"Superman has always defended vulnerable communities and he’s always been political, says Joseph Darowski, a professor at Brigham Young University. Darowski is also a comic historian and the editor of “The Ages of Superman: Essays on the Man of Steel in Changing Times.” “It’s an inevitable part of the comic book industry that politics is going to seep in,” Darowski says. “There’s always some reflection of what’s going on on the world stage.” In the 1940s, Superman tried to stop World War II. He’s taken on corrupt politicians and got political during the Cold War, too. “As America gets engaged in the space race, suddenly Superman’s enemies are coming from the stars more frequently,” Darowski says. “Kryptonite and other forms of radiation creeps into the stories after the dropping of the atomic bomb. During the Cold War and the nuclear arms race, Kryptonite becomes much more commonly used in Super-man stories, and villains who get their power through radiation also become much more common. These geopolitical events end up being adapted in fantastic ways into the Superman comics.”"