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I'm writing this because Superman is one of those characters I grew up with (there are pictures of me as a child wearing superman shirts in the house). There is a whole article when it comes to him and that is whether he can conceive a child with Lois Lane safely or not.
First of all let me say right now that saying he can't is especially at this point moot because in the movies he did without difficulty. There are actually two versions of how it happened. In the theatrical cut of Superman II he gave up his powers and then went to bed with Lois Lane. In the director's cut he slept with her and then gave up his powers.
Either way she survived and bore his child with no difficulties and it wasn't exactly particle collider time (insert large hadron collider jokes) when they conceived nor did the sperm have 100 times a billion more power than normal human sperm obviously. There was no rash of pregnancies to speak of. But it seems that being half human and never having had the opportunity of being near the red giant that krypton orbited the child turned out mostly harmless and constantly sick. He seems to have his krypton moments where he has more strength\etc. than at other times though.
Another thing I want to talk about is the author asserting that humans would smell as alien to him as a totally unrelated organism would smell to us, sexually. I beg to differ here because He barely had any time on krypton and spent most of his life amongst humans. The years for which he would form his sexual identity where spent on earth with the Kents (human). Superman loves humans and this includes how they smell. I would argue he is more accustomed to humans than kryptonians because comparatively speaking he's spent a lot more time with them getting acquainted with everything about them in his formative years. Why else would he end up choosing Lois Lane as the love of his life? He did also listen to Pa Kent's guidance and didn't defy him before he died. As far as he was concerned he was his father before Jor'el waltzed back into his life via crystal. He also cared about his adoptive mother and what she had to say. To say that he was an uncontrollable youth is not paying attention (he may have been that way in Smallville I don't know... I hate that show).
This brings me to something else I have thought of and I'm sure I'm not the only one who thought about this. Presumably kryptonians have the molecular density that they do because they lived on a planet that not only was able to sustain life but was far enough to be frozen, survive their sun expanding into a red giant.... not melt in the process... allow them time to get molecularly dense, develop elegant crystal technology, etc. before finally going supernova (but not turn into a black hole).
Sort of like how our solar system will end up except our planet is too close to the sun to survive it turning into a red giant. Anyway if there really was a Superman his genes would not matter much. Take for example the astronauts. Our bodies where built to withstand the gravity that we have to endure on Earth. If we go into a micro gravity situation we start losing bone mass and our muscles atrophy.
I would think this would eventually happen to superman. If not in 31 years perhaps 62 years or 90 years. However long it takes it seems natural to me that just like being in micro gravity is bad for us being near a star that doesn't facilitate the type of gravity his race was accustomed to would have negative effects on Superman eventually. At the very least it probably would make his sperm very lazy compared to if he was on krypton.
Although canon says pretty much that the sun being yellow somehow has magic properties other than not holding him back so much physically that he can do extraordinary things. In Superman Returns they show him recharging by getting the rays of the sun in full blast by going above the earth's atmosphere. That reminds me of how they originally wrote him though. When he was created he they didn't write him as being able to fly. They wrote him as being able to do the equivalent of what the astronauts do on the moon only multiplied enough so that he can "leap a tall building in a single bound". He didn't fly he just jumped very far. This was due to earth's gravity not being as strong as Krypton's. Where that falls apart is going into micro gravity doesn't make our other senses stronger as well. That's one area where magic comes into play also (which is one of his vulnerabilities as well apparently).
In the end I actually don't think there is one absolute interpretation to him because he is after all a fictional character and thus he's only bound by the imagination of the people who are currently writing stories about him. This is where all examination of mythological creatures or ones that have become so legendary that they are now mythology (take ninjas and Pirates of the Caribbean for example) falls apart. Because for most people grew up with them as fantasies rather than reality. Even the ones that are based on history that are now long gone are subject to this.
Most people do not learn the actual history of again, Pirates and Ninjas and just go by their imagination. Who wins is determined by which one likes better with a smattering of hollywood to determine which one would win. Most of the time imagination wins out or the most stubborn person combined with their imagination wins. That's why I have chosen a while back not to participate in arguments such as that. I'd love to see historians argue about it though backed up with facts.
