Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Superman: Birthright, Issue #12 – “The Hero Emerges”! This is it, this is the end of the 12-part limited series! Say your goodbyes, get your yearbooks signed, don’t forget to swap phone numbers to stay in touch! In the previous installment, Luthor has hired an army of goons masquerading as Kryptonian invaders to make a mockery of Superman (and level Metropolis just a little bit too, while they’re at it, for fun). Superman spends a good portion of the issue fighting back kryptonite sickness just to keep these smelly teamsters at bay.

Meanwhile, Lois Lane is tipped off about the kryptonite meteorite in Lex Luthor’s lab. She endeavors to sneak in there to attempt to shut off the magic green sickness machine and steal the rock under Luthor’s nose.

She almost succeeded. But Luthor noticed.

And now “the hero emerges”, as it seems. In this iconic twelfth and final issue, does Superman take a giant Superdump on Lex Luthor’s face and then strangle him with a garbage bag? Or maybe a real hero finally shows up, like Wonder Woman? Hey, she’s got comics! Maybe I should read some Wonder Woman comics.

Superman: Birthright, Issue #12 [September, 2004]
Written by: Mark Waid
“The Hero Emerges”

Superman lies on the cracked ground between the Metropolis Mofos and the Kryptonian Kunts. With the blue and red pajama man currently incapacitated, Jimmy takes the TOUGH GUY helm with his INTIMIDATINGLY CRAGGY-FACED PRESENCE. “You guys weren’t half the threat you pretended to be. We did a lot of this ourselves. But we’re not afraid anymore. Get him.”

lol “get him”. OK, Jim.

“Don’t bother,” fuzzy-chested Superman says, bouncing up onto his feet and punching this Van-Gar guy in the ol’ kisser.

This Van-Gar might be a twerpy douche, but this giant laser-shooting tank is not. That can still really kill people!

“Jimmy? Relax,” hairy-breasted Superman says, grabbing the tank by its tread and lifting the thing above his head like it was a soccer ball.

Looks like Superman’s got this covered! No more kryptonite poisoning; perhaps he’s going to stop being a baby? Works splendidly for me! I can check in with Lois Lane now.

Oh geez, she’s screwed!

“I know you accidentally burned off all your hair in a fire, because I just received my copy of Superman: Birthright, Issue #8 in the mail yesterday!”

Lois Lane knows a lot, sir, and now the rest of the city will know what she knows too because the pen is mightier than the sword! You’re not going to decapitate this journalist! Not today!

So she starts talking. He already grabbed the kryptonite from her hand, but she’s talking anyway. A lot of talking. She knows these photographs are real, but from thousands of years ago, as indicated by the differences in modern starcharts! She also knows that, by removing the kryptonite from his power grid, this whole “invasion” is smoke and mirrors and lies and deceit and acting and scheming! What else? Oh yeah, and now Superman is beating up the bad guys as they speak! She knows that too. She knows it all the way deep into her fallopian tubes.

Pfft, whatever, sister. The Lexcorp Army is 100% real, vicious, and feral, and they’ll make short work of Superman and all those dumbshit citizens of Metropolis out there. Jimmy Olsen? Do you think he’s any match for a round of military bullets to the fucking face? Puh-lease.

A big boom reverberates through the building. One of the Lexcorp Army drones radios Lex Luthor to whine about a problem, which Luthor doesn’t want to hear one word about.

Oh, you’re going to say words anyway? *huff* Fine. They can’t leave the building! Someone threw a very large laser-shooting tank in front of the door.

Luthor tells them to find a way out anyway! Meanwhile, Lois is hitting everything she sees in the lab with a wrench, which is some good stuff right there.

Van-Gar doesn’t look very intimidating anymore. “Looks like your boss has cut you loose,” observes Superman while feeding him a mouthful of fist and chips! Right to the teeth.

No way. Lex Luthor is loyal, he would never leave Van-Gar out to dry like this!

