Song of the Day 6/12: The Flaming Lips, “Waitin’ for a Superman”

Metropolis, the fictional city where Superman fights for truth, justice and a better tomorrow, has always presented DC Comics with a problem in truthiness — where exactly is it? A lot of people, the News Journal reminded its remaining readers this week, place it in Delaware, right across Delaware Bay from Gotham City (I’d link but it’s behind the paywall).

Metropolis is an obvious doppelgānger of New York (so is Gotham; comics great Frank Miller once said Metropolis is New York by day, Gotham is New York by night), and it was treated that way for decades. But in the ’60s, after Marvel Comics placed its heroes right in the real New York City, people started asking DC to get more specific — if Superman didn’t operate in New York, where did his derring-do get done?

Given all the alternate universes in comics, its location has, conveniently, varied from project to project. Occasionally it’s in the Midwest, not too far from Smallville, which is supposed to be in Kansas, but most of the time it’s somewhere along the East Coast. Over the past 30 years an increasing number have placed it a spot that, in our universe, looks relatively empty amid the surrounding megalopolis.

Songs about Superman abound, but only this one, in which Wayne Coyne describes a weight so heavy Supe can’t lift it, harks back to the logical conundrum of an omnipotent God creating a rock he cannot lift. It was the second single from the band’s 1999 album “Soft Bulletin.”