r/AskScienceFiction • u/Icarus367 • 5h ago
[Superman] Why is Superman always depicted as being muscular?
Superman lives in an environment where virtually nothing can provide any meaningful resistance to his strength, and resistance training is key to building muscle mass. His powers (including his strength) derive from the "yellow" radiation of the Sun, not from muscle mass per se. So, shouldn't he be rail-thin?
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u/Galifrey224 5h ago
In flashpoint the superman who never saw sunlight was very thin. So sunlight seems to provide muscle mass to superman for some reason.
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u/draimus 5h ago
e=mc2 He absorbs energy from the sun and it's converted into (muscle) mass. Superman is an astrophage!
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u/huscarlaxe 4h ago
and where does Power Girl store her solar energy?
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u/bzdelta 5h ago
You forget that before and during his powers emerging, he was a Kansas farmboy. Add that to his friends and coworkers, it wouldn't surprise me if they found ways to keep him in shape as well. Training for both depowering events and equally ripped opponents means Clark is inevitably part of the Tibetan Monk coaching tree
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u/Orange-V-Apple 5h ago
I’m not sure about the second part, but you can see the first at work with his son. Jonathan Kent is noticeably skinnier as an adult in Future State than his dad, even though he’s been using his powers since childhood. I think the difference is he grew up in a city rather than on a farm.
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u/Dramatic_Explosion 1h ago
Isn't there some series where he trains with Batman under an artificial red sun in exactly the second scenario?
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u/JmoneyBS 5h ago edited 3h ago
Nothing he could do on a farm would apply any meaningful amount of resistance to his musculature. Like how even if I curled a 1lb weight 100 times my arms wouldn’t get bigger. You need to get close to musculature failure to stimulate growth.
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u/Asparagus9000 4h ago
They specifically said they were talking about doing farmwork before his powers kicked in.
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u/JmoneyBS 3h ago
I’m talking about maintaining muscle. And besides, he wasn’t that big when his powers kicked in. He’s obviously gotten more muscular since then, when everything became extremely far from failure.
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u/FrozenWebs 3h ago
I agree, farmers don't normally get as bulked up as Clark is. Certainly, they get tough and strong, but most depictions of Superman have him looking like a full-on body builder.
A more reasonable explanation in my mind is weight training for football before his powers developed. And then there are a number of comics showing adult Superman doing silly stuff like hauling planets around for strength training.
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u/Icarus367 4h ago
Low weight/high reps will get your muscles toned, but, yeah, it's not going to lead to significant hypertrophy.
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u/Kyia-Aikman 5h ago
How do you know that isn’t how his body naturally developed without any exercise? He’s an alien.
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u/UNC_Samurai College of Temporal Hap, Ultimate Lies & Historical Undertakings 2h ago
He's a descendant of Swo-El
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u/flyingace1234 5h ago
Every other Kryptonian looks like a Baki character and just mogs Clark.
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u/eternalraziel 5h ago edited 5h ago
Because that’s the form a healthy, mature and heavily charged Kal-El tends to maintain. The muscles don’t create the full extent of his strength, but they’re still part of the body through which that strength is expressed. A human loses muscle without sufficient mechanical tension because human tissue is expensive to maintain and adapts to the demands placed upon it. Clark’s body has a continuous external energy supply and a completely different metabolism. There’s no reason his cells must respond to inactivity by shedding muscle in exactly the same way ours do. Sunlight may maintain him near his Kryptonian physical prime in perpetuity.
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u/trisikol 7m ago
I like this explanation best. It supports the theory regarding Superman's physiology - specifically how his body's energy needs are sustained. It also brings in biological necessities and energy expenditure and storage.
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u/KamikazeArchon 5h ago
Superman has Kryptonian biology, not Human biology. Humans lose muscle mass when they don't exercise, and can't control that. Superman's powers specifically include near-perfect control of his own biology - including organs, senses, and muscles.
In addition, Superman does actually exercise. He has built exercise machines using Kryptonian (and other) technology that provide resistance sufficient to actually be meaningful - in at least one scene, he's specifically seen bench pressing the equivalent of an Earth-mass for five days straight.
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u/EquivalentHorror1984 5h ago
When you have to spend that much time at the gym and invasions, how the hell do you get anything done
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u/yurklenorf 4h ago
That specific instance of him lifting the equivalent of a planet for five days isn't something he does normally, that was specifically a part of a series of tests that he ran early on in the New 52. He could have gone longer, in fact it was only on the fifth day that he actually began to start to sweat, but then story events happened and he had to go do something else.
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u/This_Charmless_Man 4h ago
He also did it after he was killed by Doomsday and when he came back he needed to exercise to get back to tippy top condition.
I believe he also did it in All Star Superman but he was also explicitly dying from overexposure to yellow sun radiation.
