In recent years, we've seen many attempts to deconstruct Superman, ranging from murderous manchildren to actual murderous children... but this idea isn't entirely new. In fact, the earliest Super-Man we were warned about came from Siegel and Shuster, years before they created the boy-scout of the same name.
In the short story The Reing of the Super-Man, we meet Bill Dunn, just your average person working on the bread line in this marvellous metropolitan city until, one day, Professor Smalley asks him to come to his house for dinner. Unfortunately for him, this polite gesture is actually a rouse to inject him with a serum that gives him powers - mainly mind control and astral projection. Not very Superman, I admit, but I don't want to discard the opening paragraph.
One criticism of many Superman deconstructions is that they're often done without a purpose other than shock value. Indeed, the easiest thing to do is to take someone with Superman's powers and imagine him acting out our worst impulses with no deeper commentary beyond "Wouldn't that be messed up?" - The Reign of the Super-Man (while not technically being a deconstruction due to predating Superman by 5 years) avoids this by using this idea to very unsubtly deconstruct capitalist ideology.
Professor Smalley holds the belief that all the poor people in the world could simply just stop being poor if they "had the slightest ambition at all..." - again, it's not very subtle, and neither is it subtle that he's blatantly in the wrong. Interestingly though, Bill Dunn (despite also living the life of a poor person trying to make ends meet) basically converts to the same thought once he starts using his mind control powers to become rich:
As [Bill Dunn] walked, it spoke to itself. "Fool! Why did you sleep on the ground when there were thousands of unoccupied beds in the world! Money, obviously, was the reason. You lacked money. How hilarious! Money is the easiest thing that can be secured upon this planet! And you have spent a full year in idle wastefulness when you could have been living the life of a Prince, an existence incomparable in its ease."
He is of course neglecting to mention the fact that he is only rich now due to the unnatural advantage of having mind control powers that he literally didn't have the day before. Or, to keep it entirely within the realm of things that apply to our day-to-day lives, he is ignoring the advantages he has received in life that make his status possible for him and only him.
Of course, like all things, this comes to an end. After causing a series of robberies and one geopolitical crisis, Bill ends up fighting with Professor Smalley, and he does end up killing the Professor, but he never learned how to create the serum. As his powers run out, he realises that, without these advantages, he will be back on the Bread Line the next day. This also makes it a bit tricky if you want to use the character in your own work, but eh, most sequels completely squash the themes of the original movie anyway for the sake of generating more plot, you'll be fine.
[Also I had no room to put this anywhere, but at one point Bill says "NOW, I will proceed to collect a large sum of money." and I don't know why, but that phrase has stuck with me ever since. I think I just find the vagueness of "large sum of money" funny. It's to the point where it's entered my lexicon.]
