All-Star Superman and Redemptive Nostalgia (SPOILERS!)

In my book on American small-town fiction, I try to articulate an idea I called “redemptive nostalgia.” This is an idea designed to push back against the popular belief that nostalgia—looking back to a fantasy past—is inherently regressive. An obvious contemporary example of regressive nostalgia is, of course, MAGA. It derives its power from energizing nostalgia for a “better time”—that’s the again—but the “better time” is one that excludes people of color and queer people. To make America great again is to make it white, straight, cisgendered again. What I want to suggest in my book is that there’s a counter-nostalgia, or a competing nostalgia, possible. This is where people on the Left, in my observation, tend to fall down; they’ll explain in detail why and how Trump’s nostalgic vision is evil, but they don’t feel very comfortable suggesting an alternative nostalgia, a nostalgia that will push us forward.
As I see it, the dilemma of nostalgia is similar to the dilemma of the superhero. Alan Moore sees an adult fixation on superheroes as infantalizing and implicitly fascist. Meanwhile, Grant Morrison sees superheroes as nothing less than our salvation, as they express in the introduction to Supergods:

We live in the stories we tell ourselves. In a secular, scientific rational culture lacking in any convincing spiritual leadership, superhero stories speak loudly and boldly to our greatest fears, deepest longings, and highest aspirations. They’re not afraid to be hopeful, not embarrassed to be optimistic, and utterly fearless in the dark. They’re about as far from social realism as you can get, but the best superhero stories deal directly with mythic elements of human experience that we can all relate to, in ways that are imaginative, profound, funny, and provocative. They exist to solve problems of all kinds and can always be counted on to find a way to save the day. At their best, they help us to confront and resolve even the deepest existential crises. We should listen to what they have to tell us.

I feel no need to take a side—at least on the question of the value of superheroes—in what Elizabeth Sandifer has dubbed The Last War in Albion. I think they’re both right. Moore is absolutely correct that the contemporary fixation on superheroes, especially as they appear in the total domination of the cineplex by the MCU, is basically bad for culture and probably bad for humanity in general, because it represents a rejection of complex thought and a loss of appetite for difficulty. It becomes a kind of cycle: the world is hard, so we turn to light entertainment; and, turning to light entertainment, we find that we don’t have the tools to rectify a hard world. So it gets harder.

On the other hand, I think Morrison is also right. There’s a value to a superhero like Superman because he represents something aspirational: a neverending battle for truth and justice for everyone. And in dark times like these I think it’s useful; certainly, I’m glad that the character is out of the hands of Zack Snyder who—whatever his other merits (or lack thereof) as a filmmaker—simply doesn’t vibe with Superman. The recent teasers for the new movie look like what we really need.

I’ve been a Superman fan since I was a child; those Fleischer Superman shorts (still, to my mind, the definitive version of the Man of Steel on film) were a part of my mental furniture for as long as I can remember. It was later that I came to the Christopher Reeve movies; later still that I came to the comics—first through the President Lex storyline and later through the fantastic and (to my mind) unbeatable A Superman for All Seasons. I’ve had All-Star Superman  by Grant Morrison and Frank Quietely for a while now, but never read it for whatever reason. And then, the other day I decided to finally crack it open. I did this for two reasons: first, because I’m going to be teaching it in my “Cultures of English-Speaking Countries” class; and, second, because...well, look around you. If anything looks like a job for Superman, it’s this.

Morrison gets a fundamental optimism in Superman, not only about humanity in general but about particular characters—even about villains. Late in the book, Superman confronts Lex Luthor, who has engineered a serum to give himself the powers of Superman. It’s a fairly typical bust-up between these rivals; on film it would be interminable and dull. But during that fight, Lex has a sudden revelation; he sees the world as Superman sees it and, for a moment, he is almost a changed man.

This is fairly optimistic, to be honest. I don’t imagine that our contemporary and real-world Lex Luthors (Elon Musk, Donald Trump, et alia) would actually be changed by the vision gifted to Lex. Lex, like Superman, is designed by Morrison to be mythic in scope; he is smarter than we are, grander than we are—in his own title he might even be a tragic figure. His hubris drives him to take on the powers of a god and, having taken them on, he is undone by the realization that they grant him. Neither Elon nor Donald have the intellectual, moral, or spiritual substance to rise to this level.

But there’s something here all the same that I find terribly compelling. Like Fox Mulder, I want to believe—I want to believe that it’s possible for anyone to glimpse the fundament of creation and be changed by it. I want to believe that we can create these godlike beings who are better than we are and that they can then drive us, all of us, even villains, to be better (one fascinating section of All-Star suggests that a world without Superman would have to create him).

As I type this, Elon Musk and his twink brownshirts are deleting the US government. Donald Trump just this day (5-Feb-2025) announced his plan to evacuate Gaza and turn it into an American zone—once again proving that, however bad Biden was on Gaza, Trump will always be worse. At moments like this we need some kind of hope. We need something to believe in, something to aspire to.

I’m not suggesting that Superman is some kind of god, that we should treat him with the same respect as Attis or Osiris or Christ. But these symbols are valuable, as all symbols are. The neverending battle for truth, justice, and (sure, why not) the American way is worth fighting. In the face of tech billionaires and self-appointed lords of the earth; in the face of the rough beast in the White House and his enabling cohort; in the face of the grundies and the fundies and the TERFs and the SWERFs; in the face of the utter inhumanity of these enemies of culture and human flourishing; it’s useful to have Superman there, in our mind, urging us forward.

I think that Superman can be a form of redemptive nostalgia. In his earliest forms he was a social justice warrior, fighting landlords and bankers on behalf of the common man. When he fights for truth, justice, and the American way, it’s on behalf of the common man. That’s part of the American heritage, too; and rather than concede the past to Trump and his fascist cohort, rather than saying “yes, America was always awful and that's the end of it,” we should be looking to the past to find this sort of energizing fantasy that can push us on into a more truthful, more just world.

Superman doesn’t exist; he’s a fantasy. But he’s a fantasy that we create and that, therefore, creates our world. It’s a world worth creating.