1948. It had been a hectic year. Truman had signed the Marshall Plan, which would provide $5 billion in aid to 16 wartorn European countries in dire need in the wake of World War II. It would give a boost to infrastructure and business, remove trade barriers and form the base capital to modernize industry…

...particularly when combined with foreign investment.

The next four years would see the most rapid growth in European history. And would form a large part of my own personal holdings over the next decade. I had invested in the region because I saw it as the opportunity to do the most good with my father’s legacy, the potential for growth merely sweetening the pie.

Truman had also signed Executive Order 9981, ending racial segregation in the US Armed Forces. Five years before the desegregation of schools would make any major headway and allow equal opportunities to live and learn, it would be made the law of the land that all men who can bleed red for this land can fight side-by-side.

Between brutality and life; this country, this city still has questionable priorities.

That brutality is why I find myself there, on that fire escape, whilst the rest of the city slept. One man, facing this city’s darkest nightmares, so that the innocent could dream peacefully.

Senator Margaret Chase Smith had the gall to speak out against the witch hunts that were being perpetrated in the name of Senator Joseph McCarthy and his HUAC. Senator Smith was the first woman to be elected to both houses of Congress, and is a lively driven woman, reminding me very much of Dian.

At least she had been a very lively woman prior to her abduction…

She’d passed comment to the wrong person at a fundraiser, prior to making her public denouncement of the HUAC’s activities, and the wheels had been put in motion to remove the dissenter before she would have the opportunity to make a problem.

Again, that’s why I found myself there, on that freezing fire escape, counting the kidnappers and waiting for the right spread across the upscale apartment building to make my move with the minimum chance of the Senator being caught in the crossfire.

I watched as one particular criminal crossed the floor to go to the kitchen, giving an opportunity to put myself between the bound Senator and the rest. I watched as my moment fell into place.

I crashed through the window and took the space in front of her. Thick gas dispersed into the crowded apartment.

Shouting and calls of “Get him!” and “Shoot him!” gave further proof to the brutality of these men and the world they would inhabit given the choice.

I heard a voice emanate from my mask that I barely recognized as my own, the ethereal tones the final thing these brutes would hear before drifting into unconsciousness.

“< There is no escaping the Sandman’s Dark Dream… >”

The town of Smallville, Kansas, appears by all rights to be the sort of down-home, Mom-and-Pop, baseball-and-apple-pie image of classic Americana that more cynical folk might sneer at as they pass by to a ‘real’ city. Earnest, simple men and women who might have had big dreams once, but settled for marrying their high-school sweethearts, having an average of 1.5 kids, and enjoying the small things like a cold beer after a hard day’s work. The kind of wholesome, almost corny sort of town that anyone who’s been out in the world assumes the worst of-- that big friendly Billy-Bob secretly beats his wife, that the good old boys at the general store have white robes stashed away in their closet, and that kindly Father Brown shouldn’t be left unattended around children. And those cynical, sneering, worldly people would be half-right: Smallville does indeed keep some very big secrets. But not the kind they would ever imagine…..

It was a warm night in April of 1995 when Jonathan and Martha Kent’s truck broke down on their way back home from the doctor’s office, where they had been told Martha was infertile, and their dreams of starting a family had been dashed. It was almost a bit of mercy that a blown tire let Jon get some time by himself, where he could work with his hands and straighten out his thoughts before he said something he would regret. There had already been words, implications, insinuations, and tears, but while they never shouted or accused, the silence in the truck’s cab told both of them that their marriage was as good as over. As Martha stared into the night sky, she quietly demanded the stars justify themselves, asking fate or God or whatever was out there what the point of it all was. And the stars, or fate or God or whatever was out there, provided an answer in a flash of light that nearly blinded them both, followed by a blast of wind that knocked Jon off his feet.

For the next two or three years, the people of Smallville found themselves bombarded by visitors poking around, asking questions. Federal agents just wondering if they had noticed any suspicious activities lately, land surveyors who suddenly had a great amount of interest in soil samples, census takers going door-to-door just to be sure there weren’t any mishaps in the last population count. And of course, tabloid reporters and internet crackpots who had the honesty to come out and ask directly if anyone knew anything about the mysterious “Kansas Lights” that had illuminated the sky over Smallville that one April night. The good people of Smallville all said the same things. Nothing strange happens in a place like this. The “Kansas Lights” were probably some kids who had gotten their hands on fireworks, and everyone was making a big fuss over nothing. And they all remember visiting Jon and Martha in the hospital when their baby boy Clark was born-- the papers must have been lost in the hospital records somewhere.

