Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Superman: Birthright, Issue #2 – “Heart of Darkness”! In the previous installment, we see baby Kal-El get launched the fuck to Earth. We then fast forward 25 years to Ghana, where Clark Kent is hanging out with some guy named Kobe who wants to be a senator but everyone’s trying to kill him for starting a revolution. The moral of that story is, uh, your identity is important.

Mark Waid wrote some really asinine shit about racism not existing in Africa anymore, too. So far this critically acclaimed Superman limited series is bunk! Eleven more issues to go!

Superman: Birthright, Issue #2 [October, 2003]
Written by: Mark Waid
“Heart of Darkness”

Spending more time in Ghana, I guess. Clark’s mom’s email address is Martha.Kent@kent.com. Did anyone ever tell her that she didn’t have to buy a whole domain name to get an email address?

Clark writes home that things are going well so far. He spends his time soaring with the animals and feeling that stifling West African air. He’s been known to wrestle a lion or two for fun as well.

“Living things have a kind of glow around them. They’re surrounded in a halo of colors I’d invent names for if I weren’t the only one who could make them out,” Clark writes, admitting to his mother than he be trippin’ on LSD in the jungle. He stays on this train of thought for a while, explaining his vegetarianism and the like, before moving on to the iPad that his birth parents gave him before they blasted their baby across the galaxy.

He figured out how to activate the tablet, but it just shows him bizarre Kryptonian images with text in an alien language. Not only that, but the tablet itself isn’t very easy to use! Not very ergonomically designed, not laid out very well. It’s like human beings weren’t even considered in its development! What is this, a dang Apple product?

Hey, Krypton had talking bowling trophies!

Clark surmises that it’s trying to show him some ancient history. Like a time capsule. And the curious part is the repeated image of a symbol with the “S” in it. At first he thought it was a family crest, but it’s everywhere you look. Wars were fought over it. Cities were built upon it. It’s on cakes and t-shirts and belt buckles and flags and napkins and toilet paper and planes write it in the sky. If it’s a symbol of hope and legacy, then Clark Kent says he really sucks these days.

He writes about meeting Kobe Asuru and feeling insignificant compared to him. Look at this would-be senator; he’s charming, personable, smart, ambitious, brave, he can hop on one foot for a minute straight. He uses his talents to try to make the world a better place! All Clark Kent does with his talents is wrestle lions and struggle to string three words together.

Oh sure, he knows he’s supposed to stay CLANDESTINE with his powers. Trust him, he knows, if anyone he makes a connection with even gets the faintest inkling that he can do something menial like pick up a house over his head, they start getting nervous and scared! People, man. What the HELL is up with people?

“Ma, there’s got to be a way for me to USE my abilities and yet not feel totally isolated by them.”

We see a shirtless Clark hovering in the air after pulling a giant fallen tree off of a ram. Local indigenous tribe people witness this display of devilry and freak the fuck out! Clark makes a sad face and flies away to meet with the leader of the forces that are trying to stop and/or kill and/or fornicate with Kobe Asuru.

This leader guy is withered and old, snooty and snotty! What Clark Kent must understand is that the Turaaba spent decades making this particular land habitable, and the Ghuri are just mooching off all of the Turaaba’s hard work. And now this Kobe dipshit wants to waltz around, cock of the walk, frothing up the Ghuri ingratitude further and drive the Turaaba away from the land? No mas!

Kent has been in his share of debate classes and Model U.N.’s! He argues that the Ghuri have been here for generations, just like the Turaaba, and that they aren’t interested in a coup. No coup here good sir. They just want representation in the government.

I said no mas, Kent. Ghuri are ungrateful, but the Turaaba leave them alone. The Turaaba insists on reciprocation of this sentiment. Kobe Asuru is stirring the pot with dangerous ideas, and the Turaaba aren’t going to bend to bullies with radical viewpoints. No mas!

An assistant hands this withered old beanstalk a phone. Clark recognizes the assistant from last night’s little shoot-out.

