Bird/Plane/Superman
Bird/Plane/Superman
This comic is a logical comparison of observations to resolve the classic Superman catchphrase of comic book bystanders: "Look, up in the sky... It's a bird !... It's a plane !... It's Superman !", hence the title. Superman, a character originally created for comic books in the 1930s, is an alien with superpowers, including the power of unaided flight; hence the catchphrase exclaiming peoples' amazement.
At the correct distance both birds, planes and the fictional Superman could be mistaken for each other. So this comic aims to help people identify the airborne object by listing on which properties they are alike and on which they are different. This problem was also mentioned in the title text of 1633: Possible Undiscovered Planets , putting Superman near the bird/plane boundary explaining why all this confusion has arisen.
The observations compared range from the mundane to the bizarre and they are listed and explained below in the table . Here some highlights are mentioned, but for all these there are much more detail below.
Some of the mundane observations are that birds don't fly around with people, while Superman can do it, and planes are meant for it;  and that the latter two are new "inventions", whereas birds have flown around for millions of years.
Interestingly enough there are actually two observations that have check mark for all three; the first being that there are enthusiasts for all three different flying objects. And these will obsess over small color details in otherwise similar looking objects. The other common thing is that they all may have sex in midair. The possibility of that happening for the all three are discussed in the table.
Three observations only counts for birds, where all those that do not count for birds do count for both planes and superman. Two of these relates to the fact that birds are eaten by cats and humans, the last is that birds flap their wings to fly, the others have other means of flight. There are observations that rules out only planes or only superman, but none that rules out only one of them at the same time as birds are ruled out.
There are also three direct jokes towards the bottom. The first is that David Attenborough may also have observed Superman's mating habits just like he has with birds in the documentary series The Life of Birds . The second is that not only birds poop in flight, but that Superman could and would also do so. And the third (and also final observation) is that not only birds chase insects to eat them, but Superman also chases them... though only when he is bored. These last three observations have that in common that the planes are left out of all of them, and the joke is always on Superman. As it has been before in 1384: Krypton and 1394: Superm*n (released just ten comics apart).
The title text refers to black stickers (decals) in the shape of an easily recognizable predatory bird, like falcons to enhance the visibility of clear glass windows or doors and scare smaller birds away before they crash into the window. This may actually not work very well according to this article: Why Birds Hit Windows , where a falcon decal is also shown. But they are meant to warn birds away and according to this comic they could also prevent Superman from flying through your window (and thus also stop him from possibly just continuing through the building). They are not known to affect the risk of airplanes flying into the building. [ citation needed ]
