ABSTRACT
The reader of superhero comics almost invariably male is like Clark Kent in being a creature of compromises and failures, whose energies are sapped by daily life. The definitive comic-book superhero was conceived in 1933 by two seventeen-year-old boys. Superman is that to which every man aspires. Superman also fulfils less obvious requirements of masculine role-playing the need for success, for instance. The machine backfires and electrocutes the Super-male. The Supermale is a myth of masculinity which, as a myth, has a validity beyond its historical period. In The Supermale there is always a pushing past the supposed limits of human capacities, a straining into the yet unrealized future. Death does not only mean the removal to a realm of unfulfilled potential, though. It is also the removal to a realm beyond the human, and the result may be a superhuman intensity.