Later, Clark approaches Kobe in front of his people and implores him not to carry out the protest march. Abena is not at all open-minded to this white-ass nonsense of being told what to do by an outsider. All Clark wants to do is protect these guys! He’s just trying to be nice! Look, he’s even wearing a friendly, unassuming orange shirt! With a pocket and everything!

Talkin’ battle strategies with the Colonel over here.

Just don’t do anything stupid to scare these already-jumpy Turaaba motherfuckers, ok? They’re already afraid that you’re going to break into their homes and throw their TVs around and pee on their nice rugs and eat the leftovers and cut holes in their walls and stick your dicks through the holes! So don’t give them any more of a reason to be afraid.

Kobe “Shifty Eyes” McGillicuddy understands Kent’s point: Kobe needs to talk to them alone. “What makes you think one man will be convincing enough?” he asks, likely perturbed as much as Abena is about Kent horning in on the Ghuri action. Don’t worry, Clark Kent “called in some favors”.

A press conference is arranged. Clark got a bunch of American journalists to fly to Ghana to report on Kobe’s stump speech. Senator Wannabe Kobe Beef asks for peace and whatnot. While this is happening, Abena runs to Clark and frantically tells him “they’re back”, referring to these rough’n’toughs with the guns! They’re in the village! Oh dear, we need a Superb Man to help!

Masked guys with guns! A skinny twerp with a flamethrower! Those dang Turaabans are destroying the village! Clark drags Abena to the side and SLAPS HER THRICE! WAP! WAP! WAP! Just kidding, how mean would that be? She wants to interrupt Kobe’s speech, but Clark advises against it. It’s a trap. They’re trying to trap y’all. Don’t be trapped. They want Kobe to run back to the village, right in the flamethrower’s path. Don’t let it happen, Abena! WAP!

Clarkus Kentus has an idea. Meanwhile, one of the Turaabans backstage, so to speak, is miffed that Abena hasn’t shown up to draw Kobe away. Very regrettable. Time for Plan B. “Silence him”.

Some fuckin’ Turaaban cops approach the dais to tell Kobe that he’s under arrest. Understandably, this isn’t taken well by Kobe’s people. A good ol’ fashioned civil unrest is underway! Oh boy, action!

Clark Kent flies to the village. A man throws a Molotov cocktail, but Kent stops it in mid-air with a furious punch! Like a burning vision of Hell itself, he scares the bejesus out of these Turaaban terrorists.

Fear the wrath of Flame Boy!

And as these buttfuckers try to get away in their car, Clark hoists the vehicle up over his head à la Action Comics #1 and smashes it against the side of a large rock. Take that, you triabalist jerk-butts.

“Out of the way! You are obstructing justice!” bellows a civilian as Kobe gets manhandled by the police, but Kobe insists that he will go peacefully.

“Asuru…shut up.” whispers a Turaaba henchman as he knifes Kobe in the whatever-hurts-the-most.

The village is cleared out. Again, Clark Kent is shirtless! As he is wont to be, certainly. A group, including Abena, just gapes at him as he looks around on high alert for more threats. Off in the far distance, he can hear the terrified shouts of the immediate stabbing aftermath. He scoops up Abena and flies her back to the press conference.

She doesn’t take this very well. She’s thrashing and kicking while he’s got her dozens of feet in the air while he sets his sights on “the man with the scarred face. He’s headed for the getaway car. He thinks he can run from me in broad daylight,” Kent’s eyes begin to glow a dangerous red, “Think again.”

Clark Kent’s ultra-dangerous heat vision busts a bunch of press cameras. Kent sets Abena down, totals the getaway car has he plows through it, and gets a full view of the presumably-dead-beef Kobe Asuru.

“WHO?!” Kent hollers, picking Mr. Sunglasses and smashing him against a house or tree or, I dunno, something brown, SO HARD that he’ll probably need a colostomy bag for the rest of his life. Mr. Sunglasses points to the old Turbaaba leader guy, who I’m just now learning is named Rep. Kebile.

The press starts swarming Kebile like the plague-ridden locusts that they are! All up in his face and shit.

Elsewhere, Abena cries over her dying brother.

Hey Clark, stop making 52-IQ faces and check that guy over there to the right. He looks like he’s having an even worse time than Kobe over there.