Time passed, and the people of Smallville moved on, suspicion giving way to complacency and eventually indifference. Clark Kent was a nice boy, after all, just a little odd. He kept to himself mostly, never played with the other kids, would either go straight home from school or spend his free time in the library. He was smart enough, did well in class, but always came off a bit….puny, and shy. While nobody ever talked about it, everyone knew he was different, and Clark started to take that personally.

Throughout his childhood, Clark was never content. His parents were wonderful to him, provided the best life for him that they could, but most nights he found himself staring out at the stars…..even when he was inside with a roof over his head. He saw how the grown-ups looked at him, how they kept him at arm’s length and whispered when he thought they couldn’t hear him. When he asked his parents about it, Jon consoled him, saying “They’ll understand some day. When you’re older, and when….well, when you learn to become who you are.”

Pete Ross had been his best friend ever since Clark had saved him from drowning in the river, and Lana Lang from the farm nearby had known him so long that most of the town assumed they would be married the second they were both eighteen, but even they could only see the bits and pieces of Clark’s life that he wasn’t afraid to tell them about. He couldn’t tell them about the time he bolted out into the road to save the family dog from an oncoming eighteen-wheeler, went under the wheels, and came back up without a scratch. He couldn’t tell them about the time a jack slipped out from under the tractor as Pa was working underneath it, and Clark held the whole thing up with his bare hands. Or how he knew Ronnie Marsh had robbed the corner convenience store because he could just look right through his ski mask. Or how when Clark found out that Lana’s father had abused her, his clothes caught on fire when Clark stared at him.

Or how one night, when no one was looking, he snuck out into the back field and jumped so high that he didn’t come back down.

As a teenager, Clark’s introversion and isolation gave way to a restless energy, an ever-more-powerful need to go out, to go to exotic places, see and do incredible things, find a place where he belonged. He became a dreamer, in more ways than one. In his sleep, he saw incredible visions-- a world far from home, full of men and women who worked miracles like they were nothing, who braved impossible odds and stared down evil with a confident smile, garbed in striking skin-tight blue suits with bright red capes, emblazoned with a shield and a curving sigil that looked for all the world like the letter ‘S.’ A world where he could truly be himself, and finally belong.

The power of these images, the yearning to be like the incredible people of his dreams, clashed with the mundanity of Smallville more and more with each passing year, until just after his high school graduation. In the summer of 2013, a massive tornado ripped through the heart of Smallville, threatening to destroy the town and everyone in it. Jon and Martha had urged Clark to stay inside, to keep his secret safe while they went out into the storm to get people to safety. When he saw their truck overturn, he couldn’t restrain himself any longer, and quite literally flew into action. Righting the truck was just the start, as Clark became a blur of motion, catching a child who had been picked up by the wind, holding up a collapsing church roof, shielding a family from a derailed train car. For the better part of an hour, in full view of the town, Clark Kent fought the very forces of nature itself, and by all accounts, he won.

Still, when the storm finally broke and the dust settled, no one would look Clark in the eye. He had saved their lives, but what he had done was….unnatural. He had reminded them of those inexplicable lights in the sky all those years ago. He’d shown them that the nice quiet boy from the Kent Farm wasn’t one of them. Maybe he was some kind of experiment from the Army. Maybe he was an angel, or a devil. Either way, he had shown them that he didn’t belong.

The next day, Clark was gone, hitchhiking down the open road, looking for a purpose and a place to belong. In his search for the truth about himself, he became fascinated in learning the truth about the rest of the world as well, leading him to take up journalism. He would enroll in a class here and there, eventually gathering enough credits to earn a Bachelor’s Degree, but he got the most experience in the field, finding places where he could put his abilities to use, reporting on the human side of the story while being careful to avoid his own role in events. Still, others were all too eager to follow rumors about some mysterious “Angel in Blue Jeans” who would show up out of the blue to rescue survivors from natural disasters or pick a fist-fight with heavily armed warlords, only to disappear just as abruptly as he arrived. In particular, a pair of freelancers always seemed right on Clark’s heels, forcing him to take increasingly drastic steps to keep his secrets: an excitable but talented photographer named Jimmy Olsen, and a tenacious investigative reporter named Lois Lane.

After seven years of wandering, Clark returned to Smallville when he learned his father had developed a malignant tumor and had only months to live. Over those months, Jon and Clark connected again, the old man imparting as much wisdom as he could while fighting the disease as long as he could. Martha talked to her son about his visions and dreams of those incredible people in bright red capes, and about how those bright red capes just happen to sound an awful lot like the blanket he had been wrapped in the night they found him. When Jon’s body finally failed him, the last words he said to Clark were “you’ve got to do the hardest thing anyone can ever do….you’ve got to become who you are.”

