FORMER SUPERMAN DEAN CAIN SPARKS NEW CONTROVERSY WITH LATEST SUPERHERO ATTACK CQ😱

Dean Cain at Hollywood Christmas Parade in 2023; David Corenswet in 2025’s ‘Superman’.Credit: 

Steve Granitz/FilmMagic; Jessica Miglio

Dean Cain is upset, once again, about superheroes.

Cain, who played Superman on ABC’s Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, most recently took a shot at Milly Alcock’s portrayal of Supergirl in Craig Gillespie’s upcoming film about the cousin of the Man of Steel. The 59-year-old’s criticisms included questioning how Kara Zor-El’s ears could be pierced if her skin is bulletproof, and being amused after someone online compared Alcock’s appearance to an ape-looking character from Land of the Lost.

The jab is the most recent in the actor’s history of dissatisfaction over recent superhero adaptations, which have ranged from Cain slamming James Gunn’s Superman for being too “woke” to decrying Captain America comics for their “anti-American-ism.”

Last summer, Cain took aim at Gunn’s Superman, which faced conservative backlash after the director told The Times of London that Superman “is the story of America” because he is “an immigrant that came from other places and populated the country.” Gunn added that his version of the hero would be “a story that says basic human kindness is a value and is something we have lost.”

The nearly century-old hero was created by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster, both sons of Jewish immigrants who emigrated to North America from Eastern Europe. Since he first appeared in a comic in 1938, the iconic superhero, who was sent to Earth from his home planet of Krypton, has symbolized the immigrant experience.

“How woke is Hollywood going to make this character? How much is Disney going to change their Snow White? Why are they going to change these characters [to] exist for the times?” Cain said, referring to both Gunn’s take on Superman and seemingly Disney’s live-action remake of Snow White, in an interview with TMZ in 2025.

Cain, who is a longtime supporter of President Donald Trump and shared his plans to join Immigration and Customs Enforcement last August (and was called out by numerous celebs for doing so), noted that one of Superman’s early mottos, “Truth, justice, and the American way,” can be seen as “tremendously immigrant friendly” but added “there are rules.”

“You can’t come in saying, ‘I want to get rid of all the rules in America, because I want it to be more like Somalia.’ Well, that doesn’t work, because you had to leave Somalia to come here. There have to be limits, because we can’t have everybody in the United States. We can’t have everybody. Society will fail. So there have to be limits,” Cain said in the interview.

In 2021, Cain slammed DC Comics for having Jon Kent, the son of Clark Kent and Lois Lane, be in a same-sex relationship.

“They said it’s a bold new direction. I say they’re bandwagoning,” Cain decried during an appearance on Fox & Friends. “Robin just came out as bi — who’s really shocked about that one? The new Captain America is gay. My daughter in [The CW series] Supergirl, where I played the father, was gay. So I don’t think it’s bold or brave or some crazy new direction. If they had done this 20 years ago, perhaps that would be bold or brave.”

“Brave would be having him fighting for the rights of gay people in Iran, where they’ll throw you off a building for the offense of being gay,” Cain continued.

“They’re talking about having him fight climate change and the deportation of refugees and he’s dating a hacktivist — whatever a hactivist is. Why don’t they have him fight the injustices that created the refugees whose deportation he’s protesting? That would be brave. I’d read that. Or fighting for the rights of women to attend school and have the ability to work and live and boys not to be raped by men under the new warm and fuzzy Taliban — that would be brave,” he said.

Cain added, “There’s real evil in this world today, real corruption and government overreach, plenty of things to fight against. Human trafficking — real and actual slavery going on… It’d be great to tackle those issues.”

Cain’s grievances are not just with interpretations of Superman. He’s also disapproved of a new Captain America comic book miniseries, United States of Captain America, in which Steve Rogers questions the concept of the “American Dream.”

Within the first issue for the comic, which was released in 2021, Rogers/Captain America says, “The first American Dream is the one that isn’t real. It’s the one some people expect to just be handed to them, and then get angry when it disappears, when the truth is, it never really existed in the first place… That dream isn’t real. It never was. Because that dream doesn’t get along nicely with reality. Other cultures. Immigrants. The poor. The suffering. People easily come to be seen as ‘different’ or ‘un-American.’ The white picket fence becomes a gate to keep others out.”

During an appearance on Fox News, Cain said, “I love the concept of Captain America, but I am so tired of this wokeness and anti-Americanism,” adding that it appears that the “cool, the fashionable thing to do is to bash America and to hate America.”

“I am on the exact opposite side of the fence,” he continued. “I love this country. It’s not perfect. We are constantly striving for a more perfect union, as we all know. But I believe she’s the most fair, equitable country ever with more opportunity than anyone’s ever seen. And that’s why people are clamoring to get here from all over the globe.”

Cain’s disparaging comments over modern takes on superheroes, as well as the actor’s choice to support conservative agendas or government agencies such as ICE, have been repeatedly called out by fans — including many pointing out the irony that someone who once played Superman would be blasé about detaining immigrants himself.

In a piece for The Guardian, film writer Ben Child emphasized that Superman is historically “woke,” reflecting on the Kryptonian’s legacy of fighting everyone from Nazis to corrupt landlords, while also offering a reminder to both Cain and readers that superhero stories as a whole “have always been the genre equivalent of a protest sign in a wind tunnel: loud, colourful, occasionally hard to read, but very much trying to say something.”

“If superheroes aren’t about subverting the powerful, sticking up for the underdogs, and punching moral cowardice squarely in the jaw, what exactly is the point?” Child asked in his piece.

“What Cain et al would really like to see is a Superman who mirrors all of these leanings without any of the obviously bad stuff: the fascist overtones, the laser-eyed jingoism and the genocidal meltdowns,” Child continued. “The only problem here is that such a character doesn’t exist, or at least, would be pretty boring to watch. Because once you strip out truth, justice, compassion, doubt, and any hint of moral complexity, what you’re left with isn’t a superhero: it’s a MAGA-friendly screensaver with heat vision, great hair and absolutely no sense of irony.”