“You don’t know him like I do. For instance, did you know that he burned all of his hair off in a fire? Check out Superman: Birthright, Issue #8!”

Superman punches Van-Gar’s lights out, cracks his face mask wide open, and reveals a normal-looking dude. Just some unconscious loser with long eyelashes.

Jimmy tells Superman that it’s cool that he’s feeling better even he does freak him the fuck out. He hands Superman his missing ‘S’ patch, which gets seamlessly sewn back on with laser eyeballs.

“Superman’s own people will tell me how to stop him,” Luthor triumphantly decrees while smacking Lois Lane to the floor! He can just set up one of his time travel Zoom meetings and ask “how do I kill you guys?” to whichever decadently dressed dork he comes across first.

“Using a wormhole to scan Krypton’s past was always only the first step,” says Luthor, doing a lot of talking of his very own, “The true goal was to transmit as well as receive. To establish a dialogue.”

Why, so he can try to get a mail-order Kryptonian bride? Whisk her away from the past and into his waiting arms?

Luthor found out another cool thing you can do with kryptonite. You can make a bomb out of it! You just need a little kryptonite, gasoline, and styrofoam. And honey. And bull semen, certainly. Anyway, he’s got himself a little troop of suicide bombers. Why? Who knows! And who cares! But he’s gonna press this button here: *boop*. Now these bombs are going to go off on a timer. Also, shut up Lois. Out the window with you!

I’m beginning to think that Lois Lane is the most gravity-prone human being on Earth.

Lex Luthor gets bored of Lois Lane’s nonsense and shoves her out of the skyscraper. While his kamikaze mannequins are blowing up the city, Superman will be too busy dealing with that to deal with her! Plus, she’ll probably hit the ground in roughly fourteen seconds. Do you think Superman can catch a falling woman within fourteen seconds? That’s a short amount of time! 1…2…3… and so on. Goes by quick.

One of Luthor’s Army explodes on the street. Everyone’s freaking out, man. That’s some crazy shit. Fake Van-Gar starts glowing green and panics. “Nooooo! It’s trying to detonate! Get it off me get it OFF– I DON’T WANT TO DIE!” he screams like a little baby. A little dying baby.

Superman scoops this miserable sack up and tells him to quit his whining. His kryptonite bomb is beeping like crazy. Lois Lane still falls.

Superman rips the bomb off of Fake Van-Gar’s chest and, presumably, launches it safely away somewhere else in the sky. It might have killed a bird or a blimp or another superhero, maybe, but we’ll never know. The explosion is too big to see what, if anything, died. But I’m sure something died!

Lois’ head is less than five inches from the ground before he catches her. “Hi,” he smiles while she has a fucking heart attack. There’s a full-page spread of Superman holding her safely. His erection is so intense you can see it vibrating right in your face on the paper.

This bald dumbass probably thinks everything’s going to plan. He probably thinks Lois died and all his suicide bombers died and Superman is dead. He’s trying to contact Krypton through his portal again. He’s probably going to explode fire in his own face again just like in Superman: Birthright, Issue #8! I’m not sure if I mentioned that yet.

Does anyone out there know how I can flip this PDF? PLEASE?!

“Come in! COME IN! This is Lex Luthor from the Planet Earth! My world is in dire peril!” Luthor yells into the swirling green void. He gets a lot of broken-up responses from disembodied voices, nothing in any real context, but Luthor keeps desperately yelling and asking for someone to talk to him.

Superman stands a few feet behind Lex, looking at him with pity. He remembers what he said before, what he told his parents back in Kansas about teenage Lex. The teenage Lex who holed himself up in the science lab, or tried to give the mayor his ideas for making Smallville a better place.

“I think he just wants someone to talk to.”

Good for Lex. I’m not entirely sure why he would want this. A guy like Lex Luthor should be smart enough to not need anyone to talk to.

