AndyC

Ultimate One Universe: Season Two

I think I've mentioned it before, but Archie Meets the Punisher had no right to be as good as it was.

@Byrd Man

Combining our picks, let's not forget that this was a thing that happened:

Ultimate One Universe: Season Two

For real though, after reflecting on our own events what's your favourite crossover event in comics? Or likewise, what's your least favourite?

@Sep

You wanna talk a great crossover event, one that not only successfully mashed two franchises together, but basically made a franchise of its own that lasted throughout the height of comics' hottest period (and some shitty movies that killed the idea dead)? And also just happened to spawn my favorite video game of all time?



Boom, baby. Fucking boom.

EDIT: Also, a criminally underrated crossover gem from the 90s was Robocop vs Terminator. Frank Miller back when it was still okay to like Frank Miller, art by Walt goddamn Simonson in top form, and a story that is just absolutely fucking bonkers. Go dig that one up some time, it's a hoot.

Ultimate One Universe: Season Two

Checking up on this thread like:

Ultimate One Universe: Season Two

Just let me know when you'd be down for such a thing.

@Sep

I mean, apart from a first post establishing Clark's current status quo, I'd be down for it pretty much off the bat.

Ultimate One Universe: Season Two

We got a lot of captains.

Also because I have a pretty full season, got a lot to work on with the Rogues, would anyone want to talk about interaction possibly later in the season? Rather than just discussing it a day before half planned.

That said I would request of @AndyC that Iris and Clark have a chinwaggle. Maybe waggle someother things if ya know what I mean.

@Sep

I would be down for the chin-waggling. I don't know if Lois would approve of any other forms of waggling that may commence. But then again that's what makes it exciting

Ultimate One Universe: Season Two

<Snipped quote by HenryJonesJr>
Is that supposed to be Flash Thompson? or is Gwen's bully a intergalactic pulp adventurer that makes Star Lord look like a chump?

@Inkarnate

Aaaaand now I'm gonna be singing the Queen song for the rest of the night. Thanks for that.

Ultimate One Universe: Season Two

Ultimate One Universe: Season Two Application

---

_Name

Clark Joseph Kent

_Alias

Superman

_{Powers & Abilities}

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Alien Physiology: Clark knows next to nothing about his birth species or his home world, but he knows that his body interacts with the world around him in ways completely different to everyone else. He can go for weeks without food, days without water, and even hours without air. He has come to believe that his cells absorb sunlight and process it incredibly efficiently, storing up over a lifetime on Earth and allowing him to do things that would be otherwise impossible. What Clark finds both exhilirating and concerning, though, is that even after years of trying to control and understand his abilities, he is still barely scratching the surface of what he is capable of.

Strength: The first of his abilities to manifest, Clark's muscles are able to generate more kinetic energy than should be possible, allowing him to move massive objects with his bare hands. Thus far, he has been able to hold up several thousand tons of rubble, lift the equivalent weight of a skyscraper, and tow a sinking oil tanker (weighing in excess of 225,000 metric tons) to safety. Though moving these immense weights does cause him a great deal of stress and even pain, he has shown no signs of actual injury afterward, indicating that if he can work through the strain, he is capable of doing far more.

Gravity Manipulation and Flight: While the exact process is still unknown, Superman is capable of expanding and manipulating his own gravitational field to an incredible degree. This, among other things, allows him to fly at hypersonic speeds, and grants him a sort of 'tactile kinesis' that aids his incredible strength, holding together superheavy objects that should buckle under the strain of their weight being focused entirely on his hands. While Superman has only recently demonstrated the ability to fly, he was previously capable of jumping over a quarter-mile into the air, though Clark does not know if this was due more to his gravitational manipulation or to his sheer strength.

Speed and Reflexes: When tapping into his reserves, Clark can move quickly enough to dodge bullets fired at point-blank range, and in a straight sprint, is capable of reaching speeds of up to Mach 30. However, moving at full speed creates a tremendous amount of turbulence in his wake, and in populated areas he rarely moves above Mach 1.

Durability: Superman seems thus far impervious to most, if not all, conventional weapons. Small-arms fire seems to have no effect on him at all, and heavy explosive or armor-piercing ordnance does little more than leave bruises or scratches-- and even those have become less effective over time. Recently, Clark was caught in a nuclear explosion while redirecting a hijacked missile away from Gotham City, and while he was temporarily knocked unconscious, even this did not cause any permanent damage. While he is still susceptible to pain, it is unknown if any force exists on Earth that can cause Superman any real injury.

Enhanced Senses: Clark has always been able to perceive the world in ways he could never quite describe. His eyes are sensitive to the entire electromagnetic spectrum, and can even focus in ways that let him see through solid objects, this 'X-Ray vision' capable of filtering through up to six inches of solid lead. His hearing is also incredibly accute, able to focus on minute details at great distances, and his extremely attuned sense of touch allows him to control his immense strength without unwittingly causing damage to everything and everyone around him.

"Heat Vision:" Clark can emit stored energy through his eyes, in the form of incredibly powerful lasers that can cut through solid steel almost instantaneously. Though he typically only uses this ability as an ad-hoc welding or cutting torch, Superman has on occasion used it as an offensive weapon, generating beams hotter than the core of the sun. Doing this, however, drains his reserves of power, and can even cause him to lose consciousness if he overdoes it.

