Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Superman: Birthright, Issue #6 – “The Remains of Krypton”! In the previous installment, Clark Kent, as Superman, gets to talk face-to-face with his old buddy Lex Luthor! Now he’s worried that the smartest man in the world will be able to figure out his secret identity (and the fact that even this guy won’t figure it out tells me that Luthor ain’t that smart in the first place). The aftermath of the scary terrorist copter scenario lands Clark a job at the Daily Planet, with Lois Lane showing him the ropes.

Lex Luthor has a large piece of kryptonite stored at one of his facilities in Colorado. He’s gonna fucking stab a dude with it.

Superman: Birthright, Issue #6 [March, 2004]
Written by: Mark Waid
“The Remains of Krypton”

Time to go hunting for some skeleton bones! Helmet-y skulls with snakes coming out! How very Aladdin and the King of Thieves. Magic carpet rides. Genie lamps. Mark Waid’s gonna get avantgarde with the Superman story at this point!

Hardly. We are dropped in the middle of a school shooting, which was still uncommon in 2003 but I think it happens every 20 minutes nowadays? No one was killed yet, of course, since this is DC Comics and no innocent person will ever die. Plus, Superman has already entered the building, really roughing up the perpetrators! Giving them noogies and Hertz donuts.

Windows break from the inside, and all the reporters scream and shout thinking they’re getting rained on by bullets. But it’s just a pile of half-melted guns. Soon, Superman drags these two angry teenage scoundrels out of the building. One has purple hair, that’s how you know he’s bad.

One reporter yells for his attention, but Superman has already left. I hope there’s someone to detain these kids! I like to imagine they scurried back into the school like squirrels as soon as Superman let go of them.

This manly superhero manly man is already at a seedy guns/ammunition store where a bearded, heavily tattooed, Confederate flag-havin’, missing teeth, pants zipper down motherfucker is watching the news broadcast. “The boys said they bought those weapons from you,” says our caped crusader with his SERIOUS FACE on. This gross loser is like “BUH? HUBUB! RUHUBAH!? I don’t know what you’re talking about! BRPABRA! UBRUHEBRUB! SQUAK! WOOF!”, but Superman knows he’s lying. He can hear the hammering of his pulse in his testicles.

I dun know what yer talkin’ ‘bout! I just sell meth here! I swear!

“One minute ago, I saw a little girl screaming because she was staring down the barrel of a gun. She was nine, and she will remember it for the rest of her life.”

Superman punches a display case, grabs a gun, and shoots right at this guy’s face. lmao

This guy fills his underwear with Natural Ice and Hormel Chili diarrhea.

…and it’s revealed that Superman caught the bullet two inches from the guy’s nose.

“Now you will, too.”

And he ties this guy up and hangs him on the wall for the police to find. Another day saved again! DOOT DOO DOOOOOOOO….DOOT DO-DO-DO DOOOOOOOOOOO!!

Later, we see a genuine Clark Kent article about the apprehension of the gun store owner by none other than faster-than-a-speeding-bullet Superman! This guy has to artificially boost his own reputation. Hack.

But then, fellow reporter Peter Hu publishes an article advising the public to be wary of this new child molester who calls himself Superman. He’s only been in the neighborhood for five days. No one knows his real agenda yet.

“SUPERMAN: Hero or vigilante? Where do you stand? Vote!
-Yes. He’s proven himself.
-No, I don’t trust him”

Clark scans this online article, with the above user voting box at the bottom, with doleful discouragement. “Anyone know where Lois is?” he asks the room. The guy in the neighboring cubicle points behind him. “Same place she is every morning at 8:45am.”

Hitting the vending machine with a baseball bat? Snorting coke off the bathroom toilet? Neither, as it turns out! She’s in Perry White’s office bugging the everloving shit out of him, complaining about the sloppy integrity and poor writing of her colleagues while he tries to drown her out with an electric pencil sharpener. She criticizes the photography, the secondary sources, the editing, and he’s sharpening 50 pencils to their nubs, looking like a gunshot through his own brain would be sweet relief.

White’s writing a pros and cons list of whether to keep Lois or fire her.

PRO: best writer… CON: …no boundaries.
PRO: good interviewer… CON: …despite inability to listen.
PRO: 3 Pulitzer nominations… CON: …17 lawsuits.
PRO: won’t take “no” for an answer… CON: …won’t take “no” for an answer.
PRO: no good place to hide her body…

Looks like Lois is gonna stay! Jimmy comes into the office, but White’s on a phone call.

