Kal-El was born on the planet Krypton during its dying years. Knowing what was to come, his father, Jor-El, developed a space craft to send him to a planet that he had learned about by talking to one of its inhabitants, Thomas Wayne. His parents bid goodbye to their only child while the planet fell apart around them, placing him into the ship and launching Kal into space. Laying in the blankets that his parents had wrapped him in, he lay there not knowing that he would never see his home again. The ship crash landed in the most unexpected of places. It wasn’t any large city or high tech research facility. Kal’s ship crashed in the unassuming place of Smallville, Kansas where he was found by an elderly couple, Jonathon and Martha Kent. Not having any children of their own, the two decided to take the orphan as their own and giving him the name Clark.
As an infant, the Kents noticed nothing overtly different with their adopted child, however as time passed, slowly Clark began to show signs of how special he was. First to manifest was his strength and, though it was far from the levels that it would reach as he grew, it was still beyond what a normal human being could hope for. As time went on, more of his powers began to show themselves and for a growing boy such abilities could go to his head. In response, both Jonathon and Martha worked hard to teach their son good morals and not only how, but what it truly meant, to be a good man but never telling him that he was not their biological child. Clark took well to what his parents taught and with the nature of youth set aside he met their expectations. His enhanced brain allowed him to perform very well in school, although in following his parents' wishes, he worked to keep an A and B average, occasionally falling back to C's in some subjects. With the development of his powers coming at a manageable pace, training to control them and hold back enough to appear human came relatively easily after the first couple of years. This let Clark, by high school, get involved in the one sport he grew up enjoying: football. Hormones hit the teenager just like any other and brought out the need to show off a bit leaving him guilty of sometimes using a bit of his power to break that key tackle, slip a pass just between the safety's hands, or catching the blitz in time during a pass to rush for a first down. The Kents, worried that the attention he gained from being such a star for Smallville, finally revealed the truth to Clark after graduation. They showed him the spaceship that they had found him in and told him the story of how he had came to them.
With these revelations, his view on life changed and he started to look back on his life and the motivations that he had had up until now. Deciding that needed a much more broad perspective on life, Clark left home to travel the world and taking up odd jobs here and there to pay his own way. His travels allowed him to meet a wide variety of people from all social classes, backgrounds, and beliefs but it also brought out signs of what he was to become. Although he never allowed himself to be seen, when he was able Clark would intervene in situations that were taking a turn for the worse; appearing as nothing but a blur to help before being far away before anyone realized that something had just occurred around them. After almost a year, he worked his way home and began college to study journalism.
Superman's cellular structure is more dense, resilient and biologically more effective than human tissue and, when charged with certain types of solar radiation, is granted by his biology superhuman capabilities. Without such charging, his strength seems on par for a human of his height and weight who engages in regular physical activity. As an alien Kal-El possesses several organs whose functions are not yet disclosed or understood but are believed to be part of and perhaps even the source of his biomatrix force field and reclamation aura. His body functions like a solar battery and constantly charges itself when exposed to yellow sunlight; his cells store and retain this charging when his powers are not in use. If Superman is exposed to blue solar radiation, his abilities are heightened to even greater levels.
The exact magnitude of Superman's strength is unknown but he is one of the strongest beings in the universe. This power comes from the bio-matrix field which surrounds his body. Extending just a few millimeters past his skin, the field is what endures much of the damage his body takes and what holds objects, which should crumble under their own weight when lifted by him, together by Kal-El unconsciously extending it around what he is holding. With his multi-megaton level strength, the Man of Steel can weights well above 100 tons, physically defeat the likes of Darkseid and Mongul, lift planetary level amounts of weight, and crack entire planets with a single blow. Kal-El’s strength translates into the ability to endure tremendous amounts of damage. He has skirted the photosphere and traveled through the sun with no injury; been struck with particle beams canon blasts of city leveling power, repeatedly endured the physical blows of some of the most powerful beings alive, and even successive strikes from Darkseid’s Omega Beams. Caught at point blank range of a supernova, Superman suffered no injury save for being knocked unconscious by the force as the rest of the entire system was destroyed around him. All of this power must be carefully managed and he has trained himself to apply just the right amount of force to a given task.
As with his physical power, Kal-El is granted incredible speeds and in most situations, while not nearly as fast as the Flash, can match most of the fastest beings alive. He has run at a speed of 2000 miles per second, flown from the Moon to Earth in under 2 minutes, and repeatedly crossed vast distances in seconds. Superman is fast enough that even under the gravity of Earth he is able to reach speeds beyond that of light; able to move even faster in the vacuum of space. He tends to fly at speeds of Mach 10 in the atmosphere. Superman’s reaction and brain functioning are similarly enhanced so he is capable of utilizing his travel speed effectively. With his brain functioning at nanosecond speeds, Kal-El’s reflexes are even faster as the body begins to react before a conscious decision on how can be made. This has allowed him to disarm opponents before they realize that he has moved, easily catch bullets being fired from fully automatic weapons and powerful sniper rifles, shrapnel, and react to faster than light attacks. Because of the damage he can cause to the environment by moving at such speeds as he is capable of, Kal-El has trained himself to apply the same control over it that he does his strength. Superman constantly calculates, when he can, just the right amount of speed so he causes the minimal amount of displacement, but this control is also an asset. With his skill in managing his running and flight speed, the Man of Steel can perform aerobatic maneuvers and exercise his strength for a variety of actions such as catching, grabbing, or lifting objects or people all the while moving at speed. Like the Flash, Superman’s control over his speed allows him to vibrate his molecules to avoid attacks or, by accelerating to just under the speed of light to increase his mass to infinity, strike with an “Infinite Mass Punch”.
