Warning: contains spoilers for Action Comics #1039!
DC’s Superman is one of the strongest superheroes in comics today, but the Man of Steel has just revealed his actual strongest superpower: knowing thousands of different languages. Clark Kent is not particularly long-lived, but during his many journeys across Earth, different planets and even different universes, he’s noticed plenty of patterns when it comes to languages. The ends up becoming one of his strongest weapons in Action Comics #1039.
In current comics continuity, Superman is not on Earth (and hasn’t been for a long time). The Man of Steel has left the planet, giving the new Superman – his son, Jonathan Kent – his name and title as the new Superman. Unfortunately Clark has been taken prisoner during a mission on the ravaged hell-scape known as Warworld. Ruled by the tyrannical Mongul who inspires fear, respect and even adoration among his slave population, the planet seemingly has no hope.
Deep beneath Warworld’s surface, red solar radiation generators burn, essentially stripping Superman’s powers and turning him into a human. But he witnesses other phenomena in the caverns – namely, a sophisticated language etched on the walls. “I’ve seen and heard thousands of alien languages in my life. I can’t read or speak as many of them as I should. But when you see enough of them, you start to recognize common patterns.” Superman realizes the writing is meant to be read bottom-to-top…and Mongul’s Bloodpriests are clearly reading it the wrong way, making up whatever Mongul desires for the sake of propaganda.
Superman’s powers of pattern-recognition mirror a technique actually used by linguists: realizing that many languages are influenced by others used by nearby, close societies. The Japanese and Korean languages were heavily influenced by Chinese writing, for example. Superman notices the Warworld language is seemingly identical to the Genesis Fragment, and has extrapolated that the Bloodpriests simply don’t know how to read the Warworld language because they lack the knowledge that Superman has regarding the linguistic connective tissue.
Unfortunately, the Bloodpriests are practiced in the ways of propaganda, and it won’t be enough for Superman to simply understand what the actual writing says. He’ll have to convince the citizens of Warworld that he is to be trusted above Mongul and his cronies. If anyone can lift up a planet full of people from oppression, it’s Superman – but the task will certainly not be an easy one.
Go to Source
Author: Joshua Isaak
