ABSTRACT
First of all, I feel obligated to admit, up-front, that I am not a die-hard Superman fan. Growing up in the 1980s, I remember his superhero presence looming large in my popular culture experiences, but because I was so young when the Man of Steel debuted on the big screen, I never wondered how he had come to fi gure so signifi cantly into American media. For me, Christopher Reeve simply was Superman, and I have never known a time when he did not exist in all his red-caped glory.