The solar radiation his body uses to give him Kal-El his powers also sustains his body. His cells process the energy and convert it to everything that his body needs, thus translating to Superman never needing to sleep, eat, breath, and never grow tired as long as he is charged. In the event that he is harmed or injured in any way, his body immediately begins to heal itself almost immediately from damage as long as it is not impeded an outside factor. His healing factor, powered like his other abilities from solar radiation, supplements his immune system making Superman immune to all Earth toxins and diseases.
Superman’s senses are also superhumanly enhanced. He has incredible hearing at extreme variances of sound and pitch frequency which grants him global hearing to the softest of sounds such as blood pumping through a being’s veins. Kal-El can easily hear someone’s heart beat and can identify a person by it if he has memorized the beats, cellphone signals and more as they lance through the air, or pick out a single voice amongst all the others on a planet. There is little beyond his eyes ability to see. The entire electro-magnetic spectrum is visible to him, radio/television frequencies, as well as any and all broadcasted/transmitted frequencies which allows him to avoid detection from radar or satellite monitoring. Kal-El enhance sight also allows him to see across vast distances as clearly as if he was there all the way down to the subatomic level. While not truly its name sake due to the lack of radiation emitted, Superman’s “x-ray” vision allows him to see through anything except lead. By possibly perceiving some form of energy invisible to normal human eyes, his eyes are able to “peel back” layer after layer of matter, literally seeing “through” them. Although he rarely uses it, Kal-El’s sense of smell is highly enhanced and he can easily smell odors across the planet.
The ability to fire beams of intense heat at a target by looking at it with the conscious act of activating this power. Although normally used as two beams of red energy, with concentration he can make the beam burn invisibly, allowing Superman to work undetected. His heat vision is so powerful that it is able to power up the giant ion planet moving engines with his heat vision alone, annihilate an entire army of Doomsday clones in one blast, and easily heat a planet. Star labs have measured that the output of energy rivals a star. With the amount of damage this power could create, Kal-El has trained even more rigorously to control it, training himself to the point that he can use his heat vision to perform surgery.
The solar radiation that grants him all of his other amazing abilities extends to the functions of Superman’s lungs as well. By exhaling, Kal-El can create simple breezes up to hurricane force winds with his ability to inhale large amounts of air useful for dealing with poison gasses and the like. The most remembered application of this ability is his “freeze breath”. When Superman takes air into his lungs they compress the incoming gas. When this gas expands upon exhalation, in a fashion analogous to the operation of an air conditioners compressor, the sudden increase in volume of the gas causes its temperature to drop proportionally to the size of this expansion.
A very rarely used or needed ability, Kal-El can use his vocal chords for multiple purposes. Aspects of this include being able to mimic perfectly voices that he has memorized, altering of frequency and pitch, but the more notable use is his scream. The force of Superman’s shout has been able to cancel out the impending threat of a nuclear detonation.
He has been trained by both Wildcat (in Boxing), and Mongul in the fighting arts. Kal-El furthered his combat training by learning the Kryptonian disciplines Klukor and Horu-Kanu.
Superman has incredible intelligence and computational abilities; his mind works sharply and with extreme speed relative to earth-humans. His analytical powers are impressive — he is able to use his senses to read information directly from machines and, with careful usage of his heat vision, he can even reprogram them. Kal-El is a very skilled scientist and machinist, constantly performing experiments such as searching for a cure for cancer as well as creating a team of robots that not only very closely resemble him in physical appearance but also similar abilities.
Superman has shown to have a powerful Force of Will, completely free of evil or temptation. Having been raised by a kindly Kansas farmer and his wife, Superman was taught to protect life and help others. He is very optimistic and never gives up, even when things are at their bleakest.
As he learned more about the culture of his home planet, Superman took some of its teachings to heart. Torquasm Vo is basically a means of focusing ones mental discipline to help fight adverse effects such as mental domination or manipulate someone's mind, however the second is almost never used unless it is absolutely necessary. Another is Torquasm Rao which allows him to tap into his instincts and separate himself from his body. This also lets Kal-El fight off mental manipulation or fight on the astral plane.
Superman has proven many times over his ability to command respect and inspire others with his charisma, ardor, and idealism. He often serves as the primus inter pares of the Justice League.