Clark Kent is now twenty-five years old, and has landed a job interview at a newspaper in Metropolis. He has packed everything he owns into a suitcase and a backpack, including the old red “blanket” his mother had been keeping in the old linen closet, and an outfit the two of them had put together to go with it. He has no friends in the city, no plan to fall back on if he blows it, and no idea where he’s going to sleep at night. But he cannot hide his excitement, or his eagerness as he fidgets with nervous energy in the seat of a cross-country bus.

He is not one of us. He does not belong here. But he knows he has a purpose. And he is ready to become who he is.

Anyone who knows me knows I’ve got some very strong feelings and opinions about Superman- he is, without question, the one character I have spent more time and thought and energy on than anyone else in all of fiction. And while doing the seven trillionth origin story might be a bit tiresome, I want to present a ‘Year One’ Clark without all of the worn-out clichés that so many tellings of the story run into: people just telling Clark that he’s the proverbial Chosen One and has a special destiny and yadda yadda yadda. Clark knows he’s different, he has a vague idea of the kind of person he wants to be, but right now he’s got no idea how to get there, and is going to be making things up as he goes. This will likely be a version of Superman who’s a little more rough around the edges-- not for the sake of being ‘edgy’ or turning a wholesome kids’ character into a radical anti-hero, but just to reflect where he’s at in his life, a young man full of piss and vinegar as they say, with a head full of big ideas and no real plan to see them through.

To this end, this version of Clark doesn’t have the Fortress of Solitude or his computer-ghost-father, no knowledge of Krypton except for half-remembered dreams. Any “destiny” he has is one he forges for himself, the identity of Superman and the meaning of the S symbol are things he will create over time. His journey of self-discovery will be more about creating a purpose rather than finding one.

All that, however, is the top-down overarching “big idea” journey. In practice, I want to tell energetic and fun stories with intrigue, romance, frightening villains, and kick-ass action, while leaving the door open for team-ups and crossovers with other players-- after all, Clark can’t exactly “find his place” in the world if he’s not interacting with the other people in it. While Superman is many things to many people-- a comfortable nostalgia act, an inspiring role-model, a secular stand-in for God or Jesus or Your Dad or whatever-- he is first and foremost, above all else, an Action-Adventure Hero. And I plan for Clark’s journey to “become who he is” to be full of action, adventure, and heroics.

“I don’t know who the hell you are,” scowls the aging crag-faced man in a suit that likely costs more than the whole farm back home, “or why you’ve decided to inconvenience me. But I do know that inconvenience stops right now.”

“You’re right about that, Mannheim,” I say, casually tossing aside the unconscious form of an armed guard into the pile of rubble and dust that used to be the palatial mansion’s main hall, “because I doubt I’m going to have any reason to keep bothering you in prison.”

For the past twenty-five years, Bruno Mannheim has been the undisputed ruler of the underworld in Metropolis. Drugs, weapons, prostitution, extortion, kidnapping, murder, you name it, he’s either done it or had it done for him, and all without the slightest consequence. Anyone who’s ever tried to oppose him either wound up under his thumb, in his pocket, or sinking to the bottom of Hobb’s Bay. Whether it’s cops, lawyers, judges, mayors or senators, nobody has had the power or the conviction to go after Metropolis’s king of crime.

Nobody until today, anyway. It turns out, it’s hard to threaten someone whose skin deflects bullets.

“Laugh all you want now, Boy Scout,” Mannheim sneers, “But you’re going to pay for every last cent you’ve cost me.”

“And you’re going to pay for every drop of blood that’s on your--*hnghhh!*”

My muscles begin to twitch and spasm as a million pins and needles prickle and stab all over my body. The air fills with the smell of ozone, and an angry buzzing like a swarm of bees. Electric shock….the floor….he’s electrified the floor!

“Ha! I knew you had a limit somewhere!” he laughs, his sneer giving way to cruel triumph. “Oh sure, you’re strong, and fast, and can do things that would give my old science teacher a heart attack. But everyone’s got their limits, Superman. Even you.”

As I struggle to keep my senses, I see him pull a small remote control from the inside pocket of his jacket.

“That’s over two million volts running through you right now,” Mannheim gloats. “A very smart friend of mine tells me that’s the most any man-made electrical source has ever been able to generate. He also tells me that this floor we’ve had installed can crack a billion volts, the same as a bolt of lightning. The thing is, my smart friend says, a bolt of lightning only lasts a millionth of a second. So if I turn this all the way up to maximum, it will be like hitting you with a million bolts of lightning every second.”

He takes a few steps back, and a thick transparent screen drops down from the ceiling between him and me, keeping him safe as the air starts to crackle. A smile of sadistic glee nearly splits his face in two.

“So let’s see how long it takes to turn you from regular to extra-crispy.”

