. All of which include three things that I think modern comics are sorely lacking: danger, violence, and sex. I'm not saying to make comics outright porn--Clark and Lois should feel a lot more chaste and wholesome than Batman and Catwoman-- but everyone has some innate reactions to sex and death ([i]eros[/i] and [i]thanatos[/i] if you wanna get all pretentious). They're the most human part of the human experience, and when you remove them, the characters come off as inorganic and neutered. Wanna know why Gotham City is so much more popular of a setting than Metropolis? Because Gotham City is pulpy as all hell-- everyone is some combination of dangerous, violent, and sexy. Poison Ivy isn't necessarily violent, but she's definitely dangerous and sexy. Killer Croc is about as un-sexy as possible, but he's also the most dangerous and violent person in the city. Harley Quinn often isn't exactly dangerous, but is always sexy and violent. Everyone in Gotham City is trying to kill and/or fuck everyone else in Gotham City, and that's why it's so appealing for writers and readers alike. Whereas Metropolis is usually just.....[i]nice[/i]. Yeah, Lex Luthor lives there and half the city is exploding at any given time, but it doesn't have the same sort of danger as Gotham because it's supposed to match the main character, and more often than not Superman himself is usually just....[i]nice[/i]. That's been kind of my unspoken goal while writing this version of Superman, to reintroduce some danger and sexiness into the character and to the setting, to make his story one that actually gets the blood pumping instead of just having him preach platitudes and be everyone's imaginary friend. I've always liked Superman's heart and a lot of his brain, but it's high time the guy had some balls again. [/quote] Interesting. I agree to an extent, and am loving your work in this game as more of a Golden Age throwback to the character, especially as my Batman in UOU is lightly tinged with that aswell. Though I personally think the problem you're describing boils down to a severe lacking of a universal consensus in comics for what Superman's world should be amongat the many attempts to "fix" a character who isn't broken. Alot like many, many writers who can't decide who or what Wonder Woman is. To me, that's always been because Superman is supposed to be hard sci-fi, not pulp. Batman works as a pulp character because he's basically a pastiche of several of them. Very few writers actually lean hard into Superman's world being part Hickman's The Manhattan Projects and part 50's monster movie that stars an alien protagonist who has all of the powers of a God but the soul and upbringing of a man, which is why I wholly reject the idea of Clark not being relatable. This isn't directed towards you, Andy, because you already know what I'm talking about. But rather the general misconception of Superman being so overpowered that he's not relatable by any stretch. If you look at him as a powerset and not a character, of course he's not going to be relatable. But take a look at Batman through the same lense. His power is that he has a fuckton of money, knows all the martial arts, and is obcenely brilliant as a detective. That's not very relatable either, but we see Batman as someone on our level because he doesn't have any powers - which in itself isn't why Batman is relatable, since he's a trauma victim with difficulty connecting to other people emotionally, something that I heavily identify with as someone who suffers from severe social anxiety. Superman, conversely, is on our level because he thinks and acts like us because he was raised as one of us. It's a power fantasy where the most down to Earth guy has to reconcile being able to do amazing things, and his limitations come in through the human perspective. You can't hurt him through conventional violent means (unless you're half of his equally powerful rogues gallery), but you can hurt the people he cares for - which is damn near [i]everyone[/i], making him a much more vulnerable character than people give him credit for. In case it wasn't obvious, I'm a big fan of Superman. Love 'em. Right under Batman and Spider-Man, he rounds out my permanent top three.