Busiek's Secret Identity did a bit of lampshade-hanging about this, mentioning that Clark could hear something happening involving a person close to him (sorry for the vagueness - must avoid spoliers!) despite it being well out of aural range. I suspect the best explanation is the one that Salaak the Green Lantern mentioned not long after the Byrneboot in the 80s: Supes's powers are (nearly) all psionic in nature. His strength is telekinesis; his invulnerability is a telekinetic forcefield; his heat vision, as Salaak mentioned, is "psychokinetic agitation of the molecules - interesting"; his X-ray vision and other senses are mostly "clairvoyance" or ESP or whatever you want to call it. It makes sense if you assume the Kryptonian gengineers simply bred psi into the genepool to assist the race in dealing with the cold, dark, heavy world they were living on. I always figured Krypton was a lost colony of Daxam, or of the mysterious human origin-world; certainly a humanoid race wouldn't evolve naturally on a failed neutron star in orbit around Sirius.
What if Superman just uses his super vision to keep tabs on people, especially around a terrible time like a close friend's death, because he cares about them so much but he knows how much people want to, need to believe in him so maybe occasionally he tells a tiny fib to perpetuate the myths of the person called Superman. Like saying he heard them crying from hundreds of miles away.
Maybe in a world where you have to deal with the vendettas of Lex Luthor, or your supposedly best friend is a paranoid insane guy that does things like making emergency plans to kill you, maybe spreading a little disinformation is a good thing.
Byrne floated his Super-psionics theory years before the reboot in the letter columns of The Comics Reader, a prominant semi-prozine of the 60s and 70s.
I thought Krypton was orbitting around Antares... or did that change in 1986?
and this likely is not the first time that Superman heard stuff at super-speed in the Post-Crisis era.
I just can't easily recall another example.
Although the ability to pick out certain sounds from a whole slew of others is not new; Kal-El has been doing that for years.
and Krypton's Pre-Crisis origins have it being a colony of humans, not the origin point.
Two humans.
Kryp and Tonn. Which isn't a fairly stupid bit of nomenclature given fictional alien prehistorical cultures.
Isn't there also the issue of the fact that the sound would never even travel that far? I mean, how strong is the sound wave from a sob? Even Power Girl's sob. Would it travel 600 miles at all?
Hhm. Psionics is starting to sound like a pretty good explanation...
Psionics are one possibility that occurred to me.
Or maybe a packet of vibrating molecules near his loved one quantum tunnels into Superman's vicinity, instantly. Upon arriving in Superman's vicinity, it transfers its vibration as a sound of tiny (Planck-scale?) loudness, which Superman hears.
Of course, if he can hear his friends, he could also hear his enemies plotting...
This is why I never liked Superman much... a better name would be 'Auctorial Fiat Man'.
It's happened a lot. In Azzarello's recent run, the first issue I believe, Superman hears Green Lantern's call for help...in space. And flies there in a matter of seconds to help him.
I was just gonna say, "Maybe his ears are so sensitive, they can pick up sound waves from very, very far away." But psionics works, too.
And I don't mind this particular gaffe so much, since it lends itself to a lot of great lines (Morrison's "Alarm bells are ringing around the world" comes to mind).
Or maybe it's folly to apply the laws of physics as they exist in our reality to a fictional universe where those laws obviously do not apply. If Johns, Rucka and any other writer did that, nobody in the DCU would have super powers. We'd only have Batman. And even he couldn't do half the stuff he does every day over Gotham. I love this site, but golly....
Some laws do have to apply in some state of constancy or we have no basis for drama, for example.
Nothing is ever weird if we don't have an idea regarding what is normal.
I got a look at AoS #632 today, so I updated my last calculation to reflect the elapsed time it provided for Superman's flight to Umec (3.712 seconds, as opposed to my guess of 10).
I'd also like to second Chris Arndt's comments above; it's usually not a good idea to have a character's capabilities to be in constant flux. If Superman only has insta-hearing occasionally, then that power ends up being more of a plot device than a character trait.
Personally, I prefer the slightly more limited-in-power Superman of the animated series and the early Post-Crisis years. If Superman is capable of hearing any cry for help in the galaxy instantly, and can fly at the speed of light, and has no upper limit on strength or invulnerability...then what challenges can there be for him? It's within his power to stop every single murder in the US and have time to spare, but he just decides to stick with protecting Metropolis most of the time?
