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Originally Posted by Lock Jaw
Superman is an incredibly complex character. The problem is that he is so complex that most writers have no idea what to do with him.
I could try to explain, but I would just fail miserably because my communication skills and way with words are crap.
In my opinion, Superman is just one of those characters that you either "get" or "don't get".
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There's nothing not to get. What there is to get is that he's iconic, he's the quintessential superhero. the original and the template, and is a major part of American culture. That's what makes him classic.
But as for him being complex and writers having no idea what to do with him...that's actually the exact opposite of what is the case. Superman is primal, and he's popular for being just what he is.
He's far from complex though, and in any case ever where the company or writers have tried to make Superman deeper, or make him more human and deal with heavier things, or even change him to be less cheesy and more vulnerable and realisitic..it has failed miserably.
They've tried to make Superman more complex, since he clearly isn't. They've tried to make him more deep and his status as a Superhero more on par with characters like Batman and Spiderman, who are able to evolve and change and do different things as well as have a wider range of emotions and weaknesses to work with.
But since it fails everytime with Superman, it has become clear that the people who want to see Superman don't want to see him change. He just has no flexibility. He has to be the all powerful, squeaky clean, all american hero with only one weakness and every power under the sun (no pun intended). That's where his appeal is rooted and that's where it ends.
So people who don't like Superman for these reasons never will, and his character doesn't allow for this to change. But in order for him to stay around they need to stick to the basics and have him be the same one trick pony generation after generation. Some will get sick of it, some never will want it, and others will be content to see a perfect tall dark handsome God-like Patriotic citizen from the 30's save the damsel in distress month after month. He's the small town farmboy who went to the big city and became a hero after his father died. It's called a Jungian hero journey. It's in just about everything, and sometimes it's coupled with a complex plot and variables. Other times it's straight forward and simple, like in Superman.
That's how it is, and that's probably how it will always be. But he is far from complex.
At least not as a charcter. The subject of why such a simple thing is successful, and it's primal nature and archetypes are a whole other story. You can teach an entire class on how deep that is in terms of it's relation to mythology and human nature, and how Superman mirrors the story of Moses and what not. But pound for pound, in the context of his stories, Superman is as simple as it gets for a hero.