Lex Luthor needs weapons! And ammo! And some Baked Lays! There’s a shortage of Baked Lays! Please help!

Superman grabs this douche by the scruff and drags him away. “Luthor, stop grasping at straws! It’s over!”

And Lex turns his head, looking like he just aged six thousand years in the last couple of minutes. He tries to punch and get away from Superman while the disembodied Kryptonian voices phase in and out, wondering if the whiny bald voice that they’re hearing on their end is even fucking real. Lex Luthor is like “it is TOO real, I’m real! WHY DO YOU THINK I’M NOT REAL? Is it my stupid bald face??”

Superman is, surprisingly, struggling to keep Luthor at bay. He huffs and puffs and tells him he lost and to give it up and pull the plug on your portal doohickey. “You lost! Ask Lois! Ask Van-Gar! Ask everyone who reads tomorrow’s news who started this nightmare, and who stopped it!”

Conveniently enough, it’s at this point the the portal is showing visions of Jor-El and Lara making arrangements to catapult their baby into space. The Last Son of Krypton and all that. Superman watches and grasps at the screen dramatically, all like “Mumsy?! Poppy?! Father?! Mommy?! Wah! Hello?! Wah!”

In the matter of seventeen seconds, he learns that he’s Kal-El from Krypton. Oh boy, how cool is that shit? The planet is gone and you’ve been Clark Kent for 25 years. Who cares?

Nice to meet you. My name is Bleep Blorp of Bloopton.

Oh, I see now. Lex Luthor is in an even match right now because he fisting a shard of kryptonite. “Last of your race. Which makes this genocide,” Lex says, punching Superman with a handful of scary, glowing, green rock, “I’m doing you a favor, Superman. It’s agony being alone in this world.”

Superman punches this doofus right back! Fist to the face style, the old-fashioned way! “You weren’t always, Lex. You made your choice. And so have I.”

Jor-El and Lara keep talking about their decision to launch their baby into almost-the-sun, wondering if they’re making the right choice, and Superman flails at the portal trying to get his parents to hear him. It doesn’t work. He doesn’t get through. Then the portal disappears. lmao

“The multinational conglomerate mogul was ‘visibly pooping his pants’, per many eyewitness accounts on the scene.”

The next day, the Daily Planet’s front page feature, written by strapping young go-getters Lois Lane and Clark Kent, exposes Lex Luthor for his attempts to terrorize the city through means a fake alien invasion. Nice try, punk! Oldest trick in the book!

It’s nice to see that the official Daily Planet website looks even shittier than my dumpheap of a blog. That’s 2004 for you.

Perry White buddies up with his two favorite reporters! Lois Lane is already salty. Luthor’s doctors are already blaming his actions on something akin to “insanity by radiation poisoning”, so this bastard is going to beat the charges. That doesn’t kill White’s buzz one bit. Until that happens, good work! Maybe you can try again next time!

Clark Kent laid the finishing blow! A confession out of Van-Gar, or should he say, John Hargerfort! I knew it all along!

“Thanks for talking me up,” Clark says to Lois after White goes back to his office for a couple shots of whiskey and a nice pud tug, “probably why I still have a job.”
“No. You still have a job because I cadged your crybaby resignation letter before Perry found it,” replies Lois, waving the sheet of paper in Clark’s face.

Well there you go. Looks like this nerd is here to stay. Clark tries to ask her out, but she calls him a crybaby again and tells him to go screw.

“Would it help if I were able to leap tall buildings in a single bound,” Clark asks her with the shittiest of shit-eating grins. And Lois flounders like a real fish about this. A real floppy fish. “I– that’s– n-no! What are you implying? That I have some sort of lame crush on Superman?”

“What are your sources? Did he say something?” she asks him, perking up, getting moist in the loins.
“What, to me?” replies Clark, coy as the dickens, “Come on, you ever see us together?”
“So noted.”

