#between bruce and clark for the sake of differentiation when really they're very similar. i get it contrast is interesting but

[blorb-el]

Calling golden age Clark an anticapitalist/socialist paragon is only true for prewar golden age Clark (1938-42). The instant the US entered the war and the character started to be used to sell war stamps, he couldn't act as anti-authoritarian; destroying a car factory for its use of unsafe, inferior materials (action 12), trapping a mine owner in his own mine to force him to improve conditions for his workers (action 3), or tearing down tenement housing in order to force the government to build better, safer apartments (action 8) are all actions that would be seen as actively traitorous in the wake of Pearl Harbor. The Superman office contributed enthusiastically to war propaganda in all the forms of media the character was appearing in (comics, newspaper strips, radio show, and the Fleischer animations). By the end of the war Superman the Character was firmly established as Establishment. Postwar golden age Superman is still devoted to doing the right thing, of course, but now he helps raise money for charity, donates his time and labor to build orphanages, that sort of thing. He's not trying to tear the system down... much as I wish DC would let him try.

Instead of Siegel's original justice cryptid, the furiously kinetic Champion of the Oppressed outsider Superman, postwar to modern day we get a Clark who shifts back and forth on the spectrum of establishmentarianism depending on the writer, but who is generally not allowed to act directly against institutions (Wolfman, Morrison, Waid, Byrne, and Maggin for example all have WILDLY different takes on the relationship between superman and Authority). My personal favorite Take is that Clark as a person is not establishmentarian, but the establishment of superheroes and their conduct codified (or calcified, if you prefer) itself around him and his personal conduct. Both in a Doylist sense and in the continuities where he's the First Superhero a Watsonian one. How does your behavior change when you know people are looking to you to determine what's right and what's allowed for themselves? How does that constrict you, when your actions are dissected and taken for justification? That's why I always think of him as a person whose natural inclination is to be chaotic good, but who restrains himself into being lawful good. Clark would sure LIKE to Solve Capitalism. But he both can't, and will never be allowed to... and that tension, far from being a bad thing, can fuel a good interpretation.