Can anyone compare Spider-man to Superman?

[DarthBoy]

Since they made both classic crossover comics in the 70's and 80's, i was wondering if can anyone compare both heroes? compare both Mary Jane to Lois Lane? or compare Jonah Jameson to Perry White?

And who would actually win in a battle?
Lex Luthor vs. Kingpin: Compare them and who could win.
Spider-Woman vs. Supergirl: Compare them and who could win.

[JulianPerez]

The MAIN difference between the two characters can be summed up like this:

Superman is motivated by an incredible desire to uphold the right, law, and justice, because he is by his nature incorruptible, fearless, and idealistic, and he believes in saving lives. Spider-Man is the same way, except unlike Superman he can lose heart, he can become tired or lose his faith: something Superman cannot do.

Spider-Man is motivated by guilt, whereas Superman is motivated by tragedy, the loss of his exploded birth planet, which leaves him alone and in exile from the world where he truly belongs.

And finally, Spider-Man is a NEW YORKER; he's funny, wisecracking and can tell jokes, whereas Superman is patriarchial and all-wise and it's hard to imagine him being funny.

Both characters are worth reading and great, but for totally different reasons.

The biggest difference between the two is that Superman is a wish-fulfillment projection, whereas Spider-Man is primarily a comedy character that never gets a break. Superman, like Tarzan, has everything a 12 year old boy could want: he's superpowerful, can do anything, big and strong and smart, has lots of girlfriends (a mermaid, a superpowered girl from another planet, two reporters: a redhead and a brunette, a movie star from Krypton, etc.) and he has stuff like the Fortress of Solitude, every kid's dream of the perfect hideout, the Interstellar Zoo (the ULTIMATE pet collection), and Kandor (think you're hot because you got an Ant Farm? We-e-ell, look what Superman's got!)

Both characters are great scientists, although Superman is probably the superior of the two; he invented (among other things):

In the issue "Hero Under Glass" (1980-something) by Len Wein where Superman battled Chemo, he was able to disperse a cloud of pollution that had transformed Superman into a werewolf man by creating a giant vacuum cleaner that sucked in air, whose inflated tank was the size of a Macy's Thanksgiving Day Balloon.

The Zone-O-Phone, which let those of us in the real world communicate with Kandorians;

The Super-Univac, the greatest computer ever created, so advanced it could predict the future with advanced mathematics;

The Superman robots (which unfortunately, stopped working thanks to pollution)

He also discovered and harnessed Supermanium, the hardest metal in the universe.

Superman also has in the Fortress an advanced super-science lab that most earthly scientists could not identify half of the equipment inside.


As for the differences between the rest of the cast:


Perry White is just as tough as J. Jonah Jameson, but underneath Jameson's tough exterior he's got a heart of gold. But underneath THAT, he's a cheap old goat.

On the other hand, Perry White is a gruff, cigar-chomping guy, but he has a heart of gold.


Mary Jane is saucy and sexy, and a progressive; whereas Lois Lane is a very traditional marriage-minded gal, judging by all her attempts to get Superman to marry her, and her conservative dress.

[Crash-Man]

Superman is a god trying to be a man.

Spider-Man is a man trying to be a god. Or at the very least, a hero.

[Dhusk]

At their best, they are both everyman characters.

When Superman was worth reading (Byrne era thru the mid 90s) and in the Smallville TV series, he was a man given god-like power and tried to do right by it. He was hardly incorruptible or infallible, but it wasn't his power that people responded to and were inspired by; it was his humanity and his example of what humanity could be at its best. Superman acted like his powers weren't his gifts alone; they were in fact a gift to everyone, and he was simply the means by which their benefits could be delivered.

All of us who read Superman could imagine waking up one day and having the powers he does. And only a tiny percent of us would use them as unselfishly or as humbly.