Hand-to-Hand Combat: In the rare occasions where Superman has had to fight an opponent of equivalent power, he has demonstrated an affinity for boxing, wrestling, and the use of improvised weapons. While Clark lacks any formal martial arts training, his raw power, keen senses, and sheer tenacity more than make up for it.

Season One Recap:

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Clark Kent always knew he was different. Growing up in the quiet little town of Smallville, Kansas, where nothing unusual ever seemed to happen, he found himself the cause of unusual happenings all the time. Like the time he flipped over his father's tractor to retrieve a lost toy. Or the time he started seeing people's skeletons in the middle of class. Or after he found out his friend Lana Lang's father had been abusing her, only for the man's clothes to catch fire when Clark gave him an angry glare. These incident, and dozens more like them, left Clark confused and afraid, but comforted by his mother and father, Martha and Jonathan Kent, who showed him the old stories of Captain America and the Justice Society. The things that made him different also made him special, they told him, and he could use those special things to do some genuine good in the world. He could be all those old stories made real: a real, true, honest-to-God superhero.

In his early teens, as his incredible abilities began to manifest, Clark became more curious about where he came from, how he could do all of these impossible things. After a string of arguments that led to Clark accidentally knocking over the farm's grain silo in frustration, Jonathan and Martha finally sat him down and told him the truth. He was not merely adopted, but found in a pod that crashed down from the sky like a meteor. The Kents had happened upon the crash site and, realizing they couldn't simply leave an abandoned child to fend for himself, took him in. Hoping to find some answers about his origins, they had searched the pod, but were only able to take two things from it before the site swarmed with black helicopters and unmarked Hum-Vees: a crystalline ball which hummed with a life of its own, and a red cloak, emblazoned with a logo that looked for all the world like a stylized letter 'S.' Clark was, for lack of a better word, an alien. A strange visitor from another world. Not only was he not the same family as his adopted parents, he wasn't even the same species. The shock of this revelation was too much for Clark to take, and at age 16, he ran away from Smallville, traveling the world to find a place where he might fit in.

For the next nine years, Clark spent his life on the road, meeting new people, helping where he could, and fighting injustice and oppression where he saw it. Invariably, however, whenever he would be forced to use his abilities, the people around him would be terrified, wondering what else this unassuming country boy was hiding. He quickly began using a long line of assumed identities, discarding them and moving on whenever someone got too close to finding him. Despite making greater efforts to cover his tracks, there was one person who started seeing a pattern-- and more importantly, seeing a story. It was while working to depose a warlord in the African nation of Nairomi that Clark first met Lois Lane, who had been tracking him for over a year and was convinced enough of Clark's kind-hearted nature to approach him. While his first instinct was to withdraw, he listened long enough to take some of her words to heart: that he shouldn't have to keep running from himself, that he could own his abilities instead of hiding them, and that in time the world would come around and see him for who he was rather than what he was. Sadly, before he could begin to work with Lois on this new direction, Clark had to return home to Smallville; during Clark's years away, Jonathan had contracted cancer, and didn't have much time left.

While spending those final days on the Kent farm, Clark talked with Jonathan and Martha about his travels, about meeting Lois, and about his place in the world. Taking the old red cloak they had found in his pod, and remembering the old stories and comic books he would read with his dad, Clark fashioned a makeshift costume, little more than a cape and a blue T-shirt with the cloak's logo on it, but it was an effective enough mock-up until they could make a better one. His 'practice' costume would have to do, however, when news broke of a terrorist attack on the Science Spire in the city of Metropolis. Clark sprung into action, promising to tell the ailing Jonathan all about it when he returned. After foiling the attack, holding up several thousand tons of collapsing building long enough for civilians to flee, he flew into the air for the whole world to see and sped back to Smallville....only to find that his father had passed while he was away. Still, Martha consoled him through choked-back tears, he had gotten to see his son stand tall in front of the world, to see him save lives, and to hear what the world called him in return: the "Superman."

With a new identity and purpose, Clark moved to Metropolis permanently, where Lois Lane helped get him a job as a junior reporter at the Daily Planet and an apartment he could share with their mutual friend and Planet photographer, the excitable Jimmy Olsen. Superman was seen as a revolutionary figure not just in Metropolis, but in the world at large, as other metahumans and vigilantes began to make themselves known to the public in the wake of his debut. Many began to question if the existence of such a figure would pose a significant change or even an existential threat to society as a whole, a talking point routinely hammered home by political blowhard G. Gordon Godfrey and billionaire tech giant Lex Luthor. Despite having the eyes of the world on him, however, Clark had never felt better, and he tackled his new persona with vigor, fearlessly taking on the organized crime syndicates in Metropolis and preventing disasters, while Lois Lane acted as his partner in crime, digging up dirt that tied many thwarted disasters and rogue superhumans to corrupt elements in the government and the military.

