Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Superman (Vol. 4), Issue #2 – “Son of Superman (Part 2)”! In the previous installment, we meet little Jon Kent, son of the new Superman who is also conveniently named Clark. He conveniently has a wife named Lois, and they live on a modest farm. Clark farms, Lois writes, and Jon burns the family cat in front of the new neighbor girl.

At the end of the issue, Superman meets up with Wonder Woman and Batman to discuss his little boy. Superman stomps his way up to Jon’s room, strikes a menacing pose, and tells Jon that he’ll be coming with him.

Probably to kill him. Or torture him. Or feed him chili until he explodes. That’s the most delicious form of torture.

Superman (Vol. 4), Issue #2 [September, 2016]
Written by: Peter Tomasi
“Son of Superman (Part 2)”

Superman is flying his son across an arctic wasteland at 9,000 mph, effectively reaching windchill of 0.3 Kelvin. “You’re shaking, Jon. Warm enough?”

He is not warm enough. He’s probably dying. Little Jon Kent asks his crazy father if he’s being turned over to the Justice League. Superman tells him that, actually, the Justice League was looking for him. It turns out that the rest aren’t entirely comfortable with a new Superman milling about.

Anyway, their little excursion is unrelated. During the meeting, a distress signal was calling them out from a Coast Guard icebreaker. And he wants Jon’s help even though Jon thinks this is a shit idea. Superman tells his son to man up and watch his dad work. From afar, though. Make yourself scarce.

The crew doesn’t know whether this Superman is here to help or hurt. Once Superman declares that the propeller on the submarine is fixed, the tension loosens up. “Thanks for your assistance,” says one member of the team tersely, all military-style. “It’s good to have… a Superman back.”

“Just doing my job, Captain,” Superman says smugly, shaking his hand. While they exchange pleasantries, a very loud WHAAAAMMM jars the lot of them. Then a FRRROOOSSSH. Then some insanely enormous squid tentacles rock the fuck out of the ship and crew. Jon Kent is worried! “DAD!” he screams!

Superman spends a few EPICALLY-ILLUSTRATED PAGES fighting the beast! The men clamor down into the submarine and intend to book it while Superman punches tentacles. There’s a lot of “urrnngh” and “JON LOOK OUT!” going on. Superman instructs his whelp to use his heat vision, which Jon exclaims that he doesn’t have. Superman tells him to use it anyway, liar.

I dare you to hit me. I DARE you.

“Aim for this crystal contraption,” Superman says, revealing a convenient video game boss fight weakness. “It’s controlling the poor creature.”

Jon blasts his dad with his heat vision instead, lmao. Little Jonny cries because he’s afraid of hurting his dad, but Superman is like “HA HA, son, I’m indestructable and this actually feels like an orgasm!” Then he tells Jon to do it again, and don’t skimp on the temperature! The boy rips off his coat, revealing his own Superman shirt, and eventually focuses his energy on the so-called crystal contraption. It works. With a high-pitched SKREEEE, the beast collapses back in the water.

Now, who would have gone and done such a thing as install this so-called crystal contraption on the giant squid in the first place? Oh well, a mystery for another time, I guess! Jon says he had fun. Superman says “heh.”

“Now, about that shirt.”

“Cool, huh? Found it at the secondhand store in town with Mom. It’s got the ‘S’ on it and everything.”

“I can see that. So wearing the shield… for what… Superboy?” Superman smiles wryly.

Jon says HELL NO, that gig is for suckers! He just wanted to be like his old man is all. Shucks, sir.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. With great power comes great sandwiches. Yada yada yada.

The heart-to-heart continues to the point where Jon gets sheepish and begins to admit to cooking the family cat. Superman knew; the smell of ozone lingered in the air for about seventeen hours. “It was an accident,” Jon whines. “And now Mom’s cat is dead because I didn’t listen. I’d give anything to take back what I did, but I can’t.”

