Exactly how strong was/is Superman? It's easy to chart the "Paul Bunyanization" of Superman---how later writers (and sometimes Siegel himself) made Superman more and more powerful, until in the mid-fifties he was moving worlds and blowing out suns...but how strong and powerful was he as originally conceived?

Matthew Baugh in his excellent "Super Powers in the Wold Newton Universe---Explained" located at Win Eckert's EXPANSION OF PHILIP JOSE FARMER'S WOLD NEWTON UNIVERSE, made a valiant attempt to calculate just how powerful Superman was. If I must take issue with his figures, it's not in the interest of showing him up, but purely in the interests of accuracy, and gratitude for his preliminary attempts at same.

Mr. Baugh took the statement from Action #1 that Superman could broadjump an "eighth of a mile"---660 feet---and calculated how much better that was than the best human athelete, which is 22.76 times that recorded in the Guiness Book of World Records. From there, he decided to apply the same factor---22.76 times the top human performance---to every endeavour of Superman's. From there he calculated that Superman's deadlift was 20,000 lbs., or ten tons, could jerk 13,000 lbs, or a little over six tons, and his squat would be 18,000 lbs, or about nine tons. He calculated that Superman could do a 182 foot high jump, over eighteen floors. Taking the same factor, he calculated that Superman could take a sustained run at 285 mph, and sprint for short distances at 514 mphs.

An excellent dissertation, but there are a few facts that were ignored---some from the comics, and some from science. For instance, in the image above, I captured the citation from Action #1 about the one-eighth a mile....and note the "easily".

In other words, this is not the equivelent of a once-in-a-lifetime jump, but instead, more like the jump someone who does the low hurdle does over many obstacles would do. (Those are traditionally either two feet high---the "low hurdle"--or three feet high---the "high hurdle".) We note that the estimate of 182 feet is a little low, even for that description---that he can "easily" hurdle a twenty-story building.

To show that Superman could do better than that estimate, even in his earliest appearances, I reproduce this panel from the second Superman story (really a continuation of the first)---where Superman, from the ground in Washington, leaps "to the top of the Washington Monument, gets his bearings"....

The height of the Washington Monument can be derived from most reference books and encyclopedias. It is 555 feet, 5 and a eighth inches high. That would seem to me to indicate that in casual running/leaping that Superman could clear twenty-story buildings, but that if he really put his mind to it, he can clear a fifty-five story building....just as an athletic man might be able to clear six feet when he really puts his mind to it.

That is even more impressive than it appears at first, because, as shown by Arthur C. Clarke, when one does a high jump, one is really only clearing the space that is more than halfway up the body. The athelete who cleared seven and a half feet was really only clearing four and a half feet above his center of gravity. If that same athelete was transported to the moon, which has one-sixth the gravity of Earth, and put in an air-filled dome, he wouldn't be able to leap 45 and a half feet, as you would expect, but only six times the four and half feet, plus the three feet to the center of gravity...in other words, thirty-one feet. So if we're going to calculate how much better Superman is doing than most humans in the leaping department, we have to subtract the three feet from his center of gravity. Similarly, judging by his high jump, Superman can do at least one hundred and twenty-three times better than humans.

His eighth-of-a-mile broad jump is the equivelent of a five foot broad jump to us.

If we take the same scale that Mr. Baugh used, 123 times the best human effort, he can deadlift 54 tons, roughly the weight of a heavy armored tank. He could jerk 32 tons, and squat 48 and a half tons.

(One might mention that Superman's near-equal, Captain Marvel, in an early adventure, was immobilized by "super-steel cables" and fifty-ton weights devised by Dr. Sivana, immobilizing each limb. Marvel got out, but by breaking the cables, not the weights. This was in Whiz #4.)

But of course, the assumption that he could outdo a human athelete's best in every instance by exactly a multiplier of 22.76 or 123 is a big supposition. Superman appears like a rather athletic man, but not necessarily a powerlifter. No athelete can duplicate all the abilities of most atheletes. It might be unfair to hold Superman up as a magnfified version of same. For instance, he might be able, if he were a normal man, to only jump six feet at most, and deadlift 200-300 pounds. If so, his Washington Monument leap would be 183 times what he would do if he were a normal human, and he would only be able to deadlift 18.3 tons to 27 and a half tons.

Yeah, yeah, I know..."only".

His eighth-of-a-mile broadjump if his strength is multiplied 183 times---which he can do "easily"--- would be like one of us leaping three feet, like one of us jumping across a ditch.

