CREATED BY: Jerry Siegel and Joseph Shuster
FIRST APPEARANCE: Action Comics (1938)
AREAS OF INFLUENCE: Superman, along with Uncle Sam (also on our list), is the personification of American ideals and values — a self-realized, yet modest and unassuming, individual (as Clark Kent) who chooses to use his incredible powers to fight crime (and preserve the status quo). Born on a distant but now extinguished planet, the Man of Steel — created by a pair of high-schoolers, sons of Jewish immigrants — is also the assimilated outsider, the cape-wearing embodiment of the American Dream. Modern depictions often paint him as humorless as he is virtuous (and even as an unquestioning enforcer of the governmental policy), but Superman will always stand for Truth, Justice, and, well, you know…
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