#sol el

Disclaimers: 

These are my thoughts, so if you do not agree (which is perfectly fine,) be nice about it! I love hearing everyone’s ideas so please do interact if you feel like it but, yk… nicely.

There will be spoilers, but this focuses on the first two volumes (and I think that maybe there’s a mention to issue #14? but nothing afterwards.)

This is just a lot of me rambling, English isn’t my first language and I mostly wrote it at 3am so bear with me!! There might be typos or mistakes… Hope everything’s understandable though!

TW: Suicidal thoughts, depression, grief, hopelessness, self-harm and other triggering situations that the comic touches upon, so read under your own discretion please!

That being said, enjoy!

Kal’s Mentality

Kal El is the only survivor of a planet that killed itself. Division, pain, pollution, hate, arrogance and cowardice, amongst others, destroyed it from within and Kal knows. He is shown to be a calm, kind, empathetic child, but only because his parents allowed him to be– they let him grow up in a space where he could think, doubt and defend his convictions, whereas everyone else was praised for following orders and doing what they were told. 

When Kal realizes that they’ll have to leave Krypton and witnesses how his parents weep for the world they’ll never be able to save, he feels a deep rage that stems from empathy out of his parents’ hopelessness and their conviction that they still need to try. This page might be the most important one from a characterization standpoint, here we’re shown who Kal is at his core, and what he will become:

In simple terms: Kal vows to help, he’s seen what hate and division is capable of, and he will not stand idly to watch it happen anywhere else, not to people like his parents. He will try.

2. AI

I loved seeing this and I feel like the criticism was done in a very clever way.

First, we see both Kal and Lois going against the current and refusing to use AI for their respective reports (issue #2) for different reasons. Both are related to the truth, but Kal’s is interior and Lois’ is exterior.

Kal wants to be honest and uses his writing to understand and put things in perspective, or at least that’s what I gather from this. The teacher says that his story is “quite descriptive” and he’s scolded for it. When his parents ask why he did it (knowing he’d get in trouble) he replies: “My words make me happy, theirs are just… words.”

Theirs are devoid of feeling, they are not true, they are generated. His paint a picture that he feels is necessary.

In Lois’ case, she is known to hate writing reports, number one report hater in the world. Yet, when the Brainiac algorithm takes the truth and twists it to build this idea that Superman is evil and should be taken down, Lois stands up against it and writes.

We all know that AI agrees with us, that it always says “yes”, but no one questions it. The article explains that, according to MIT, “brain scan studies found that heavy chatbot users showed lower activity in brain areas tied to skepticism and creativity, raising red flags about long-term effects” and that there are cases of “people lost in chatbots’ endless “yes,” ending up isolated… even driven to breakdowns or worse.” There is even a term for the negative after-effects of AI validation (emotional breakdown, paranoia, self-harm…), “ChatGPT psychosis.”

All this to say, critical thinking (amongst a lot others) is slipping away from AI users or, “the more comfort that you get from AI, the less you question it.” It leads to delusion and disconnection. 

To be fair, in Christopher Smith’s case, it’s sort of the opposite depending on how you see it. He goes to the Brainiac algorithm with a very personal, terrifying and debilitating fear, yet it insists that his weapon misfired and that what happened wasn’t his fault when Smith tells it time and time again that he did intend to do it. Here, the algorithm is telling him what he wants to hear, that he is innocent when he clearly isn’t, it tries to re-write the experience in his brain so that Smith will be pliable. Similar to how chatbots agree with you to keep you engaged… 

3. Doomscrolling and social media

Here comes Jimmy Olsen!

In issue #9, he’s talking to Kal and he tells him the story of how he realized he wanted to be an Omega Man. He was doomscrolling and thinking about the state of the world (sound familiar?) when he realized that one day he’d have a kid and how he’d want to tell them that he fought and made a difference, that he didn’t just stand by. After being shown the intel that they had gathered, he immediately went to get a vasectomy.

(This page stuck with me, it made me so sad. The hopelessness —a very popular theme in this comic— is so raw.)

The effects of doomscrolling are well-known. On one hand, there’s the anxiety and the sleep loss, the constant need to be in control and updated while also avoiding real life problems. To be watching divisive content all the time is dangerous for our mental health, and the fact that it lead Jimmy to give up the family he wanted to have… how many people have given up their dreams out of fear, and how much of that fear was caused by uncertainty and skepticism?

In this article by the Friday Times about doomscrolling and empathy, there’s two quotes that stood up to me.

“Obsession with social media and war content erodes empathy, replacing reflection and action with curated outrage and digital spectacle.

“Anyone not frothing with anger is declared a passive bystander.”

