The deconstruction of the superhero is one of those popular writing approaches that I tend to find myself endlessly fascinated by. Considering what Peter David said in his response to Bill Maher—more than a week ago—about comic book superheroes becoming modern myths, it’s easy to assume that said mythologies might be approached from many different angles. What superheroes have to set them apart, generally speaking, from other folkloric and mythological archetypes, is the fact that for the most part, superheroes are human: they make mistakes that they eventually learn from, they adhere to doing the right thing and helping others like them, they walk amongst us and with us. There are plenty of great books and stories that adopt this theme. There are also plenty of bad books and stories that adopt this theme and someday I just might actually get to talking about all of these stories, good and bad. But today, we’re taking a look at the one character who seems to be constantly thrown into the deconstructive cesspool: Clark Kent. I’ve learned from experience that many of Superman’s best stories revolve around the idea of Clark as a man, as opposed to Clark as a superman. After all, that’s how we as readers are able to relate to the idea of Superman and that’s what makes the character so endearing over all: the manaspect of Superman, our relation to him as a human being and not as an immortal alien. It is in this regard that we have to consider Man and Superman, a lost Superman story written by comic veteran Marv Wolfman and illustrated by Claudio Castellini, that was published previously last week by DC comics, despite not many readers actually picking it up (at least, from what I’ve been seeing). In his introduction, Wolfman explained how this story was originally conceived in 2006 for a new series of Superman comics, collectively known as Superman: Confidential. It was slated to be put out as a four-issue storyline but when the title was canceled, the story disappeared along with it. But Wolfman was proud of this story and fought to have it released. Finally, it had made its way to the stands, albeit thirteen years later, in a single, ten-dollar, 100-page special format. There may have been a bit of special treatment here: Wolfman is one of the most prolific and important writers in comics, providing groundbreaking work for both Marvel and DC in the seventies and eighties, including his masterful run on The New Teen Titans and the greatest cross-over event in the history of the medium, Crisis on Infinite Earths (both illustrated by another seasoned veteran, George Perez). So, when the creative titan who saved the DC universe from going under in the eighties tells you in the introduction to his 100-page super-sized book that what you’re about to read is the best Superman story he has ever written, you can’t help but not be intrigued and you sure as hell can’t help but hold some fairly high expectations.

You might disagree with him after reading this book, though it may be important to note that while this may not be one of the greatest Superman stories you ever read, it might be the best kind of story that only Wolfman himself could produce. For, you see, Wolfman was completely incorrect in his intro: this is not a Superman story. This is a Clark Kent story. Sure, he does Superman things, but Wolfman procures that despite it’s quasi-Nietzschean title, Man and Superman focuses less on how Clark becomes a symbol of hope by rising above everyone else and is more about a man in a transitioning state: a boy from a small, rural town attempting to make his way in a totally alien environment. The first chapter opens with Clark traveling to Metropolis, his shadow drawing across fields of wheat and simple two-lane roads before transitioning to a five-lane freeway and then the Daily Planet. The second page paints the city of Metropolis with a single, full-page bleed that is simply congested: a low-angle image of Clark walking down the street shows a sky cluttered with buildings, the street itself is full of people and hovering over Clark’s head are balloons of different voices (brought upon by his enhanced hearing abilities) and just below these balloons are incessant car horns in blaring onomatopoeia. Thanks to Castellini’s art, the image is actually easy to digest, without missing any of the relevant details. This image of Clark, bombarded by bubbles of distant voices, is referred to a number of times in the book and it embodies the disassociation between the unfamiliar outsider and the noise of the adult world. This would then seem to impose a coming-of-age narrative with Clark at the epicenter, though it appears much more transcendent on the reader: the number of word bubbles on a single page are enough to give any reader anxiety and I’m sure anyone native to a small town, myself included, can relate to traveling to a major city and being overwhelmed by the way of life there. Certainly, however, Clark will be passive to the uncertainties that the city provides, including the cacophony of street life, the dingy nightmare of an apartment that he lives in and the empty promises afforded by his workplace? Because he’s Superman and Superman is an altruist, able to see the good in everything.

