To Kill the Man of Steel

April 28th, 2005

Filed under: Comics, Medicine

Most everyone is familiar with the two classic ways to kill Superman:
1. Kryptonite.
2. Magic.

The nineties added a third method:
3. Getting smashed, repeatedly and very hard, by Doomsday.

However, with just a little knowledge of medical science, two more methods of killing Superman become readily apparent:

4. Superman’s Heart
Superman has a bad heart. In the past several years, there have been at least three occasions where his heart required defibrillation to restart it (Action #817, Superman #175 and Superman #198). That’s never a benign procedure and suggests that his heart, and particularly its conduction system, may be his weak link. Send a bunch of electrically-based villains after Superman and have them concentrate on his heart.

Or I would feed him plate after plate of bacon and butter-fried eggs. I bet cholesterol works the same in Kryptonians as it does in humans.

5. Infectious Disease
Superman is susceptible to diseases. In the Silver Age he was infected by Virus X as well as Zohtt’s bioengineered infection. More recently, he was infected with the Xarxas virus. His Kryptonian immune system is strong, and it takes a special microbe to defeat it.

Or at least it did.

Superboy has DNA that is half-human and half Kryptonian. This makes him the perfect breeding ground for infections that could kill Superman. Superboy could acquire (or be infected with) a common human virus. Viruses mutate fairly quickly, and in the presence of Krytponian DNA this virus could quickly develop defenses against Superman’s immunity. Without much effort the common cold could defeat the Man of Steel.

You should have gone to Med School, Lex.

7 Responses to “ To Kill the Man of Steel ”

  1. John Nowak
    April 29th, 2005 at 1:31 am

    Let’s suppose he was swallowed alive by a sentient dinosaur. He’d suffocate eventually, but he couldn’t tunnel his way out without killing the dinosaur.

    Then again, he might be able to escape from either end of the alimentary tract…

    So it would have to be a Kryptonian super-dinosaur.

  2. Aine
    April 29th, 2005 at 5:57 am

    Does that mean that if there existed individuals on this planet who were half chicken, half human then we would have pandemic flu outbreaks more often?

  3. Mike Loughlin
    April 29th, 2005 at 8:17 am

    There was a short story in a late-90s JLA 80-page giant in which the Atom hitches a ride inside Superman, and almost gets killed by his rampaging immune system.

    I think any virus that attacks Superman has to come equipt with lasers.

  4. Jeff R.
    April 29th, 2005 at 11:10 am

    To geek out, you left out “take away his powers” [either with the abovementioned magic or kryptonite, or with exposure to a Red Sun] and then kill him as you would any other man.

  5. Jer
    April 29th, 2005 at 11:45 am

    I’ll bet that Kryptonians under a yellow sun are immune to normal Earth cholesterol buildup. But Kryptonian “Cholesterol X” probably builds up in their arteries in mere moments to kill them.

    (Probably only comes from special Kryptonian beef too. Those darn Kryptonian Super-Cows.)

  6. Seth Finkelstein
    April 30th, 2005 at 11:24 pm

    It’s always been the case that Superman could be physically injured or even killed by another Kryptonian being – e.g. escaped Phantom Zone villain, or a maddened Krypto or another Kryptonian animal. But it wasn’t going going to be easy, since though Superman wasn’t a top martial artist, pre-Crisis even apart from the powers he was also a very skilled (boxer class) hand-to-hand fighter. Doomsday was a case where the story was written so Superman didn’t win the physical fight.

  7. Harvey
    February 29th, 2008 at 11:22 am

    Silver Age continuity was eaten by the Anti-Monitor as part of Crisis on Multiple Earths, so those methods would not work with the post-Infinite Crisis Superman.

Leave a Reply

« Liefeld on Teen Titans Fifth Grade (barely)! »