For six months, Superman was on top of the world, easily besting the various ‘super-villains’ that rose up to challenge him, including the electrified political radical Livewire, the vampiric murderer Parasite, and the radioactive monster called the Atomic Skull. His first true challenge came, however, when he was attacked by a fleet of high-end anti-metahuman military drones, developed by Dr. John Henry Irons for the US military but hijacked by a malevolent hacker calling himself The Toyman. For weeks, Toyman tormented Superman, taking control of vital parts of Metropolis’ infrastructure, endangering millions of lives and causing wanton destruction, while Superman could only try to contain the damage. While the elusive cyber-terrorist continued to frustrate and humiliate Superman, his critics in the media had a field day with it, pressing the narrative that Superman was not someone who could be trusted when the time came.

Superman briefly broke away from his pursuit of the Toyman to meet another threat: an unknown entity called the Silver Surfer had arrived in Central City and was threatening their local hero, the speedster known as The Flash. Together, Superman and Flash were able to subdue the alien assailant, leaving him in the custody of SHIELD, but the battle left Clark severely drained of his power, but also hearing a name that resonated with him: Kal-El. Taking time to return to his home nearby in Smallville, Clark visited his mother, hoping she might have some answers from when she and his father found him. In his room, they found the metallic orb that was with Clark in his pod, which activated when he said the name ‘Kal-El,’ flashing pictures of an alien world and flooding his mind with images and memories, before flying away into the night. Elsewhere, the long-dormant pod in which Clark came to Earth stirred to life, burrowing into the Earth and disappearing from sight, but not before attracting the attention of its new owner, Lex Luthor, who had been performing experiments with the pod and its contents to create the highly advanced technology that made LexCorp a dominant power.

The next day, Clark and Lois were assigned to cover stories in Gotham City: Lois had secured an interview with Dr. Irons in the hopes that it would lead them to uncovering the Toyman’s identity, while Clark was sent to do an exposé on the vigilante known as the Batman. As Clark interviewed people who had encountered the Bat, Lois learned that Toyman was likely a disgraced programmer named Winslow Schott, who had helped develop artificial intelligence for Dr. Irons but had also been secretly torturing his creations for his own amusement. Lois and Irons were attacked when Toyman began taking control of several cars and attempted to ram them, but before Superman could help them, he was called back to Metropolis to deal with the escaped villainess Livewire. During his battle with the electrical menace, Superman was electrocuted with several million volts across the brain, temporarily affecting his mind, impairing his judgement and increasing his aggression.

When Clark returned to Gotham City to save Lois, he found her unconscious in a scene of wreckage, with the Batman looming over her. In his altered state of mind, Superman jumped to conclusions and attacked Batman, believing he had something to do with Lois’s injury. Before he could land a finishing blow, however, Lois was able to snap him out of his delusion, insisting that Batman had actually saved them. Once they reached an understanding, Superman and Batman were able to trace Toyman back to his lair, where it was revealed that Winslow Schott was long dead, and Toyman was in fact a rogue AI based on Schott’s digitized consciousness, created by a fragment of a vast and far more powerful intelligence discovered by Lex Luthor. Before the two could dismantle him, Toyman hijacked a nuclear missile from a nearby Army base and launched it towards Gotham City. With millions of lives at stake, Clark broke away from the battle to stop the missile, leaving Batman to take down the AI himself. While Superman was able to redirect the missile over the ocean, he was unable to get clear of the blast, getting caught by the shock wave of the nuclear explosion and believed dead. Incredibly, Superman survived this, and would later meet up with Batman in a nearby café to discuss the events and any potential plans for the future. In the end, the two would go their separate ways, still far from friends, but at least no longer enemies.

As Clark recuperated at Lois’s apartment (the two having confessed their feelings for each other during the crisis in Gotham and spending the night together), Lex Luthor held a press conference, unveiling his latest creation that would, according to him, render the metahuman ‘gods and monsters’ of the world irrelevant: a hyper-advanced artificial intelligence network, linked to every LexCorp device in the world, which he named Brainiac.

Where Do You Plan To Take The Character This Season?:

Clark has grown from being a down-and-dirty scrapper to a full-fledged superhero at this point, and his relationship with Lois has blossomed from partners-in-crime with a mutual crush to a genuine romance, so now I want to take the opportunity to develop some of the other denizens of Metropolis. I’m hoping to bring out some more of Superman’s rogues gallery, have some more newsroom hijinks with Jimmy and Perry and the like, and most importantly, establish the full-on enmity between Superman and Lex Luthor, developing their rivalry from two influential figures who dislike each other in the abstract, to the eternal nemeses they will eventually become.

Supporting Characters:

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Crucial NPCs

Lois Lane: Clark’s co-worker at the Daily Planet, closest confidant, best friend, and lover, Lois was the one who tracked Clark down during his wandering years and inspired him to adopt a public persona. She is a tenacious and determined idealist, absolutely fearless in the face of evil and intrepid in her pursuit of the truth. While she puts on an air of being cynical and bossy, underneath that she’s a deeply caring and loving person. She’s also something of a thrill-seeker, only ever truly feeling at home when there’s danger about. She believes in truth and justice, and more than anything, she believes in Clark.

Jimmy Olsen: Clark’s roommate, and a photographer at the Planet, Jimmy is an excitable young man who believes that he has the coolest job in the world. A major technophile and an obsessive fan of ‘cape culture,’ Jimmy sees the world in shades of awesome, which more often than not obscures his critical thinking.