Surprisingly, no. We have to remind ourselves that this is a Clark Kent story above anything else and as a man, Clark responds as naturally as anyone else would in this situation: scornfully, doubtfully. Prior to entering Metropolis, he reflects on the dreams that he shared with his classmates and his parents; his dreams of joining the Daily Planet, living in a fine apartment, in a safe neighborhood, and moonlighting as a hero to the people. It isn’t too long before Clark has to verbally acknowledge the fact that is stuck on his mind; the one fact that he thought he’d never have to consider: “This is going all wrong… I’ve got no idea what I’m doing.” It was around this point that I couldn’t help but find myself connecting with this story on a deeply personal level; one I thought I’d never feel reading this book. Lately, I’ve been telling myself something very similar to what Clark had been chiming in his bed at night, and while I might not be as lost, I can’t help but confide in the vulnerability and the hopelessness of Clark’s current predicament. I live a pretty amazing life—no doubt about that—but that doesn’t mean that I haven’t faced any bitter disappointments. A few years ago, I imagined myself exiting college and taking my degree to the workplace to secure myself with a decent job until I could apply for a masters program. I thought about having an editing job, something in the local paper, a publishing internship, anything that could pay me well enough to keep me sustained and fed while I worked towards my calling: writing stories, teaching people about storytelling and promoting my work. Then my dreams came crumbling all around me: my family came down with health issues, writing jobs turned out being quite scarce where I live, I was rejected by my dream school’s master programs, I don’t have any books out and my entire belief of being a teacher and a leader had been flipped on its head when I was confronted with the idea that maybe I just wasn’t fit to be a teacher. Everything is going wrong and I have no idea what I’m doing.

There’s comfort though, as Clark soon learns: he works a secondary job as a janitor to pay the bills cause—in his own words—writing doesn’t pay much. He makes friends with a few of the other janitors and goes out with them to a baseball game, where the four of them essentially confess their ambitions and their struggles to make ends meet. One of Clark’s pals, Jose, confesses to working three separate jobs because it “puts food on the table and keeps my kids in shoes. I’m not taking handouts,” while another coworker laments; “the American dream. Working our asses off.” Apart from being a still-relevant topic in this day and age, this scene also gives us a sense of how we can approach our economic situations differently. Jose, the co-worker who works three separate jobs, has nothing to complain about, despite the fact that he works three separate jobs. He doesn’t take handouts, he works his ass off to make sure that he and his family are able to live comfortably. In some sense, this also gives Clark a paradigm shift: at first, his perception of life in the big city had completely changed and he saw very little hope in building a life for himself, but if a guy can work three separate jobs and not complain, why can’t Clark?

We all know it’s not that simple, though: the world is an unforgiving place and sometimes, these moments of epiphany come and go just when things get hard once again. For Clark, this means trying to do the right thing and save lives as random companies are bombed all over the city, only for the people of Metropolis to see him—the “Flying Man”—as the culprit. He also tries to squeeze in an interview at the Daily Planet, after his mutt of an employer, Metropolis Daily News, blows up. After hanging out in the waiting room for hours, Clark queries about the wait time and about attempting to reach out about a writing job. A man sitting in the waiting room with Clark tells him that, “hundreds of grads apply for a job here. The Planet’s the best in the city […] make him notice you above all those other hungry kids. Good luck.” Story of my life right here. After graduating college, the job hunt for creatives in any industry is exactly like this, down to the empty good luck bookend. Really, any job might be like this to some degree: you’re up against a tidal wave of other writers, other designers, other programmers, people who may be just as passionate as you are for your craft. This is most certainly the case for any artist, as well. Going to school, I felt that I had so much potential for what I wanted to do, that I was heading in the right direction, that my hard work and my determination would pay off when I began searching for work, for applying to other schools and for submitting my writing to magazines. What college doesn’t teach you is that your determination and the quality of your work can only take you so far, that your degree and your grade point average cannot factor in the excruciating amount of luck required to land any kind of success, that workplace experience would be more of a determinant of if you were ever going to actually obtain any kind of work outside of retail and that—in all actuality—jobs for creatives are hardly achievable unless you have something that jobs want from you and are willing to pay you handsomely for. But how does one get that something and what even is that something? There’s no clear-cut answer, because it’s different for everyone at different stages of their life. I hesitate to admit that there are plenty of times where I felt like giving up, that I was only fooling myself when I told myself that I would work simple retail jobs until I can get my writing out there and that I should have been better, been smarter about my time in college and that my work might be a bit too arcane for the market.

