Who will save the day? In the pantheon of superheroes and superpowers, Jesus offers us a different model. (culture in context).

SUPERMAN TURNS 65 THIS YEAR, BUT DON'T EXPECT him or the legion of comic book superheroes he inspired to retire anytime soon. When Cleveland teenagers Joe Siegel and Jerry Schuster convinced DC Comics to put the man of steel into print in 1938 they gave birth to a pop icon that can still leap tall buildings in a single bound.

The first Superman comic was snatched off the stands faster than a speeding bullet, and by the seventh issue sales had rocketed to over half a million copies. This brought a rush of other caped crusaders to the newsstands. Superman was joined by Batman, Wonder Woman, the Flash, Green Lantern, and Captain America, and by 1943, 25 million comic books were sold each month, most of them about masked muscular avengers in tights.

But the panels of comic books couldn't long contain the sock-em! pow! adventures of these crimefighting superheroes. By the early '40s Superman had made the leap to radio and the movies, and within a decade had his own TV show. When Christopher Reeve first put on Superman's cape in 1978 there had already been a dozen films about the man of steel, and by the time Tom Welling stepped into the role of the boy from Smallville in 2001 there had been six TV series about Krypton's favorite son.

And Superman hasn't been the only caped crimefighter to enjoy success on the big and small screen. There were Batman movies in the '40s, a campy Batman TV series in the '60s, and Tim Burton's 1989 reinvention of the franchise that led to four blockbuster films about Gotham's greatest crimefighter.

And if the Superman-Batman franchises seem temporarily exhausted, the big screen has been full of other superheroes of late, many from the Marvel house of comics. In two Blade films Wesley Snipes has played a "daywalker" superhero locked in mortal combat with legions of villainous vampires. Meanwhile, in the X-Men movies Patrick Stewart (Professor X) and Hugh Jackman (Wolverine) have been marshaling their superpowers against Ian McKellen's (Magneto) axis of evil mutants. Last year Toby Maguire (Peter Parker) brought Stan Lee's Spider-Man to the big screen, unleashing the teen web-slinger's powers against the superhuman might of archnemesis Willem Dafoe (Green Goblin).

This spring Ben Affleck's Daredevil introduced us to a blind avenger who seeks to rid Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen of criminal warlords. And this summer we get a peek at director Ang Lee's rendition of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's The (Incredible) Hulk and see Sean Connery leading a cast of Victorian superheroes in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

It's not hard to explain the enduring popularity of superheroes, on and off the pages of comic books. They are, by definition, extraordinarily powerful, very good looking (who else would dare wear those form-fitting tights?), and deeply virtuous. Their muscular bodies ripple with a sinewy strength that renders them invulnerable and invincible. They stand up for law and order, defend liberty and democracy, and get to avenge all sorts of injustices while putting the town bully in his place (jail). And they are beloved and admired by millions of grateful citizens--including a very cute love interest. What adolescent boy (the prime target of this genre) wouldn't be attracted to such paragons of power and virtue?

Even more, with their ordinary human alter egos, these comic book deities allow the nerdy Walter Mitty in readers everywhere to imagine themselves as caped crusaders. For though they must live their daily life as mild mannered Clark Kents or Peter Parkers, they can at least dream of being Superman or Spidey by night.

STILL, THERE IS A troubling side to these masked marvels. Like other American icons--the cowboy and the private eye--the superhero a loner who often works outside the law. In spite of the fact that Superman and his colleagues fight for "truth, justice, and the American way," these men and women of steel sometimes take justice into their own very powerful--and dangerous--hands.

The avengers in Tim Burton's Batman and Mark Steven Johnson's Daredevil have little patience for legal red tape and are more than willing to embrace a rougher vigilante justice. If the judges and courts can't put these villains away, Batman and the Daredevil will have to punish them in their own violent fashion.

Superheroes also have a problem with vengeance and anger management. More than a few comic book characters first donned their capes and masks to avenge the murder of a parent. Batman's Bruce Wayne and the Daredevil's Matt Murdoch both witnessed the brutal murder of their parents as small children, and their crimefighting careers are an attempt to work through the rage provoked by these slayings. Spider-Man's meek little Peter Parker was transformed by his beloved uncle's brutal slaying. And we don't even want to talk about the wrath boiling away inside of The Incredible Hulk. It's no wonder these caped or masked (or green-skinned) crusaders have a soft place in their hearts for vigilante justice.

The problems with superheroes are even starker when a nation has superpowers. When Clark Kent first donned his tights in 1938 America was a second-rate military power in the throes of a crippling Depression, and fascist tyrants were plotting global dominion. Superman, Wonder Woman, and Captain America were populist expressions of hope that the little guy could somehow win the day.

But since 1945 America has been a superpower, and for more than a decade we've been, as Secretary Colin Powell likes to describe us, "the only bully on the block." We are no longer the little guy, and our fantasies about superpowers are decidedly more dangerous.

Like the superheroes in our comics America has promised to use our "superpowers to uphold the principles of democracy and the enforcement of the law ... never for selfish or evil ends" (Superman Comics: November 1965). But, like Batman and Daredevil, America has often been impatient with the bureaucracy of the U.N. and the constraints of international law, and more than a few times we have decided to take the law into our own hands. All too often we seem to think that our superpowers--our overwhelming military might and global economic dominance--entitle us to practice a vigilante justice.

In the last two years we have snubbed the International Court, disregarded international conventions on prisoners of war, canceled or defied international arms and environmental treaties, and initiated a preemptive war in violation of the U.N. charter and Security Council regulations.

The fact that we may bring a thug like Saddam Hussein to his knees, or that we are rushing humanitarian aid to a people we have starved for more than a decade with inhumane sanctions, does not make these acts legal or right. We may proclaim, like Matt Murdoch/Daredevil does when he is caught pummeling a mugger, that "I am not the bad guy," but we are not being good superheroes.

JESUS OFFERS US A VERY DIFFERENT model of the superhero. The Bible reports that he had wondrous powers, calming storms, walking on water, multiplying loaves, curing the sick and lame, healing the blind and possessed, and raising the dead. But it also reports that, unlike the man from Krypton, Christ took on our frail human flesh and embraced our mortality and powerlessness. As Paul tells us, though in the form of God, Christ did not deem equality with God as something to be grasped at, but took the form of a slave--and not just as a secret identity.

In the fourth chapter of Matthew, Satan tempts Jesus with the superpowers that will allow him to escape human frailty and rule over others, but Christ chooses to embrace human suffering and to take up the cross that will join his flesh to the bodies of all the sick and suffering in the world. Jesus teaches us that the only superpower that means anything is the power of compassion.

To be a good superpower America doesn't need men of steel. We need hearts of flesh.

PATRICK MCCORMICK, professor of Christian ethics at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington.