2003’s Superman: Red Son imagines if Superman’s rocket landed in Russia instead of the United States, and he grew up to become a socialist dictator of the globe. “Superman” as a stand-in for “the Man” to Batman’s rebellion has become a familiar trope in alternate universe books as well. The two heroes don’t actually trade blows, but Batman does belt Superman across the face, leaving himself with an injured hand and Superman looking like a smug and untouchable jerk. State Department asks Superman to have a talk with Batman about how he cannot, under any circumstances, seek revenge on the man who just murdered his son, because it would cause an international incident. When Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini appoints the Joker as the country’s UN ambassador, thus giving him diplomatic immunity for all crimes he’d previously committed (I know, I know, just … go with it), the U.S. In A Death in the Family, the indelible 1988 story arc that canonized the death of Batman’s second Robin, Jason Todd, Superman also plays a government stooge, albeit more gently. When Miller returned to the setting in 2002, he closed the first act of The Dark Knight Strikes Again with the entire Justice League, under Batman’s tactical orders, kicking Superman’s ass. Batman fakes his own death at Superman’s hands (a Bat victory in the end) and lives to raise a generation of revolutionaries for another day. His Kryptonian physiology is young and spry, where Batman is craggy and battered he’s the loyal arm of a dystopian American state, where Batman has become a hero of the people that makes that state nervous. In Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, Superman is essentially the comic’s final boss fight. Superman” recurs so often it could be the encyclopedia illustration for “that thing where a slight misunderstanding leads superheroes to punch each other for a scene until they realize they’re allies.” Some of the most influential stories in the comics canon are inverted stories where Batman and Superman stand opposed to one another. Measuring superheroes against each other rather than their villains is the superhero genre’s favorite inversion, and “Batman vs. Image: Curt Swan, Sheldon Moldoff, Ira Schnapp/DC Comics The story of 1965’s World’s Finest #153 takes place in an alternate universe where Batman becomes convinced that Superman killed his father. And when our most famous comic book stories are about Superman being the bad guy, Hollywood decides he must be. And when he loses, it makes him the bad guy. And when we keep making him fight Batman, he keeps losing. There’s some validity to all of these ideas, but there may be a deeper answer rooted in the way comics history has made its way to the larger pop consciousness: Superman has become a bad guy because we keep making him fight Batman. Fans of a more troubled Superman may believe it makes him easier for audiences to relate to. The snap judgment might be that today’s creators view cynicism as hand in hand with sophistication, or misunderstand the character’s classic incarnation and assume it lacks the depth to interest an adult audience. But how did our popular imagining of Superman gain this reputation as conflicted and reluctant? Naive and unwitting? As a stooge of the silent majority? Or as a tyrant in waiting? And it’s not that you can’t find the benevolent Superman out there - in comics and on the CW he’s a father and truth teller. It wasn’t always this way: Back in 1978, Christopher Reeve and director Richard Donner delivered a Superman worth believing in. Smaller productions like Brightburn have even made a bad guy out of the super child. The shadows of breakthrough graphic novels of the 1980s like The Dark Knight Returns (Superman as a loyal tool of American imperialism) and Watchmen (Superman as a being so powerful he ceases to care about humanity) loom over Hollywood nearly three decades after their publication. The last few years have seen The Boys, with its mercurial demagogue-in-the-making, Homelander the neck-snapping Superman of Man of Steel through Justice League the laser-eyed unstoppable force of Ikaris in Marvel’s Eternals. The dark, conflicted Superman, or even a Superman who’s gone fully over - Superman as the bad guy - commands the current zeitgeist. Prepare yourself for Polygon's Who Would Win Week. One eternal question spans all of pop culture: "Who would win?" That's why we're dedicating an entire week to debates that have shaped comics, movies, TV, and games, for better and worse.