Anyway, this is even worse with properties that are purely fiction\fantasy which is why geeks\nerds care about canon (which stories are official in a storyline and which are not) so much.
First of all let me say right now that saying he can't is especially at this point moot because in the movies he did without difficulty. There are actually two versions of how it happened. In the theatrical cut of Superman II he gave up his powers and then went to bed with Lois Lane. In the director's cut he slept with her and then gave up his powers.
Either way she survived and bore his child with no difficulties and it wasn't exactly particle collider time (insert large hadron collider jokes) when they conceived nor did the sperm have 100 times a billion more power than normal human sperm obviously. There was no rash of pregnancies to speak of. But it seems that being half human and never having had the opportunity of being near the red giant that krypton orbited the child turned out mostly harmless and constantly sick. He seems to have his krypton moments where he has more strength\etc. than at other times though.
Another thing I want to talk about is the author asserting that humans would smell as alien to him as a totally unrelated organism would smell to us, sexually. I beg to differ here because He barely had any time on krypton and spent most of his life amongst humans. The years for which he would form his sexual identity where spent on earth with the Kents (human). Superman loves humans and this includes how they smell. I would argue he is more accustomed to humans than kryptonians because comparatively speaking he's spent a lot more time with them getting acquainted with everything about them in his formative years. Why else would he end up choosing Lois Lane as the love of his life? He did also listen to Pa Kent's guidance and didn't defy him before he died. As far as he was concerned he was his father before Jor'el waltzed back into his life via crystal. He also cared about his adoptive mother and what she had to say. To say that he was an uncontrollable youth is not paying attention (he may have been that way in Smallville I don't know... I hate that show).
This brings me to something else I have thought of and I'm sure I'm not the only one who thought about this. Presumably kryptonians have the molecular density that they do because they lived on a planet that not only was able to sustain life but was far enough to be frozen, survive their sun expanding into a red giant.... not melt in the process... allow them time to get molecularly dense, develop elegant crystal technology, etc. before finally going supernova (but not turn into a black hole).
Sort of like how our solar system will end up except our planet is too close to the sun to survive it turning into a red giant. Anyway if there really was a Superman his genes would not matter much. Take for example the astronauts. Our bodies where built to withstand the gravity that we have to endure on Earth. If we go into a micro gravity situation we start losing bone mass and our muscles atrophy.
I would think this would eventually happen to superman. If not in 31 years perhaps 62 years or 90 years. However long it takes it seems natural to me that just like being in micro gravity is bad for us being near a star that doesn't facilitate the type of gravity his race was accustomed to would have negative effects on Superman eventually. At the very least it probably would make his sperm very lazy compared to if he was on krypton.
Although canon says pretty much that the sun being yellow somehow has magic properties other than not holding him back so much physically that he can do extraordinary things. In Superman Returns they show him recharging by getting the rays of the sun in full blast by going above the earth's atmosphere. That reminds me of how they originally wrote him though. When he was created he they didn't write him as being able to fly. They wrote him as being able to do the equivalent of what the astronauts do on the moon only multiplied enough so that he can "leap a tall building in a single bound". He didn't fly he just jumped very far. This was due to earth's gravity not being as strong as Krypton's. Where that falls apart is going into micro gravity doesn't make our other senses stronger as well. That's one area where magic comes into play also (which is one of his vulnerabilities as well apparently).
In the end I actually don't think there is one absolute interpretation to him because he is after all a fictional character and thus he's only bound by the imagination of the people who are currently writing stories about him. This is where all examination of mythological creatures or ones that have become so legendary that they are now mythology (take ninjas and Pirates of the Caribbean for example) falls apart. Because for most people grew up with them as fantasies rather than reality. Even the ones that are based on history that are now long gone are subject to this.
Most people do not learn the actual history of again, Pirates and Ninjas and just go by their imagination. Who wins is determined by which one likes better with a smattering of hollywood to determine which one would win. Most of the time imagination wins out or the most stubborn person combined with their imagination wins. That's why I have chosen a while back not to participate in arguments such as that. I'd love to see historians argue about it though backed up with facts.
Anyway, this is even worse with properties that are purely fiction\fantasy which is why geeks\nerds care about canon (which stories are official in a storyline and which are not) so much.