Clark tells Lois to be careful. People still don’t trust that Superfellow. Lois thinks the public will come around. Only a matter of time.

We end back at Krypton, where Superman’s message to his parents actually made it through. Jor-El and Lara watch the screen.

“Mother… Father… …I made it.”

Then, to celebrate the success of their mission and the continued life of their baby, they kiss and fuck.

Final Thoughts

All right, Mark Waid, you certainly redeemed yourself here. After your war crime that was the first seven issues of Captain America from the late nineties, this limited-run Superman origin story has won me over on both YOU, you fat nerd, and Superman in general. As a character. As a man. Etc.

So what does this mean for me? More Superman? Sure, perhaps I’ll stick to this early-’00s era! That way I can possibly see Clark Kent try to unsuccessfully uninstall Bonzi Buddy on some Gateway computer with Windows ME before watching episodes of Becker.

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Superman: Birthright, Issue #11 – “Kneel Before…”! In the previous installment, a giant robot bug, claiming to be an invader from Krypton, starts terrorizing Metropolis. Lex Luthor spreads kryptonite radiation all over the city, preventing Superman from doing a damn thing about it! This makes him sad enough to quit his job over it.

But then some huge cocksucker named Van-Gar, who claims to be an invader from Krypton visiting in order to take over Metropolis and then Earth, starts broadcasting to the public that he is visiting in order to take over Metropolis. And then Earth.

So Clark Kent doesn’t quit his job over this. He becomes Superman and we’re going to see him try to fight something else unsuccessfully!

Superman: Birthright, Issue #11 [August, 2004]
Written by: Mark Waid
“Kneel Before…”

On the cover, they had to make sure Superman’s head was significantly enough below this dude’s crotch so that they wouldn’t get dinged by the Comics Code Authority. Leinil Francis Yu had to redraw it 46 times.

There’s a bunch of these Silver Surfer-looking mofos wearing Superman costumes terrorizing downtown Metropolis. They speak in their strange diamond alien language and they blast holes into buildings with laser arm cannons. One of them might be a water tower? It’s more like a water silo. They crack the sucker open and the streets start getting flooded.

One of them corners a damsel, and she looks quite distressed about it! The real Superman pops in at the last moment to save the fucking day. A regular white knight.

“You’re safe now, miss,” Superman says before safety is completely ensured. He’s just standing there talking before he acts; a bold move when every second counts.

“You, on the other hand–” Superman continues, referring to one of the Silver Surfer Supermen, taking his sweet time with respect to, you know, actually saving somebody from dying, “–you disgust me.”

Then the assailant, the guy who disgusts Superman, he gets shot in the chest with laser eyeballs. He’s down for the count. A good effort, sure, but that took way too long and there’s a hundred more! So way to go, good job.

Once again, I’m compelled to point out the top-notch artistry on Superman’s stupid monkey face.

Superman sees more descending from the sky. Kind of. He’s still all fucked-up and clouded from the kryptonite radiation, all scrambling his circuits and screwing up his internal compass and giving him heartburn and indigestion and very strong pedophiliac urges. He flies away and leaves the woman screaming for him to come back. All like “Superman, where are you going? Don’t leave me! SUPERMAN!” lol

High atop the Daily Planet building, Lois Lane is watching all the action through her binoculars. She thinks out loud about the sheer coincidence of these bastards showing up out of nowhere, with no warning, in ships that completely escaped detection, and suddenly news reports are flooding in about alien sightings that never happened and property damage that doesn’t actually exist. It stinks. Stinks bad. Stinks real bad. Smells like one of Lex Luthor’s big, ugly dumps.

Lois is all like “Superman, if you can hear me, please show up and let me help.”

Superman flumps onto the roof, looking wretched as hell. Real shameful shit. “Okay,” he grunts. Lois looks at him with a face that screams “ew”.

But then she leaps toward him and starts…feeling his chest for a bit. Superman stands there arms akimbo like “yeah, baby”. “My god,” Lois sobs, “what did they do to you?”