Martha Kent: Clark’s adoptive mother, currently residing in Smallville, Kansas. While Martha is incredibly proud of the man Clark has become, she’s never really stopped seeing him as her little boy, the miracle who came from the stars and answered her prayers.

Jonathan Kent: (deceased) Clark’s adoptive father, a former Army infantryman who returned to his home with the intent of living a happy, quiet life with his hometown sweetheart. Jonathan was unprepared to raise a child, let alone one as unique as Clark, but he did his best to instill his son with the right principles, teach him right from wrong, and show him how to fight when it mattered, before succumbing to cancer shortly after Clark’s debut as Superman.

Daily Planet Newsroom

Perry White: A career newsman who climbed his way to the top, the Chief Editor of the Daily Planet is a tough, grumpy, often domineering lion of a man. He has seen it all, usually more than once, and while he has grown jaded over time, he is still committed to preserving the integrity of the Planet’s name even as the paper struggles to get by.

Steve Lombard: The head sports writer at the Planet, Lombard peaked in high school and never truly realized it. Still believing he’s the proverbial big-man-on-campus, Steve routinely tries to assert himself as the macho alpha-male of the office, whether through unwanted advances towards his female co-workers or arguably-good-natured light bullying of Clark and Jimmy, which has gotten him in trouble with Perry on more than one occasion. He is not mean-spirited or deliberately antagonistic, just a meat-head who doesn’t realize how much of a jackass he can be.

Ron Troupe: The Planet’s senior political correspondent, Ron is more often than not the smartest person in the room, a fact which has led him to become something of a snob towards his co-workers. While he is an excellent writer, he routinely has to be reined in to keep him from slanting stories too much with his own biases.

Cat Grant: The Planet’s lifestyle and fashion writer, Cat’s vivacious and flirty persona often gets her in with the movers and shakers of Metropolis. While putting on airs of being bubbly and light-headed, she is actually an extremely clever and ambitious woman with big career goals far beyond simply writing tabloids for a failing newspaper.

Spoiler

Linda Danvers: A newly hired intern at the Planet, Linda is a soft-spoken and shy young woman who tends to keep to herself, and generally avoids speaking or making eye contact with anyone whenever she can.

Other Metropolis Figures

Captain Dan Turpin: A twenty-year veteran of the Metropolis Police Department’s Special Crimes Division, Turpin is a classic hard-boiled detective, tasked with bringing in the increasingly crazy threats the city throws at them. When he’s not chasing down super-criminals or busting gangsters with ray guns, he’s pursuing what may be the city’s greatest mystery: uncovering the truth about who Superman really is.

Lieutenant Maggie Sawyer: Turpin’s partner, a highly competent but inexperienced cop still getting used to the way things work in the big city. She doesn’t share Turpin’s zeal for pursuing Superman, but always has his back.

Dr. John Henry Irons: The founder and CEO of SteelWorks Industries, Irons is a brilliant engineer in the field of robotics. Having recently helped Superman stop the Toyman menace, Irons has gained something of a reputation as an ally in the hero community.

”Bibbo” Bibbowski: The owner and head cook of Bibbo’s, Clark’s favorite hole-in-the-wall diner, ‘Bibbo’ is a large, gruff, somewhat dim-witted but good-hearted man who has become a huge fan of Superman and the other superheroes. When he’s not at work, he can usually be found leading a volunteer neighborhood watch in Suicide Slum, trying to fight back against the rampant gang activity in the area.

G. Gordon Godfrey: A boisterous and bombastic television pundit, G. Gordon Godfrey hosts the highest-rated show on the LexCorp-owned Galaxy News Network. While dismissed by most as a sensationalist blowhard, Godfrey nonetheless continues to stir the pot and foment anti-Superman sentiment throughout the city.

Enemies

Lex Luthor: The CEO of LexCorp, Lex plays the part of a genius billionaire playboy philanthropist, as well as a socio-political firebrand, championing the cause of humanity in the face of superhuman threats. In secret, he is a vicious, sadistic, insecure, and vindictive megalomaniac, having left quite a few bodies in his wake in his schemes for more power and control. While publicly he denounces the superheroes and vigilantes of the world as ‘inhuman,’ he has secretly been using stolen alien technology for years to develop his corporate empire.

Brainiac: A hyper-intelligent artificial intelligence app developed by Lex Luthor, Brainiac is embedded into every LexCorp device in the world, and in several of its competitors. During its unveiling, Luthor claimed it would not only give people unlimited instant access to any information they could possibly want, but even begin to train their minds to become more intelligent with increased use. According to the rogue Toyman AI, however, this intelligence is far more powerful than even Luthor realizes, and is only giving the billionaire technocrat the mere illusion of control.

Bruno Mannheim: An old-fashioned gangster at heart, Mannheim has been the king of Metropolis’s criminal underworld for years. In the wake of Superman’s arrival, his empire has begun to crumble, and he is reaching to increasingly desperate measures to preserve what is his.

Livewire: Originally an anti-Superman activity turned into a violent metahuman terrorist, Livewire’s body has transformed into a mass of living electrical plasma, allowing her to travel at the speed of light project electrical arcs with voltage well into the millions, and pass through solid matter. Her physical form was dispersed when Superman dunked her into the ocean and shorted her out, but it is only a matter of time before her consciousness reconstitutes a new body.