Now, in at least three later stories by Siegel, Superman supposedly jumped into the stratosphere---some six miles above the earth---and even above it---over thirty miles above the earth. I have rejected Superman doing that unaided, and suggested he used the Legion flight-ring to aid him. My reasoning is this---to reach the lower edge of the stratosphere would take 7040 times the best human athelete's leap. To get beyond the stratosphere would take over 35 thousand times the best human athelete's leap.

If so, then the effort to leap (broadjump) an eighth of a mile would be similar to me just moving an inch or two, or even less, if we take the upper estimate. Superman would never be able to conceal that much power in a secret identity, nor would that eighth-of-a-mile broadjump be classed as just "easily"---it would be "negligible". It wouldn't really be a leap by his standards.

Superman is also shown straining while breaking into steel vaults (although still able to do it) and if he were really in that strength scale---able to lift, at the lower limit, at least 704 tons, at the upper limit, 3500 tons, he would be able to tear it apart like tissue paper.

So I reject it.

As for actual feats of muscular strength--- it's harder to guage it.

In his first adventure he lifted a automobile with four individuals in it with one hand. An average automobile back then weighed 3,340 lbs---nearly two tons. Add four people and roughly seven hundred pounds and you would get two tons.

In this early story from Action #7, Superman is shown lifting a full-grown elephant---which weigh between 4 to 7 tons---casually, with one hand.

(One might mention that the Incredible Hulk, Superman's near-equal in strength and leaping ability, juggled a full-grown elephant, a horse, and a seal, in Avengers #1.)

Superman was several times in the very early stories was shown able to leap while holding a car or a truck. In Action #12 he leaps from one nearby bridge to another, while holding a car with a reckless driver. (Who faints, naturally.) Other stories show him leaping to the roofs of buildings while carrying a car, or even leaving one on top of a smoke-stack. Evidently the weight of a car is negligible to him.

On the Action Comics cover #17, Superman is shown overturning a tank. In "America's Secret Weapon", a 1943 patriotic tale which already suffers from some exagerration (he survives an artillery shell without effect, that should have knocked him out) he overturns heavy tanks, which are in the fifty-ton range. (One might note that Superman's physique by this time is looking more developed, doubtless from the exercise regime he had built for himself in his Secret Citadel, and after years of doing super-deeds which have finally given him enough exercise.) He takes both hands to do so, though, which seems realistic, given the parameters we have established for his strength.

I might note that Superman, in his "Hugo Danner" phrase, once carried an artillery gun, in the same weight-range, for his commander in the French Foriegn Legion. See GLADIATOR.

On the other hand, there were times when even Siegel messed up, and made Superman do feats that were clearly impossible. That has to do with the difference between force and mass. Though Superman was a little heavier than you would expect for his size (in GLADIATOR, when they weighed Hugo Danner, they were startled that he seemed half again as heavy as one would expect) he certainly doesn't have the mass to stop an automobile or a train heading right towards him, or to stop a train by pulling on it.

For instance, in Superman #4, Superman tries to stop a train by reaching the last car and straining with all his strength to slow it, gradually, to a stop. Actually, the most that would have done is slow it a little bit, and that only if he dug his feet deeply within the ground as he was doing so. Even if he had the mass to do so---which he doesn't, else the Daily Star floors would have collapsed underneath him---probably the outcome would have been to snap off the last car, letting the train continue unhindered.

However, Superman could have lifted one of the cars partway off the tracks, and the engineer, in alarm, could have braked the train.

(Similarly, in the 1942 story, "Man and Superman", Superman supposedly stops a subway train by pushing directly against it. Even if he had dug his legs into the ground---and from the drawing, it appears he sunk his feet in--- he should have been batted away like a rubber ball. He must have employed some other means to stop the subway train.)

His speed was estimated at around 285 mph over the long haul and sprint at 514 mph by Mr. Baugh. Actually, reading from the comics, it appears that the long haul was overestimated and the sprint was underestimated...

Which is no fault of Mr. Baugh's. We are dealing with an extraterrestrial form of life---in my opinion, ultimately derived from Earth but genetically-altered--and we cannot expect in all cases for him to be a perfect amplification of our own abilities.

Of course, speed isn't necessarily a function of force when you are dealing with living beings rather than simple objects in physics---faster reflexes have to be put in also. The Incredible Hulk, who is able to duplicate many of Superman's feats of strength and leaping, is actually much slower than most humans.

A 1941 story establishes Superman can do a hundred yard dash while holding another person in two seconds flat, which is some five times the best human time...

Superman is initially described as "faster than an express train"---in 1938, when that was published, faster than eighty miles an hour. (Interestingly, eighty miles an hour was exactly how fast Wonder Woman could run when she first came to America...)

