I love the version of Superman where he growing up and is friends with Luthor and he’s like ‘I cannot tell him my secret because my dad would disapprove’ and it’s got accidental closeted queer vibes.
And there’s this comic book (not in the same continuity) where Luthor is this mad genius who escapes from prison easily and Clark interviews him and he’s like “I like you Clark, you’re so humble and down to Earth, but I hate Superman who is the opposite of that.”
and then Lois likes Superman more than Clark, at least to start with, in some versions I think.
And then with Brainiac there’s the possible storyline of ‘this computer has a lot of information stored on my lost culture but he is also an existential risk to all sapients everywhere in the galaxy ahhhhggg’.
And how will Clark deal with an environment where everyone is hostile to immigrants when he is one himself and also dedicated to upholding the law?
And the first comic where he interacts with Batman is actually fairly good: Batman threatens to bomb people if Superman unmasks him and Superman is like ‘oh shit, he is not lying, I can hear his heartbeat’, but Batman was actually threatening to explode himself. And the cartoon where Batman is fighting Brainiac and his costume gets ripped to reveal he was Superman all along was hilarious: “I did not predict this possibility.” The Justice League series in general (part of the same continuity) was pretty good actually.

I like the potential stories there. There’s so many emotional possibilities. Stories where he just punches stuff are indeed boring. He is, frankly, under-utilized as a character imo because many writers don’t understand that, or think the solution is to make a version of him that is evil which still involves him punching stuff, or because they’re scared to actually touch on political issues like immigration or queerness. (can you imagine how many people would explode if Luthor was an ex-boyfriend for both him and Lois and they bonded over how shitty Luthor was as a date lol.)