ARE YOU THE ONE POOPING IN THE URINALS??

The call was Lex Luthor’s office. They extended an invitation to Clark Kent for a meet and greet with the Big Bald Bossman himself and he turned down the offer twice? What the fuck, kid?

“Luthor is one of the most important figures in this city, one of the most innovative inventors in the world, he requested to be interviewed – and you didn’t jump at it? Kid, what planet are you from?”

Heh heh. Well, uh…

White instructs Lois to get the fuck out of his office and drag Clark to Lexcorp. Right now.

So they do.

“You can tell Perry I know the ropes by now. I realize you’re sick of ‘babysitting’ me,” Clark grumbles as they pass through the entrance of Lex Luthor’s Big Bald Building. She agrees, but she has also been itching to fight with Lex, so for now she’s still getting involved.

Now it’s Lois’ turn to grumble. She’s still upset that the Peter Hu Superman story suggested, even endorsed, fear. NO ONE knows more about Superman than she does! Not Peter Hu! Not Perry White! Not Clark Kent! Bitter bitter bitter. Like so much tea.

They flash their press passes to the desk secretary as Lois talks about how much she would stake her reputation on the opinion that he’s trustworthy. The secretary calls Superman hot, and Lois almost agrees on autopilot before snapping back to tell the secretary to buzz them in. I think I see Clark’s face getting a little red! So cute, sir!

Wrong, that woman was talking about Luther Vandross and his sweet, sweet voice.

In his office, Lex Luthor is ranting about wanting to trademark a vaccine for AIDS. Not copyright! Trademark, goddamnit. Clark extends his hand to Lex: “Hello, Lex. It’s been a long time since Smallville,” he says, but Lex keeps his arms folded bitch-style. “Mr. Kent, I’m not familiar with ‘Smallville’. If you’re claiming that you and I have met before – that makes the second time you’ve lied about me this week.”

Off to a great start! Is it chilly in here? Seems kind of chilly.

LEX LUTHOR WILL BE ASKING THE QUESTIONS HERE! “I asked you here for two reasons. First, to let you know how displeased I was with your story regarding the helicopter attack on Metropolis. You accused me of being somehow responsible.”

Certainly, in person, Clark Kent ain’t so quick to be confrontational! He backpedals and points out that he merely just made the Lexcorp connection, but Lex bares his teeth. Clark’s “insinuation was quite clear” and “not at all amusing”.

Meh, whatever, journalists be journaling, my man. What are you gonna do about it? *grabs crotch* Huh, buddy?

But it’s not even about blaming Lexcorp! As irresponsible as that may be, the real tragedy here is Clark missing the bigger picture! Lex presses a fancy button and fancy pixels start swirling around the walls. Lex is gonna show them something, grab the popcorn.

The suited-up business smart guy starts laying down some Lexcorp facts: EVERYTHING, from aircraft designs to home improvements, has its foundation in the science of astrobiology. The study of extraterrestrial life. Boeing jets? Space aliens. La-Z-Boys? Aliens. Get the picture? Any questions?

Good. Let’s talk about the planet Neptune! The walls all around the office make it look like they’re really there! Wow!

Boooring! This is boring! Lex Luthor is boring. OK, he’s done talking. Lexcorp probes discovered iceworms on Neptune, that’s the gist. What do you mean you don’t see where he’s going with this?? Lexcorp designed a deep-sea explorer unit that eats hydrogen and sulfur just like Neptune iceworms.

The walls change location. Mercury! Too hot! Nothing lives there, not even Santa Claus. Why would he? The only way to live near Mercury is to glide around the sky soaking up photons and whatnot. Lexcorp designed a craft with solar panels, bing bang boom.

Location changes again! Some Proxima Centauri planet with silicon-based lifeforms. Lois Lane stops him here, she’s getting really bored too. OK, fine, here’s the point: “I’ve been cataloging the natural abilities Superman has thus far demonstrated,” Luthor explains, showing on the screens the blue and red superhero guy shooting eye lasers at a piece of drywall, “his senses are inhuman. Eyewitnesses claim he has uncanny hearing, as well as eyes that can see x-rays and other energy wavelengths – and even emit them in the case of infrared.”

He slices, he dices, he makes mounds of julienne fries in seconds!

Plus, his muscles can crush diamonds. His skin is like titanium. His supple legs and pouty lips, ooh baby.

