I never thought I’d ever get emotional over a strand of hair, but then James Gunn’s Superman dropped its first official image, and there it was: the curl. That iconic, irreverent, defiant little swoop dangling over David Corenswet’s right brow. It’s a small thing. But it’s also everything.
The Superman curl has always been more than just a little flourish. It’s a symbol, a signifier, a wink to the audience that this isn’t just some dude in a cape—this is Superman. In the pantheon of superhero styling, nothing comes close. Batman gets the black cowl, Iron Man has the red and gold helmet, but Superman? He’s got cheekbones, a ridiculously sharp jawline, and one perfectly sculpted, gravity-defying lock of hair.
It was there in the Golden Age of comics during the 1930s and ’40s, when artists like Joe Shuster and Wayne Boring gave the Last Son of Krypton an artful curl to soften the ultra-masculinity. It wiggled across Christopher Reeve‘s forehead in the ’70s, fluttering dramatically as he saved falling helicopters, and helped separate Kal-El from his bespectacled alter ego, Clark Kent. Even when he was undercover in the newsroom of the Daily Planet, the curl acted kinda like a very obvious clue—his one giveaway for those paying close enough attention (his journalist colleagues were clearly terrible at their jobs).
But somewhere along the line, the curl just sort of… disappeared. You could blame the gritty reboot era. Zack Snyder’s take on the character, while legendary in its own right, stripped Superman of whimsy—a slicked-back ‘do and a darker suit in place of the bright, almost naive optimism that the curl kinda embodied. Henry Cavill’s Superman was powerful, brooding, and stacked, but the curl? MIA. Too soft! Too camp! Which is ironic, given these are films about jacked men in spandex.