I'll have to check "Secret Identity" later, but I looked at my copy of Azz's first Superman issue, and it does have Supes hearing GL's cry for help through the vacuum of space, and over a span of a million miles. But it didn't really say for certain how long it took for him to hear it, or how long it took him to reach Kyle, so those aspects could be up in the air. If his hearing is psionically-based, there's no reason why it shouldn't be instant, though.
Finally, psionic hearing loses the neat illustration of super-hearing that we see on "Smallville." I prefer a super-hearing that allows Clark to tune-in occasionally; not one that has him constantly having to tune-out the rest of the world. It humanizes him a little more.
Jeff said:
Or maybe it's folly to apply the laws of physics as they exist in our reality to a fictional universe where those laws obviously do not apply. If Johns, Rucka and any other writer did that, nobody in the DCU would have super powers. We'd only have Batman. And even he couldn't do half the stuff he does every day over Gotham.
******
Except that given the number of times he's been knocked unconscious in 60 years of continuity, he should be permanently brain damaged by this point!
Loren said:
If Superman is capable of hearing any cry for help in the galaxy instantly, and can fly at the speed of light, and has no upper limit on strength or invulnerability...then what challenges can there be for him?
******
clearly the only crisis worthy of someone with such god-like powers....
jerking Lois around with phoney marriage proposals!
(You all know the web site I'm referring to).
Actually, the random power-level generator is one reason why I cite superheroes to illustrate physics principles and not the other way around - using physics to account for a character's feats. For once you've determined a particular power level, the next issue will likely contradict it.
I really like the hearing in space bit, though.
And he's a big hit a parties with his "super-ventriloquism"!
Cheers,
Jim
To be fair, Rucka explained this in an interview (with either Newsarama, CBR, or the Superman Homepage). Superman *didn't* hear the shot, but reacted to a gut feeling, an intuition. Rucka likened it to a mother's instimctual knowledge that something is wrong with her child, even before she could possibly physically know. Superman's reaction is due to the husband/wife soulmate bond, not to any quirk of super-powers or physics.
I remember a great Silver Age Superman story about this.
Some talk show host had been kidnapped, and Steve Lombard is standing in for him in the studio (doing a crap job - we all hated Steve Lombard, didn't we?). The kidnappers, with the talk show host strapped and gagged in a chair, are therewhile watching the live show on TV in their secret base.
Suddenly the kidnapped (?) talk show host appears on the stage of the show, telling Steve that he is the real talk show host, and the one the kidnappers got is Supeman in disguise.
The kidnappers watch this in confusion, looking at the guy they've got bound in the chair, and his doppelganger on live TV. They argue among themselves what to do.
Finally, one of them pulls a gun on the talk show host in the chair and says the only way to find out if they really got Superman or not is to shoot the hostage.
The kidnapper cocks his gun: CLICK.
Then we go into the first instance of "Bullet Time" in comics - literally speaking, and decades before The Matrix:
We see a panel of the kidnapper firing his gun, and the sound effect BAAAAAAAN (reverbrating, continueing through the following panels).
Next panel: Close shot of the "talk show host" on TV, and on his ear. Soundeffect:AAAAANNNN.
Next panel: The "Talk Show Host" in the studio (who actually is Superman in disguise) becomes a whirl of speed lines, as he flies in Superspeed out of the studio. Soundeffect: AAAANNNNNNN
Next panel: Superman above the city in Superspeed - so fast, that the clothes and the mask of the Talk Show Host he was wearing literally tear and melt away in the friction, revealing the familiar red and blue uniform. Sound effect: AAANNNNNNNNNNGG
Next panel: Superman breaks through the wall of the kidnapper's base, having listened for among the millions of sounds in the city for the CLICK of the gun being cocked, and then immediately flying off to the location.
And final panel: Sound effect: NNGGGGGG!!! - We see the bullet, which has been flying all this time towards the head of the bound Talk Show Host in the chair - being caught inches away from its target, by Supermans invulnerable hand.
Caption: "...proving once and for all, that SUPERMAN is faster than a speeding bullet."
And I don't care how physically impossible that was, but this was fantastically cool for the ten-year-old me reading it many years ago, and still is for the present me!
(I've been paraphrasing the above from memory, and probably did not do it justice.)
I don't even have that issue, but I remember seeing it. The talk show host was "Johnny Nevada," which is pretty cool when you're a kid and you remember that the capital of Nevada is Carson City.
Anyone still reading this thread after two years? I hope I find my way to this site again. 
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