Clark Kent tells Kobe not to die. He dies anyway! It’s like he was waiting to spite Clark.

A full-page spread of the Ghana Dispatch shows Kent’s article about the events leading up to Abena’s appointment as a probationary member of the local Parliament. Kobe’s death incited a massive write-in campaign. Kebile was forced to resign amidst allegations of murder and terrorism campaign orchestration.

Later, Clark and Abena meet up at Kobe’s gravestone, adorned with flowers and trinkets. “You’re not the first, Abena. You’re scared of me now. Don’t worry, I won’t stay.”

And Abena’s like GOOD, you weirdo. I don’t know what’s worse, that you’re a freak or that I couldn’t even kill you if I wanted to. That sucks! Go away!

Nah, she wouldn’t do him like that. Sorta. “I suppose we… owe you for the good you have done,” Abena hesitates before starting to blame him for Kobe’s death. “Why…why couldn’t you have s-stopped this…?” she cries. He defends what he did. He saved their people, it’s what he would’ve wanted ya ungrateful little…so-and-so, arrrghghh.

“Kobe Asuru will be remembered as a great man with a simple legacy. He was who he was. And the world will be a better place for it,” Kent tries to soften the blow! But Abena is now standing farther away from him. Oh well, move on to somewhere else and ruin someone else’s life, Clarky.

Don’t ya miss me, Pops?! Farm work sucks a lot more now without me, huh?

Three days later at the Kent Family Farm, Jon Kent’s decrepit old ass is trying to haul heavy bags from his truck. He unloads one bag into a barn, turns around, and suddenly the pickup is completely empty!

Clark sits atop a seven-foot pyramid of bags, lookin’ cute.

Jon is chuffed to see his boy! He takes Clark into the house to surprise his mother. She’s in her “hobby room”, aka her David Duchovny / Dale Gribble alien conspiracy command center where she’s scouring UFOs.com on Windows 98. “What’s up in the sky this time, Ma? A bird or a plane?” Clark chuckles. How folksy! Puke.

Clark makes fun of Martha’s use of her time, but she tells him to hush and shush! Ever since she started trying to figure out where Clark came from, she’s really gone down the alien rabbit hole.

Enough about that though! How’s the town doing? Where’s Lana Lang? Are you guys doing good? What about Lana Lang? Hey, can I have a banana? Lana Lang? How do you even get internet out here in the first place? Lana Lang?

“No one’s heard from Lana Lang for years.”

“And Lex?”

That dipshit? He moved to Metropolis and started his own business. Don’t ever mention that bald putz again. Now wash up, dinner’s ready! We’re having Betsy, your prized pet pig! Sweet, sweet pork on that one, kiddo.

Just the worst thing that has ever happened to us. A real pain in the ass.

Over a meal, Jon and Martha assure their alien son that he’s the best thing that’s ever happened to either of them…contrary to what I wrote in that caption up there! “Can you imagine what the world would have made of you if they’d learned what you can do?” ruminates Jon, who doesn’t realize that the world would make of him quite a bit, actually. Just give it time.

Clark asks his parents to follow him to the barn, where he proceeds to tear up the wood floor and lift his giant baby space pod above his head. Jon and Martha get nervous, all like “uhhh, what are you doing son? Cut it out now…”

“It’s still here. The banner. Good. It’s been on my mind,” Clark finds a large blanket cape thing with the ICONIC SUPERMAN LOGO on it, “Its colors, its insignia… clearly, this meant a great deal to my forefathers.”

Clark makes a really dumb face, which is saying something considering this series has been chock full of really dumb Clark Kent faces so far. “…it’s time it meant more to me.”

His folks get all jumpy and nervous. They don’t like it when their son gets ideas!

Africa has changed me, mother. I know now that I must be Super Man.

Time to make a costume!

Final Thoughts

We all reach that point in our post-college lives where we drift about aimlessly yearning for a sense of purpose, right? Some of us choose to start families, others pursue even higher education. Clark Kent decides to put on some tights and knock around a few bad guys. I hope it works out for him! I’m pretty skeptical.