That’s Always Been My Superman

Photo via Space

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“SuperWoke.”

That was the refrain across social media following the release of the Superman (2025) trailer. The backlash that followed revealed as much about today’s political and social landscape as it did about the film itself. Dean Cain, a former Superman actor, accused Hollywood of “changing beloved characters” and complained that the new slogan, “truth, justice, and a better tomorrow,” had abandoned the patriotic clarity of “the American way.” Jesse Watters sneered that Superman’s cape might as well say “MS-13.” Kellyanne Conway added that audiences “don’t go to the movie theater to be lectured to” or to have people “throw their ideology” onto them. 

But what exactly is the ideology being objected to? In the film, Superman endeavored to stop the fictional U.S. ally of Boravia’s invasion of Jarhanpur and their subsequent massacre of its unarmed citizens—a campaign justified as “liberation” but carried out with the promise, “we will kill them all.” Obviously, Superman wasn’t a fan! Critics aren’t just upset that Superman opposed a planned genocide, though; apparently, it went too far for director James Gunn to acknowledge that the alien from Krypton is, in fact, an immigrant. 

This all raises the question: why is it controversial for Superman to oppose genocide? Why is it “woke” to say that the world’s most powerful hero should stand with the vulnerable instead of the invaders?

To react as though this stance is divisively ideological says less about Superman and more about us.

A Superhero for the Common Man

The accusation of Hollywood “politicizing” the modern-day Superman only makes sense if you forget where he came from. The idea that the Man of Steel should be a flag-waving mascot, always aligned with American power, has more to do with wartime branding than it does with his origins. From the start, Superman was political in the most intentional way: he was created by Jerome Siegel and Joe Shuster—two Jewish sons of immigrants in Depression-era Cleveland. His first adventures didn’t involve him saving the world, or even Metropolis, from alien invasion. Instead, Action Comics No. 1 introduced him as a “champion of the oppressed.”

Superman’s debut issue reads almost like a catalogue of social critiques. His first adventure has him freeing a woman who was wrongly accused of murder, hauling the real perpetrator before the governor just in time to stop an execution. In another scene, he interrupts a domestic abuser, telling him, “tough is putting it mildly for the treatment you’re going to get,” before carrying him off to face justice. Later, Superman uncovers a corrupt senator’s plan to drag the country into war for profit. Along the way, he thrashes gangsters like Butch Matson—men who assumed they had the right to mistreat women with impunity. 

This wasn’t apolitical escapism. Siegel and Shuster were clear: Clark Kent decided early on that he must use his strength to “benefit mankind”—not just the powerful few. Superman was “on the side of law and order,” but only insofar as the law served justice. His first enemies weren’t intergalactic despots but the everyday abusers, conmen, and politicians who preyed on the vulnerable. In short, Superman began as a working-class hero, an immigrant fantasy figure standing up for people the system left behind.

Superman Wears Red, White, and Blue—Kind Of

When Superman debuted in 1938, the United States hadn’t yet entered World War II. His early battles were local—crooked politicians, war profiteers, and domestic abusers—not cosmic or geopolitical. But by 1941, America was at war, and Superman was enlisted for the cause. The covers of World’s Finest Comics quickly turned from social parables into propaganda posters. In the spring 1943 issue—World’s Finest No. 9—Superman, Batman, and Robin cheerfully throw baseballs at caricatures of Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo above the slogan “Knock Out the Axis with Bonds and Stamps.” By issue No. 11, the trio is tending a victory garden. By No. 13, they urge readers to “fight paper waste and hang one on the paper-hanger of Berlin.” In Superman No. 17, the Man of Steel literally hoists Hitler and Hirohito over his head. The champion of the oppressed had become a champion of the war effort.

