suspension of disbelief
May 16th, 2005 by 
Abbas Halai
over at suspension of disbelief, the “fact check for the four coloured world”, loren collins posts about superman’s super hearing.
Everyone knows that Superman is “faster than a speeding bullet.” He can run fast. He can fly fast. He can even eat and read fast.
But did you know that Superman can also hear fast?
“That’s absurd,” you say. “You can’t hear fast anymore than you can see fast or smell fast.” Well, at least two of the architects of the new DCU order disagree with you.
One is Geoff Johns. Back in November’s JSA #67, there is a scene with Power Girl standing before Sue Dibny’s grave. In one panel, she lays a rose at the tombstone. In the next panel, she begins to cry, and in the third, there is a hand on her shoulder and an off-panel voice saying “Hi.”
The hand and the voice belong to Superman. He says he was in New York and heard her crying, so he came to check on her. PG replies “That’s almost six hundred miles away.” (I don’t know where the cemetery is supposed to be, but to illustrate, that’s about the same distance between NYC and Columbia, South Carolina.)
The speed of sound at sea level is about 761 mph. Thus, the sound of Karen’s cries should have taken about 47 minutes to reach Superman’s ears (and we’ll just put aside the question of Clark being able to single out the sobs of an occasional acquaintance from several states away).
read the rest at the website.
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