How strong is Superman and does James Gunn even know? What the comic history of the Man of Steel's powers tells us

How strong is Superman? What are the actual limits of his powers?

Among superhero fans, these are more debates than questions with solid answers. And with trailers for director James Gunn's Superman showing a version of the character who is susceptible to a certain level of pain and injury, the debate is raging again.

Gunn's Superman is shown dealing with serious bodily injuries – not the more metaphysical kind inflicted by the power of Kryptonite – and even undergoing painful medical treatments by his attendant robots.

For some, that's a bridge too far in terms of Superman's vulnerability. Coupled with very few feats of super strength shown in the trailers, it's got a certain group of vocal Superman fans up in arms with their perceived understanding of how powerful James Gunn's Man of Steel will actually be in the movie.

But for me, a lifelong fan of Superman and a reader of comics from across his nearly 90 year lifespan, the show of vulnerability feels more like an attempt to grapple with Superman's shifting power levels on screen, and a way to lull fans into under-preparedness for what I am hoping will be some truly cosmic spectacle.

For one thing, I'm personally not expecting DC Studios to show us the coolest stuff in the trailers. We've barely seen Superman in action, aside from a scant few clips fighting Ultraman and the Hammer of Boravia.

We don't actually even know how the injuries seen in the trailer were caused. For all we know right now, he actually is weakened by Kryptonite when he's hurt in the film, a condition under which Superman can canonically be gravely injured.

All of that speculation aside, Superman's power levels have varied wildly throughout his history, and even from creator to creator. There is a relatively consistent baseline to Superman's strength in the modern era, but each portrayal of the Man of Steel across media has its own interpretation of what he can do.

The history of Superman's powers

Following Superman's original debut in 1938's Action Comics #1, his powers were described as being "faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound", and able to withstand any attack short of an exploding shell.

For a few years, those were essentially the limits of Superman's powers. He didn't fly until 1940's Adventures of Superman radio show, which introduced numerous aspects of the character's mythos, including Kryptonite.

From there, Superman's powers ballooned through the rest of the Golden Age of the '40s and early '50s, through the Silver Age of the '60s and early '70s. His classic powers were all established, including X-Ray and microscopic vision, super freeze-breath, heat vision, full on flight, speed beyond the capability of even the fastest craft, and of course, cosmic level super strength powerful enough to move planets, and nigh-invulnerability which can traditionally only be countered by kryptonite, magic, or sometimes, someone even stronger than him, like the villain Doomsday who actually managed to kill Superman in the early '90s.

He also accrued dozens of strange minor powers that were used only a few times before fading into obscurity, including things like his amnesiac super-kiss and being able to reverse time by flying backwards around the Earth which were later adapted into 1978's beloved Superman movie and its sequels.

It wasn't until 1985's Crisis on Infinite Earths, which rebooted most of DC's comic continuity, that Superman's modern power levels were essentially established - massive super strength, nigh-invulnerability, super-senses, x-ray and heat vision, freeze breath, super speed, and flight.

Heroes of myth

Though there's a generally agreed upon range of Superman's abilities, the true answer to how powerful he is will prove remarkably frustrating to a certain strain of tire-kicking fans, especially since DC declared that all of Superman's comic book history, across all the reboots, relaunches, and changes in his powers, are canonical whether that fully makes sense or not.

Because the truth is, Superman's power levels, like those of all fictional characters, are entirely malleable at all times based on the situation he's in, the story being told, and the people telling it.

Superhero comics have often been compared to modern myths, and more than just about any other superhero continuity, the DC Universe lives up to that idea, both in the godlike feats undertaken by its undeniably powerful heroes, and in the fluid, ever-shifting nature of their personalities and abilities.

Superman, like the quintessential Greek hero Heracles (or Hercules, if you're into that sort of thing) is less a quantifiable Ivan Drago strongman, whose highest output punches are duly recorded to history, than he is a being of storied myth whose capabilities are determined by what makes for the best spinning of the yarn, and whose feats and adventures have evolved across countless tellings of their tales.

I don't bring up Heracles in particular for nothing. Superman writer/director James Gunn has cited Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely's fabled All-Star Superman as a major inspiration on his film - a comic which itself takes not insignificant inspiration from the classic concept of the 12 labors of Heracles, with Superman promising to complete a series of wondrous tasks before he dies due to toxic over-exposure to Earth's yellow sun, the source of fuel for his Kryptonian powers.

It's another turn of the cycle of myth, as the core idea of a man whose strength beyond strength is directly equitable to the parable on which it rests echoes directly into Gunn's telling of Superman's story.

Superman's official power levels

While I'm personally very much in the "wait-and-see, it's all just a story" camp in terms of how Superman's vaunted strength will be portrayed in Gunn's film, I also understand the impulse to dig into the debate around exactly what Supes can do.

I grew up going to comic stores, lurking in the racks of new and old issues, in heated conversation with my fellow fans about whether Superman or the Hulk is stronger, which heroes might be able to lift Thor's hammer, and so on.

That's part of the magic of superhero fandom, the characters and their stories engender these conversations and creative ideas among fans. We're invited directly into the world of the Marvel and DC Universes in a way other fiction rarely offers.`

But there's a special aspect to that magic that can be lost in the conversation around how strong Superman actually is, which is that every fan gets to see it for themself and imagine their own delineation of a character's limits. There are guides along the way, important and memorable scenes from our favorite stories that stick in our mind as examples of just what our most beloved heroes can do.

It's that individualized perception that has kept superhero comics fresh across changing creative perspectives, which will hopefully allow James Gunn to craft a compelling portrayal of the world's greatest superhero, and which enables the debate in the first place.

And anyway, we haven't even seen the movie yet.

James Gunn's Superman hits theaters on July 11. For more, check out our list of all the upcoming DC movies and shows.