Of course nowadays he's written like he was in the silver age, an unapproachable do-gooder doofus demigod, and he's become unreadable again. He's lost his humanity and become just a cardboard icon again. When was the last time you saw Clark Kent do something that a normal person could identfy with? He used to eat hot dogs, gossip with the guy at the newsstand, have arguments with his mom, etc. Nowadays he has a few panels of painful wannabe-witty banter with his supermodel-looking wife before he flies off to smack down the Menace of the Month. *sighs*

Spider-man is also someone who woke up one day with incredible power. Except that he acted like most of us would: he initially used his powers for personal (but not unlawful) gain. Plus his powers had appeciable limits, and like everyone else, he had to deal with the real world. I wouldn't say he's eternally motivated by guilt as much as, like Batman, the deaths of those close to him helped to turn him toward the path of championing justice.

Spider-Man is NOT just a "comedic character" by any stretch. Peter Parker, for all his guilt trips, obviously loves being Spider-Man in a way Clark Kent can't enjoy being Superman (especially under current writers.) He displays the exuberance and fun of what we hope being a superhero would be.

Spider-Man has also been written much more consistently than big blue over the decades, I'm not that fond of some of the current storylines in his comics (the one with Gwen Stacy's kids was just...ugh), but he is still recognizably the same Peter Parker I read about in his original first story in Amazing Fantasy. HE is actually much more of an unchanging icon than Superman has proven to be, who gets a major makeover every 10 years or so.

[JulianPerez]

At their best, they are both everyman characters.

Forgive me, but when was Superman EVER an everyman, conceptually? I mean, that's just not possible with a guy that comes from another planet who is essentially a wish-fulfillment conception. Superman is no more an everyman than Tarzan or Doc Savage are.

Superman isn't supposed to be identifiable; that's what Clark Kent is for. One unfortunate side effect of a recent reboot was that Clark Kent was no longer discernable as a seperate character, the greatest strength of the character.

Spider-Man is NOT just a "comedic character" by any stretch.

Spider-Man started out as a gag strip. He got allergy attacks fighting to save mankind. His employer was cheap, crusty, and full of personality. All of this is funny, funny stuff. He's a hard luck superhero type. Though you are correct in saying that Spider-Man had some very poignant moments, such as in SPIDER-MAN #23, where the world thought Spider-Man was a coward.

Peter Parker, for all his guilt trips, obviously loves being Spider-Man in a way Clark Kent can't enjoy being Superman (especially under current writers.) He displays the exuberance and fun of what we hope being a superhero would be.

Superman, a patriarchial figure, did take himself a little too seriously occasionally, however, in his Schwartz-era characterizations, he was often shown to have a good deal of fun.

Spider-Man has also been written much more consistently than big blue over the decades, I'm not that fond of some of the current storylines in his comics (the one with Gwen Stacy's kids was just...ugh), but he is still recognizably the same Peter Parker I read about in his original first story in Amazing Fantasy. HE is actually much more of an unchanging icon than Superman has proven to be, who gets a major makeover every 10 years or so.

Except for one noteable one, the makeovers don't really change all that much; Superman's power level fluxes, but not his characterization.

[Dhusk]

Forgive me, but when was Superman EVER an everyman, conceptually? I mean, that's just not possible with a guy that comes from another planet who is essentially a wish-fulfillment conception. Superman is no more an everyman than Tarzan or Doc Savage are.

Superman isn't supposed to be identifiable; that's what Clark Kent is for. One unfortunate side effect of a recent reboot was that Clark Kent was no longer discernable as a seperate character, the greatest strength of the character.

Superman was a very identifiable every man in the sources I mention--post-Crisis Byrne era, the immediate post-Byrne/Death of Superman era, and the Smallville TV series. He was also so in the first season or two of Lois & Clark TV series. No matter his origin, he was a very identifiable and human character who just happened to have powers, not a cardboard two-dimensional demigod who tries to diguise himself as a human, which was the vastly inferior Silver Age interpretation.