The Parasite: The creature that was formerly LexCorp janitor Rudy Jones was mutated into an abomination, a monster that drains the electrical charge of anything it touches, converting that energy into bio-mass on its own body. Capable of killing a human near instantaneously, the Parasite can use this drained energy to increase its own mass, creating armor plating that can shrug off tank shells, or claws and spurs that can pierce solid steel, or tentacles that can extend its lethal reach by hundreds of yards. Parasite believes that absorbing the energy of Superman is the only thing that can stop its insatiable hunger, and will stop at nothing for the chance to feed again. Currently in super-maximum security confinement on the Raft.

The Atomic Skull: The tragic result of military experiments to create their own metahumans, a trio of special forces operatives named Joseph Martin, John Corben, and Nathaniel Tryon were fused together into an insane, monstrous abomination that emits lethal blasts of radiation. Currently in super-maximum security confinement on the Raft.

The Toyman: Originally believed to be a black-hat hacker and cyber-terrorist named Winslow Schott, Toyman was actually an artificial intelligence based on the now-dead Schott’s digitized thought patterns. Tormenting Superman and the citizens of Metropolis again and again, the sadistic AI saw humans at little more than toys, playthings to be bent and smashed and broken for its own amusement. The combined efforts of Superman and Batman were able to shut the program down, and the Toyman is believed to have been destroyed completely.

HI THERE!

MISTER MXYZPTLK: A CLEVER, DASHING, EXTREMELY GOOD-LOOKING, SPECTACULAR-IN-BED, ALL-SEEING AND ALL-POWERFUL ENTITY FROM A HIGHER PLANE OF REALITY, WHO OCCASIONALLY CHIMES IN WITH PITHY COMMENTS ABOUT THE FUTILITY OF YOUR EXISTENCE AND HOW YOU’RE ALL A BUNCH OF WORTHLESS SACKS OF QUIVERING MEAT SPENDING YOUR DAYS TRYING TO DISTRACT YOURSELVES FROM THE FACT THAT YOU’RE ALL GOING TO DIE SOME DAY-- AND IF THINGS DON’T GO YOUR WAY, THAT SOME DAY MAY COME VERY, VERY SOON….

Post Catalogue:

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"Toy Soldiers" Arc:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4
• Part 5 (Segue to Multi-Player Event)

Multi-Player Event: Enter the Silver Surfer

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4
• Part 5
• Part 6
• Part 7

Toys in the Attic (Toyman cont'd)

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4

Bat Country (Batman Crossover, Toyman conclusion)

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4
• Part 5
• Part 6
• Part 7
• Part 8
• Part 9 (by Master Bruce)
• Part 10
• Part 11 (by Master Bruce)
• Part 12
• Part 13 (by Master Bruce)
• Part 14
• Part 15 (by Master Bruce)
• Part 16
• Part 17 (by Master Bruce)
• Part 18
• Part 19 (by Master Bruce)
• Part 20
• Part 21 (by Master Bruce)
• Part 22
• Part 23 (by Master Bruce)
• Part 24
• Part 25 (Co-wrote w/Master Bruce)

Season Finale

Ultimate One Universe: Season Two

Ultimate One Universe: Season Two Application

---

_Name

Clark Joseph Kent

_Alias

Superman

_{Powers & Abilities}

Hider

Alien Physiology: Clark knows next to nothing about his birth species or his home world, but he knows that his body interacts with the world around him in ways completely different to everyone else. He can go for weeks without food, days without water, and even hours without air. He has come to believe that his cells absorb sunlight and process it incredibly efficiently, storing up over a lifetime on Earth and allowing him to do things that would be otherwise impossible. What Clark finds both exhilirating and concerning, though, is that even after years of trying to control and understand his abilities, he is still barely scratching the surface of what he is capable of.

Strength: The first of his abilities to manifest, Clark's muscles are able to generate more kinetic energy than should be possible, allowing him to move massive objects with his bare hands. Thus far, he has been able to hold up several thousand tons of rubble, lift the equivalent weight of a skyscraper, and tow a sinking oil tanker (weighing in excess of 225,000 metric tons) to safety. Though moving these immense weights does cause him a great deal of stress and even pain, he has shown no signs of actual injury afterward, indicating that if he can work through the strain, he is capable of doing far more.

Gravity Manipulation and Flight: While the exact process is still unknown, Superman is capable of expanding and manipulating his own gravitational field to an incredible degree. This, among other things, allows him to fly at hypersonic speeds, and grants him a sort of 'tactile kinesis' that aids his incredible strength, holding together superheavy objects that should buckle under the strain of their weight being focused entirely on his hands. While Superman has only recently demonstrated the ability to fly, he was previously capable of jumping over a quarter-mile into the air, though Clark does not know if this was due more to his gravitational manipulation or to his sheer strength.

Speed and Reflexes: When tapping into his reserves, Clark can move quickly enough to dodge bullets fired at point-blank range, and in a straight sprint, is capable of reaching speeds of up to Mach 30. However, moving at full speed creates a tremendous amount of turbulence in his wake, and in populated areas he rarely moves above Mach 1.

