this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2025
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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
But then isn't he accelerating the people on the train just as much?
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.
If he can decelerate the passengers in the train non lethally, he by definition also had time to accelerate the kid nonlethally. Supes has muscles for brains.
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.
If he pushes off the train, he starts from Vo=Vtrain, he simply has to push off less than he would if he were standing still to get to the kid, since Vintercept would be quite a bit greater than 0 anyway. If Vintercept is smaller than Vtrain, that would mean there is no non-lethal solution, passengers in the first car would experience the same (lethal) deceleration or the kid would experience lethal acceleration.
He would also decelerate (and then accelerate) during the kid intercept, which being 'super', I would expect him to be able to do, as he can perceive things faster as well.
Snap the neck? Just support the neck. Just put the kid on his whole torso so the kid's body experiences the acceleration as a monolith as if on a rocket seat.
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.
Is he canonically heavier than the train?
He can 'run faster than light', or at least, it's safe to assume he is faster than all human technologies of mobility in the context. All he has to do is accelerate to a speed, taking into account the distance required to decelerate to a non lethal speed to intercept the kid.
It's basically this - the deceleration required to reduce the speed to one that is either a full stop or at least a non lethal one at the point of impact can, by definition, instead be imparted to the kid. A hypothetical person in the first engine that supes is acting on is experiencing the same deceleration as would be required to accelerated the kid during intercept.
The kid intercept is simply a more efficient way to address the situation in all frames of reference, albeit a less dramatic one.
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.
There's a whole locomotive between them to dampen the impact.
Same reason why modern cars are designed to crumple. It absorbs more of the impact before it reaches the people inside.
So only the first ten or so cars will be scenes of unbelievable carnage. Meanwhile, he could have simply picked up the kid and cushioned him from the impact.
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.