And your assertation that Superman isn't supposed to be identifiable is pure BS. During the comics and TV series that were most readable/watchable, it was the character (in every sense of the word) of Clark Kent and his upbringing that made Superman what he was.

Pre-Crisis, Superman was a joke, character-wise. I never saw anything in any of the comics I read that made me care about the character AT ALL. Bad, gimmick-filled writing, predictable plots, and bad art (Curt Swan was the most undynamic comic book artist EVER) didn't help either. By the early 80s, even the boosts from movies weren't helping; he was a character continuing on by sheer momentum. Byrne, Ordway, Carlin, and the others did him a GREAT service by their very humanist revision, which has been completely frittered away by the recent writers of his.

This may shock and amaze you, especially reading your posts in other threads, but there can be very successful interpretations of the character that deviate from your preconceptions of what he "should" be. I think you look at the Silver Age of DC through the very rose-colored glasses of nostalgia, and don't see the mountain of hackneyed tripe most of it was. I read stuff like Sandman and Watchmen and Maus, then shake my head in disbelief at people like you who somehow believe that the Silver Age DC was somehow the pinnacle of what comics could achieve.

Spider-Man started out as a gag strip. He got allergy attacks fighting to save mankind. His employer was cheap, crusty, and full of personality. All of this is funny, funny stuff. He's a hard luck superhero type. Though you are correct in saying that Spider-Man had some very poignant moments, such as in SPIDER-MAN #23, where the world thought Spider-Man was a coward.

Spider-Man. A gag strip.

You just confirmed you have no idea whatsoever what you're talking about when it comes to this character. Please do not comment further if you do not want to end up looking even further like an ass.

Superman, a patriarchial figure, did take himself a little too seriously occasionally, however, in his Schwartz-era characterizations, he was often shown to have a good deal of fun.

Schwartz-era, he had the personality of a generic cereal box.

Except for one noteable one, the makeovers don't really change all that much; Superman's power level fluxes, but not his characterization.

Actually the "one exception" I believe you're talking about, Byrne's revamp, was the most successful revision of the character in his entire history, commercially and creatively. It was this revision that inspired and led to the Lois and Clark and Smallville TV series, the animated series, put him in the national news, and dug Superman out of deep comic sales doldrums and put him back on the superhero map for the current generation of readers.

You know why it was successful? The same reason why the Marvel superheroes eclipsed the DC ones for decades. They made Superman into (*gasp*) an identifiable and humanistic character. That the current creators have chucked this completely and have taken a huge step backward into the Silver Age characterization is everyone's loss.

[JulianPerez]

Superman was a very identifiable every man in the sources I mention--post-Crisis Byrne era, the immediate post-Byrne/Death of Superman era, and the Smallville TV series. He was also so in the first season or two of Lois & Clark TV series. No matter his origin, he was a very identifiable and human character who just happened to have powers, not a cardboard two-dimensional demigod who tries to diguise himself as a human, which was the vastly inferior Silver Age interpretation.

The argument that Superman became more identifiable during his (thankfully over) 1986-2003 incarnation is weak at best for one reason: Clark Kent went from a dismissable, mildmannered nerd to a handsome football player and GQ model with a career as a successful journalist. Heck, why didn't Byrne go all out and make him Tom Cruise?

And as I said above, Superman is a wish-fulfillment projection and adventure character; he's not supposed to be idiosyncratic or identifiable. That's why the Clark Kent persona that he assumes is so important.

Further, if anything, the clueless Byrne variation on Krypton made Superman less identifiable. Previously, Superman had been sympathetic as a result of the fact that, despite all his powers, he was alone and different from the entire human race, an exile who lost the place where he could truly belong.

As for the odious LOIS AND CLARK series, when it wasn't playing up Cat Grant as a one-dimensional skank and having the Toyman be played by - My God - Sherman Helmsley, George Jefferson himself, it gave us a very identifiable Clark Kent. If by "identifiable" one means "uses lots of hair gel, has prominently developed pecs, and smouldering brown eyes."