Durability: Superman seems thus far impervious to most, if not all, conventional weapons. Small-arms fire seems to have no effect on him at all, and heavy explosive or armor-piercing ordnance does little more than leave bruises or scratches-- and even those have become less effective over time. Recently, Clark was caught in a nuclear explosion while redirecting a hijacked missile away from Gotham City, and while he was temporarily knocked unconscious, even this did not cause any permanent damage. While he is still susceptible to pain, it is unknown if any force exists on Earth that can cause Superman any real injury.

Enhanced Senses: Clark has always been able to perceive the world in ways he could never quite describe. His eyes are sensitive to the entire electromagnetic spectrum, and can even focus in ways that let him see through solid objects, this 'X-Ray vision' capable of filtering through up to six inches of solid lead. His hearing is also incredibly accute, able to focus on minute details at great distances, and his extremely attuned sense of touch allows him to control his immense strength without unwittingly causing damage to everything and everyone around him.

"Heat Vision:" Clark can emit stored energy through his eyes, in the form of incredibly powerful lasers that can cut through solid steel almost instantaneously. Though he typically only uses this ability as an ad-hoc welding or cutting torch, Superman has on occasion used it as an offensive weapon, generating beams hotter than the core of the sun. Doing this, however, drains his reserves of power, and can even cause him to lose consciousness if he overdoes it.

Hand-to-Hand Combat: In the rare occasions where Superman has had to fight an opponent of equivalent power, he has demonstrated an affinity for boxing, wrestling, and the use of improvised weapons. While Clark lacks any formal martial arts training, his raw power, keen senses, and sheer tenacity more than make up for it.

Season One Recap:

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Clark Kent always knew he was different. Growing up in the quiet little town of Smallville, Kansas, where nothing unusual ever seemed to happen, he found himself the cause of unusual happenings all the time. Like the time he flipped over his father's tractor to retrieve a lost toy. Or the time he started seeing people's skeletons in the middle of class. Or after he found out his friend Lana Lang's father had been abusing her, only for the man's clothes to catch fire when Clark gave him an angry glare. These incident, and dozens more like them, left Clark confused and afraid, but comforted by his mother and father, Martha and Jonathan Kent, who showed him the old stories of Captain America and the Justice Society. The things that made him different also made him special, they told him, and he could use those special things to do some genuine good in the world. He could be all those old stories made real: a real, true, honest-to-God superhero.

In his early teens, as his incredible abilities began to manifest, Clark became more curious about where he came from, how he could do all of these impossible things. After a string of arguments that led to Clark accidentally knocking over the farm's grain silo in frustration, Jonathan and Martha finally sat him down and told him the truth. He was not merely adopted, but found in a pod that crashed down from the sky like a meteor. The Kents had happened upon the crash site and, realizing they couldn't simply leave an abandoned child to fend for himself, took him in. Hoping to find some answers about his origins, they had searched the pod, but were only able to take two things from it before the site swarmed with black helicopters and unmarked Hum-Vees: a crystalline ball which hummed with a life of its own, and a red cloak, emblazoned with a logo that looked for all the world like a stylized letter 'S.' Clark was, for lack of a better word, an alien. A strange visitor from another world. Not only was he not the same family as his adopted parents, he wasn't even the same species. The shock of this revelation was too much for Clark to take, and at age 16, he ran away from Smallville, traveling the world to find a place where he might fit in.

For the next nine years, Clark spent his life on the road, meeting new people, helping where he could, and fighting injustice and oppression where he saw it. Invariably, however, whenever he would be forced to use his abilities, the people around him would be terrified, wondering what else this unassuming country boy was hiding. He quickly began using a long line of assumed identities, discarding them and moving on whenever someone got too close to finding him. Despite making greater efforts to cover his tracks, there was one person who started seeing a pattern-- and more importantly, seeing a story. It was while working to depose a warlord in the African nation of Nairomi that Clark first met Lois Lane, who had been tracking him for over a year and was convinced enough of Clark's kind-hearted nature to approach him. While his first instinct was to withdraw, he listened long enough to take some of her words to heart: that he shouldn't have to keep running from himself, that he could own his abilities instead of hiding them, and that in time the world would come around and see him for who he was rather than what he was. Sadly, before he could begin to work with Lois on this new direction, Clark had to return home to Smallville; during Clark's years away, Jonathan had contracted cancer, and didn't have much time left.

While spending those final days on the Kent farm, Clark talked with Jonathan and Martha about his travels, about meeting Lois, and about his place in the world. Taking the old red cloak they had found in his pod, and remembering the old stories and comic books he would read with his dad, Clark fashioned a makeshift costume, little more than a cape and a blue T-shirt with the cloak's logo on it, but it was an effective enough mock-up until they could make a better one. His 'practice' costume would have to do, however, when news broke of a terrorist attack on the Science Spire in the city of Metropolis. Clark sprung into action, promising to tell the ailing Jonathan all about it when he returned. After foiling the attack, holding up several thousand tons of collapsing building long enough for civilians to flee, he flew into the air for the whole world to see and sped back to Smallville....only to find that his father had passed while he was away. Still, Martha consoled him through choked-back tears, he had gotten to see his son stand tall in front of the world, to see him save lives, and to hear what the world called him in return: the "Superman."