The shift wasn’t just visual, though—it was linguistic. In the radio serials of the early 1940s, Superman fought for “truth and justice.” Then, in 1942, a new phrase was added: “and the American way.” It fit the moment as an easy morale booster for a nation at war, but the motto stuck long after the war ended. By the time the 1950s television series arrived in the middle of the Red Scare, George Reeves’ Superman was introduced each week using that phrase; amid Cold War paranoia, this line acted as both slogan and shield, binding Superman’s image to a myth of unshakable national virtue.

But the motto was never actually static. In the 1966 New Adventures of Superman cartoon, his fight for “the American way” was quietly replaced by “freedom”—reflecting the civil-rights era’s broader moral vocabulary. The 1970s Super Friends swapped it again for “peace for all mankind,” aligning with a post-Vietnam hunger for idealism without nationalism. Even when the 1978 Superman film brought the 1942 phrase back, it played more as self-aware nostalgia than it did propaganda. Reeves’ Superman was earnest in a cynical age: a reminder of what people wished America still stood for. 

Despite its screen ubiquity, the line didn’t appear in a comic until Superman No. 53 in 1991, fifty-three years after his creation. On that cover, Superman salutes a billowing flag under the words “TRUTH, JUSTICE, AND THE AMERICAN WAY!” But even there, the story undercut the image. After rescuing a foreign president, Superman clarifies that he believes “in everything this flag stands for,” but that he is a “citizen of the world” and thus values all life, “regardless of human borders.” Supporting the ideals of the flag, he reminded readers, is not the same as endorsing every action taken in its name

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From there, the motto continued to evolve. Smallville (2001) winked at it—“I stand for truth, justice, and other stuff.” In Action Comics #900 (2011), his American citizenship was renounced altogether: “I’m tired of having my actions construed as instruments of U.S. policy… ‘Truth, justice, and the American way’—it’s not enough anymore.” And when Superman & Lois (2021) joked about it; Lois asking if he still stood for it, Clark replying, “I think someone’s just trying to get me to admit I was raised here”—the line had become self-consciously outdated. Months later, DC officially replaced it with “truth, justice, and a better tomorrow.”

Dean Cain would do well to realize that this update didn’t erase tradition; it acknowledged its history. “The American way” was never set in stone. It simply reflected what America wanted to believe about itself in that decade. Superman’s allegiance remains tied not to a country, but to an idea—that power should serve the powerless.

The Immigrant We Decided to Love

Clark Kent was raised in Kansas, sure. But Clark Kent is really Kal-El, and Kal-El isn’t American at all. He’s not even human. He’s a refugee from a dying planet who crash-landed in a field and was adopted by a couple who decided compassion mattered more than anything else. His story has always been an immigration story.

There’s a moment in Smallville that makes that subtext explicit. When Ma Kent wants to call immigration on a young man named Javier, insisting that he “has to go through the proper legal channels,” Clark fires back, “Was it legal when you forged my adoption papers? I’m an illegal immigrant, Mom!” It’s played as teenage defiance, but the line collapses the distance between fantasy and reality: the great American hero is, by every definition, an undocumented immigrant. 

We accept Superman’s story because it’s safe; his difference is invisible (most of the time), and his assimilation is complete. He looks the part, speaks the language, and saves the world. The refugee becomes the patriot; the alien becomes the ideal citizen. But the minute he reminds us who he really is, or dares to question what “the American way” demands, we accuse him of being political. 

The Mirror Still Holds

Across every reinvention—every slogan, war poster, radio serial, and reboot—Superman has always been on the same side. Not the left or the right. Not America’s. Not even Krypton’s. The side of good. That’s the whole point of him. He was built to defend people who couldn’t defend themselves, to hold power accountable, and to believe that truth and justice matter above all else.

So when people call Superman (2025) “woke” because he refuses to stand with the invaders, or because the film acknowledges what he’s always been—a refugee using his strength to protect the vulnerable—they’re not really critiquing the character. Superman has never changed sides. The question is whether we have. If you think standing against genocide is radical, or that empathy is ideological, the problem isn’t Superman’s morality. Maybe it’s your own.

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This article was edited by Amelie Arango and Angeline Wu.