Nothing shows how little the Byrne Robots get it, more than the casting of Dean Cain as Clark Kent.

Steve Lombard, maaaaybe.

Bad, gimmick-filled writing, predictable plots, and bad art (Curt Swan was the most undynamic comic book artist EVER) didn't help either.

Superman's plots were many things, but they were not predictable. For example, during the Cary Bates-penned issue that featured the Parasite draining the Galactic Golem's powers, we were under the impression that the Golem was dead and the new Super-Parasite had easily conquered Superman. Wrong! It turned out to be that Superman was a robot.

As for Curt Swan, his art was magnificent, clean, correct, wildly imaginative (the future worlds that Swan created were the most extraordinary), however, he has suffered a lot because he, like the equally brilliant Don Heck, did not draw like Jack Kirby. Swan made the faces of the characters distinctive; witness the difference between the skull-like, gaunt face of Braniac vs. the chubbier face of Luthor, for example. This is something that, incidentally, Byrne never could do: he drew men as the same thin-necked mutant and the only identifiable characteristic was their hair.

Spider-Man. A gag strip.

You just confirmed you have no idea whatsoever what you're talking about when it comes to this character. Please do not comment further if you do not want to end up looking even further like an ass.

The fact you do not agree with the above comment does not mean I am an "ass." Spider-Man was a fantastic character, whose greatest strength is that he used the tropes of the Superhero story for comedy. It is much easier to create tragedy than comedy (witness Gwen Stacy's evil children, for instance) which is why many of the Lieutenant Stans did not successfully make Spider-Man as entertaining as Stan the Man did. Although the amazing Roger Stern and Bill Mantlo came the closest.

I read stuff like Sandman and Watchmen and Maus, then shake my head in disbelief at people like you who somehow believe that the Silver Age DC was somehow the pinnacle of what comics could achieve.

........

Sandman was pretty fantastic; Neil Gaiman can write.

I'm not quite so certain about the other two you mention. In fact, WATCHMEN may be one of the worst of Alan Moore's works. Alan Moore is at his best as a writer when he is funny, and WATCHMEN only occasionally had humorous elements of the old Alan Moore we know and love: moments like "The only difference between Jon and the H-Bomb is they didn't need to get the H-Bomb laid every once in a while." Hee hee hee. Even SWAMP THING had a dark humor. WATCHMEN was ver-r-r-y slow paced, like Frankenstein walking with anvils tied to his feet, slowed down in no small part by at least a dozen subplots that had nothing to do with the main story of the miniseries. WATCHMEN would have been the exact same story if Alan Moore was given only six issues to . And it sure doesn't help that Dave Gibbons gives every woman he draws a terminal case of Man-Face.

As for MAUS - I totally agree with Harvey Pekar when he said that it was a mistake to draw the characters as animals. Note every single version of holocaust memoirs, particularly Wiesel's NIGHT, create horror simply by describing things as they were, simply and without frills. Spiegelman went out of his way - with the Jews as cute, cuddly mice everybody loves and Nazis as cats - to squeeze drama from the situation, what Roger Corman once famously called "emotional pornography."

Actually the "one exception" I believe you're talking about, Byrne's revamp, was the most successful revision of the character in his entire history,

The Golden Age Superman, who sold millions of issues, was the most successful version of the character to ever exist. In terms of sales, everything was downhill from there.

Using the fact that Byrne got a lot of publicity for Superman is a weak argument, too. The "Quiz Show" aspects of the Miss America pageant (complete with spooky music) attracted a lot of press at the time, but it was divorced from what the Miss America pageant was supposed to be about. Press attention is not validation for any creative choice.

*edited by moderator

[PatrickG]

I thought it was pretty widely accepted that Spider-man was derived from Superboy/Superman.

A geeky, glasses wearing high school student in a red and blue costume gets powers and must grapple with the responsibility those powers hold. He gets a job at a newspaper.

