In a week already rocked by the totally-not-racist divisiveness over Barack Obama’s birth certificate, we’re not sure our comments section can withstand another debate over this subject, but here goes: Superman, erstwhile defender of truth, justice, and the American way, has given up caring about the lattermost of those things by renouncing his U.S. citizenship. The move comes after a recent storyline that found Superman flying to Tehran to show his support for local protestors, thereby sparking an international incident over what the Iranian government saw as a U.S.-backed act of war. Declaring that he was “tired of having my actions construed as instruments of U.S. policy”—which, to be fair, does not have constitutional provisions for the use of heat rays and spinning the world backward on its axis to reverse time anyway—Superman then went before the United Nations to declare that he was going global and officially giving up his ties to the United States.
Of course (and off we go), there’s some question of whether Superman even had a citizenship to renounce: He is, after all, among the most alien of illegal aliens, having crash-landed from Krypton—though raised as a Kansas farm boy—thus creating the small matter of not being born here and having non-American parents, which as we all know by now is simply unforgivable. And were he asked to produce his birth certificate, it’s doubtful anyone would accept a crystal shard. But in the words of DC publishers Jim Lee and Dan DiDio, he “has long embraced American values” and “embodies the best of the American Way”—and if you want to get really technical, he got his green card the second he married Lois Lane anyway. Of course, there’s also the matter of his pre- and post-Crisis histories, how this decision ties into Clark Kent’s citizenship, etc., all of which makes this whole thing so complicated, we don’t really want to get it into it further—although these people will!
Anyway, even though Lee and DiDio assure readers that Superman “remains, as always, committed to his adopted home and his roots as a Kansas farm boy from Smallville,” naturally there are some who are sort of angry about the nation’s most iconic superhero not wanting to be an American anymore. And if you guessed that a lot of them would turn up in the Fox News comment section, you’d be both knee-jerk and correct, as there are currently more than 3000 people weighing in with remarks like, “Please, don't tell me that the Supe has become another ungreatful [sic] immigrant," “Superman is supposed to be an American ’true blue’ hero, heroes don't give up the fight and run away. The new writers are the ones who need to move out of the U.S. Perhaps we need a new hero with some real balls anyway,” and “And just one more bit of Americana that the self-loathing liberal cretins have ruined. Just like everything they smear their slimy hands across. Yeah, it’s just a comic book. Just throw it on the mountain of other bits of America they've ruined. Liberals have destroyed the United States of America.” Well, as long as we’re not getting needlessly hyperbolic. But if they think this is bad, just wait until they see Zack Snyder hand Superman over to a British guy.