With a new identity and purpose, Clark moved to Metropolis permanently, where Lois Lane helped get him a job as a junior reporter at the Daily Planet and an apartment he could share with their mutual friend and Planet photographer, the excitable Jimmy Olsen. Superman was seen as a revolutionary figure not just in Metropolis, but in the world at large, as other metahumans and vigilantes began to make themselves known to the public in the wake of his debut. Many began to question if the existence of such a figure would pose a significant change or even an existential threat to society as a whole, a talking point routinely hammered home by political blowhard G. Gordon Godfrey and billionaire tech giant Lex Luthor. Despite having the eyes of the world on him, however, Clark had never felt better, and he tackled his new persona with vigor, fearlessly taking on the organized crime syndicates in Metropolis and preventing disasters, while Lois Lane acted as his partner in crime, digging up dirt that tied many thwarted disasters and rogue superhumans to corrupt elements in the government and the military.

For six months, Superman was on top of the world, easily besting the various ‘super-villains’ that rose up to challenge him, including the electrified political radical Livewire, the vampiric murderer Parasite, and the radioactive monster called the Atomic Skull. His first true challenge came, however, when he was attacked by a fleet of high-end anti-metahuman military drones, developed by Dr. John Henry Irons for the US military but hijacked by a malevolent hacker calling himself The Toyman. For weeks, Toyman tormented Superman, taking control of vital parts of Metropolis’ infrastructure, endangering millions of lives and causing wanton destruction, while Superman could only try to contain the damage. While the elusive cyber-terrorist continued to frustrate and humiliate Superman, his critics in the media had a field day with it, pressing the narrative that Superman was not someone who could be trusted when the time came.

Superman briefly broke away from his pursuit of the Toyman to meet another threat: an unknown entity called the Silver Surfer had arrived in Central City and was threatening their local hero, the speedster known as The Flash. Together, Superman and Flash were able to subdue the alien assailant, leaving him in the custody of SHIELD, but the battle left Clark severely drained of his power, but also hearing a name that resonated with him: Kal-El. Taking time to return to his home nearby in Smallville, Clark visited his mother, hoping she might have some answers from when she and his father found him. In his room, they found the metallic orb that was with Clark in his pod, which activated when he said the name ‘Kal-El,’ flashing pictures of an alien world and flooding his mind with images and memories, before flying away into the night. Elsewhere, the long-dormant pod in which Clark came to Earth stirred to life, burrowing into the Earth and disappearing from sight, but not before attracting the attention of its new owner, Lex Luthor, who had been performing experiments with the pod and its contents to create the highly advanced technology that made LexCorp a dominant power.

The next day, Clark and Lois were assigned to cover stories in Gotham City: Lois had secured an interview with Dr. Irons in the hopes that it would lead them to uncovering the Toyman’s identity, while Clark was sent to do an exposé on the vigilante known as the Batman. As Clark interviewed people who had encountered the Bat, Lois learned that Toyman was likely a disgraced programmer named Winslow Schott, who had helped develop artificial intelligence for Dr. Irons but had also been secretly torturing his creations for his own amusement. Lois and Irons were attacked when Toyman began taking control of several cars and attempted to ram them, but before Superman could help them, he was called back to Metropolis to deal with the escaped villainess Livewire. During his battle with the electrical menace, Superman was electrocuted with several million volts across the brain, temporarily affecting his mind, impairing his judgement and increasing his aggression.

When Clark returned to Gotham City to save Lois, he found her unconscious in a scene of wreckage, with the Batman looming over her. In his altered state of mind, Superman jumped to conclusions and attacked Batman, believing he had something to do with Lois’s injury. Before he could land a finishing blow, however, Lois was able to snap him out of his delusion, insisting that Batman had actually saved them. Once they reached an understanding, Superman and Batman were able to trace Toyman back to his lair, where it was revealed that Winslow Schott was long dead, and Toyman was in fact a rogue AI based on Schott’s digitized consciousness, created by a fragment of a vast and far more powerful intelligence discovered by Lex Luthor. Before the two could dismantle him, Toyman hijacked a nuclear missile from a nearby Army base and launched it towards Gotham City. With millions of lives at stake, Clark broke away from the battle to stop the missile, leaving Batman to take down the AI himself. While Superman was able to redirect the missile over the ocean, he was unable to get clear of the blast, getting caught by the shock wave of the nuclear explosion and believed dead. Incredibly, Superman survived this, and would later meet up with Batman in a nearby café to discuss the events and any potential plans for the future. In the end, the two would go their separate ways, still far from friends, but at least no longer enemies.

As Clark recuperated at Lois’s apartment (the two having confessed their feelings for each other during the crisis in Gotham and spending the night together), Lex Luthor held a press conference, unveiling his latest creation that would, according to him, render the metahuman ‘gods and monsters’ of the world irrelevant: a hyper-advanced artificial intelligence network, linked to every LexCorp device in the world, which he named Brainiac.

