Is Superman an American citizen?

[xiphias]

No, seriously: he was born on Krypyon to Kryptonian parents. He was RAISED in Kansas by the Kents who raised him as their own. But would he be an American citizen, or is he an illegal, undocumented alien?

Comments

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

I think after a while, he'd have been naturalized.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

In order to do so, he'd have to explain where he came from, which he couldn't do and maintain his secret identity as Clark Kent. . .

[tpau]

i would assume, that when you find a child in a cornfield, you can go to authorities, who do some legal thing determining hte child is really abandoned, and you get to formally adopt them,. which gives the kid a certificate liek a birth certificate, and then the yare naturalized (thoguh i assume that hte system assumes the child is already a citizen, jsut with no proof)

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

In the pre-Crisis area, he was once given a world citizenship by the UN.

[estherchaya.livejournal.com]

wasn't he adopted by the Kents? He'd have gotten their citizenship then.

[banshee99.livejournal.com]

That's what I was going to comment with! =) Lionel Luthor helped them adopt him formally.

[steelwngs.livejournal.com]

That would depends on which of his origins you go by. The first version he would have been an undocumented alien.
Second a newest version he would have been an American citizen through adoption.

[folzgold.livejournal.com]

I would assume the Kents took him to a doctor when he was a baby. Gotten some sort of certificate and all. He's employed, and not at a place that would pay him under the table, so he must have a SSN at least.

[mattblum.livejournal.com]

That raises another question, though: Did they take him to the doctor? I mean, wouldn't the doctor have, y'know, noticed when he/she tried to give little Clark a shot and the hypodermic needle broke against his skin?

[folzgold.livejournal.com]

I guess again, it depends on which canon you are using. Some say that he came here with powers, and some say they were slow to appear when he was a little boy.

[tpau]

i thought his powers were "charged" by our yellow sun, so as a baby he would have been normal-ish...

[folzgold.livejournal.com]

*shrug* I have no idea. There are so many different stories about it. It's like, did Arthur get Excalibur from the stone, or the Lady in the Lake? Who knows? We each have been told a different story.

[mattblum.livejournal.com]

True, but surely his physiology would've been obviously different from humans'. I mean, he sure looks human, but he isn't, so one would expect that his internal organs would be in at least slightly different places, and that his pulse, blood pressure, and body temperature would have different "normal" ranges. Any even reasonably competent doctor should have recognized that baby Clark Kent was not a normal human child.

For Ma and Pa Kent's sake, I hope Clark's powers didn't manifest themselves until he was in his teens. I mean, as a parent of two kids under 5, I shudder to think how much trouble they'd get into if they had super strength and speed, and could fly.

Can you imagine changing baby Clark's diapers if he had his powers then? Anyone who's changed a boy's diapers regularly knows that you have to be really careful when you lean over him when the diaper's off. But with a superbaby, you'd have to worry about getting a concussion or losing an eye!

[folzgold.livejournal.com]

Have you seen Marvel's "Supreme Powers"? It's a very well done Superman take off.

[banshee99.livejournal.com]

His powers didn't start emerging until he was older - I bet needles didn't break on him when he was little. Also, it's not illegal to not immunize your children, so they could have just opted to not give him shots.

[mattblum.livejournal.com]

I seem to recall that, in at least one version of Superman's origin in the comics, the Kents pretended that Clark was their biological child, which, since they lived on a farm in the middle of nowhere, was not that hard to do.

[cheshyre]

What I was trying to explain this morning, from an old rec.arts.comics faq over whether Superman could become President:

post-Crisis, the theory seems to be that he can because Kal-El was sent to Earth in fetal form and wasn't truly born until the birthing matrix in the ship opened up in Kansas.

See also Terence Chua's comment in this thread

[king-tirian.livejournal.com]

This notion comes from the pretty excellent 1991 Action Comics annual, an alternate timeline in which Superman finds himself running for President. (Clark Kent was Pete Ross' campaign manager who was critically injured in an assassination attempt in which Kent's identity was revealed.) To quote: "The justices [of the Superme Court] acknowledged S.T.A.R Labs' evidence that Superman had been artifically conceived within the birthing matrix Thus, it was their unanimous decision that the Man of Steel was truly born only after the matrix opened, on U.S. soil!" And Supes did turn out to be an awesome President.

[(Anonymous)]

The current thinking at DC, for the comics, is that Superman is a Kryptonian citizen and therefore is not an American. Clark Kent, adopted son of Jonathan and Martha Kent, is an American citizen. Essentially, an odd version of dual citizenship.

Bob Greenberger

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Okay, I'm going to go "wibble" now. I think we can take this as pretty much definite, then.

Bob freakin' Greenberger just commented in my LJ.