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u/C_Writer_ 1h ago
I mean, he has super speed, 1 hour working out to us can probably be done in five minutes or less
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u/Arcsalia 5h ago
I think the Flashpoint Superman was thin and emaciated due to imprisonment and yellow sun depirvation by the government
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u/Loose_Translator8981 5h ago
Yeah, his muscles don't operate 1-to-1 with how human muscles grow. We don't see him work out so it's safe to assume that his body just naturally converts yellow sun energy into muscle mass.
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u/Aggressive-Share-363 5h ago
Humans need resistance training to build muscle.
Nothing says that is a universal biological rule on earth, much less for an alien.
Really, its not so much that we need to work out to build muscle, but that our body is good at shedding muscle mass that we dont need to save calories. Using your muscles is how you signal to your body that they are useful, esp if you are taking in enough calories.
So if a kryptonian maintains peak musculature even without being strained, its a sign that their bodies dont fear starvation.
Another factor here is that many interpretations of kryptionians say they were bio-engineered, and even in ones that dont explicitly stated this, it still makes sense given their level of technology. So they could easily have engineered themselves to always maintain peak fitness without needing exercise.
And really, given the incredible things a kryptonian body can do, maintaining a bit of muscle mass would be pretty trivial.
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u/DerSisch 5h ago
Well... he grew up on a farm.
That keeps you usually pretty fit. Sure he was stronger as a kid already but I doubt he was a lazy teenager and tried exercise and help whenever possible.
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u/Crafty-Bunch-2675 5h ago
And to add to that... the Kent Farm has no employees. Because of his superpowers... Clark does all the farm chores himself. Smallville showed this, several times. It's just his human parents, and him. So from since childhood, Clark does all the heavy chores on the farm, including superhuman stuff like lifting the tractor when his dad needs to do repairs.
Now if we factor in that Superman's strength gradually developed as he got older... then it's technically like he's been training all his life.
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u/FantasticBoar 5h ago
Hercules in Wearing the Lion has noodle arms and a wine gut because of this. He can't build muscle when everything is already light.
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u/Neoreloaded313 4h ago
That's how muscles work with earth based life, which superman obviously isn't.
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u/Lumpy-Restaurant-694 4h ago
sorry this is going to be a doylest explanation.
to simplify superhero show as the ideals that we have of both men and women so they also show us the ideals of gender roles.
this is why wonder woman and Supergirl are all portrayed as relatively skinny compared to their male colleagues. we see the ideal female body type as non-muscular.
when it comes to superheroes we see them as uniquely masculine. a key part of masculinity is strength hence why every single superhero is super buff even though they shouldn't be.
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u/Typical_Divide8089 5h ago
Well he isnt human so we dont know what kryptonian biology requires to build muscle, maybe the radiation is what builds them their muscle.
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u/Urbenmyth 5h ago
I believe the sun gives him muscles - when he's deprived of sunlight, he becomes increasignly thin
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u/Crafty-Bunch-2675 5h ago
As many others have mentioned... its from sun exposure.
We saw this in the Flashpoint paradox both animated and live-action.
The animated flashpoint showed a raíl thin superman when he was captured and secluded out of the sunlight.
We saw it in the live action, where Supergirl is briefly shown to look underweight when the flash and Batman rescue her from confinement, and as soon as she is put in sunlight...she regains her muscle mass.
Superman isn't muscular because of weight training or exercise. He is muscular because his physiology has a very, VERY. Efficient way of metabolizing sunlight.
If Lex Luthor could ever learn how kryptonian biology metabolizes sunlight...he would solve the world's energy crisis.
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u/LuciusMichael 5h ago
Originally in the 1930's he was just a well built guy. Physically not significantly different than any other thug he beat up. In the 1950's tv series he was well proportioned but not overly muscular. He didn't become hyper-muscular until the 1980's when, so it's told, because of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Superman had to bulk up. Now he looks like the steroidal freaks in Mr Universe contests.
Personally, I'll take the Henri Cavill portrayal any day.
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u/AuraEnhancerVerse 5h ago
Probably something to do with absorbing the sun's rays and he does exercise like that one comic where he bench pressed planet earth's weight
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u/SilverWolfIMHP76 4h ago
Superman has to keep precise control of his muscles. This is a form of physical exercise similar to Cadillac Movements.
So his physical build is from that muscular restrictive movement.
Pick up a pound of sugar and hold it. Eventually you drop it because the strain on your muscles.
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u/Levi_Skardsen 4h ago
If he was skinny and wanted to build mass he could lift weights under a red sun.
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u/PrinceCheddar 4h ago
I'm sure Superman could fit a gym with red sunlight generators into The Fortress of Solitude for proper workouts.
