Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Superman (Vol. 4), Issue #4 – “Son of Superman (Part 4)”! In the previous installment, the Kent family flies Jon to the Fortress of Solitude to give him a checkup, only to find THE ERADICATOR squatting on the premises! And, guess what? The Eradicator wants to eradicate the half of Jon that is human!

He’s going to cut him in half like the whole King Solomon thing, right? Right down the middle lengthwise.

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

“STAND DOWN, KAL-EL. WE ARE THE GUARDIAN OF THE KRYPTONIAN RACE. THE RACE YOU WILL RESTART AND LEAD TO FORM A NEW KRYPTON.”

So that was the Eradicator implying that Superman has to find a nice Kryptonian lady to fuck in order to repopulate a dead, exploded planet. The logic here is astoundingly good! Superman claims that this Eradicator cat is malfunctioning. Malfunctioning like a fox!

While the Eradicator hoots and hollers about Jon Kent being “impure”, Lois takes him to safety. And by “safety” I mean she falls down some stairs while Jon runs toward her. He feels all sad and guilty that he’s the reason all this is happening. Superman continues punching this Eradicator guy.

“After Goldie, I promised I wouldn’t kill again, but right now–” Jon grimaces with heat in his eyes.

“Jon, don’t listen to it – listen to me,” Lois implores. “You have the best of both worlds inside you. You can be great… choose to be.”

Jon twists his mouth into a face of DETERMINATION. He zips up his cute little Superman jacket and starts running back upstairs to the fray. This isn’t what Lois had in mind, but we’re here now, aren’t we? Might as well.

Both at once, and with a FRAKOOOOOM, Superman and Jon punch the Eradicator in the face, separating head from neck! Boo-yeah! “Did we do that?!” Jon cries, looking like someone shat in his grandmother’s mouth and then stabbed her with a scimitar. Then the Eradicator erupts like a volcano; fiery ghostly apparitions flow out of his neck stump.

“NOOOOO! WE ARE KRYPTON! AND WE ARE GONE!”

That’s not all that’s inside me right now, big boy.

Eradicator loudly laments the freeing of all these captured souls. Now their legacy is no longer preserved! Eek! Ope!

Then there’s an even GIANTER explosion. And maybe they all died! But we’ll see later. Right now, we’re back in Metropolis where a burly man is arm wrestling another burly man in a bar. This one is for all the marbles! Burly Man #1 makes fun of Dead Superman, so Burly Man #2 wins instantly and tells him to stop bad-mouthin’ “the world’s greatest sooper-hero” in his bar.

Burly Bar Owner wins a moon rock, which Burly Man #1 got from an astronaut. Suddenly, the moon rock starts floating in the air and the bar starts shaking like an earthquake.

I barely know what happens next and I read the damn thing. The moon rock explodes (I think) into a torrent of fiery souls (it looks like) and Superman and Jon Kent appear collapsed and half-conscious on the pool table (that one is for certain). The barman calls him “Sooperman”. Lois is there too, but she’s fully conscious. “SOMETHING’S WRONG – THEY’RE IN PAIN!” she yells, not wondering where the hell they are or how they got there, apparently.

Ah, it turns out the moon rock didn’t explode, so that was something else I guess. The moon rock still hovers while trillions of souls start orbiting it like tiny, little, buzzy electrons. Lois recognizes this buzzy orbiting! There must be some dang Kryptonite in that rock! She has to get rid of it before Superman dies of Kryptonite laryngitis!

Meanwhile, patrons are becoming possessed by the spirits of the long lost Kryptonians. A real bruhaha breaks out, I tell you whut.

Fuckin’ Supes. That guy tips well, good ol’ Supes.

So, the moon rock (a piece of the planet Krypton) starts getting sucked up into a vortex, but Lois wants to hang onto it before it gets sucked up into the vortex. Just as Superman’s soul starts leaving his eyes and mouth, the barman grabs the rock and hurls it out through his own glass window. “FOR SUPES!” he hollers like an idiot.

Spirits go flying every which-way. Superman is still caught up in… whatever it is that he’s caught up in… and starts having visions of talking to his father on the farm.

“…you’re always right where someone needs to be,” says Pa.

“Can you… come with me?” asks Clark.

“Can’t do that, son, you’ve got your own family to look after now.” Pa smiles his cheesy boy-howdy aw-shucks Kansas farmer smile. “It’s the duty of the living to carry on the name of those of us who can’t so we can rest easy… so that you can be free.”

Superman gets up and starts walking with his family. Lois is like “what the fuck is going on?” Superman can hear the voices from the spirits, and they’re happy to be free. Free for the first time since the Eradicator sucked them all up through a straw.

Jon notices that the Eradicator is not dead. Far from it. He looms outside the bar now in his Final Form. “FREEDOM IS ONLY WITHIN,” he says. Superman is not happy that this jobber is back.

And he starts sucking up souls again.

Lousy mudbloods.

And then he goes after Jon’s tender little soul. “STAY AWAY FROM ME!” he bellows. In 10 cycles, the Eradictor will have fully rebooted and Jon’s soul is all slurped up like spaghetti. Jon wants to fight, but Superman tells him to get the hell out of here as fast as your stumpy little legs can carry you.

Eradicator gets to 9 cycles when Superman and his family book it, and at 8 cycles when the barman looks on in disappointment and disgust that Superman just ran away from the Bad Guy.

“A WORLD AWAITS, KAL-EL! THE HOUSE OF YOUR FATHER… AND YOUR MOTHER. WHY RUN FROM YOUR BIRTHRIGHT… WHEN YOU CAN WALK DOWN YOUR ANCESTRAL HALLS ONCE AGAIN? THE BOY STANDS IN THE WAY OF OUR FUTURE.”

Jon tries his fiery eyeball rays. We’re down to 5 cycles. Eradicator chases Superman and his family down like a hawk in heat. Lois points out the very obvious fact that Superman can’t outrun this guy. He’ll have to face him.

Superman listens to the spirits again, because THEY’LL be helpful. Pffft.

Actually, they are I guess. They voluntarily get sucked up by the Eradicator, and then the Eradicator blows up again for some reason.

Right outside the bar, I guess, there’s a dock with a submarine. Superman shoves Jon and Lois into it, I suppose. Then he flies it to the moon, it seems. It’s really dumb.

“The Man of Steel’s got a plan,” says the barman. He’s wrong.

Final Thoughts

How dumb is this shit? What’s Superman’s plan? Leave his family on the moon and away from the Eradicator’s hands. What’s he going to do? Feed them astronaut ice cream for the rest of their lives? Are they going to decorate the interior of their submarine? Nice plan, fuckface. God, I’m so mad.