Superheroes II

When I wrote here that the Sensitive Man escaped spectacularly, what I meant was that he burst his bonds, ran through a wooden door, ran inhumanly fast across an island, then hid by remaining under water for longer than is usually possible. This shows that the narrative is indeed in Superheroes territory. Although I listed Poul Anderson's Un-men and Sensitive Man as superheroic characters, I forgot to include his Galactic psychohistorians traversing interstellar space faster than light without spaceships by mentally controlling cosmic forces! "Superheroes" range from costumed adventurers or masked avengers to characters with some superhuman powers to virtually omnipotent characters. Superman developed through the following stages:

strong and able to run fast and leap high, like Hugo Danner in Philip Wylie's Gladiator (possible source);

able to fly;

infinitely strong and with additional visual powers;

able to fly across interstellar space faster than light;

able to time travel (by virtue of FTL flight) -

- then was scaled back down to superhuman but not infinite strength with speed and flight but not FTL.

It will be seen that the Galactic psychohistorians parallel part of Superman's progressive empowerment. Poul Anderson could have written an ingeniously rationalized Superman novel.