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
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 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.
Yes. In the opposite direction, gradually. It’s called deceleration. The mass of the train would spread the impact of Superman hitting and slowing it across the entire train, rather than the frame of a tiny human going from not very fast, to super man flying speed. At least that’s how I’m rationalizing it with rudimentary physics. I’m probably wrong.
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.
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.
Yes. In the opposite direction, gradually. It’s called deceleration. The mass of the train would spread the impact of Superman hitting and slowing it across the entire train, rather than the frame of a tiny human going from not very fast, to super man flying speed. At least that’s how I’m rationalizing it with rudimentary physics. I’m probably wrong.