Him starting off at the velocity of the train is the problem. It’s not as simple as “Superman just goes a little faster,” momentum has to be conserved. To launch himself forward he has to launch the train backward and the train likely doesn’t survive that. Continuing to push the train was still likely the best option Superman had in this situation.
Not if he was already pushing the train when the kid entered the equation. If this is an earlier version of Superman as this seems to be and he was already pushing the train when the kid came into the picture, then the only way for him to accelerate off the train to grab the kid is if he pushes off the train. Which effectively creates the same “stopping the train too fast,” problem.
Right? No wonder they all make it about The Gays.
Depends on the time in which he had to do the deceleration. I did some more looking and I guess that this page comes from Action Comics 1000 from a short bit where the current iteration of Superman is getting deja vu like flashes of things that this iteration of the character has not done but were rather part of the overall character’s history.
So this likely came from a very early iteration of Superman that A) wasn’t nearly as strong or fast, and B) that the situation most likely began with attempting to stop a runaway train from crashing. Then while attempting to stop the train, a child wandered into the path of the train and Clark couldn’t exactly let go of the train to move the kid out of harm’s way.
So I did some more looking and it seems like this image is from a… basically a clip show of a “story” that’s going through the history of Superman.
So in that context we’re likely looking at a significantly less powerful Superman earlier in his history. Which also means that the situation was likely that the train itself was going to crash and he’d been pushing on it for much longer with the kid having wandered into the tracks while he was in the middle of stopping the train.
I personally like “Litigation of Karens” for how often their involvement tends to involve them threatening to sue or press charges on someone.
The idea is he’s straining so hard because he’s trying to use the exact amount of force he needs to stop the train without harming anyone inside. Too much force on the train and everyone in the train gets injured or killed, too little and it doesn’t stop in time to save the kid, and I believe in this one he didn’t have the option of just grabbing the kid because he would have been hurt too badly from the sudden acceleration.
If you’ve ever tried to assemble something where you’ve gotta snap together two pretty fragile pieces it’s a similar idea. You absolutely can generate way more than the force needed to get the job done, the difficulty is in having the pieces survive the attempt.
I can tell you I have experienced it with models and computer components and you’d absolutely think I was arm wrestling a God with how much I was straining trying to push those parts together without breaking them.
Edit again: I think I found where this is from. I guess it’s from Action Comics 1000 with the actual thing that’s happening being like a deja vu flashback of Superman’s comic history. Like the current canon Superman of the time is seeing flashes of things he personally hasn’t done but were part of the history of the character.
So this would have been from a significantly less powerful Superman and was most likely a situation where the train was going to crash so stopping the train without hurting the people was the main goal with the kid wandering into the path of the train while he was already trying to keep the train from crashing
Didn’t they try to make something like that canon years ago? That Superman has some kind of field he extends to objects he touches that in part dampens some of the physics implications of the movements he’s shown to be able to do carrying objects and people that don’t immediately rip themselves apart from G forces? Or am I misremembering?
Good thing I’m only pretending to be an adult with any idea what I’m doing.
My family’s income rose by about 300 dollars per month a few months ago. We immediately lost about 250 dollars per month in rental assistance and SNAP benefits. But it’s totally individual choices that keep us in poverty. If we just budgeted better we cou- Wait. No, scratch that. We also get in trouble for having too much money in savings and assets. We’d actually lose all our benefits before we managed to save up any appreciable amount of money.
My family’s income rose by about 300 dollars per month a few months ago. We then immediately lost about 250 dollars per month in rental assistance and SNAP benefits directly because of that income change. Yep, totally personal responsibility. Definitely our fault we’re in poverty and definitely has nothing to do with the Democrats means testing every assistance program without any regard to what other assistance programs someone might be on in an effort to seem “fiscally responsible” with these programs.
Oh we also get in trouble for having too much money in savings or other assets. There is basically no “climbing out of poverty,” you either stay right where you are or through some miracle immediately rocket out. There is no in-between.
You’re ignoring the part where I said this seems to be a memory of an earlier point in comic history for Superman we’re seeing. This version of Superman is almost certainly nowhere near that fast.
He also doesn’t need to weigh more than the train for the train itself to not be able to withstand the force of him pushing off.