It must really suck to be a writer for something in the Superman franchise. Part of what makes a plot gripping is that the reader or viewer, while of course knowing that the good guy will win, actually believes that it is in the realm of possibility that the bad guy, even by some stroke of blind luck, could defeat the good guy. This is rather difficult when the good guy is impenetrable, has superhuman strength, can move extremely fast, has heat and x-ray vision, and has super breath.

The creators of the Man of Steel soon realized this, so they decided that there was, after all, one thing that could hurt Superman: rocks from his former home planet. Don't ask me how this makes the least bit of sense. I can see it negating his super powers perhaps, but killing him? If his planet hadn't exploded in a ball of flaming wreckage, wouldn't he have been living on a something made of this toxic rock?

Even this presents a bit of a problem for those who make a living off making cartoons or movies about the continuing adventures of Superman. Kryptonite is supposed to be a "rare mineral", yet in order for there to be a plot, Lex Luthor pretty much has to have an inexhaustible supply of it. In an episode of the Superman cartoon that I watched this morning on Tivo, the bad guys are able to hurt Superman with high-tech weapons provided by aliens from another dimension.

And then there is Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, in which Superman fights Luthor-created "Nuclear Man" in a 90-minute social message about the dangers of nuclear weapons (and it came out in 1987! This is no 50's monster movie) that borders on laughably bad.

Rumor has it that they're still working on a new Superman big-screen adaptation. Let's all hope they tune-down the superpowers a little bit or we'll end up with plots like these.