There are tons of twists on the concept, sure. But I think Spider-man is more directly derived from Superman than many other heroes are and that it's one of the reasons he's such a strong, iconic super-hero: he's only a step or two away from the original with some very novel twists and turns inserted in to make it interesting as a concept of its own.

Superman + Kafka = Spider-man.

[PatrickG]

I would add that all super-heroes are essentially somewhere between a sitcom and a soap opera.

Thing is, most leaned more heavily towards one or the other. Spider-man was revolutionary because of his balance of the two. He really brought serial continuity to comics in a way that had never been done, acheiving a heightened level of drama. At the same time, he incoporated more overt and funnier comedy than comic books, by and large, had done before.

He's hard to classify. But the closest modern example I can think of is Buffy, which revolutionized the Prime Time Drama. Most modern hour long dramas are structurally some hybrid of Buffy, Hill Street Blues, Northern Exposure, Ally McBeal, etc. etc. But Buffy really straddled the fence between sitcom, horror and soap opera in a new way that shows like "Lost", "Smallville", "House" and "Veronica Mars" all emulate to varying degrees.

I've seen Buffy classified as "Horror", "Sitcom" and "Soap Opera". None of these are wrong.

Spider-man is a sitcom. It is a soap opera. It's also standard heroic fiction.

[JulianPerez]

I would add that all super-heroes are essentially somewhere between a sitcom and a soap opera.

Thing is, most leaned more heavily towards one or the other. Spider-man was revolutionary because of his balance of the two. He really brought serial continuity to comics in a way that had never been done, acheiving a heightened level of drama. At the same time, he incoporated more overt and funnier comedy than comic books, by and large, had done before.

He's hard to classify. But the closest modern example I can think of is Buffy, which revolutionized the Prime Time Drama. Most modern hour long dramas are structurally some hybrid of Buffy, Hill Street Blues, Northern Exposure, Ally McBeal, etc. etc. But Buffy really straddled the fence between sitcom, horror and soap opera in a new way that shows like "Lost", "Smallville", "House" and "Veronica Mars" all emulate to varying degrees.

I've seen Buffy classified as "Horror", "Sitcom" and "Soap Opera". None of these are wrong.

Spider-man is a sitcom. It is a soap opera. It's also standard heroic fiction.

Interesting perspective, Pat. I never thought to compare BUFFY to Spider-Man, yet on closer inspection the similarities in approach are extraordinary.

Although I would argue that the soap opera is only able to come from Spider-Man because of the humorous, idiosyncratic aspects of Spider-Man. Spider-Man is a sympathetic underdog because he's so...well, really, a loser more than anything. This can be funny: he can fight crime but can't pay his rent, his aunt makes a superhero like him carry an umbrella in the rain, because "I know how fragile you are, Peter." But the very thing that makes Spider-Man so interesting, his loserishness, goes from being funny to being a source of real problems that are actually tragic. Spider-Man has all sorts of ridiculous problems with his love life that any sane adult could probably find a solution to.

This is another difference between Superman and Spider-Man. Superman is an idealized projection and figure that never loses courage, is never afraid, always has a plan, and always saves the day. Superman awes us. Spider-Man on the other hand, makes us feel a little bit superior.

then shake my head in disbelief at people like you who somehow believe that the Silver Age DC was somehow the pinnacle of what comics could achieve.

Your lack of a sense of history disturbs me.

Silver Age DC Comics were in fact, the pinnacle of what comics could achieve. Gardner Fox had a tremendous gift for plotting, a wild imagination that covered everything from alien warlords with cone helmets that fire energy bolts, to battles with enemies like the Invisible Destroyer and Gorilla Grodd.

No one matched Uncle Morty and his writers like Otto Binder and Jerry Siegel for their incredible energy in worldbuilding. Most comics only show a terrific idea every few years. Superman had one every few pages; whether it was the Metal-Eating Mole of Kandor, the crystals on Supergirl's belt that telepathically relayed to her the time, Perry White's Super-Cigars, a race of shapechangers that to celebrate Supergirl, all turn into her simultaneously...

