When a person’s ability to fly, see through walls and shoot lasers from his eyes is more plausible to readers than your firm’s continued profitability and existence, you know you are in trouble.

The Onion reports widespread incredulity that The Daily Planet newspaper, famous  for being Clark Kent AKA Superman’s employer, has not gone out of business given the fate being suffered by every other major metropolitan daily newspaper in the world.

They report:

While they acknowledged that enjoying the adventures of a superhero who can fly, lift a bus over his head, and shoot beams of intense heat from his eyes requires some suspension of disbelief, longtime fans told reporters they simply could not accept a daily metropolitan newspaper still thriving in the media landscape of 2012.

Those fans have a point. It continues:

Other fans said The Daily Planet—which for some strange reason has not been acquired by multimillionaire Lex Luthor with a promise to give readers shorter articles with more sizzle—is so deeply woven into the Superman universe that they had no choice but to avoid the comic altogether. They said even the most exciting stories are routinely marred by absurd depictions of a publication that somehow flourishes in print and whose millions of loyal readers seem oblivious to the idea of getting news online faster and for free.

“I can totally buy into an epic battle in which Superman claps his hands and creates a sonic boom that sends Darkseid flying through 50 buildings,” lifelong reader Richard Taft said. “But as soon as people start lining up at newsstands to read about it in The Daily Planet, I think, ‘Doesn’t anyone have a computer at work? Are there no smartphones?’ Before I know it, I’m suddenly aware I’m reading a fictional comic book, and the spell’s totally broken.”

And finally a point dear to my own heart:

Lou Wadlow, owner of a Boston-area comic-book store, said the outright ridiculousness of The Daily Planet not putting up a pay wall in a futile attempt to remain profitable is causing the popular comic to lose readers, especially younger ones.

Yeah, timesonline.co.uk. Cough.

Priceless.