So how can this all be true? Lex Luthor already knows how it can all be true! ONLY, mind you, a huge-ass giant-ass planet, mind you, with a bajillion times more gravity, mind you, orbiting a very, very, very, very, very dim red star, mind you, can cause humanoid creatures to evolve the types of cells and nerves that are identical to Superman’s specifications! Hee hee hee, how clever.

So there you go, Lois Jerkface Lane. Your superhero crush is some bug-eyed, slimy alien! RAWR! SQUELCH! And Lex has definitive proof!

But before we get to that, some more emotional stuff: this guy with his flashy clothes and his desire to keep his face visible. He’s doing this on purpose, but for what reason? To hide something. To hide, what, though? And here it is: Superman is some bug-eyed, slimy alien! RAWR! SQUELCH! And–

Clark interrupts with his ugly, mouth-breathing, snot-congested face.

DURRR! HAAAAAARRR!! But sir, how did you find all this out?! HURRRRRR!!

Lex plasters the walls with hypothetical renderings of Superman cut open on the operating table, being examined by doctors and scientists. Sure, try pulling out the ol’ spleen, that’ll have all the answers. They’re cutting open his head. Playing with entrails. It’s really gross, so Lois and Clark decide to fuck off from this place while Lex sings to himself, happily watching the carnage.

Lois and Clark, traumatized, have a chat later over coffee. Clark asks Lois if Lex was right or wrong. And if it would matter anyway. Lois doesn’t know.

Clark is amused that Lex doesn’t remember him. That in of itself is crazy bones! But he was kinda hoping he wouldn’t remember him anyway. Lois picked up on that introduction between them, the super sleuth that she is. “You and Lex acted like you were old friends. Shame. Thought maybe you could shed some light on his motives. Why the big obsession with finding extraterrestrials?”

We see a montage of young Clark and young, curly red-haired, nerdy-looking Lex hanging out together. Stargazing. Lex getting made fun of by other kids. Lex alone in the school science lab.

“…I think he just wants someone to talk to,” Clark responds.

Oooooh, Lex gets some pity-influenced characterization!

Later, Perry White demands that Clark writes up the Superman story based on Lex’s testimonials. Clark argues that there was nothing substantial. White argues that it’s fucking Lex Luthor, not some crackhead in an alley. If he’s saying it out loud, then it must have some credibility! Lex Luthor is a leading expert in every field he is involved with!

“Either you write it up or I’ll hire someone who will.”

So Clark frowns and starts contributing to the smear campaign. Even if it is kinda true stuff to begin with.

Gonna bump Bat Boy from the front page.

And how will this affect the public’s opinion of Superman?

Well, the issue ends with Superman stopping a runaway subway train after the driver has a stroke. He begs for someone on the platform, a doctor, to come forward and help.

Everyone recoils in disgust, horror, and maybe a smidge of randiness?

Final Thoughts

Oh no! Superman Bad Man! Big scary alien! Help! He’s gonna dissolve my bones and eat my toasters and probe my anus! Someone launch him into the sun before it’s too late!

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Superman: Birthright, Issue #5 – “Menace to Metropolis”! In the previous installment, Clark Kent arrives in the big city, makes a scene at the Daily Planet office, bumbles through his terrible interview, saves Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen after Lois crashes the company helicopter (lmao), and then gets knocked the fuck through a building after catching a quick glimpse of his old pal Lex Luthor.

So only four minutes as Superman and already he has a nemesis to fight! That’s called MOVING THE PLOT FORWARD. Thanks Mark Waid, you’re not so bad after all I guess.

Superman: Birthright, Issue #5 [January, 2004]
Written by: Mark Waid
“Menace to Metropolis”

God, look at the ugliness of that cover art. These are supposed to be human faces. They each look like they’re attempting to push out turds of three very different consistencies.

The government building operating the terrifying helicopters is in a frenzy. “Someone’s overridden our remote control of the copters!” cries a frantic private at the command console. An anti-terrorism test has turned into accidental terrorism! “Then abort the mission! Now!” screams General Pickford, not hearing the “overridden our control” part.

It’s no use. They also can’t shoot them down in a heavy urban environment either, even though that would likely do less damage in the long run. I’d make that call. I should be a military general.

“Then how did two of them just fall into the East River?” asks the grim-faced and liver-spotted Head Army Man. Well, sir, according to the droves of crazy, homeless witnesses, it was a strong man in tights flying around what did it. But a copter shot him through a building. I swear on my mother’s piss-stained grave, sir, I’m not making this up!

Well, everyone’s in luck, because the Tights Man can’t be killed or hurt by anything ever, so he gets up from the wreckage more determined than he was before. “Well…that won’t happen again,” he says with his poorly-drawn “durrrr” face.

