Superman is vegan.

I'll just get straight to the point: Superman is vegan. By this, I don't mean to report a fact about how the character is written or portrayed in media containing him. It's not the case that most portrayals of Superman have him written as a vegan character. Rather, I mean to say that Superman should be written that way, because it is the most sensible way to portray the character.

Now, this suggestion is not without some precedent. In the Superman: Birthright comics, written by the fantastic Mark Waid, the character is a vegetarian. Waid tied this into a fairly unusual power to see an aura around all living beings, but more fundamentally it has to do with his love for, and desire to protect, all of Earth's creatures.

There are not many other adaptations that explicitly make the character a vegetarian, and there are many that show him eating meat or animal products. But my argument doesn't rest on any particular adaptation, only on broadly continuous facts about Superman that are consistent across writers and stories.

At his core, Superman has two defining character traits:

1. He is a godlike being with more power at his hands than anyone else on Earth.
2. He uses that power to protect those who are weaker than he is, because he cares about each and every one of them.

Superman saves people, and he protects the vulnerable. This is Superman 101, but it's worth making the point clearly: if Superman does anything, it's protect those who cannot protect themselves. Across so many incarnations and decade after decade, Superman will take the time to save an innocent inmate on death row, to comfort a suicidal teenager, to confront abusers, to fight the Klan, to save cats stuck in trees, even to save the life of a squirrel. What the best Superman writers understand is that Superman sees no one as beneath him or undeserving of his help.

Non-human animals are sentient beings who are subjected to all kinds of abuse, torture, neglect, and death at the hands of humans. They are the ultimate example of the voiceless, vulnerable, and downtrodden, and many people rarely afford their plight a second thought. But Superman cares about everyone, and that includes animals. Superman wants to help everyone, and he wants to hurt no one. And it's for this reason that Superman should be written as a vegan.

Veganism, for those not fully in the loop, is the practice of abstaining from the use and consumption of animal products, as well as avoiding the use of animals for labor and entertainment, and the associated philosophy that rejects the commodification of animals. There are other definitions out there, but this is the one I use.

I believe Superman should be written as a vegan. The Man of Tomorrow, who cares about every living being on Earth, should not dine on the flesh of a slaughtered cow. As the protector of the weak and downtrodden, he should not participate in the exploitation of the weak and downtrodden. He would not be interested in being party to the abuse and killing of animals. That's not how Clark Kent should spend his hard-earned money.

How to write a vegan Superman

Now, once we've decided that Superman should be vegan, we have a practical question: how do we portray that aspect of his character? Well, I'm not a comic writer, so I can't give a definitive answer, but I have some suggestions.

First, obviously, I'm not suggesting that his veganism be the focus of every story or even feature prominently. It should just be one fact about him among many. Mark Waid did this when making him a vegetarian in Birthright, and that sets the standard that we should be aiming for: a Superman who is definitively a vegan, connecting this fact to his compassion for all living creatures, and letting that sit in the background. It could be the focus of a comic issue and it could come up every so often, but there's no reason it should be the predominant fact about him. As hilarious as it would be, we don't need Superman to be saying “I'm vegan” every other panel.

That said, while Superman's veganism doesn't need to be the focus of every story, it certainly could be the basis of some interesting ones. A theme with Superman that's being explored quite a bit lately, such as in James Gunn's Superman film and in the excellent TV show My Adventures with Superman, is how Superman is perceived as an outsider. Villains like Lex Luthor lean into parallel versions of xenophobic anti-immigrant rhetoric to say that Superman, the alien, isn't human and doesn't belong.

Being vegan opens up the door to a new way Superman can be cast as an outsider*¹ and opens new avenues to explore his disconnect from the average person. He cares about each and every human being, but also about all the animals those humans exploit. This is a complex relationship to have with humanity, and that relationship is the focus of many Superman stories.

Beyond that, writing Superman as a vegan also opens up another avenue for demonstrating how Superman always keeps to his principle of universal compassion and justice, even if it doesn't make him popular. Because Superman cares about everyone. No matter what.

Before concluding, let me address a few potential responses:

“Clark Kent is a Kansas farmboy. Not exactly a vegan demographic.”

Clark Kent is also a big city reporter, which is also not a typical Kansas farmboy life path. Superman is not your average Kansas farmboy. He is defined by a lot more than just his background and upbringing. Which is not to say that upbringing doesn't matter! Even if Jonathan and Martha Kent aren't vegans (and I don't think they need to be), it's the values he internalizes because of them, that universal compassion, that would lead him to be vegan in the first place.

“You clearly just want Superman to be vegan because you're vegan.”

I'll confess to some measure of bias here, but I'm writing this mostly because I think this is just clearly the correct way to portray the character, not because I think Superman should be more like me. And I don't think every superhero should be vegan. Some definitely should, like Beast Boy*² and Superman. For others, I don't think the same case can be made. I don't think we should expect Batman, Captain America, or the Hulk to be vegan, for instance.

Superman is different because, for one thing, he's a paragon. He's the standard for a superhero, and his moral code reflects his character. His character is one of universal compassion. His actions need to reflect that. He should come off as annoyingly righteous (though he should never be haughty about it), because he holds himself to the highest possible standard.

“You can care about animals without being vegan.”

Sure, plenty of people do. But those people are also, knowingly or not, enabling the vast apparatus of industrial animal torture. This is not something I think Superman would or should do. As I said before, Superman is not just a good guy; he is meant to be the best guy. It's not just his strength that's super; it's his moral character. All of us come short of living up to our values sometimes, but more than anyone, Superman holds himself to those values, because it's his responsibility to do so.

My core point, which I'll say again now, is that Superman cares about everyone, and that should include caring about the cow more than he cares about eating a burger. Superman is vegan.