Active Optic Nerves

Elliot S! Maggin tells us in Superman: Miracle Monday (Caveat Corner Books, 2017) that Clark Kent can project heat and x-rays from his eyes because his optic nerve has an active as well as a passive mode, my only points at this late hour being first that Poul Anderson would have been able to invent ingenious rationales for all of Kent's superhuman abilities and secondly that Anderson would also have been able to match Maggin's Biblical resonances, e.g.:

"Then, as happened to Abraham's aged wife Sarah, the Heavens gave [Martha Clark Kent] a son." (Chapter 2, p. 17)

And, in a list of earlier heroes:

"Young David killed the giant Goliath with the spin of a smooth rock in a land where walls fell at the sound of trumpets and the Creator of Heaven and Earth spoke through the mouths of men in rags whose eyes burned with the lights of Eternity." (Chapter 4, p. 35)

Superheroes began as sf, then became a distinct genre: Frankenstein is pivotal between Gothic and sf; Superman between sf and superheroes. What's next?