Can you introduce yourself, please?

Sure. I'm Ben Fritz. I cover the entertainment industry for the journal, and fans of your

podcast, may remember I was the host of a journal podcast miniseries a couple of years ago called

With Great Power, all about superhero movies. Ben is our in-house superhero expert, and I wanted to talk to him about one of the first

superheroes, Superman.

He's the template on which every other superhero has been based.

And he's such a symbol of, like, truth and goodness and old-fashioned values and doing the right thing,

you know, that he's always this icon, I think, for anybody who cares about superheroes

and comic books.

You probably know the story.

Superman is from another planet.

As a baby, his spaceship crash landed in the little town

of Smallville, Kansas. He embodies everything about a traditional superhero. He's got the

square jaw, perfect hair, and big red cape. And he's faster than a speeding bullet. More powerful

than a locomotive. People to leap tall buildings at a single bound. And today, more powerful than a locomotive.

And able to leap tall buildings at a single bound.

And today, the latest version of the Man of Steel flies back into theaters.

My father once told me, it's not about what you can do, Clark.

It's about what you choose to do.

That's why I choose to protect this world.

It's a reboot, which, you know, means they're starting over from scratch with a whole new cast and a whole new mythos.

And this Superman movie is sort of really trying to balance these very comic booky elements, these, you know, slightly silly, not quite real elements, which is sort of what goes along with Superman, with like very real, grounded moral quandaries in the real world.

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