Superman is stronger then most think

Whenever a character gets downplayed (even by casuals) you see an inevitable rush eventually of people saying how a character is actually much stronger then you think and likewise when a character is wanked, you see eventually people criticizing and picking apart the evidence to bring them back down. This pendulum of power swings back and forth for any character analyzed enough, it seems growing closer and closer to an accepted midpoint until new evidence is shone on the subject matter, though given the sheer number of forums, this point can never be reached.

I think Superman right now is on the downplayed part of the pendulum swing as a response to certain shall we say high-profile few incidents of him getting wanked. People seem to think he's much weaker then his feats suggest and that despite how strong people in his own universe seem that like half of the other 6 members of the original JLA could beat him. Here are some misconceptions about how strong Superman is.

1: Power
You look on reddit and Superman is generally considered planetary level, or maybe a bit above that and while that is dipping on one end of the spectrum, few people take into account how powerful Superman is. Even with Rebirth I often say that he's universe level due to the fact that Pre-Crisis is now canon again but I feel that doesn't really do the Man of Steel justice. Let's look at his feats.

Superman, in one of his most famous Pre-Crisis feats pushed against the force of the Big Bang as well as destroyed a structure that survived the event.

How is that any different from universe level? My imaginary audience thinks to me. Here's the thing though. The Big Bang does not need to be just universe level if it has feats above that. While it CREATED the universe sure, different verses have it do other things as well. And the universe created by the DC Big Bang was MASSIVE, totaling over 100 trillion light years. As Rebirth has both Pre-Crisis and Post-Crisis canon these two events should both be relevant. However the observable universe is only 93 billion light years long. Since that means the DC universe is over 10,000 times larger in diameter, it's three-dimensional volume is gonna be over 1.2 BILLION times the volume of the observable universe.

The other universal feats used for Pre-Crisis Superman are similarly casual. Darklord Maaldor feat? He created a universe merely by dying. Pre-Crisis Supergirl fought a universal reality-warper capable of controlling all the forces of the universe which should also be above baseline universal and almost killed a weaker version of the Anti-Monitor who even by that point was casually destroying universes.

Is Superman outright multiversal? I don't think so at the moment, but I think his pre-crisis feats demonstrate that he is above baseline universal.

2: Speed
I don't know why this is but a lot of the times the comparison being made in terms of speed is Superman and The Flash, which just not a fair comparison. Even there I don't think Superman does as badly as people seem to think.

First off scaling between DC Heroes is harder then you'd think because they tend to hold back for one reason or another, meaning directly scaling Superman to Flash or Flash to Superman is difficult since both hold back. In terms of direct feats however Flash is much faster. While that makes it seem like a cut and dry case, I think the specifics make it not as giant a difference as it seems.

Basically what it seems to me is Restrained Flash>Restrained Superman and Unrestrained Flash>Unrestrained Superman HOWEVER...Unrestained Superman>Restrained Flash and that is a really big deal.

Most people by now know of Flash's big cosmic gamblers feat, ie one of the fastest speed feats ever calculated at a whopping ~2.375e43 c. Some people will say "Wally was using external help at the time so the speed doesn't apply to him." There are several points people are missing about it though, namely this was during the time Wally was afraid of going too fast or getting sucked into the speedforce like Barry did. The feat while massive is never stated to have broken the speedforce barrier which is very important, and it's very likely in the context of the story's timeline placement that he wouldn't since he was completely afraid of entering the speedforce.

At most he broke the Time Barrier which is much less then the speedforce barrier. Scaling Superman to this does not mean he is as fast as Wally because Wally by now is MUCH faster then this.

So does Superman scale to this? I would say yes.

Jay Garrick the Golden Age Flash has actually run up to the edge of the speedforce barrier before. Even in his Post-Crisis Days Superman has matched Jay's speed until Jay speed stole from him and Jay had admitted being slower then some of the other DC Speedsters, Superman being included. 

In terms of Pre-Crisis, Superman has actually broken the speedforce barrier before

though unlike with Barry and Wally it was very difficult.

Recently DC has released the following ranking of the top 10 fastest speedsters

Considering how close Superman is in position to the Two Flashes, and being faster then characters described as being nearly as fast as the Flashs (Cheetah) or has made them push their limits (Black Racer) I think it's pretty consistent to say he's supposed to be that fast.

3: Hax

Common misconception is that Superman is merely a brick, no potent abilities, just raw power.

While Superman isn't the most hax character in fiction, he does have his own fair arsenal similar to a lot of the other JL Members.

Both his heat vision and his freeze breath have been shown to work on intangible enemies. He was also able to destroy an illusion by shouting

He has access to op DC pressure point combat and is quite good at it.

His Psionics include super-hypnotic eye beams, illusions and mental plane fighting.

His heat vision or static electricity can affect spacetime as can merely his punches. If he can distort spacetime, that could be quite deadly in a no-holds barred fight as it could potentially displace an opponent's vital organs in space.

His speed allows him to turn invisible, vibrate an opponent's atoms out of synch so they disintegrate, or use phasing to turn intangible, even turning the entire Earth intangible at one point. Even after being exposed to kryptonite, Superman was able to vibrate across dimensions.

He has access to dimensional sealing using his heat vision

And what I think is his most powerful ability, his ability to erase a being from existence by equaling out their quantum strings with his voice, including the abstract entity Darkseid

And this is not even counting some of his other abilities that aren't really haxes or his counters to many haxes. 

So yeah he's not say a Green Lantern or a Herald of Galactus in terms of versatility and number of haxes but he's not a complete brick either.

4: Intelligence

One of Superman's most underused powers. Superman has a lot of intelligence feats that show he is a massive supergenius. He can build a robot capable of planning millions of chess moves in a moment and then beat it in chess, learn a mermaid's strange language just by hearing it once, made a machine that granted people super powers and so on. Though his greatest intelligence feat is being able to compete intellectually with Brainiac, one of them being able to process information equal to many galaxies.

In combat that would be an immense advantage, able to plan out every potential scenario, every way in which a fight could turn out based on what action the user takes and choosing the optimal one. 

Superman's intelligence is quite a strong advantage against most enemies that is even remotely fair for him.

TLDR: Superman...he's pretty strong.