Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: All-Star Superman, Issue #12 – “Superman in Excelsis”! This one wraps up the very uneven limited series. And with a word like “excelsis” in the title, you can be assured that I’m going to hate this issue! In the previous installment, something about a Tyrant Sun showing up to take over Earth’s sun, but then Superman has a sun-eater that kills it. Or something.

It was really goddamned stupid.

I’m tired of this series. I didn’t like it much. Let’s just get it over with.

All-Star Superman, Issue #12 [October, 2008]
Written by: Grant Morrison
“Superman in Excelsis”

So it’s going to be a battle between Superman and SuperLex, is it now? Who’s going to win? The bald one or the dumb one? (they’re both dumb)

“Why did you bring me all the way from the Science Plaza during a corequake?” Kal-El asks Jor-El. Jor-El gets a two-person spaceship ready. He’ll explain on the way.

It’s because science is for nerds! Oh wait, that’s not the explanation.

Father, you know Kal-El has been very busy at the neo-consciousness labs! This better be good! Neo-consciousness can wait, this is very important stuff. Top shelf crucial shit here.

“I’m dead, Kal-El. I died when the world of Krypton tore itself apart in a cataclysmic explosion. Myself, your mother, our people… are all gone.”

SNORE! Tell me something I don’t know, guy. Kal-El is confused. They’re on Krypton right now! Are you hallucinating again? Do you have the syphilis, Father? Do we need to call Dr. Lex-Or?

“You’ve come among the dead, my son. Don’t you understand…? …you too are dead.”

Died while fighting the Tyrant Sun due to prior yellow sun radiation exposure. Remember, dingus? And now, being the last link to Krypton, everything is all gone. All memories, all art, their proud history. In a puff of smoke. Way to go.

“But your machines stabilized Krypton’s core,” Kal-El insists. “Jor-El of El, my Father, if I’m dead… what place is this?”

In other words: shut up.

Jor-El spews some technobabble about the continuation of consciousness and the persistence of individual awareness. “The choice here is simple,” Jor-El says out of nowhere. “To remain at play within the field of living, fluid consciousness. Or to turn and face down evil one last time.”

SOUNDS VERY THRILLING JESUS CHRIST I’M SO THRILLED. What’s going on with Lex Luthor? He’s floating outside the ruined office of the Daily Planet building. Sneering. Man, is he ever sneering. If sneers could kill, this sneer would level Hiroshima. “You’re the ones who sent me to the electric chair! Me, the future savior of the Earth. And the Daily Planet thought I’d be better off dead? So why don’t we let the planet decide who lives, who dies in these next harrowing few minutes.

*sneer*

Do I have something in my teeth?

Perry White, full of piss and vinegar and gumption, points his fatass finger at Luthor and tells him that the truth, with a capital-fucking-T, sent him to the chair! And Lex Luthor doesn’t like this pushback one bit. His eyes and teeth start glowing. He argues that the truth isn’t tangible and therefore doesn’t exist, which is not a very smart argument.

Luthor detects the unmistakable frequencies of a Superman-hailing ultrasonic watch. Turn it off now, Jimmy Olsen. He’s not going to come rescue nobody! As for you, Lois, Lex Luthor wants a personal blowjob assistant. Do you think that Jimmy is available? *wink*

Kal-El doesn’t believe he’s dead. It makes as much sense as a bucket of scorpions in a brothel! If Kal-El is dead, then Superman is dead, and that just sucks for the “great people” of Earth. Jor-El says that his work as Superman is done anyway. “You’ve given them an ideal to aspire to. Embodied their highest aspirations. They will race, and stumble, and fall, and crawl… and curse… and finally… they will join you in the sun, Kal-El.”

Sounds very optimistic! Here’s some more optimism: “All that is impure will be burned to ash. And all that is strong and great and true will survive… and be reborn.”

Back in the Daily Planet — and I keep forgetting this guy’s name, but he’s trying to perform CPR on a passed-out Clark Kent. Lex tells him to stop wasting his time on Clark “Pussy Repellant” Kent. Lois and Jimmy point out to Luthor that – this is not something we the audience can see at all – the sun is now blue and the Tyrant Sun double-crossed him and poisoned the sun which is now blue, apparently. Lois calls Lex an idiot, which hurts his poor feelings. He blows out a gale of air that sends Lois flying backwards. All the while, the definition drawn into Perry White’s butt is something to behold.

Winners in fights always go “NGGH!”.

Luthor flips Jimmy onto his back and challenges anyone else to stand up to his supreme brain jenius powerful self. Clark Kent regains consciousness and is like “umm, yes, uh, sir, I’d like to stand up to you… heh heh, uh… please.”

“I… ah… think maybe you should stop threatening my friends. And everyone else for that matter. Don’t you think you’re maybe just a little too unstable for the kind of power you’re packing?”

Lex takes this courage for an attempt to impress the lady. Clark Kent is holding a gravity gun for some reason and shoots it at Lex, sending him flying into a billboard. I think we, the reading audience, are supposed to cheer. I’m groaning, let me tell you.

