What is it about the character of Superman that appeals to some but not others?
JMS: I think it’s a difference between power fantasies and revenge fantasies, with Superman more the former, and Batman more the latter. Not to belabor the previous point, because we all have our childhood horror stories, but I grew up in the mean streets of Newark and Paterson and some of the poorer parts of other towns. We moved 21 times in my first 17 years. Guys like me didn’t become writers, they ended up pumping gas or working in machine shops. It was a dead-end lifestyle filled with no. So on the one hand, there was no one I wanted to get revenge against…I just wanted a chance to be somebody, a chance to learn to fly, and to become someone who couldn’t get hurt. So I latched on to Superman at a very early age. I’ve said it before, and it’s true: most of my morality I learned from Superman. One of my very earliest memories is an image from a Max Fleischer Superman cartoon where he has his cape over Lois, protecting her from molten metal. I searched for that image for decades be
