The Nerd Thinks: Death to Kryptonite!

The recent release of the "Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice" trailer sparked the age old debate of who would win in a fight between Batman and Superman, which I've already discussed. The most common defense for Batman, aside from prep time, is that Batman could just use Krytponite to weaken Clark and ultimately kill him. Now Superman could easily fly away at mach 5 and blast Batman from a safe distance, but it highlights one of the most overused, and quite frankly stupid, weaknesses in all of comics: A green space rock.

How many times has Superman gone up against a villain ( or hero) that had no business being in the same room as him but because of Kryptonite they are an actual threat to him? We are talking about a man who at one point in his career moved entire planets, punched dimensions apart, can bench press the weight of Earth for days and goes up against the likes of Darkseid and Mongul. How is it that his weakness is so abundant and exploitable? I mean Batman pretty much stockpiles the thing and always keeps it on him just to give him a chance against Supes and that it just totally contrary to the character of Superman; he is supposed to be the best of us, the most powerful of us, yet he can get

You thought I was kidding about the gum

taken out by Kryptonite gum and be reduced to a sniveling pansy. He needs to create special suits just to avoid the radiation from green K but can survive being at ground zero of an ATOMIC EXPLOSION, do you see how wildly inconsistent that makes him appear to be? Superman should be able to shred the likes of Metallo, oh but wait he has a Kryptonite heart so now he's a threat. Regular non powered Lex Luthor would get killed faster than Batman..no wait..he has a Kryptonite powered suit, he can now match Superman blow for blow. I know a lot of people will say "but without it he's too powerful" and I would be inclined to agree...if he didn't also have another weakness.

Kryptonians are super powerful beings but even they have weaknesses aside from a green rock. For starters, if they are deprived of yellow sunlight for too long then they are no stronger than a regular human, same goes for being under a red sun...it makes them basically human. The biggest non Krytponite related weakness is an aversion to magic. Beings like Captain Marvel and Shazam ( and even sorcerers) present a challenge to Superman because they are based in magic. It does a whammy on them that is akin to a slow poison, much like krytponite, and is a much better way of giving a character a weakness that something as abundant as Kryptonite. There are not many magical beings or magic users that could harm Superman but there are enough to where he isn't a totally unstoppable foe and it gives the added bonus of giving whomever uses magic against him some cred; it would be much more acceptable to me if Batman learned some spells to incapacitate Superman rather than throw a green rock at him because one way shows that the character has the discipline to learn and that should be rewarded by him bringing the big guy down; the other shows just how lazy writers can be since they can just write themselves into a corner, throw a rock at Supes and suddenly have instant drama/danger.

Look, I have respect for classic things in comics ( I dig that the Flash show basically has a cosmic treadmill) but Kryptonite is a remnant of bygone era where the cover pages were full of exposition and the writers could get away with characters with as much depth as a kiddie pool in the Sahara. Nowadays we are able to craft wonderful stories and characters with strengths and weakness befitting them so why should Superman be beholden to such an archaic weakness? Green Lantern has no issue against wood, Martian Manhunter got over his fear of fire ( well at least until the retcon but at least they tried to get away from it) so why not just get rid of Kryptonite? And before anyone complains about him being op, let me remind you that Wonder Woman got powered up to the point where she is an actual god and I don't hear any complaints about that. Bottomline, having a character as powerful as Superman have such a ridiculous weakness totally undermines the character and allows for writers to be extremely lazy when it comes to putting him in peril. Take that away from them, force them to write characters that pose a real challenge to both  Clark Kent and Superman or maybe..just maybe...create new characters that can be a physical challenge for him. He is an alien after all, maybe explore more races that could kill him? I mean you really have your pick of the litter here but get red of green K, DEATH TO KRYPTONITE!