“Who is that guy?” the people on the street point and ask with awed wonder as Superman flies straight into a bunch of bullets and plows through a copter, breaking it into shrapnel.

♫ Diamonds, Daisies, Snowflakes, That Guy! Chestnuts, Rainbows, Springtime, That Guy! ♫

Superman managed to grab the radio as he busted through the copter, which six distinct voices are talking through at the moment. One of the voices announces that skyscraper evacuations have begun in the heart of downtown.

And in front of the tallest building in Metropolis, Lois Lane bullies Jimmy Olsen into trying to sneak up in order to get a better glimpse of Superman. Lois has balls. Jimmy has no balls to speak of.

Lex Luthor is in his large, crumbling office getting briefed by a screaming man. “Who is he? No visible means of negating gravity, impervious to bullets and explosions and God knows what else–”. He also has time to inform the Bald One that the last chopper has gone down in the park before he gets cut off.

Superman breaks a window entering Luthor’s office. Luthor stays remarkably calm.

“I’d prefer you make an appointm–”
“Shut up.”

Luthor stays seated while Superman speaks to him across the room. “Two dead, seventeen injured. Is this what you’ve come to?”

Luthor doesn’t even know who he is! Superman tells him to drop the “innocent businessman” act and displays the copter radio. “Innocent people suffered because the remote units in those helicopters were sabotaged with ultrasonic signals. I traced them to your towers and to this office.”

Luthor maintains his remarkable calmness, but now the teeth are gritted. When asked how Superman traced these alleged signals, Superman claims he saw them.

This is when Lex Luthor starts turning the tables, making threats that he’ll sue this dork for property damage and false accusations and bankrupt him into learning the high-tech equipment he’s using to fly and use force fields and look so ravishing in those colors of his.

Superman ain’t scared. And Luthor stops mid-sentence when he sees a band of light drape over the front of his shadowed assailant, revealing a portion of the S. Luthor drinks that shit in.

A team of mercenaries enters the office to try to protect the bald bastard. Superman says “No,” when they tell him to freeze, then he does the opposite of freeze. Namely melt. With his eyeballs. All the guns.

“Heat…came out of your eyes… you melted state-of-the-art ordnance,” Luthor states with a frown.
“Add it to my bill, you diseased maniac,” Superman retorts, being a little crude toward the obvious cancer patient in front of him.

Now Lois and Jimmy pop into the office, all smiles. They’re told to leave. She says no.

Oh wow, ok, two good questions. Let’s see… the one that’s bad I had nothing to do with! Heh heh. And the one that’s good was actually me and not this guy. Any other questions?

Lex Luthor puts on his slimy politician hat and starts flapping his gums about the senseless tragedy that befell the city with respect to the creepy self-driving death helicopters. “This stranger’s amazing actions no doubt prevented the loss of countless lives, meaning that whoever he may be…he is a friend to Lex Luthor.”

He plasters on a big phony smile while Jimmy’s camera goes off, immediately followed by a side-eyed scowl.

The soldiers start kicking Jimmy’s ass while Jimmy hollers “Freedom of the press! Freedom of the press!” Superman blasts them with his heat spooge again.

Luthor has had enough and demands everyone to get out of his office! Superman flies away. Security roughs up the two reporters, takes Jimmy Olsen’s camera, and sends them both out the front of the building. Jimmy grabs his own head and has a Rain Man fit about everything. “I let you down,” he moans to Lois, and she’s nice enough to not agree with him out loud. “C’mon, let’s get back to the newsroom. There’s still plenty of story here.”

As Jimmy continues moaning and groaning about losing the proof, his unbroken camera drops from the sky into his already-open hands. Superman winks and grins in the distance looking like a real celebrity. A real Christopher Reeve-type.

And sure enough, the photo of Lex Luthor giving his full shit-eating-grinned endorsement of Superman makes its way onto the front page of the Daily Planet. The front page of the website, anyway. Luthor is designated within the news article as an “astrobiologist”, which is like the biggest waste of a college degree I’ve ever heard. If any astrobiologists are out there reading this, come fucking fight me you 84-pound twerp. Superman is designated as the “Flying Strongman”.

Thank you very much “Martha from Accounting” and “Tim from Human Resources”. Your congratulations mean the world to me.

A bruised and possibly drunk-on-the-job Perry White approaches the cubicle with a sheepish Clark Kent. “Not to interrupt the Pulitzer Awards going on in your darling imagination, but I want you to meet your new partner.”