That’s right you can’t, you little psychopath. But you can apologize before mom feeds you your own butt.

“Do you think Mom will be mad?”

“I think she’ll be proud.”

WHATEVER. I’d be fucking mad. No dessert for a year and the Xbox in the garbage.

As they fly home, some weird Superman shield made of lava pulls itself out of the ground jibber-jabbering. “PLASMA DETECTED. HOMO SAPIEN… KRYPTONIAN. SHARED GENOME. EARTHLING. ORIGIN OF GENOME IS FROM THE HOUSE OF EL.” Then it flies off into space and around the world. This is another one of those dumb things that happens in Superman comics and I’m going to hella ignore it for now.

Later, Jon sits up in a tree with his own thoughts until the new neighbor girl, Kathy Branden, shows up. “Hi, Jonathan,” she says with a slightly sad face.

Lois is tending to Clark’s back after it had gotten blasted with 9,000 degree heat. She chides him for bringing their boy along for the ride, but Clark insists that it was a nice teaching moment for him. Still, though, the boy needs to learn how to control his powers before someone, or something, else gets hurt.

I’ll start by taking away all of his tube socks…

Kathy climbs the tree and cozies up next to Jon.

“How come you didn’t say anything about what I did to the cat?”

“I don’t know. Felt like something we should keep between us.”

That’s very kind of her. Keeping the cat homicide to themselves.

Lois tells Clark that his own bumpkin parents didn’t know shit about raising a boy with superpowers. At least Clark has the advantage.

“Are you scared?” Kathy asks.

“Of what?”

“Being able to do that – what you did with your eyes?”

“Sometimes… yeah… I don’t want to hurt anybody.”

“You won’t.”

“How are you so sure?”

“I can tell you’ve got a good heart.”

They’re gonna start fucking on that tree branch, aren’t they?

She touches her hand to his, and he squeezes the branch so hard that it breaks. She’s still on the tree. He falls.

Kathy grabs her grandfather who carries Jon’s lifeless body. After a quick rap on the Kents’ door, the situation becomes quite clear! JON IS DEAD!

…

DEAD TIRED OF FALLING OUT OF TREES!

But seriously, though, your son fell and is critically injured lol. He lost consciousness, probably landed right on his soft melon. The grandfather is named Cobb and he advises the Kents to have “Doc Brooks” look at him (Doc Brooks keeps a lot of lollipops in his underpants). Why, Grandpa Cobb will drive everyone over if’n you’d like.

Get the fuck out of my face, you saggy old overalls-wearing brainiac supervillain!

Cobb and Kathy walk away bewildered. Lois reassures them both that Jon will give them a call once he’s feeling better. Then she whips around to Clark and asks what the hell that was just then. Clark doesn’t answer, but he did his special Star Trek injury assessment scan and determined that Jonny Boy has a slight concussion, nothing more.

“I don’t understand how he could start having these powers but still scrape his knees and hurt his head,” Lois wonders concernedly.

“There’s only one place to get those answers, and that’s… THE FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE.”

Yeah right, Clark. Just another excuse to have some private jerking-off time.

As they speak, the weird lava shield continues flying across the planet, homing in on the Fortress of Masturbation Solitude (roughly three miles within the Arctic Circle, not as far north as Santa Claus). “KRYPTONIAN ENERGY SIGNATURE RECOGNIZED. ACCESS GRANTED.”

The thing enters the Fortress and starts “assimilating”. By that, I mean it latches onto Clark’s glasses and Daily Planet badge (both inexplicably in the Fortress instead of Clark’s house). Then it forms some large lava-faced figure of Superman.

“WE ARE HERE. WE WILL SAVE YOU, TOO, KAL-EL.”

Final Thoughts

Whatever. At least Batman is about real-life crime that makes sense most of the time. Every Superman comic is loaded with weird alien bullshit that seems to be made up on the fly. Lava Supermen? How many Supermen are there going to be?

I want to see Gingerbread Superman. Delicious.