This is Faith in Play #92: Weakness, for July 2025.
Thanks to Bryan Ray for recommending the Min/Max Podcast. This topic comes from one of their early episodes, some years back, which I heard earlier this year.
Someone said that Superman was boring because he had only one weakness. My immediate reaction was that’s wrong, he has at least three weaknesses (and as I write this I remember a fourth).
The first weakness is, of course, kryptonite, and it’s famous enough that people use it as a synonym for a weakness, like “chocolate is my kryptonite”. Of course, there are few weaknesses as dramatic as kryptonite–unshielded exposure immediately turns Superman into an invalid and begins killing him. Fortunately, his recovery is just as rapid once he is removed or shielded from its radiation. It’s a dramatic weakness, and our source is correct, it’s rather boring–but it isn’t his only weakness.
The second weakness we noted in Faith in Play #29: Victims: there are people in his life who matter to Superman, notably Lois Lane and Jimmy Olson. As we wrote then, if you want to cripple Superman, either find some kryptonite or kidnap Lois and Jimmy.
But the third weakness may be the most telling: Superman lives by a moral code and won’t violate it. Given his power, he could rule the world, kill anyone who got in his way, destroy any weapon brought against him, all with little fear of opposition or reprisal. He doesn’t, not because he can’t but because he believes in a set of moral principles, once expressed as truth, justice, and the American way. His core ethics limit what he can do.
Yet this weakness is in some ways also a strength: people know that Superman won’t violate his ethical code, and so they trust him. In one of the Spiderman movies the Green Goblin fights the hero in public, and the people rally to Spiderman’s side, helping him in their limited ways to battle the enemy, because they recognize that he is fighting for the right. Similarly, when Superman promises the girl that he will save her mother in New Jersey before he saves the city in California if she will remove the kryptonite, he keeps that promise even though he can’t get back to the city in time. Paladins have limits on their conduct, but commoners know that they can be trusted. If it is known that someone will always try to do the right thing even at great personal expense, the limitations created by that are compensated by the trust and support given by others. As we pointed out decades ago in Faith and Gaming: Bad Guys, this is a benefit the evil character patently does not have: driven by selfishness he can neither trust nor be trusted, and that becomes known.
Just for the sake of completeness, Superman is vulnerable to the rays of a red star. His power comes in part from the yellow sun. Kryptonians are ordinary people in their own star system; it is only when they reach star like Sol that they become empowered. That is something a scientist like Lex Luthor could probably find a way to exploit, although I don’t know whether he ever has.
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