He could outdistance trains, yet he didn't seem to be going that much faster. And whenever he was in a real hurry, he would use his leaping abilities. That brings an upper limit for a sustained run...

In SUPERMAN AT FIFTY, an article about Superman's abilities, "The Art and Science of Leaping Tall Buildings", John D. McGervey, a physics professor, estimates the top speed for the leaping.

Quote:

"Even Superman cannot turn off air resistance. Any object thrown through the air at great speed will be slowed down by air resistance and eventually fall earthward at a constant speed, called the terminal speed. For a body of human size, shape and weight, the terminal speed is about 120 miles per hour."

So for at least the latter part of his leaps, he would move no faster than 120 miles per hour. He weighs more than a human his weight, but not that much more. If he can do a sustained run at much greater speeds than 120 mph, one would think he would never use the leaping as a method of travel, preferring the running. Instead, looking at the stories, the opposite is true...

Conclusion: Superman on a sustained long-distance run averages about 120 mph or less. That's certainly respectable speed.

Does that mean that Superman is not "faster than a speeding bullet"?

One would think so. However, two examples show a little more complex story.

In Action #8, Superman races a bullet at short range to save a boy's life. I suspect human reaction time on the trigger might have something to do with it, but he does intercept the bullet before it hits the boy...

In Superman #3, in a story reprinted from a 1939 newspaper story, Superman races a bullet---again at close range, within the confines of a room---and intercepts it before it hits Lois.

An average bullet from a handgun or rifle roughly travels 1000 to 1100 mph, allowing for variance in arnament, etc. That means Superman can sprint, not three times his average long distance speed as we humans can do, but ten times as fast...for extremely short distances, say the length of a room.

So, 120 mph for the long haul, and 1100 mph for the extremely short sprint. So he is faster than a speeding bullet---for short periods of time, anyway.

Of course, Superman is tough, verging upon invulnerable. He has to be, since as he realized in his "Hugo Danner" days during World War I, he would tear himself apart if his muscles weren't as tough as they were strong.

He can certainly withstand small arms and machine-gun fire all day. Artillery shells or large bombs dropped by planes, however, can knock him out. (The same thing happened to Hugo Danner in World War I.)

In the newspaper strip, in a story by Siegel and Shuster published in 1939, Superman is knocked unconscious by an explosion that destroys an entire submarine. In fact, when he recovered, he remarked that the explosion "nearly finished me".

Extremely tough, but not totally invulnerable. He would doubtless be totally destoryed by an atomic bomb, despite what later writers (even, disappointingly, John Byrne, who otherwise tried to reduce Superman's powers) said. (John Byrne, to his credit, has it render Superman unconscious, at least...)

At first, like Hugo did in GLADIATOR,(although he was never harmed by fire) he thought fire could harm him. Trapped in a burning building by the Ultra-Humanite, he thought he got out "just in time". If he had thought about it, he would have realized the large artillery shell explosions had a great deal of heat in them, and had never burned him yet. Later he learned that fire was not something he needed to be concerned about, that he was very resistent to fire and heat.

The Ultra-Humanite knocked him unconscious with "enough electricity to kill five hundred men". Other, lesser, charges of electricity he laughed at.

He was invulnerable to some gases...gases in a coal mine cave-in, for instance, presumably methane gas, did not harm him in Action #3. Nor is he harmed by hydrocyanic gas, the deadly gas they use in the gas chamber, in a 1941 tale--- although the fact that he can hold his breath for over two hours might be a factor.(See Action #15 and #20 where his ability to hold his breath that long underwater is mentioned and demonstrated.) Tear gas didn't affect him in the Ultra-Humanite's final adventure. Nor was he harmed by a gas that entered in through the pores of the skin in "Superman Champions Universal Peace". His physical structure was different. (I have speculated that Krypton might have more metals in its makeup than Earth, hence Gold Volcano, and thus more potentially poisonous substances near the surface. Doubtless an immunity was built up over thousands of years on Krypton.)

On the other hand, Luthor released a "powerful new gas" and it knocked him out in their second encounter. Another new gas in Superman #7 also knocked him out, temporarily. So he's immune to some of the gases that effect us--- but not all.

Of course, he is also more vulnerable than human beings to the radioactive remains of his home planet...

One other segment of "toughness" is his "super-resistence" to disease. In Action #19, the only thing that saved him from the plague the Ultra-Humanite developed--- was his extremely efficient immune system. (A good thing, too---otherwise young Kal-El might have died from the common cold, like H.G. Wells' Martians'.) In another story, he gave a transfusion to Lois Lane after she was injured, and it was discovered that he was a universal donor---that his blood can be used by all four blood groups---and Lois, near death before, immediately perked up after the transfusion.

