I found the origins of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster's Superman to be quite interesting. I always thought of creations like this to just suddenly come to its creators, but as Ari Kaplan explains in 'From Krakow to Krypton', it took many incarnations to finally arrive at the Superman character that we know today. As a matter of fact, Superman might not have ever caught on without the final incarnation.
The character of Superman was originally based on characters such as Buck Rogers and Tarzan. Then they made a supervillain character named Bill Dunn who gained powers with the help of a professor Earnest Smalley. The name Superman was acutally derived from Nietzsche's Ubermensch a man who has reached his peak intellectual and creative ability. Siegel and Shuster then decided to make Superman a super hero. The new incarnation was based on characters such as Doc Savage, Flash Gordon, and The Phantom. Superman actually reflected Flash Gordon in that he was an alien coming to Earth fighting human criminals rather than a human in outer space fighting aliens.
The most interesting thing that I learned is that originally Superman had no super powers. Nowadays, we see Superman as almost indestructable with several super powers. He's from another planet after all. I believe that Siegel and Shuster wanted to create a hero that everyday people could relate to especially during the depression. I think that the super powers were added later after the creators lost rights to their infamous character.
I agree with your comments regarding Superman and indeed Superman could be seen as a hero to Jewish people as depicted in the comic book. I also think that in order for Superman to be "super" he needed to have super powers but I think that to make him a indestrcuctable as he they made him is a little far fetch and actually takes away from his character some what. I think that is one reason some people like comic characters such as Batman, Spiderman, more because there is a human element to them more then Superman. People can relate to them whereas Superman most people cannot.
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