If You Didn't Know Superman Was a Progressive Illegal Immigrant All Along, You Weren't Paying Attention

Let’s get one thing out of the way right now: Superman is an illegal immigrant. Not in the Roswell autopsy sense, but in the "crashed his spaceship in Kansas without a visa" sense. He didn't wait at the border. He didn’t fill out the paperwork. Ma and Pa Kent didn’t stand in line at the Smallville Department of Extraterrestrial Naturalization. Nope. Baby Kal-El skipped customs, took refuge in a cornfield, and has been living that undocumented life ever since.

And guess what? That’s the point.

See, when Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, two sons of Jewish immigrants, dreamed up Superman in 1938, they didn’t just create a man who could leap tall buildings in a single bound. They created an immigrant story wrapped in red and blue spandex. Superman’s Kryptonian roots, his assimilation into small-town America, his double life, these are all allegories for the American immigrant experience. An outsider who wants to belong, who does good because it's the right thing to do. If that’s not the quintessential progressive fairy tale, what is?

Look at Clark Kent. He works for a newspaper. He believes in truth, justice, and, depending on the decade, "the American Way," which, despite being co-opted by bumper stickers and cable news segments, originally meant the America of open arms and big dreams. Clark exposes corruption. He fights for the little guy. He’s literally a union member (shoutout to The Daily Planet newsroom). He’s the champion of the voiceless. Sound familiar?

Black Adam: You fight for the wizard?

Superman: I fight for those who can't fight for themselves.

- Superman/Shazam!: The Return of Black Adam

Superman has always been a social crusader. In his earliest comics, he wasn't just punching asteroids and Doomsday monsters, he was throwing corrupt politicians out of windows and smacking wife beaters around their living rooms. He was the blue-collar hero in a cape.

If Superman were real today, he'd probably be the one stopping ICE raids with heat vision and picking up asylum seekers in the Fortress of Solitude’s guest suite. Like, what are we even talking about?

James Gunn didn’t invent this version of Superman; he just remembered it. His recent comments about Superman being an immigrant didn’t add something new to the mythos. They re-centered what’s always been there. The Man of Steel is, and always has been, a testament to the idea that immigrants make this country stronger. The Kryptonian refugee who grows up in America’s heartland isn’t a threat to the American dream, he’s its biggest cheerleader.

So, when you see folks foaming at the mouth over how "woke" Superman has become, whatever that word means now, just remember: Superman was woke before "woke" was a hashtag. His whole existence is about inclusion, compassion, and standing up to bullies, whether they’re on the playground or in positions of power.

Superman may acknowledge that we "technically" have the right to be closed-minded and intolerant, and he doesn't try to force people to view things his way or impose his will onto others. But that doesn't mean he'll stand for bigotry or ignore it, especially those beliefs are acted on, and especially if they're acted on with the intent to harm others.

As Superman would say:

"That's Un-American."

If that bothers you, maybe you haven’t been reading Superman comics very closely. Or maybe you just didn’t want to see what was always there: a left-leaning, progressive illegal immigrant who believes that the path to a better future is together. And if you didn’t know that by now, well, you just weren’t paying attention.

If you need it even more spelled out, here is a click from Smallville, a show Superman fans claim to love.