As I’ve hypothesized before, Superman probably wears boner-proof underwear so strong that it causes his boner to invert upon itself. That’s what’s happening right now as we speak. He huffs and puffs, pretending to be deeply affected by kryptonite radiation, but you and I both know that it’s because his inverted boner is tearing up his insides at the moment.

“This ‘invasion’ is mostly a hoax,” Superman pants, “It’s designed to create a fear and panic that Luthor can ‘save’ us from– and ‘prove’ that I’m never to be trusted.” I can’t help but imagine him doing air quotes with each applicable word like Dr. Evil.

Lois is like, what the SHIT are you talking about? I just saw you fight some real soldiers with mine own two eyes!

Subpar-man is like, nah bitch, these are men in crafty disguises masquerading as MERCENARIES pushing FALSE IMPERIALIST KRYPTONIAN AGENDA, employed and bribed by Lex Luthor TO FUND HIS SEX TRAFFICKING OPERATION. That’s about 10%. The other 90% is “an illusion cast by an energy web Luthor’s thrown over the city.” He using holograms and blanketing this city with sickly, green, magic hallucination gnomes.

Sounds plausible!

Lois is a few steps ahead, yo. She already figured out some of this junk, smartypants. ALSO, she knows Superman is being poisoned by something and she wants to know what it is. “It’s too dangerous a secret, Lois” Superman whines when asked, “I can’t– I shouldn’t–”

Welp, there goes yet another pair of those alleged “boner-proof” underpants.

But Lois knows how to melt that ol’ butter, amirite? After a little awww shucks from the cornfed Kryptonian Kansan, Superman starts opening up about the dangers of kryptonite and how it’s harmless to humans but dangerous to superhumans such as himself! “That’s what’s powering this entire operation. A chunk of rock no bigger than a football– and I can’t get within a city block of it.”

Lois is intrigued. A football-sized rock, eh? Sounds pretty…stealable, if you catch my drift. She opens her purse, revealing a nicely arrayed set of lockpicking tools. The kind she uses for breaking and entering to get real scoops. Let’s check the old newspapers. What year is this again? 2004? Ah, here was a juicy story! *ahem* Lockpicking tools she, for example, uses to catch Jude Law fucking his children’s nanny!

She asks where this rock is. “In his lab on the top floor,” Superman grins devilishly, “there’s a private elevator through an unmarked door off the north alley. It’s open.”

Nope! Never mind! Sounds too complicated to me! Can’t I just grab any rock I find off the ground instead? Come on, now.

Well, at any rate, Lois has to skedaddle ASAP. The vague sounds of diamondy language are heard by Superman from over yonder. She takes her leave. Superman grunts and groans and forces himself to do more Superman stuff now.

A group of these so-called hired thugs and mercenaries are terrorizing a crowd. One of them lifts up a baby and threatens to eat it, or something. Before they do that, though, they open fire on the crowd with some real-ass bullets.

Superman lumbers in, hoisting his heft, to barely save the day again by blocking the rounds. Problem is, this time it looks like he isn’t entirely impervious to the bullets. He’s weaving and heaving, smoldering and moldering!

Hey, who farted?! Heh heh!

“People, listen to me,” Superman wheezes, eyes all bloodshot and droopy, looking a lot like everyone’s boozy Uncle Jack at Thanksgiving before he says something incredibly racist and takes a dump on the carpet, “you’re being lied to. Tell them the truth, ‘Van-Gar’–or whatever your name is! Your men are actors working for Luthor!”

And Van-Gar, lookin’ sheepish, is all “I dunno what you’re talking about, weirdo.”

Superman starts trundling toward him in a manner that suggests he, and the rest of Metropolis, are going to try taking him on? Yeah, that’ll work great.