When Superman first started his career, he had no super-senses. Yet in Action #11, his x-ray eyesight and super-acute hearing is mentioned. In Action #15 and #17 he uses his super-hearing to hear what's being said in the next room, or on the other end of a phone conversation.

In Action #18, he can peer through walls to see two people together with his x-ray vision. He was standing right outside the residence.

In Action #20, for the first time his telescopic vision---a more long-range vision than humankind is heir to---is employed for the first time.

In Action #24, Superman uses microscopic vision for the first time to spot a tiny bullethole in a room. We also learn something new about his x-ray vision---his eyes, at least at that stage, "glow weirdly" when he uses x-ray vision. (Later he may have gotten that trait under control.) Again, he is standing outside and peering right through a wall...

However, what he is staring at, makes no sense. He is peering through a wall and yet reading what is written on a note. How did his x-ray vision know when to stop? Why would it pierce a wall, yet reveal the surface of a piece of paper?

It is true that true x-ray vision would be more discriminating in details than the best x-ray picture, which is a shadow of x-rays going through the body---the same way you can tell more about something by looking at something than seeing its shadow. Still, many things stop x-rays, not just lead. Indeed, true x-rays would be absorbed by air at the end of the length of a football field. (Again, courtesy of the "Art and Science of Leaping Tall Buildings").

I suspect the x-rays that Superman sees by are by-products of the powerful processes of his own body, since very few x-rays reach the surface from the sun.

The fact that---at least in Siegel's early stories---Clark stays very close to the scene he's overlooking with his x-ray vision---is a mark of realism, since x-rays would be absorbed at a much greater distance by the air. However, in the scene mentioned above, the reader of the note must have read it aloud to himself, and Superman heard the words with his now-acute vision. There is no other conceivable way for Superman to have known what it said otherwise, since the paper would have doubtless been transparent in his x-ray vision.

It's hard to seperate fact from fiction from the early Supergirl stories, which suffers from the "Paul Bunyanization" of Superman and his family in the comics---yet many of her adventures hinge on her hearing or seeing something with her super-senses before others can, especially when she was Superman's "secret weapon" at an orphanage. I suggest that Kryptonian females did have super-senses from a much younger age than Kryptonian males---that it is a sex-based difference, and most Kryptonian males didn't get super-senses until they were a mature forty years old or so---which might mark the beginning of maturity for a Kryptonian, who, according to John Byrne, live at least a thousand years.

Some abilities are a byproduct of his super-strength. He could store air in his lungs at over a hundred atmospheres' worth of pressure (which is one reason he could last so long underwater) or release it all at once. In Action #20, Superman blew out a hand-held torch by the Ultra-Humanite, and in an early Sunday strip blew a forest fire in one direction rather than another.

Others are totally different. In Luthor's second appearance, Clark shows an ability to voluntarily stop his heart for short periods of time.

So Superman is faster than a speeding bullet---at least for a short sprint. Superman is able to leap tall buildings---at least as high as fifty-five floors, and perhaps more. More powerful than a locomotive?

Well, maybe more than some locomotives, some of which only function at 400 horsepower. Superman's lifting of an elephant with one hand would involve 178 horsepower. Superman's leap to the top of the Washington Monument would involve 1015 horsepower. Yet some locomotive units in Superman's day could muster 3000 horsepower, and sometimes several would hook up together, to give a combined horsepower of 4800 horsepower.

In Action #4, Superman tries to get a drunk out of the way of a speeding train. As it rushes towards them, Superman yells to the struggling drunk,

"You fool! You'll kill us both!"

At least early in his career, Superman doubted he was more powerful than a locomotive. (He did manage to leap away with the drunk just in time.)

I must admit---I still have my doubts.

Still, he's not exactly a wimp.

Still...two out of three isn't bad.

PARTIAL LIST OF SOURCES:

Of course, TARZAN ALIVE and DOC SAVAGE: HIS APOCALYPTIC LIFE by Philip Jose Farmer.

"Super Powers in the Wold Newton Universe---Explained" by Matthew Baugh.

"The Art and Science of Leaping Tall Buildings", John D. McGervey, SUPERMAN AT FIFTY, 1988.

Those interested with comments, suggestions, things I have forgotten, things I messed up, contact me at...
E-Mail:al.schroeder@nashville.com

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Speculations Copyright © Al Schroeder. Superman is owned by DC Comics, Warner Communications, and the Siegels. All other characters copyrighted by their respective owners.