Superman's superhuman abilities were originally explained as common to all people from his planet and derived from millions of years in a demanding environment. Fair enough.

Originally, he had extraordinary strength and resilience. He could lift a car with one hand and nothing less than a bursting shell could penetrate his skin. He could outpace a train. He could leap over a tall building in a single bound.

Fair enough. There are plenty of examples in nature of creatures with amazing physical abilities superior to human beings. It's not so hard to suspend your disbelief to apply these abilities (ants lifting many times their own weight) to a human scale.

I read Philip Wylie's Gladiator three times and found the material credible. Hugo Danner and the 1938 Superman had much in common.

It's when Superman's abilities began to become "unnatural" that the problem might have started. What other Earth creatures has x-ray vision or fires heat-rays from their eyes? What other Earth creature propels itself through the air without an action-reaction mechanism? What Earth physical material is capable of standing up to laser bombardment or massive radioactivity with no damage?

Say we allow for some basic telekinetic or psionic ability, we would swim in the waters of pseudo-science where every interpretation is fair game.

Given that Superman's abilities have strayed so far into the unnatural, it's perfectly understandable that writers from within or without the medium would get him wrong. The only way to get him "right" under these circumstances is to compile a "Superman Bible" of exactly what his abilities can and cannot do.

That and not let science-ignorant people like Sam Raimi write these stories.

I wonder if the misuse isn't so much intentional (although still ignorant) but a by-product of wanting to do whatever seems "kewl." Superman's standing horizontal really threw me at first and I still have to blink several times when see it because it's just so atypical of how his power of flight was previously used. That doesn't mean, necessarily, that it is a misuse, of course, but isn't it likely that somebody in making the film simply thought it was a "neat" idea and just did it, without much consideration for whether his power could in fact be exercised thus? Same with Sue turning only layers of her skin invisible instead of all the way -- "Wouldn't it be just so cool if Sue just 'wiped' away a zit? Yeah! Let's do it!"

In the first Raimi Spider-Man film, he has Flash punch toward Peter, but because of Peter's new super-powered reflexes what is portrayed is Flash moving in slow-motion and, oddly, Peter moving at normal speed (comparatively). I understand there's license to give a sense of what it means to be super-powered, but the combination of Peter's powers of spider-sense and super-fast reflexes don't actually operate to make the world about him seem as if it's moving very slowly.

It bothers me when Flash "vibrates his molecules" allowing him to pass through solid objects.

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Actually, that's not too farfetched considering how fast the Flash, especially Barry Allen, is.

Normal people can shake or "vibrate" their hand while pretending to be extremely nervous.  Now do that at near light speed.  Plus, also taking into consideration what the saturation of the chemicals did to his body, we don't know how much control he actually has over his molecules or bodily functions.  The "vibrating his molecules" was a very simplified explanation of it. 

The thing that bothers me the most is that the Flash should be the most "powerful" hero there is in the DCU.  A man that runs and operates at near light speed should be able to take care of any situation in less than a nanosecond.  (I'm being generous there.)  He literally sees the world "standing still".  Writers may "get" the Flash's powers, but they need to make him seem more fallable, so they "slow him down or speed him up" to fit the situation/problem.

Didn't explain how he was able to hold his breath for about 20 minutes (speed of light), tho.

Let me use this to ask a question.  Recently, I read, somwhere, that while it appears to take light from the sun 8 minutes or so to reach the Earth from our perspective, it takes nearly no time for the photons to reach the Earth from their perspective.  That is, relativity aside, the speed of light is near instantaneous to the traveler, in this case the photons, but c to the observer.  Is this so?  Emery?

Reminds me of the time Monica flew to Jupiter.  Maybe it should have ben near instaneous from her perspective, even though x amount of time would have passed.