I like to think that a lot of people reach a point such as this in their lives and during these moments, they ask themselves, what’s the point? Why do any of this? Why write if it’s going to go unread? Why make music if no one will listen? Why write a blog if no one will follow? Why try for a job if you can’t get experience? Why continue to pursue something if it doesn’t work out, or if it seems like a fruitless endeavor? In the case of Clark’s predicament, he remembers what his father, Jonathan Kent, told him before he left Smallville: “Life isn’t always fair. Like I say, we do what we do.” This is in reference to a few pages earlier, where Jonathan says the same thing to Martha after she offers to send twenty-five dollars to Adopt-a-Family, despite the economic status of the Kent household. This statement is then directly repeated on the following page, when Clark pays his coworker back for taking him to the baseball game. Jose, in response, says to Clark: “New kid in a new city, and broke—you looked like you needed some fun […] It was hardly a fortune. Even if you blew it off, hey—we do what we do.” It’s here that Clark has his small epiphany. We do what we do; we act on sympathy, we continue to trudge forward and do the right thing because it’s the best that we can do. Jose, in this scene, shows Clark the empathetic aspect of being a human, the passivity born from our trust between one another. If Clark hadn’t paid Jose back, Jose wouldn’t have been hurt by it because—in Jose’s eyes—he did his best to help his friend out and that’s all that mattered. Clark’s response after this, then, is to not give up; to continue his Flying Man routine and to continue pursuing the Daily Planet for work. He understands that this is the direction that he must continue to head in, no matter how small the odds:

“I love to write. To work out a story, to explore it from the inside out, to understand why it’s important and to be able to explain it to others […] And all my powers, as great as they are, don’t make me a better writer than anyone else. That has to come from within. […] Going back to Smallville is not an option. Not after spending my whole life preparing to come here.”

This moment resonated hard with me because it’s this latter aspect that really pushed me out of the funk of my inadequacy. This is the answer to the question of what’s the point? The point is that you spent all this time pursuing your dreams so keep going. If you’re climbing up a mountain with hopes of reaching the summit, don’t let the snowstorm a few miles beneath the summit stop you from reaching your goal. Even if you never truly reach that goal, realize that it wasn’t truly a loss, because we do what we do. We create because that’s what we do and it’s our choice to decide that this is what we are chosen to do. Nobody else can decide what you were meant to do. Nobody else can tell you to stop doing something that you love. Again, this is easier said than done; sometimes the discouragement of the moment is so great that it weighs us down, sometimes our fears for success, for failure, for pain are so great that we simply find it hard to be confident that what we’re doing is the right thing, that the direction we are heading is truly the right direction. Believe it or not, this book gets it. Wolfman gets it. That’s why this story, Man and Superman, exists: to show you that even Superman gets it and will most likely feel the same way once again in the future. Just like the rest of us. Clearly, it works out for Clark: he becomes Superman and gets the job at the Daily Planet, but he works different angles to achieve his goals and focuses on the act of creating a story worth reading. It takes time and perseverance, but it happens.

Obviously, this little self-help session was more an exercise of understanding myself rather than a basic critical analysis of a comic book, but again, I like to think that a lot of people may be going through the same circumstances as me, as Clark, as anyone who feels lost in their life’s quest (which will happen time and time again). Wolfman seems to assert, with Man and Superman, that if any of his readers are feeling lost in their journey, that it’s okay. Feeling lost is what makes us human and hopelessness is something that comes to each and every one of us at some point in ours lives. Even Superman. But a lost life direction is not the end-all for you, or me, or anyone. It’s only truly over when we decide that it’s over. Was this Wolfman’s best Superman story? Debatable. Is this the most personal, humanistic version of Clark Kent that we’ve seen from a major comic writer? I’d like to think so. I can’t pretend like I know what I’m doing now, but the confusion and the anxiety I feel will not stop me from doing what I do. Nor should it bend the will of anyone unsure of where their destinies might be headed. Instead, Man and Superman shows its readers a real-world situation—fraught with discouragement—that draws us into the humanity of Superman and poses a truly difficult question to its reader: when your life leaps off the rails and the superman is reduced to a mere man… what will you do?