Assuming that you’re not all sick to death of thinking about Superman and ready to move on to other topics — like pirates, for instance — I’ve found a trio of articles that should give you adequate distraction from work on this Friday morning.

First up, Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy fame reviews the science of Superman Returns and, surprise surprise, finds it somewhat lacking. If you thought I was nitpicky, wait until you see this guy in action! Seriously, Phil’s site is both entertaining and educational, and, with the exception of the movie Armageddon (which was so boneheaded that it demanded a good shredding), he’s really not all that cruel when it comes to pointing out errors in our popular entertainments. Personally, I think he provides a valuable service by reminding us that the real world doesn’t really behave like the one we see on-screen.

I will quibble with Phil on one very minor point, though: he has a lot to say about the scene in which a space shuttle launch from atop an airliner goes very, very wrong. I won’t argue with any of the scientific points he makes, but he keeps referring to NASA and its shuttle orbiter; I think, in fact, that the vehicle we see in Superman Returns is supposed to be a privately owned spacecraft like SpaceShipOne. I’m pretty sure I saw a Virgin Galactic logo on the video screen in the 777’s cabin, and this would explain the cameo by billionaire adventurer Richard Branson as the shuttle’s pilot.

Moving right along, Wired recently published an essay by novelist and sometime comic-writer Neil Gaiman and Wired’s own Adam Rogers on why a character created nearly 70 years ago continues to endure. The key paragraph, I think, is this one:

Compared to most A-list comic characters, [Superman] has almost no memorable villains. Think of Batman, locked in eternal combat with nocturnal freaks like the Joker — or Spider-Man, battling megalomaniacal weirdos like Dr. Octopus. For Superman, there’s pretty much only bitter, bald Lex Luthor, forever being reinvented by writers and artists in an effort to make him a worthy foe.

 

Superman’s true enemies are disasters like earthquakes and hurricanes, jet planes tumbling from the sky, enormous meteors that would crush cities. Superman stands between humanity and a capricious universe.

And finally, an oldie but a goodie, Larry Niven‘s infamous “Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex” essay, in which he logically (and humorously) dissects the difficulties inherent in, um, perpetuating the Kryptonian species. For example:

Electroencephalograms taken of men and women during sexual intercourse show that orgasm resembles “a kind of pleasurable epileptic attack.” One loses control over one’s muscles.

 

Superman has been known to leave his fingerprints in steel and in hardened concrete, accidentally. What would he do to the woman in his arms during what amounts to an epileptic fit?

Yeah, that would be a problem, wouldn’t it… and then there’s the matter of superpowered Kryptonian sperm, but I’ll let Larry give you the details of that…