You're just upset here because your pet version, Byrne's SINO (Superman In Name Only) from 1986-2003 has joined the dustbin of failed variants that comics have forgotten, along with the female Dr. Mid-Nite, powerless Judo disco Wonder Woman, the Yolanda Montez Wildcat, and Byrne's forgotten "new" origin for the Incredible Hulk. And worst of all for you, is that he will never be seen again. Except maybe in mention as a bad memory.

When Superman was made an unrecognizable creative abortion by a talentless phony who flushed all the oddity and imagination of five decades down the toilet, Alan Moore loudly and angrily proclaimed they had thrown the baby out with the bathwater and wrote the zany, acid inspired love letter to the Silver Age, SUPREME.

I highly doubt anyone will do the same for Byrne's "Superman" now that he's gone.

I do have one thing to say though, for Byrne's SINO: Na na na na, na na na na, hey hey hey, Gooooodbye!

To quote the Great One: How sweet it is!

[Crash-Man]

Spider-Man started out as a gag strip.

Wait...the same Spider-Man who inadvertently caused the murder of his uncle in the very first issue? And stood there crying to boot?

I think humor has always played a big part in Spider-Man (thankfully), but to cite it as a "gag strip" is a little ridiculous.

[666MasterOfPuppets]

Well, I read one comic of Spider-Man like eons ago, so I can't really talk about him. Except for what I've seen in TV and movies, which I heard are consistent portrayals of the comic-books.

I think Spider-Man is driven by guilt and tragedy, but nonetheless, he kinda likes being a Super-Hero (I guess, he seems to enjoy it sometimes). Except for those times when something reminds him of the real motives for which he's there, doing what he does. A man with a very noticeable limit on his powers, he does what he can. And like someone said, he's a New Yorker, he's a funny guy. Perhaps he does it more for the need of not being engulfed by grief than for anything else. I don't know. But Spidey would give his life to protect the people, and even moreso, to protect his loved ones. And there's people who love him, and others who hate him or envy him.

But Superman, he's a completely different deal.

He does things because they're right: the values that he was raised with, and his dep love for humans, "mere mortals", make him go and fight whatever evil it's out there, with or without his powers. There are evil people in the world, but there are also good, compassionate people, who have shown him the right way. Who have loved him. Even when he's not from "around here". So, Kal-El wishes to trust mankind, believing hat this planet and its inhabitants are worth saving.

And yes, we could say (as someone else in this thread did), Superman is a god trying to be human. Something that obviously he will never accomplish. He might have been raised by humans, but he's not an human. He's an alien.

Being the SOLE (yes, I know, but he should be, dammit) survivor of one of the most advanced civilizations in the galaxy, he's alone. Despite having wife, family and friends, he's alone. All of them will die one day, and he will still be there, among us, without those he cared about the most. This obviously causes him sadness, but I think it's something he will be able to deal with when the time comes.

Like Julian said, both (Spidey and Supes) are scientists, but Superman's intellect is well beyond anything a human could ever comprehend: owner of an unbelievable technology, and son of an advanced civilization, he can create paradise out of darkness, robots that seem and act like living, sentient beings, satellite networks, and armies of Super-robots. There's no secret in this Earth that Superman doesn't know or doesn't understand.

Superman sees it all, and hears it all.

And possessing incredible abilities, he can fight gods and demons, and win. He can move planets or strip them of their atmosphere. Some people love him, others envy him, others hate him, and others fear him. And it is safe to say that there are people who even adore him, given that they think he is some sort of messianic figure.

My two cents.

[sugmasterflex]

When Superman was made an unrecognizable creative abortion by a talentless phony who flushed all the oddity and imagination of five decades down the toilet, Alan Moore loudly and angrily proclaimed they had thrown the baby out with the bathwater and wrote the zany, acid inspired love letter to the Silver Age, SUPREME.



Which specific issues of Supreme did Moore write?