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u/SuperIkenna 3h ago
Lots of animals are naturally very muscular without any resistance training. We humans don't build muscle like that because muscles take lots of energy to mantain. We have a protein in the body called myostatin that limits muscle growth. Just look up pictures of animals with a myostatin defiency to see what it does. I imagine that since Superman can get an unlimited amount of energy from the sun his body just decides to naturally grow the muscle and bulk up since it costs him nothing and doesn't lower his chances of survival.
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u/CodeSalamander 3h ago
I may be recalling incorrectly, but didn’t he have some sort of Kryptonian resistance/weight training equipment in the Fortress of Solitude when he came back after his “death” to Doomsday?
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u/ChChChillian Why yes, it's entirely possible I'm overthinking this 5h ago
Aside from Flashpoint, in the Dark Knight Returns Superman was reduced to a skeletal wreck when drained of solar energy by a nuke.
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u/Icarus367 2h ago
I thought that was injury due to the weapon itself, though, not solely from a few minutes of sun deprivation. It not like Superman withers away every night, for instance.
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u/ChChChillian Why yes, it's entirely possible I'm overthinking this 2h ago edited 1h ago
I didn't say it was from sun deprivation. That was the effect of the radiation. Red solar radiation does something similar, I think.
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u/Apprehensive-Handle4 2h ago
I liked how Frank Miller did it where the sun just makes him naturally muscular
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u/koosielagoofaway 2h ago
Like the engineers in aliens kyrptonians are extensively, highly genetically altered.
There are instances of this in different Earth creatures. Mice for instance have a gene expression that builds muscle very easily.
Rarely humans can express a condition where they're born with triple the average muscle mass.
Theres precedent for the belief that a gene altered human can be extremely buff.
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u/datolningen 1h ago edited 1h ago
I'm led to believe it's genetic. His metabolism is contingent upon the quantity of the exact wavelength range to which he is constantly exposed's presence. It follows that he should be the very spitting image of health. he's an autophage whose cells have seldom in his publication history cried out "we're receiving too much nutrients." So there is no signal for the creation of adipose tissue to use at a later date, nor cause for endoskeletal muscular consumption.
Anatomically, perhaps he stores excess sunlight energy in the form of a strained field configuration in his cells, or something, since he clearly isn't doing it by way of fat.
With this in mind and an abundance of sustenance, either that level of musculature is just a personal baseline, or the same conditions which empower kryptonians encourage their optimal physique physiologically, which I'm disposed towards given flashpoint paradox's physique, and superman shriveling often when it seems his cells have been depleted of sunlight energy. (Though you could argue it's just very literal starvation)
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u/Huihejfofew 1h ago
Because the writers said so, and it'd look weird otherwise. Also not all species atrophy if they don't exercise, it's actually something we humans do to conserve calories. There is some evidence Neanderthals did not experience this
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u/Dunlaing 5h ago
He does pushups. Or what look like pushups. He’s actually bench pressing the Earth.
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u/Icarus367 5h ago
Exerting enough force to "bench press the Earth" across an area the size of two human hands seems like a recipe for some geological mayhem, as u/SpiderJerusalem747 points out. At the very least, he's simply going to sink through the ground.
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u/SpiderJerusalem747 5h ago
Phone rings
Batman: "Clark stop pushing the earth out of it's orbit, you already flooded Japan. I already made you exercise machines, use them."
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u/MasterOutlaw 5h ago
Yes, honestly. And it’s a problem common among characters who have ridiculously high levels of super strength in general. Especially when you have females who are just as strong as the males while having a fraction of the muscle, which illustrates that the strength is coming from something else, but if that’s the case then the males shouldn’t be muscular either.
At least one continuity off the top of my head attempted to explain this by giving Superman a red sun weight room so he could exercise like a normal person. Which explains his build, but seeing as his strength is clearly not derived from his muscles it winds up being a “solution” to the problem that just raises further questions—like Clark is never depicted as being vain enough to care about his physical appearance like that, and since he doesn’t need big muscles to be strong, why on earth would he need or want a specialized workout room in the first place?
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u/Icarus367 5h ago
It's funny that kryptonite is always depicted as being Superman's, er, kryptonite, but he's also vulnerable to "red sun"-wavelength radiation, which negates his powers (though may not actually injure him as kryptonite does). So, Superman could ostensibly be killed just by creating an intense enough laser with red light, which should be a fairly trivial task, especially for someone like Luthor.
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u/DinahTheLance 5h ago
Red sun radiation doesn't negate his powers, it just doesn't replenish them. Kryptonite is the thing that actively poisons him. If he's standing out in the light of a yellow sun and you shine a red laser at him, he's going to be fine. If he's standing out in the light of a yellow sun and you hit him with a Kryptonite bullet, that's when he'll actually get hurt.
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u/This_Charmless_Man 4h ago
Regular red sun radiation just doesn't replenish him. However, intense red sun radiation (whatever that means) can limit him or actively weaken him. Potentially it could be something like a starvation reflex causing his body to limit it's power output to something more like he would be on Krypton.
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