The state of Superman in popular culture right now

[scary harpy]

I just knew this reply was going to be posted.

The thing is, we always know who is going to win. Whether Clark is fighting a mugger who has nothing but a knife on him, or an army of higher dimensional cannibal gods from the far side of the Source Wall, at the end of the story the protagonist is going to win. It's the nature of the narrative structure.

Agreed. 100%. (This is Not my first comic book.)

So yeah, when you hit that first page of "Superman v bank robbers" you know Superman will win. But you also know from the first page of "Superman v Darkseid" who is going to win. It's just a matter of how we get there.

Agreed. 100%. (This is Not my first comic book.)

Now, it's highly unlikely that Clark's going to walk away from the bank robbers bruised and bleeding. They're not a threat to him physically. But so what? There's other ways to hurt him. Maybe an innocent bystander gets hurt in the fray and Clark blames himself. Maybe one of the bank robbers is a 14 year old kid and despite all of Clark's efforts to save him the kid refuses help and just *wants* to be bad. Maybe somebody's safety deposit box gets destroyed in the chaos and the owner tries to sue Superman. There's tons of ways to give the story real stakes and put some pain on Clark without him actually losing or getting physically hurt.

You make an excellent argument. I am Not disagreeing that his could be a great story. It's simply a story I have no interest in reading.

I have no desire to read a story about Superman versus bank-robbers...or Prankster...or Puzzler...or Toyman...(or a natural disaster...or a one-shot giant monster...or a one-shot alien)...or Lex Luthor (largely because Lex has been overused for decades)!

If the protagonist was Batman or Nightwing, I might be interested. I can pretend there is more threat in the later than the former and I find that more enjoyable. This is also the reason I think it's easier to create villains for Batman than Superman.