Superman, Hope, Parody, Archetypes, Wolverine- this post has it all. Disclaimer: This post is sure to disappoint

Ok disclaimer time: Be advised comic book likers: Calm down, I'm on your side. I'm just writing down some of my loose interpretations from a subject I know little about. I'm sure there's a lot I'm leaving out and if you think there is anything critical I have excluded from my poorly contrived argument, please post it in a comment.

Ok, it's cringe time.

Superman has really never interested me. He's indestructable to the point of boredom- every episode has to involve some insanely elaborate situation that renders his powers useless- reminiscent of how in Pokemon, Ash insisted on using Pikachu as the sole choice in each and every gym regardless of the type. Once he fails, which he inevitably does each and every time to his great and inexplicable confusion he formulates a plan. Instead of using the tried and true method of catching new pokemon and training them evenly, he finds some hideously unnatural way to jack up Pikachu.

For instance I saw this one episode of the classic live action TV show, where a guy marches up to Superman wearing a lead mask and threatening that he reveal his identity or something of the like. He's like: Superman, your powers don't work on me as long as I wear this lead mask, and he's like, uh why don't I just take the mask off? to which he promptly responded: YOU CAN'T! IT'S LOCKED ON! And that was the end of that discussion. Did Superman challenge his authority? No, they just went on with the episode.

Anyway the point is, I wouldn't say that culture has been influenced by Superman. Yes Superman's reach is immense and the cultural references are many. But from what I can see, there is one major theme at play, and it doesn't mirror humanity. Superman is so effective because it is above humanity.
Ask people what they like about Superman and they'll say its about transforming themselves into something Superhuman. And if that helps people draw strength and purpose to their lives than thats great. That's why the symbol is so effective, because it's directly equivalent to hope and power.

Ok, I'm going to backtrack for a minute, and say that I find the inverse of this theme VERY impressive.
The best part about the Kill Bill series, aside from eyeball squishing, scalping and confusing people with anime was the Superman reference at the very end. Bill likens Uma Thurman to Superman in the sense that she is not mild mannered Clark Kent transforming himself into Superman, but Superman disguising himself as the whole of humanity. Weird idea, Clark Kent is a parody, The skewed representation of how a godly figure would perceive humans.
Seriously though, this blew my mind *cranial wind*

Now this is messed up. Globally, the Superman symbol is directly equivalent to hope and power, therefore, Superman is a godly parody- yes Tim- the Jesus archetype (much to everyone's dissatisfaction). Yet Clark Kent is a humanly parody. Woah- no happy medium. Nobody is being real here. I feel like I have to take the averages and do math to find something that I can relate to.

You may argue, what about Lois Lane- well by that point I had already lost interest.
Plus, I'm a little disturbed at the idea of Superman as a love interest.
Frankly his classic good looks and kiss curl disgust me.

This is why I like X-Men, plus even in a hideous yellow abomination of a suit, Wolverine is way hotter.

Ladies, would you rather have this

Dang, is that arm hair or shadowing? Who cares!

Or this

I feel a little less fortune after reading this.

Image extracted from: http://www.the-isb.com/?m=200712&paged=2

Redisclaimer: If you're still pissed off, maybe you didn't read the whole article. Go back and look for the part where I said Superman was awesome.