Would Superman Be More Popular If He (And His Rogues) Never Rose Above Mid-Tier?

[SecretWarrior]

I imagine this would put him and his villains more on Golden Age or Spider-man/Wolverine/Luke Cage/Fantastic Four level or just a bit above, which seemed to be the approach of Superman: The Animated Series. Would the conflicts and interpersonal drama be more interesting to a wider audience? Or is a key feature of Superman his god-like power levels?

[PCN24454]

No because viewer interest and story exist independent of power level.

Superman's personality isn't defined by his power level. Even Peter Parker has had stories when he was starting out about how he was now too strong.

Most people that say he's too OP are just rationalizing why they don't like him and don't really care about the reason.

[Vordan]

No because viewer interest and story exist independent of power level.

Superman's personality isn't defined by his power level. Even Peter Parker has had stories when he was starting out about how he was now too strong.

Most people that say he's too OP are just rationalizing why they don't like him and don't really care about the reason.

This. Hulk’s gotten more and more powerful as well and it hasn’t hurt him at all. Hell he’s immortal now and it’s the most popular he’s ever been. The problem is Supes has been and still is at the mercy of the Batman fanboys who run every other wing of DC who don’t care about anyone except Batman. They don’t put any thought into Supes or how his world works, instead just trying to force him to be what you described, a more mid level hero. I wouldn’t mind an extended piece of media that depowers Clark down to his Golden Age levels, such as a cartoon or game, but even then they’d probably rather just rehash Batman again.

[manwhohaseverything]

Power levels are inconsequential and relative wether high tier,mid tier or low tier. The presentation and how it's visually conveyed is not only lacking,it's also bland.For an action character superman sucks when it comes to action sequences.the requirement is tension and sequences having emotional depth.Someone mentioned immortal hulk,it had hulk adopting body horror.how his powers were presented visually changed and works modified .Hulk adopted more horror aspect than ever before.

[DochaDocha]

No. Superman was the standard for superheroes for much of the Golden and Silver Ages. As much as you could argue that Superman today suffers from being too powerful, you could argue that Superman in the 1950s and 1960s benefited by being this outrageous demigod-like creature.

Depowering Superman today isn't going to fix the real issues, most of which were already highlighted in this thread.

[Jon Clark]

I'm going to say "Yes", but it requires that a lot of related changes had occurred along with this. The most important being that DC hadn't elevated any other major characters to the levels Superman currently occupies.

Superman simply needs to be top of the food pyramid with a few other guys as rivals. Whether that is surviving pipe bombs, shrugging off tactical nukes, or yawning in the center of a universe destroying anti-matter annihilation is all the smae thing as far as the character's concept goes. The difference is in both how often these things come up and how we as readers can relate to them.

To me the problem is that Superman's feats began to surpass things we could relate to and things we could build adventures off. Superman protecting the guy up the street from an armed robber is more relatable than Superman battling a cosmic being like Imperiex for the lives of whole planets. One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic and a threat to millions is therefore less interesting than a threat to a small handful. The more powerful Superman became, the farther he moved from protecting people we could identify with toward protecting large faceless masses.