Chalk this one up to Superman “disguised” as Clark Kent! Hahaha, what a twist! Jimmy hands him a Superman costume “because they always keep a spare”, and Superman suits up. “LEAVE LUTHOR TO ME,” he booms. Then there’s fighting on the street that lasts for a while. Not particularly interesting stuff. I’m a-gonna skip it.

You call that impressive? I suspected Luthor’s involvement since the plasmatic plutonium sensor ray transmogrified interdimensional nanorelics into carbo-nucleic razzamatazz Gorbo Pods! Dummy.

The gravity gun, you see, causes Lex Luthor to work over 50 times harder just to stay floating in the air. Eventually, his efforts are fruitless and he crashes down into the concrete, through the concrete, then through a fucking subway train. I’m guessing a thousand people die, but we don’t get to hear about that! We just see Luthor punch Superman in the face.

Superman, writhing on the floor like a constipated cactus, gets dragged by the cape by Lex Luthor and his Jumbo Powers to the subway station. “Stand aside!” Luthor says to the people of Earth. “Don’t be alarmed! This is only the phase transition to a new way of life without Superman!”

The SWAT team, guns trained, are not standing aside. And they are alarmed.

“Lay down your weapons, surrender and everything will be fine. Everything’s going to be fine now that Luthor has the mandate.” And get the president on the horn! Time to overthrow the government January 6th-style! And furthermore, h– oh no!

The Daily Planet posse has shown up, strutting through the subway station like their shit doesn’t stink and/or plop down their legs on a daily basis. They are led by that one woman who showed up in a positron cannon. She’s all like “This is Science Year Zero! And we’re putting these traitors on trial!”

Well, you can tell by the way that I use my walk I’m a woman’s man. No time to talk.

Superman sucks and doesn’t make sense. Batman at least makes sense. Batman fucks. Alfred fucks harder.

This woman and Lex exchange pleasantries. She says he looks weird. He says she looks weird. Oh wait, is this his niece or something? Nasthalthia? She calls him “Lexie” and that’s my only clue.

Lex starts talking about how he can taste color and see gravitational forces and other mushroom-addled nonsense. He even tears up, it’s so beautiful! “This is how he sees all the time, every day,” he sobs. Is this issue over yet?

“Uncle Lex! You’re literally embarrassing me beyond all therapy with this behavior!” Nathalthaithaia gripes. Superman mansplains Lex’s thought process, It amounts to the following: his powers ran out. It’s just like that 24-hour power piss!

Superman socks Lex in the face. Lex recoils bloodily. “No! No! You’re supposed to be dead! I had it timed!” Oh wah wah wah waaahhh. Lex reaches into his inner coat pocket to pull out another vial of piss, but Superman has it in his hand.

“I COULD HAVE SAVED THE WORLD IF IT WASN’T FOR YOU!” Lex cries.

Superman punches him in the face again.

This is a bald hate crime!

“You could have saved the world years ago if it mattered to you, Luthor,” he says to the unconscious sack of shit on the floor. Lois runs up to her stinky Super Boyfriend, who’s pocked with white spots, by the way. See, he’s falling apart now and he only has moments to convert the blue sun (which we still haven’t seen) to a nice, yellow sun before he dies.

I predict the blue fucking sun will cure him.

Lois and Superman tongue-wrestle in front of everyone. She has tears streaming down her face. He looks like lukewarm garbage. They profess their love for one another, and Superman fucks off into the sky.

Aha, the sun actually is blue! They weren’t just making that shit up. Superman plunges right into the thing at 2.99×10⁸ meters per second, turning it yellow somehow. Plot hole again. So many plot holes. It’s like the swiss cheese of comic book series.

We’re on another day, one year later. Lois Lane sits on a park bench, staring at a Superman statue. Jimmy Olsen cozies up next to her in his jetpack (?) and asks her if she’ll be speaking at Superman’s memorial service. Lois insists that Superman ain’t dead. He’s just sleeping! And he’ll know where to find Lois once he’s done building an artificial heart for the sun to keep it alive (?).

EPILOGUE TIME! Mr. Quintum is in his weird moon lab talking about how happy Lex must be, even in death row, to live in a world without Superman! I can hear him laughing from here! HA HA HA HA!

“But what if Superman never returns?” asks Quintum’s assistant. “What then, Mister Quintum?”

“I wouldn’t worry too much about that day, Agatha.”

He looks at a doorway emblazoned with a Superman shield that says “2” instead of an “S”.

“P.R.O.J.E.C.T 2” is my guess.

Whatever.

Final Thoughts

Final thoughts? You want my final thoughts? I think Superman sucks. I think all his bullshit little holier-than-thou morals suck. I think all his villains suck. I think Lois Lane sucks. And I think Metropolis and its entire population sucks.

I’m done with Superman for a while. If anyone is reading this shit, recommend me something worthwhile, goddamnit. Something comparable to Superman: Birthright, which actually was pretty good because it wasn’t up its own ass! ASS! That’s right, ASS!

Bleh.