He presses the button, the angry buzzing becomes the deafening roar of man-made thunder, and the world explodes into light and pain. Every nerve in my body screams, every muscle seizes and locks. My heart spasms at random, and my lungs fill with smoke. My senses reel as my brain starts to short circuit.

I don’t know how long Mannheim continues to pour voltage through me. Seconds, minutes, hours? Time seems to lose its meaning. It would be easy to quit struggling, to escape the pain and slip away into eternity now.

But that would mean that Mannheim wins, and gets to keep hurting and killing good people.

And that won’t do.

I grit my teeth. I clench my fists. I open my eyes. And, with the power of a million thunderbolts coursing through my body every second, I take a step towards him.

And then another.

And another.

“.....n-no,” Mannheim stammers. “That’s not…...no! You can’t! E-e-everyone has l-limits! E-e-even you! You have to have a limit!”

I take another step forward, and I grin.

“…...do I?”

Helena still remembered the purple dress she had worn as an eight-year-old outside her family's estate as they waited for Don Mandragora to arrive. She hadn't known who he was at the time, just an important important dinner guest from her father's work. Whatever that was. The dress had puffed sleeves that her mother had to keep reminding her not to play with as a shiny back car pulled up the drive. "But they won't stay down, and my stockings itch." She had complained while her mother clasped her hand to keep her from fidgeting as the door to the car opened, and two men stepped out.

When Helena first arrived in Sicily and come to understand the Cosa Nostra and her family's place in it, she had imagined breaking into the home of every mob family and destroying them each as her own family had been. The reality was much less dramatic, but good things come to those who wait. Or at least that is what she told herself as she ducked out of sight from a patrol; directly into a dumpster positioned outside the 12 foot fence surrounding the Beretti concrete plant. The lights lining the inside of the perimeter meant that cutting through wasn't an option without being seen. It wouldn't have been the best choice in any-case: The less attention there was to a Bertinelli ever being in another family's territory the better. Once the guard's steps had faded to a reasonable distance, Helena aimed her loaded crossbow toward the top of the barbed fence. With a quiet buzz a cable wrapped around it's target and pulled Helena up. She crouched down on her precarious position and scoped out the area.

They hadn't wasted any time shooting, but the only image Helena had of that brief moment was her father falling to the ground at the same moment her mother pushed her into a similar position. Amid the screams someone called for her to run. So she had.

Whether the lack of security was a result of Angelo Beretti's arrest or part of the cause, it was a glaring issue throughout. Non-front factories were harder to break into. Helena shot herself to the top of the flat, square building; directly over the heads of a patrol and was completely undetected. For the moment it was a relief, for the long term something would have to be done. Within moments she had the grate to the building's ventilation system off and was sliding herself in. It was a tight fit, but once she reached a non-vertical passage, she was able to move around enough to crawl, and even reach her utility belt.

The Bernitelli family didn't go down easy. The assassins spent an hour combing through the house, killing everyone in their sight; family member or servant. Helena's mother had forced her into a closet from which she watched as the hit-men intercepted her mother's exit and left her bleeding on the floor. A child, and unaware of her family's profession, Helena screamed. For a brief moment, the killed met her eyes, but turned away. Leaving her to sob as her mother's blood soaked into the carpet until her cousin would discover her the following morning.

There was one final guard standing between Helena and her prize. Under normal circumstances, that would have been a lethal position to take. But in keeping with her cover of stealth and discretion she instead pulled one of Pamela's vials from her belt. With a quick prayer and final inhale she dropped the vial from her position on the vents, held her breath, and waited until she heard the man's body hit the ground. For another few minutes she waited for the pheromones to dissipate before lowering herself to the ground. The guard was still alive, his breathing shallow but even. The key to the door his was tasked with watching was easily retrieved from his hip.

The room they were keeping mayor's daughter hostage in really wasn't bad, all things considered. There were no windows, and the floor and walls were plain cement. But there was a rug, couch, bed, table, even a TV which she was so absorbed in she didn't even notice her visitor until Helena turned it off.

"Who are- Well its about time someone came looking for me. Don't you people know who I am?"

Helena ignored the teenage girl and instead began searching for paper. There was a newspaper beside the couch from two days before, likely used in the original ransom. She picked it up and began writing on it's front page.

"My father will have this place burnt to the ground. The idiots in here will be rotting away in Arkham for years when he..." Her voice finally trailed off as she realized her "rescuer's" free hand was leveling a loaded crossbow at her face.
"Oh darling," She lamented, as though explaining a concept to a small child. Her writing finished, she staged the newspaper in the girl's lap, stood back and snapped a picture."I'm not here to save you."

Charlotte might have yelled after her, but by the time anyone came to check in, Helena was long gone.