Superman's Strength and powers

Hello people!

something that has always puzzled me and fascinated me is "how strong is Superman?" it might be an easy question to answer but you have to take into consideration the multiple incarnations of Superman, some have become stronger whilst others have made him weaker (but still very strong)

today I will talk about multiple versions including the Christopher Reeve Superman, the Man of steel, Bronze age and the Post-crisis version.

But first here's a little bit on the man of steel himself.

So Kal-El was born on Krypton which was orbited by a red sun, which explains why all Kryptonians were weak on Krypton, its the yellow sun rays that give superman his powers this explains why he is superior on earth and that means this effect will wear off when the sun gets older I think but its his years of adapting that have really impacted his strength and powers. In some versions Superman can reach his true power by going very close to the sun as he is taking in more of the radiation, strengthening his cells, muscles and senses however I don't think there are many versions in which Superman reaches his optimum strength, this is more so in the comics whereas films tend to show Superman struggling against certain objects for example in "Man of Steel" he struggles supporting the oil rig but.... it's still pretty heavy, I don't know exactly how much but I may try and find out and talk about it in the Man of steel section.

Now I am going to talk about the individual incarnations of Superman, I hope you enjoy :)

Man of steel

In the man of steel there is no real indication to how strong he is apart from in the oil rig scene, other than that you get to see a lot of his speed, flying abilities and heat vision but it does express this idea that he is gains strength from the suns radiation but something that I have wanted to see is superman fly next to the sun and get really powerful. Anyway there are 2 cases which really show off superman's strengths 

1) Oil rig platform- The tower of the oil rig platform collapses and Clark holds its for some time so a helicopter can escape the blaze, in this scene Clark is not Superman, he does not have the strength of Superman... yet. After a bit of research the tower he lifts are usually 50 metres tall but I couldn't find the weight of the structure he holds but I'd imagine that it's very very heavy, for his first actual challenge it wasn't bad but he is definitely stronger. I'm annoyed by the fact I cant work out how heavy it is, I'd imagine a few thousand tonnes.

2) Terraforming- Not only does Superman destroy the world engine but he also breaks free from its gravitational push which forces him to the ground and it looked like he struggled to break free from it.
overall I think this version has almost dimmed his powers down so he's not unbeatable as such, which is great for realism but if your in a comic you can do whatever you want.
moving swiftly onto the Bronze age.

Bronze Age
this incarnation is actually very similar to the characteristics that the man of steel carries in the 2013 film, he adopts his powers from 2 things, the weak gravity of Earth and the yellow sun, also if he is exposed to a similar environment as krypton his powers were gone but this also meant that any other Kryptonian on earth possessed the same powers as Superman, I think this is similar to most incarnations but it was nice to see it in the film and explored brilliantly. Anyway.
In this early version of superman (1940ish) his strengths and powers were outstanding to the point where he could move a planet and lets say he moved earth for example, after a bit of research this is how much the earth apparently weighs 5.9736×1024kg and after using my scientific calculator I found that it equals 5,973,600,000,000,000,000,000,000kg
I think that's quite a lot however you could argue that he lifts a much lighter planet but still that's pretty damn impressive. Not only has his strength increased but he also gained other powers in this era like Ventriloquism (this is all true) and Hypnotism, we actually saw this in the Christopher reeve film where he erased Lois's memory this was also the period in which Superman gained his flight because in the Golden age he could only super jump. This version of superman is awesome but I have 2 problems, back then the art wasn't as good I mean it was very good but I prefer the art from now and the superman then was more... happy and enthusiastic and I do prefer the newer versions because some of them do suffer a bit and its great to see him confront it but that's just my opinion.


well... it turns out he can lift more than 1 planet, more like 20... sooo lets times that number by 20 and that equals

1.19472e+26...... yeah I have no idea

Post crisis

I believe it was this era that the writers decided to restrict superman of his powers because then it would give the character new challenges that would have been easy for previous versions however he was still super strong and he was still invulnerable... to an extent, he could survive blasts and explosions but he could be weakened by them and one thing that I did read was that Superman was not the perfect hero, he wasn't as clever as Bruce Wayne and some villains which meant he could be outsmarted. obviously weird powers like ventriloquism were not used any more which I was happy about because the first version seemed to give him the best powers so it was nice to see restrictions and more weaknesses but... lifting a planet is pretty bad ass. there is a lot to say about this incarnation but one thing that I did notice in a comic is that they tried to explain his flight which i believe was used in Man of steel a tiny bit. The idea was that superman could basically make things float in a way hence his ability to fly but it also meant that object around his were also affected like in man of steel when he first takes off small rocks begin to float and the same thing happens to Zod when he learns to fly, I'm not sure if this aspect was directly taken from this era but it seems quite similar.  

Other Movies
I said I was going to talk about Christopher Reeve's superman but I don't think I will touch up on it a lot because there's not much to say, they couldn't really show how strong he was well but some of it was pretty cool like freezing a giant lake and carrying it to a fire but my all time favourite is when he turns back time, its ridiculous but just brilliant. I guess the same goes for Brandon Rouths superman because they essentially based it on the Reeve version but because the technology was more advanced they could have a bit more fun with it and the best example is probably the plane crash scene or the kryptonite continent. There are a few others I could have touched up on like Smallville but I never watched it all so it would be difficult to justify his strength especially where there are 10 series, its a lot to cover.



ppft who needs tracks anyway!











so overall he is very powerful and its strange how sometimes his powers were reduced then increased and if I'm honest I do prefer a weaker superman because then they can give him a challenge but then again I would love to see superman lift a planet again, that would be pretty amazing.
anyway that's it for today
I hope you enjoyed
Until next time :)