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The attention being lavished on new Superman Brandon Routh's Package of Steel™ has escalated from occasional tabloid scrutiny to full-blown press tour. Perhaps sensing that Routh's carefully engineered, now-infamous superjunk is the most compelling thing about the actor, the evil masterminds of Warner Bros. dispatched him to the WonderCon convention in San Francisco, where the topic of geek discussion quickly turned to the relative rigidity of the obsessed-about codpiece:

"To be honest a lot like a baseball player's protection or football players wear protection for that area," Routh admits. "That's pretty much what it is except softer because I didn't have to worry about getting hit in it."

Even having candidly dealt with his nether-regions, Routh's body came into play once again with the discussion of the "S" on the new Superman suit, a piece of lettering that many in the comic community have felt is too small. Yes, size really matters.

"What I was told was that if you make the 'S' too large, on the particular suit that we had, the new designed suit, the 'S' tends to take over the chest and the whole front of the suit," Routh acknowledges. "And so the shape of the 'S' is to maximize, um, my chest."

In fact, the wardrobe department had to continually explain the chest-maximizing principle to director Bryan Singer, who seemed preoccupied with a more radical costume change designed to enhance the more controversial elements of he costume. Ultimately, however, Singer deferred to his specialists, and his plans to replace the iconic chest insignia with a large arrow pointing crotchward, the new home of a showily engorged, serpentine super-"S" never made it past a series of surprisingly detailed doodles scribbled on the back of his script.