Real Superhero Adventures: Superman's Awkwardest Power

And no, I'm not talking about the subject of Larry Niven's essay on Superman.

I think the most awkward power of Superman's, the one that causes the most trouble for writers, is his superspeed.

I can understand why he has it-Supes is supposed to be the best at pretty much anything. He's faster than anybody except the Flash (whose reflexes and thought processes are indisputably faster, although Superman can more or less reach the same speeds). But when a character is totally invulnerable, strong enough to push moons around for the heck of it, and has flight and ranged attacks at his disposal, as well as being able to survive in space or underwater for as long as he pleases (well, that depends on continuity, I suppose), how come he needs superspeed?

If one thinks too hard, it's obvious Superman's speed would ruin many if not most if not nearly all of the Superman stories if every writer had him use it to the maximum potential. One blogger thinks that if Superman were to fight the Hulk, he'd sneak up on the Hulk from behind at Mach 17, grab him by the ankle, and throw him in the Sun before he could react. This, of course, makes the whole fight with Doomsday, who is basically a zombie version of the Hulk, pretty silly, even with Doomsday's apparently quick reflexes. Even Kryptonite can't really pose a threat to a superfast Superman:

Metallo: Now, Superman, die! (opens his little chest door to reveal the Kryptonite) Huh? Where'd you go?
Superman: (faintly) Up here.
Metallo: Eh? AAAAGH! (Superman drops the Chrysler Building on him)
Superman: There. Now to cure world hunger.

If Supes can move as fast as his pre-Crisis self, he can even outrun Kryptonite radiation. How is that even a weakness anymore? Not even nigh-omnipotent magic would pose much of a threat, either:

Cthulhu: Ph'nglui mglw'nafh me R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn. (fires 1,894,360 magical bolts at Superman [and yes I counted them all and that's an exact figure])
Superman: (from the orbit of Jupiter) You missed! (throws Io at Cthulhu)
Cthulhu: Io! Io! Shub-Niggurath-*smush*

Sorry about the H.P. Lovecraft in-joke there. And, of course, if Supes really threw Io at Cthulhu that hard, earthquakes would be the least of our worries-the resulting explosion would probably wipe out the entire Solar System. (Seriously-if it hit Earth that quickly, it'd be travelling at relativistic velocities, and the effect would be kind of like a really huge particle accelerator. I'd worry about folks living in the Alpha Centauri system, and for that matter the integrity of the space-time continuum.)

The point is, the superspeed thing is a little much. Superman's got enough powers and is plenty overwhelming already without speed and reflexes to match the rest of his overpoweredness.