Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Adventures of Superman (Vol. 1), Issue #576 – “AnarchY2Knowledge”!

In the previous issue of the Superman: Endgame collection, Clark spends an entire issue trying to beat up Brainiac 13 while Lois talks extensively about how great Clark is and how much he’s grown and how much Metropolis means to him and how much their marriage is a marriage. I hated it.

Metropolis is being “digitized” before everyone’s very eyes, according to Jimmy Olsen, PhD. In the end, Superman also gets digitized and absorbed within the machine that is turning Metropolis into a crazy, futuristic computer world. Superman has been compromised, now who will help stop Brainiac?

If you guess “who cares”, then you are correct!

In the previous issue of Adventures of Superman Vol. 1, Lex Luthor gifts Lois and Clark with tickets to the opera, where he slips Clark some laxatives and tries to make a move on Lois in his absence. Other stuff happens too, but I think that’s pretty hilarious in of itself.

Now we move on with the Brainiac story. Hope it doesn’t keep sucking!

Adventures of Superman (Vol. 1), Issue #575 [March, 2000]
Written by: Mark Millar / Stewart Immonen
“AnarchY2Knowledge”

“He is still Superman. The face might be blue, the costume might be different and the powers might all be wrong… but he’s still the same Man of Steel who’s saved this city more times than even he can remember.”

The narration brings us right where we left off! Superman is witnessing firsthand the nanobots replacing Metropolis with nanotechnology. Far out, man! The Year 2000 really is the future! “Is this still Metropolis?” one thinks as stuff that looks cooler than Metropolis replaces all the sucky stuff about Metropolis.

Lois and Jimmy Olsen chat casually about Superman like they’re commentating a football game.

“Uh, I’m not sure Superman transforming into his old, electric-blue self was the lucky break we were hoping for, Lois. He kinda looks unsteady on his feet out there.”
“Something tells me the old look wasn’t exactly his idea, Jim. Superman barely seems to recognize his own body.”

I’m not sure what this “old look” is referring to exactly. Superman used to be electric-blue? News to me. Maybe I’ll find out some day. Or maybe one of you chucklefucks reading this can drop me a comment. Or maybe I can just look it up! All solid options.

“Superman was the only real obstacle that stood in the way of [Brainiac] turning Metropolis into one big supercomputer,” Lois says, observing that Brainiac is doing everything he can to stop the Man of Steel Man. And if that means turning him blue, then that means turning him blue.

Now, if they were to turn into cries for “write an article”, then I’ll be whistling a different tune!

“Well, we can’t just stand around, Lois,” says Jimmy, fully intending to just stand around with his camera anyway. Gotta get those crisp and clean close-up shots for a newspaper that won’t exist anymore soon. Lois ain’t having that, she’s going to play Superlady and help the public. Maybe she’ll go find Ma and Pa Kent, the biggest hayseeds that are currently in the city. Pa’s probably losing his mind that his oversized belt buckle is getting a digital upgrade.

Superman is making the most of his bad situation. “I don’t know what you’ve done to me, Brainiac, and frankly, I don’t much care…” he says, taking a petulant swipe at the Big Bad Big-Brained Brainiac, “…but this city is under my protection and I won’t let you or any of your lackeys hurt another human being.”

Always so altruistic! What if Superman had an ulterior motive for all of his good deeds? “This lady’s so gonna give me a handjob” would be a pretty big motivator. Especially if that lady is Wonder Woman, of course! Heh heh heh.

Brainiac whips out some real Doctor Octopus rip-off electric tentacles and zaps the big blue bitch right on the chest. Not a good time. One way or another, Superman is closing Brainiac down. How do I know this? Because Superman says “One way or another, I’m closing you down.”

A few figures are scrambling around the LexCorp Building. One of them is *squints* Lex Luthor himself. He’s with his daughter and her caretaker, again. At the end of Superman: Y2K, Lex inserted a chip into her daughter’s brain. Or something to that effect. Now she speaks as a conduit for an older version of Brainiac’s software. “[Brainiac 13] is everything I was scheduled to be eight hundred centuries from now.”

That’s a lot of centuries! That’s, like 80 millenniums. Millennia? The year 82,000? Humanity will be extinct by then, and who’s going to be maintaining Brainiac’s upgrades that far in the future? The Lizard People? Please. The Lizard People will have better things to do.

