Only in more recent memory has he been stupidly overpowered, and then writers played with overpowered tyrannical/government agent superman. To this day one of the best instances of superman portrayals is the animated series from the 90s where he happens to be relatively weak, can't breathe in space, wears a lead-lined suit to fight the likes of metallo, it's never interesting to watch hammer squash ant, it more so to watch someone struggle with enemies with unique obstacles to overcome and the power scaling becomes less ridiculous when you put a reasonable cap on superman to allow various foes to have a chance at defeating him with their abilites