yeah some people I think take that superman being good and wholesome as a personal insult and do their best to tarnish him for no good reason. They call it "Exploring" or "deconstruction" but it comes off as petty needless nonsense.
Not saying superman can't be explored or deconstructed. He has been a billion times but the people that want to do it the most are the least equipped to do it.
It all comes from this really cynical viewpoint that I don't subscribe to, which is that good or kind characters are inherently boring, and no character is interesting until you make them "dark" or violent.
I think that what makes Superman interesting
is his goodness. This is a guy who at any time could decide that he wants to rule the world with an iron fist, and there's pretty much no one that could stop him. Even if he didn't want to go that far, he could easily use his powers selfishly, or lazily, or whatever. But he doesn't. All he does is help people.
And this isn't because of some childhood trauma, or because he has weird psychological problems, or even because it's what someone told him he was
supposed to be doing. He just has the ability to help, in ways other people can't, so he wants to help. Because he was raised by good, solid parents who weren't super spies, or warriors, or heroes, or wealthy philantropists, or criminals he was rebelling against, or whatever. They were just a couple of regular people who happened upon a baby in trouble, who decided to help because
they could.
So this is why I say it comes from a place of cynicism. The story of Superman is, when you come down to it, a story that believes in people. It believes that, while there absolutely are assholes and criminals and people who are evil, there is a spark of inherent goodness in mankind. This is why you'll even see Superman trying to reason with Luthor from time to time. If Superman is an angel, Luthor is a demon, but you still see Superman trying to find some small piece of the light inside that terrible man. If you're the kind of person who is too cynical to believe in people in that way, Superman is going to bounce right off of you, and you're going to try to alter the character to make it feel more "real" or "grounded" or whatever.
It really does seem that way. Hilarious, considering how hard everyone pushes him as this HUGE comic book fan..
You can absolutely be a huge comic book fan and dislike/misunderstand Superman completely.