It’s not like Lex would be saying anything much nicer to his daughter during peacetime.

Lex comments that, 800 centuries or no 800 centuries of advancement, ANY version of Brainiac is just as evil and destructive as any OTHER version of Brainiac. Lex holds his daughter up and looks her square in the eye. “The only reason I’m even tolerating your presence is that you’re the best chance we have of eliminating the thing.”

Brainiac Lena does admit that it is the ONLY entity that knows where the one piece of machinery is that’s shielded from Brainiac 13. And if you think it’s at the Starbucks on 4th and State, you are sadly mistaken! It’s actually at the Starbucks on 7th and Monroe.

Anyway, Brainiac 13’s power core is on the 100th floor of the LexCorp Building. That’s between the 99th floor and the 101st floor for any dummies in the room. Let’s go cut the power! And avoid those giant sentry bugs, they’ll try to horse around with you. Blasting you to kingdom come and the like.

“Obeying my every command is our only chance of sabotaging that power supply, Luthor,” Brainiac Lena says. Obeying commands is certainly not something Luthor is used to, but he knows the stakes. If Brainiac tells him to suck his own penis, then you’d better believe Lex is immediately removing some ribs Marilyn Manson-style.

Oh yeah, sorry, Lena’s caretaker got killed. Such is the price to pay for saving the world! Ho hum.

“Thanks to nanotech overhaul, Metropolis General Hospital has been doubling in size every forty-five minutes since the stroke of midnight…” It’s not enough, though! People are getting injured in droves, and apparently they’re flying in people from Indonesia? Why the hell would a hospital that keeps doubling in size not be able to keep up? People are exponentially getting hurt and killed?

Jimmy runs into his buddy Ron, the guy who knocked up Lois’ sister Lucy. She had a bad fall and they’re at the hospital to check on the baby. “Trouble is, we got separated and now the whole building’s changed shape!” Sucker turned into a Chuck E. Cheese ball pit, without all the urine and feces. Well, on second thought, with all the urine and feces, actually. “I can’t find her anywhere, Jim! Tell me you and Lois have some idea what’s going on here!”

Why the fuck would Jimmy “Cameraman” Olsen and Lois “Superman’s Fuck Buddy” Lane have any more idea than Ronnie over here? Show me their credentials.

TV screens show rapidly flickering images of other cities all over the world. It’s not a Metropolis problem anymore, kids. Brainiac is taking over the whole Earth!

Took long enough.

Emote while I’m pummeling you, Brainiac! EMOTE!

Superman, meanwhile, is still trying to hand Brainiac’s butt over to him on a silver platter, but he’s fresh out of silver platters. There are barely any paper platters! Brainiac’s not even breaking a sweat here, which isn’t odd because robots don’t sweat anyway. It’s a figure of speech, man. Be nice.

Brainiac zaps Superman again. This causes him to see all sorts of visions. Six billion people in the world, and Brainiac wants Superman to make sure he can hear the cries of every single one of them! Even the ones who are asleep right now and/or blissfully unaware of any crazy technological advancements happening in the world since they live in a remote Chinese farm or a Tahitian hut. “But he’s still Superman after all, and six billion cries for help are just six billion more reasons to scatter this monster’s hard drive to the outer reaches of the universe.”

Remember when there were only six billion people in the world. How quaint.

Lex keeps getting closer to the main power supply. Will he be the one who will stop all this madness while Superman flails around with his cock in his hand? Here up in the labyrinthian LexCorp floors, Lex finds his two female bodyguards who were training him to fight back in Superman: Y2K. He’s snotty about this, since they’ve been all but absent for the last, like, 45 hours. They offer their sincerest apologies, since once the building started doing the change-a-ma-roo, they got trapped in the walls. Now Luthor’s got some muscle! Who fucking needs Superman anyway? Useless, that guy. Like plastic fruit.

Lucy Lane is alone in a dark ultrasound room. “What’s going on? Where did everybody go?” she asks herself, completely unaware of everything, apparently. She yells for Ron, but Ron ain’t anywhere. She looks for a door, but door ain’t anywhere. The ultrasound TV screen flashes an image of Brainiac, and Lucy’s all like “WAAAHH”.

Ron, where are you?! Our favorite show is on!!