“I don’t know what’s brought on this sudden bout of of insubordination, soldier–” Van-Gar bellows while holding Superman in place with just one arm, “but why don’t you ask these delicate little sparrows you say will ‘fight’ us?”

Van-Gar motions toward the sorry looking lot that is the civilian people. Just a bunch of shaggy, overweight men and empty-headed children. And women with underbites.

“How ‘empty’ does this threat look?” Van-Gar asks as a very large alien tank rolls in, then he gets right up close to Superman’s tender ear and whispers these sweet nothings: “My men aren’t doing this for the money. We’re backing Luthor because he’s right. You’re the fraud, and we’re on to you.”

Van-Gar tears the spandex right off of Superman’s oily, hairy chest and throws his ass to the ground, son.

“It’s only a matter of time before you turn on anyone weaker than you. That’s how it works.”

Well, that part really burns his biscuits crispy-like. Fuck you for ever suggesting that Superman would pick on someone weaker than him! Get over here right now, weakling!

I don’t want any crying kids in my new world order!

Nope, the tank starts revving up and blasting through the crowd. The weakened kryptonite-smeared Superman tries to carry people out of the way quickly. Jimmy the Ginger-Faced Photographer pushes his way up to the action for some photographs and notices the tank blast gun pointed right at a crying kid. He screams for Superman’s attention. He gets the kid out of the way and blocks the blast with a giant ‘S’ shield he tore off the vehicle.

Jimmy calls Perry White to let him know he has another humdinger of a photo. Jimmy’s making a “look how important I am” face while doing it, too. Like “Rrrrrr, I’m gonna win a Pulitzer!”

And indeed, the photo gets uploaded and spread all over Internet Land. I’m not gonna post the photo here! You’re gonna have to pick up SUPERMAN: BIRTHRIGHT! ISSUE #11! at your local 7-Eleven.

Lex is angry that the photo exists. “DAMN IT!” he yells, not very Christianly.

“Lexcorp’s Earth-First Security Force is fully armed, ready and eager to engage the invaders, sir,” radios in a decked-to-the-nines military man general! And his military crew. Whatsitcalled. Army. And, oh yeah, Lex is ready all right. He’s been edging himself in his chair waiting for it. But instructs the army general to hold fast in order to give Commander Van-Gar McDougle another minute for the opportunity to “break Superman’s spine”.

Van-Gar puts a little more pepper in his punches. The crowd gathers to watch Superman get his ass handed to him EVEN THOUGH he’s yelling at them all to stay back.

Is it because his voice sounds like this?: “Ehehheehheehe heehEHE deee deee deee dddeeeeeeeEEE”

Nobody listens to Superman because he’s predictable. That’s what Van-Gar says, at least. I don’t think that really answers the correct question.

But, all the same, Van-Gar blasts him a few more times.

“I’ve been waiting all day to say this, Superman: Your ‘S’ is mine,” Van-Gar cracks.

GRRROOAAN. Fucking groan, dude. Fuck off, Mark Waid. To anyone reading this, don’t forget to Google a picture of him and snicker at it. His short-sleeved plaid button-down shirts look like they reek of Hormel chili and inhaler medicine.

“Back off,” sneers Jimmy, surrounded by a throng of other sneering Metropolis citizens, “He’s with us.” Ooooh, how very intimidating. A bunch of dorks with makeshift club weapons. There’s even an old woman with saggy titties holding a spoon.

Lex Luthor is preparing the army general to advance. Lois Lane has finally made her way, in a clandestine fashion, into Luthor’s quarters…

“You’d think Luthor would have the courtesy to label his death machines,” she whispers to herself as she peruses the lab.

Eventually, she finds the pointy green shard of scary glowing rock.

“If you can hear me, I’ve got it. We’ve won,” Lois whispers.

Yeah, look out behind you, there’s a grinning bald doofus that’s about to roofie your shit.

Final Thoughts

THE THRILLING CONCLUSION IS NEXT! Who knew a 12-part limited series would have this many parts?!