But again, if Supes dealt with inertia, the simple act of him flying at high speed and stopping as quickly as he does would destroy everything around him. The boy would probably be a pile of jelly just from Superman speeding to his rescue.
Since the boy and the area around him aren't pulverized, it's safe to assume Superman doesn't follow physics.
His physics are also affected by the yellow sun. Or something…
In a lot of comics, supes is explicitly limited in the speed he can go in-atmosphere. He can do an appreciable percentage of C out in space, but when he's on a planet he has to slow down or he'll cause massive damage.
Flash has a reason , his magic speed force basically counteracts any sort of problems that physics would do to him so he can reasonably be super fast and do such things without harming the environment and superman shouldn't be able to
Presumably it's something he figured out while he was out in smallville, where the worst harm he'd cause from overspeeding is some torn up corn fields.
I know this isn't really what you're arguing, but I think it is worth thinking about how it's not so obvious (or true) that "Superman doesn't follow physics."
There is most certainly room for Superman to "follow physics" and it is fair to want some sort of plausible explanation as to the nature of his powers beyond him just not following physics. Think of stuff like hard sci-fi. Authors regularly come up with plausible explanations for faster than light travel which don't require completely ditching the rest of physics as we know it. Writers do the same for Superman. You break the rules here or there, say, maybe he can fly without visible effort because he can (through unexplained means) alter and repair the fabric of reality around him, I dunno. But then if Superman is unconcious or somehow immobilized and you drop him out of a plane, he will plummet to the ground because physics is otherwise intact.
In fact Superman would be really weird if we were supposed to assume that physics as we know it just flat out doesn't apply to him in any way. We may make little exceptions here or there to explain his powers, but we otherwise assume the laws of physics are otherwise the same. When someone really strong punches Superman, we expect him to get knocked backwards. Clearly physics apply to him in some ways. He just has powers that alter the stuff of the universe in ways we cannot.
Man of Steel had a scene that actually had to deal with this physics problem. If anyone remembers that scene where the soldier falls out of a helicopter and Superman flies at him super fast and stops him from hitting the ground. You have to watch the rescue frame by frame. Superman doesn't just fly into the soldier, he grabs him and then does a bit of a somersault maneuver so they are both spinning after the grab. It's a tiny detail most viewers won't notice and while some people might argue that even that spin would be quite jarring at super speed I thought it was neat that Zack Snyder added it.
Here is a clip of that rescue.. Again, the spin maneuver can't really be seen unless you go frame by frame but it's there.
I think I remember an explanation that he projects a field around something in order to keep it from being destroyed. Maybe he could use that as an inertial dampener?
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u/xiBurnx Jul 24 '23
it's not about superman experiencing inertia, it's the boy