Jimmy and Ron find the door and enter, thanking the Good Lord Jesus Christ Our Savior that they were able to find Lucy before something was too late, whatever that something might be. Before Brainiac pre-empted Wheel of Fortune?

Hugs and kisses abound. Nothing for Jimmy, of course, but he takes it in stride. Also, danger ahead: a speeding train (with its tracks being created ahead of it) races toward the hospital! The occupants are like “WE’RE GONNA DIE!” Ma and Pa Kent are on the train, too. Ma is fretting, all like “do you think we’re gonna die, Pa?” and Pa, cool as a cucumber, chuckles and guffaws and pours himself a delicious glass of cherry cola on the rocks and toasts a glass and, three microseconds from impact, says “Absolutely not, Martha. Clark won’t let us down.”

Superman does excuse himself from trying to beat up Brainiac to stop the train, and I think he succeeds? Well, no, I suppose he reroutes the train instead of stopping it. Stopping it is very hard to do. Ma wonders if Clark has eaten his Wheaties today, but Pa chuckles and guffaws and cleans his glasses and kicks back with the sports section of the newspaper and says “He’s fine, Martha. Our boy’s just climbing back into the saddle like his old man taught him to.”

Gross. I don’t think Pa realizes what that means entirely in a EUPHEMISTIC sense. Also, Pa’s optimism is cloying. Have a little fear once in a while, you bumpkin.

“There are four hundred and seventeen passengers onboard that train and every single one of them is dead if I’m weak!” Superman cries to himself. Look, man, go to therapy.

So Superman gets to the front of the train and starts pushing back. Pushing and pushing. Push, push, push, push! Push push, you’ve got this! Push, keep pushing! It’s crowning, it’s beautiful! Push push push!

“Now what?” Luthor asks his brainy baby.

“What do you think, you bald-headed oaf? We free the real Superman?”

“What? Is this some kind of joke?”

Before them is a visage of Superman in stasis. Brainiac had used some psychic energy to channel the blah blah blah and whoozits into formulating the yammer yammer and reconstructing the hoopla from the required yada yada energy signature from the power core. You follow?

Time to get Superman back, boy howdy.

This guy? Look at him. He’s drunk!

Blue Superman is still trying to stop the train like a weak, useless sack of poopy sludge. “BRAINIAC?! You’ve nothing to gain by killing innocent people, damn you! Take me instead!” Well, that kind of foul-mouth language won’t get you anywhere. Say please next time, you rude so-and-so you.

… ok, he’ll try taking you now. Electric octopus tentacles and a “BZZT” and a “NGH!” and here we are. Superman begs, without saying please mind you, for Brainiac to stop trying to kill him for a minute so he can stop the dang train.

“He’s not Superman. The face is blue, the costume is different and the powers are all wrong,” proclaims the rather blunt narration. “He’s not Superman–” Brainiac sticks some very sharp pokey things through Blue Superman’s back, impaling him, taking away his dignity. Sad. “–and he never will be.”

Blue Superman screams like a little baby.

No shit, dummy. This is why you’re the dummy and Brainiac is the brainiac, dummy.

Luthor punches his hairy neanderthal knuckles into a keypad. Baby Brainiac tells him to hurry the fuck up so that they can, like, not die. Luthor is getting flustered, so his two bodyguards tell him to step back so that they can make short work of it.

Then they kick the tube holding the Superman recreation in stasis. It works. He flops to the floor like a depressing, buff fish. “I never thought I’d be pleased to see this spit-curled charlatan, but I must admit my heart is almost racing,” Luthor drawls. Let’s see your mental acuity, stat! *snaps fingers* *kicks the dead weight* You’re good. Time to stop Brainiac, nerd.

Superman grunts and moans, remembers that he has been stabbed by brainiac while trying to stop a train, and now the train has plowed into a Planet Hollywood and exploded into a torrent of shrapnel and feces. Superman has been beaten. All is lost. Time to hang up the towel, Lex. Find him a towel to hang up, please.

“Spoken with the usual ill-informed certainty, Superman, but I’m afraid it’s only the first battle which has been lost. The war is just beginning.”

Sounds promising. Getting into the thick of a war is always a great, dandy idea. Let’s do the war thing.

The last page shows the Metropolis skyline. It looks like shit.

Final Thoughts

I AM NOT INVESTED IN THIS STORY. Give me photoshopped wedding rings any day!