Comment by wredcoll

This is a popular opinion and I think it speaks to a certain truth (bravery isn't not feeling fear, its doing the thing despite the fear, etc) but I think it misses something important.

Superman may not be physically injured if he fails to catch the crashing plane, but he's sure going go be emotionally hurt if someone he's trying to save dies.

Saitama is a bit of a subversion of superman. Superman could do literally anything and instead chooses to save lives. Saitama is basically bored and saves lives sort of by accident.

It's hard to write good superman stories because there's only so many times you can have lois lane tied to some railroad tracks or kryptonite show up again, but the good stories have superman struggling with moral choices and unknown consequences.

Now that I type this out, it seems like most superman movies are pretty constrained by their budget from being able to focus on smaller scale stuff. Basically, if you're making a superman movie, you've gotta have skyscrapers falling over at somepoint.

Anyways, in conclusion: everyone should watch Superman: The Animated Series (and related spinoffs). It's just has a lot of quite good superman stories.