I feel like these two ideas are very important to the Absolute Universe. After all, Jimmy joined the fight so that he could avoid being declared a passive bystander by his future children, and –for better or worse– his empathy was eroded. He’s okay with killing Peacemakers, when it’s the death of people that repulsed him and made him react in the first place.

On the other hand, there’s also a moment with Kal in issue #15 where he thinks about the fact that he can hear the whole world screaming and thinks the following: “Feels obscene to listen. Feels more obscene not to.”

This is the same thought that keeps us from turning off the news (despite the fact that it’s always the same crap) and that keeps us from scrolling past a video on tiktok (despite the fact that (usually) we can’t do anything to help someone that’s half a world away.) Knowing that Superman feels the same way, that we’re suffering from the same powerlessness… it’s somewhat reassuring. It means that it’s real. It means that it’s human and that we will find a balance together. 

It means that empathy is worth it, even if you can’t always save everyone, and that we are not alone.

4. Mental Health: Isolation, Loneliness, Suicidal Thoughts, Depression, Dehumanization, Rage and Hopelessness – Empathy

This is especially sad because of how many real life examples of these we have. According to the WHO, one in every seven 10-19-year-olds experiences a mental disorder, unrecognized and untreated. “Depression, anxiety and behavioural disorders are among the leading causes of illness and disability among adolescents. Suicide is the third leading cause of death among those aged 15–29 years old.”

Amongst the list of factors that can contribute to stress during adolescence, the article cites: exposure to adversity, pressure to conform with peers and exploration of identity. 

Obviously, Kal is not a normal human being (in a normal world, because as much as we consider the Absolute Universe a mirror of our reality, it’s not the exact same) and his problems go above the general teenager existentialism, but still there are so many moments in these two volumes where I can see the teenager that he is bleed through the image of invincible Superman that the world sees.

In issue #6, we follow Kal as he spends over seventeen months drifting, homeless, lost.

Until he lands in Smallville. He finds something good, he finds great people. Everything is okay for once, until it isn’t. And he reacts the only way he knows how.

He runs for over five years, avoiding human connection like the plague. He didn’t feel safe, let alone cared for.

And Kal is mad. He’s angry, and that is dangerous. He refers to himself as “the fury of billions,” and in issue #9, he thinks: “Every day I spend under this sun, I grow stronger. Angrier. And further removed from who I was.” He’s nothing like the calm, kind, empathetic child he was once, the child that his parents allowed him to be. He’s losing himself to a world that he doesn’t know how to save.

So Kal is being transformed by the pain, but is also trying his damned hardest to remain earnest and caring. 

His father, Jor-El, was (in his words) one of the most caring people he’d ever known, and he’d once told Kal: “we must never lose sight of what constitutes cruelty and inhumanity, especially when we're the ones being cruel.” He taught Kal to stand his ground and fight for what was right. 

The father that might have been, Jonathan Kent, told Kal to run away. The world is begging and praying for Superman’s rage. They want (need, to a certain degree) revenge and violence,

but Kal cannot give them that. He refuses. He cannot be someone they want, no matter how much pain it causes him.

To make matters worse, it’s clear that people on Earth don’t even see a person, they see a weapon. Even Lois and Jimmy, who we know are good, wanted to take advantage of him and didn’t even bother to ask his name. 

In issue #13, he thinks to himself: “I am nothing and no one. I'm only here to bleed.” In #10, he refers to himself as “the last beast in the mine.” The dehumanization that this child has gone through, to the point of only seeing himself as a shield and a martyr for a world that never let him belong. 

In issue #12, we’re shown how lonely he feels and how isolated he’s become. Sol tries to take care of him, but throughout the whole issue we experience his fear of getting hurt again and the paralyzing nature of it. This page right here is one of the best visual art pieces I’ve seen in my life:

In words of Sigmund Freud, “depression is anger turned inward” which is very fitting because, in this universe, Kal’s fortress of solitude is himself. He is angry, he’s in pain, he is mourning everything he never got to have, and he doesn’t have anywhere to go, so he turns to himself, and there's only so much he can bear without destroying himself.

He doesn’t let himself be known, he doesn't even know if there’s anything left of him to share.

Deep down, he’s just a scared child. He’s terrified that he’ll never be whole again, that he lost his parents’ beloved son, that he lost the person he could’ve grown to be with the Kent’s support and love, that he failed to save himself.

That he’s too broken. That love isn’t enough.

But it is. 

It always was.

Conclusion:

Absolute Superman is about hope, love and perseverance. It’s about empathy and how we need to keep flying despite the world trying to drag us down, it’s about standing up for ourselves and opening up, it’s about facing our fears and embracing who you are and becoming the person that you can be.

It’s about knowing that hearts can break, but they can be mended.

It’s ad Astra per aspera, but knowing that there is no option: you will reach the stars, you will make it through the hardships.