Superman blows.

A fun game us nerds like to play is creating a hypothetical battle between two fictional characters, be they from movies, video games, comics, or TV shows, and then a debate would ensue regarding which of the two characters would win. You've heard these before: "King Kong would SO totally beat Godzilla!" "Darth Vader would wipe the floor with Darth Maul's ass!" "Lara Croft defeating Sonya Blade? I think NOT!"

There are no simple answers to such a conundrum, either: those highly passionate about these arguments will go to great lengths and great detail as to why their favored character would win (hence the flabbergasted looks from people situated in the general vicinity).

But when it comes to fantasy battles between famous superheroes, nothing pisses me off more when someone pulls out that dreaded ace in their sleeve: Superman.

Folks, let's make something clear: Superman sucks. He's an unflawed, invincible, and utterly bland Mary Sue character created in the late 1930's as a means for wish-fulfillment fantasy to the adolescents reading those comics. Sure, back then that wasn't really too much of a bad thing (especially considering that such stories were meant as escapism during the Depression), and comic book characters became much more realistic and relatable (thanks in part to the Marvel revolution of the 1960's).

But for some reason, Superman still has that goody-two shoes vibe about him. And in the aforementioned battles, people always like to use Superman as their secret weapon. "I bet Superman can beat Spider-Man!" Yeah, no shit, Sherlock. You've got a character who can lift well over 200 tons, flies at the speed of light, is impervious to virtually anything, and he has that goofy little Elvis-curl in his hair that always stays in place, where Spidey can only lift 15 tons, jump about 20 feet in the air, has a spider-sense (which doesn't mean squat when Supes can plow into him before it even kicks in), and he can shoot webs. Yeah, no contest there.

Apologists try to defend the Big Blue Boy Scout by saying that he DOES have a weakness: Kryptonite! Oooh, whoop-dee-frigging-doo, KRYPTONITE! A glowing, green space rock. In 21st century terms, that's one of the worst uses of deus ex machina ever. How's an opponent like Spider-Man supposed to implement that? Kryptonite webbing? Not even The Hulk, the best possible match for Superman, could possibly use Kryptonite to his advantage (especially since Hulk is too dumb to even know what the hell it is). Maybe unless Hulk smashed Supes with a huge Kryptonite rock or shoved a shard of it up his ass, there's no way that good ol' Superman's gonna lose. The fact that one even factors in the possibility of using Kryptonite renders this exercise completely useless, since the two fictional combatants should be judged on their powers and skills, not some dumbass third-party meteorite.

So from now on, when you wanna start such a fantastical debate, do everyone a favor and don't include Superman. Superman sucks, so let's move on.