SuperMan thought he was amazing until he landed on the super planet. The problem with the super planet was that it seemed extremely ordinary. People on this planet from the first look were mild mannered, ordinary, weak and feeble. Unlike SuperMan they couldn’t run hundreds of miles per hour. They couldn’t fly or shoot lasers from their eyes. They couldn’t even have x-ray vision or blow super cool air to freeze things around them. Individually, they seemed weak, they were weak.
As a mass they seemed utterly idiotic. They had this ability to follow each other off cliffs without a second thought. They went to wars against each other and built civilizations only to collapse them under the weight of chaos and inability to communicate. SuperMan was clearly superior to these people and thought from the beginning that he would become a de-facto president of the planet.
He quickly went about showing his skills. He flew around the earth saving people, he picked up trains and stopped dams from collapsing. He ended wars and saved cats stuck in trees. He even chased the earth back into time to try and anticipate buildings collapsing in earthquakes. But to his surprise, the people didn’t care much. They would say thank you and move on. What they had was their own super powers that were most of the time far more superior to his.
The people used their super powers after a collapsed dam to rebuild it and make a better one that wouldn’t collapse. After every disaster they found a way to come together in groups of superhumans. I call them superhumans because they had this ability to have powers even when looking like they were not super at all. They would somehow know who has what power even though no one wore super costumes. Some had uniforms but they weren’t anything like SuperMan’s. Their costumes seemed surprisingly utilitarian which bothered superman. The superhumans thought SuperMan’s tights and cape were funny, especially his underpants over his tights. He realized that sometimes a most ordinary looking human could re-route all of a plumbing in a house. While another could bring light to every room. SuperMan couldn’t do that. He could move a house or take the people out but he had no way of actually saving their house from a flood and if he did, there was no way he could actually fix it.
Another human could direct hundreds of humans to create a levy to withstand huge rivers. All Superman could do was swoop in to save one or two people. But these humans could call on hundreds in helicopters and they would save many more than SuperMan could. They had humans who could direct hundreds of superhumans with many superpowers. One mild mannered superhuman could figure out how to move money so that other humans could eat and live and work and create things as necessary as helicopters or as trivial as toys and beds and televisions. These superhumans didn’t have to change into different clothes to call on these powers although many often did. For instance he noticed men and women on golf courses in funny looking shorts trying to put tiny balls into into tiny holes with tiny little clubs. They could hit that ball with no supervision or super strength just by taking advantage of physics that they mastered. They could feel the wind and compensate for it. The same men and women would then put on fancy suits and in those clothes they would direct thousands of other superhumans into amazingly diverse actions from building planes and ships to bringing about relief efforts in far away countries from disease and natural calamities without having to turn back time or fly or run themselves.
Some of them had ability to take their emotions and transform them into paintings, music, books and movies. The other humans could be moved to tears or laughter by these visions of their own emotions. They could communicate to each-other past, future and world that have never been and might never be.
Superman could not compete with these super powers. Despondent he decided to give up his super talents, they seemed inferior on this planet. He decide to learn one of their trades, ability to collect information and disseminate it to other humans. This ability to go and seek information seemed amazing to him as these humans could take this information and direct their talents with anticipation of future events based on his reporting. He may not have had his cape and he may not have run faster than other humans or fly like the others, but he felt for once super. Because the humans, could drive as fast as him by calling on super power of other humans to build cars which could go faster than him, they could fly farther and faster than him by calling on superhumans who could design and build planes and rockets, but by becoming one of them, by learning a superhuman power, he felt accepted, respected. With his new power he wasn’t just a SuperMan, he became a SuperHuman.
not-rushin 