Lois Lane looks like someone just took a big shit right on her face. “Just for a while, while he learns the ropes,” White promises, but starts walking away all the same, “I wasn’t going to hire him, but he filed one hell of an exposé on the chopper sabotage.”

A guy at Waynetech named Otto Juris (back when he worked at Lexcorp) uses a fake name Paul Paxton these days. He built the copters, and Lexcorp is trying to bid against Waynetech. BUT, since the copters started fucking shooting people for no reason, Waynetech backed out. HOWEVER, the connection (that can’t be proven definitively) caused the government to remove Lexcorp out of the running for the bid. Fascinating stuff, guy!

“That’s the first dirt anyone’s turned up on Luthor that I can remember. I’d say that earns Kent his shot.”

Kent whistles to himself like he think he cute. Lois shoots him a skeptical look, but is nevertheless intrigued!

Hmmm…too many ugly fucking frown lines to be Superman…

“Off a pretty thin lead. How’d you stumble across it?”

She gets right up in his face and he attempts to both maintain a boring white-guy face and his bursting erection. Clark Kent probably had to learn the hard way not to wear regular underwear in the office. I hope that gets addressed in another Clark Kent first-day-on-the-job story.

“Overheard somebody. Followed a hunch,” he responds vaguely, maintaining his pallid and frowny demure. He asks what she’s staring at, and she thinks he looks familiar. She actually puts her hand on his face to keep his mouth open to check his teeth (boner is now inverting itself due to Super Underwear and rupturing his rectum).

She spends several panels staring, taking a load off the comic book artist for about a page.

“…ah, forget it,” she says, giving up and walking away. Off-panel, Clark returns his penis to its normal place with a SuperFart and moves on with his day.

Clark makes a note for himself to let Ma know that the being-boring tactic worked. And he didn’t even have to try that hard. Because he’s boring, you see. “…but Luthor was another matter altogether,” he writes later in an email.

He goes on to write that he bumped into Luthor completely by accident, and was disappointed in what he had witnessed. Clark had always hoped they’d be friends again some day, but it doesn’t seem to be in the cards anytime soon. What with the fact that Lex will be performing experiments on him regularly in the future, that’ll effectively create somewhat of a rift. He also wishes that he was able to practice his identity-hiding chops before “dangling it in front of the world’s smartest man”, but I think we can all be happy that his identity was the only thing he dangled in front of Luthor.

Still, though, this whole dual-identity is just crazy enough to work, you crazy old dingbat! He concludes the email by declaring (brazenly) that he wants to bone Lois Lane, and then a breaking report on the office TV screen announces a hijacking situation. Gotta go do my reporter superhero thing, Ma! Send! Fly away!

I’ll know for next time, sir. Are kale and bouillon cubes still your favorite?

Meanwhile, in Colorado, at a Lexcorp-owned facility, SEX Luthor arrives via helicopter. “Mr. Luthor, sir, what a…pleasant surprise,” says a scientist with a clipboard, who probably first thought to say “pain in my ass”. He asks her to cut out the pleasantries; Lex Luthor doesn’t have time to be fake nice in front of people who aren’t news reporters, politicians, or pre-teen girls! “You followed up on the narrow-band spike of October 14th?” he asks.

“A supernova in Skysector J172, nothing more,” she, Dr. Chun, responds. And the multiple signals on October 29th? Why, those were just the result of atmospheric interference! What did you want me to tell you? That it was the aliens from Sesame Street trying to make contact? Remember those, sir? Yip yip yip yip yip! Heh heh! Never mind, sir, sorry.

She tells this dude to listen up: finding random messages in the sky is going to take some time, so if you’re looking to shut us down because we’re not finding anything, then I’m going to hit you on your shiny dome with a baseball bat! “Put your worries to rest, doctor. I want you to keep monitoring the stars,” he says as he boards the elevator. “Still, tell your team to switch to the emergency generators. There’s about to be a brief power outage.”

And down into the depths of the facility he goes. Down to a secret containment chamber, where a secret thing is being contained within the secret containment chamber!

A large, green crystal shard in a sealed glass tube.

“Marcy? Clear my appointments for tomorrow,” Luthor speaks into the phone, smirking fiendishly, “Tell Mr. Kent I would like to see him.”

Final Thoughts

I can’t wait! Clark Kent is going to show up at Lexcorp and Luthor is going to start stabbing the guy in the chest with a sharp piece of kryptonite, unprovoked, like goddamn Buffy the Vampire Slayer.