Where Do You Plan To Take The Character This Season?:

Clark has grown from being a down-and-dirty scrapper to a full-fledged superhero at this point, and his relationship with Lois has blossomed from partners-in-crime with a mutual crush to a genuine romance, so now I want to take the opportunity to develop some of the other denizens of Metropolis. I’m hoping to bring out some more of Superman’s rogues gallery, have some more newsroom hijinks with Jimmy and Perry and the like, and most importantly, establish the full-on enmity between Superman and Lex Luthor, developing their rivalry from two influential figures who dislike each other in the abstract, to the eternal nemeses they will eventually become.

Supporting Characters:

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Crucial NPCs

Lois Lane: Clark’s co-worker at the Daily Planet, closest confidant, best friend, and lover, Lois was the one who tracked Clark down during his wandering years and inspired him to adopt a public persona. She is a tenacious and determined idealist, absolutely fearless in the face of evil and intrepid in her pursuit of the truth. While she puts on an air of being cynical and bossy, underneath that she’s a deeply caring and loving person. She’s also something of a thrill-seeker, only ever truly feeling at home when there’s danger about. She believes in truth and justice, and more than anything, she believes in Clark.

Jimmy Olsen: Clark’s roommate, and a photographer at the Planet, Jimmy is an excitable young man who believes that he has the coolest job in the world. A major technophile and an obsessive fan of ‘cape culture,’ Jimmy sees the world in shades of awesome, which more often than not obscures his critical thinking.

Martha Kent: Clark’s adoptive mother, currently residing in Smallville, Kansas. While Martha is incredibly proud of the man Clark has become, she’s never really stopped seeing him as her little boy, the miracle who came from the stars and answered her prayers.

Jonathan Kent: (deceased) Clark’s adoptive father, a former Army infantryman who returned to his home with the intent of living a happy, quiet life with his hometown sweetheart. Jonathan was unprepared to raise a child, let alone one as unique as Clark, but he did his best to instill his son with the right principles, teach him right from wrong, and show him how to fight when it mattered, before succumbing to cancer shortly after Clark’s debut as Superman.

Daily Planet Newsroom

Perry White: A career newsman who climbed his way to the top, the Chief Editor of the Daily Planet is a tough, grumpy, often domineering lion of a man. He has seen it all, usually more than once, and while he has grown jaded over time, he is still committed to preserving the integrity of the Planet’s name even as the paper struggles to get by.

Steve Lombard: The head sports writer at the Planet, Lombard peaked in high school and never truly realized it. Still believing he’s the proverbial big-man-on-campus, Steve routinely tries to assert himself as the macho alpha-male of the office, whether through unwanted advances towards his female co-workers or arguably-good-natured light bullying of Clark and Jimmy, which has gotten him in trouble with Perry on more than one occasion. He is not mean-spirited or deliberately antagonistic, just a meat-head who doesn’t realize how much of a jackass he can be.

Ron Troupe: The Planet’s senior political correspondent, Ron is more often than not the smartest person in the room, a fact which has led him to become something of a snob towards his co-workers. While he is an excellent writer, he routinely has to be reined in to keep him from slanting stories too much with his own biases.

Cat Grant: The Planet’s lifestyle and fashion writer, Cat’s vivacious and flirty persona often gets her in with the movers and shakers of Metropolis. While putting on airs of being bubbly and light-headed, she is actually an extremely clever and ambitious woman with big career goals far beyond simply writing tabloids for a failing newspaper.

Spoiler

Linda Danvers: A newly hired intern at the Planet, Linda is a soft-spoken and shy young woman who tends to keep to herself, and generally avoids speaking or making eye contact with anyone whenever she can.

Other Metropolis Figures

Captain Dan Turpin: A twenty-year veteran of the Metropolis Police Department’s Special Crimes Division, Turpin is a classic hard-boiled detective, tasked with bringing in the increasingly crazy threats the city throws at them. When he’s not chasing down super-criminals or busting gangsters with ray guns, he’s pursuing what may be the city’s greatest mystery: uncovering the truth about who Superman really is.

Lieutenant Maggie Sawyer: Turpin’s partner, a highly competent but inexperienced cop still getting used to the way things work in the big city. She doesn’t share Turpin’s zeal for pursuing Superman, but always has his back.

Dr. John Henry Irons: The founder and CEO of SteelWorks Industries, Irons is a brilliant engineer in the field of robotics. Having recently helped Superman stop the Toyman menace, Irons has gained something of a reputation as an ally in the hero community.

”Bibbo” Bibbowski: The owner and head cook of Bibbo’s, Clark’s favorite hole-in-the-wall diner, ‘Bibbo’ is a large, gruff, somewhat dim-witted but good-hearted man who has become a huge fan of Superman and the other superheroes. When he’s not at work, he can usually be found leading a volunteer neighborhood watch in Suicide Slum, trying to fight back against the rampant gang activity in the area.

G. Gordon Godfrey: A boisterous and bombastic television pundit, G. Gordon Godfrey hosts the highest-rated show on the LexCorp-owned Galaxy News Network. While dismissed by most as a sensationalist blowhard, Godfrey nonetheless continues to stir the pot and foment anti-Superman sentiment throughout the city.

Enemies

Lex Luthor: The CEO of LexCorp, Lex plays the part of a genius billionaire playboy philanthropist, as well as a socio-political firebrand, championing the cause of humanity in the face of superhuman threats. In secret, he is a vicious, sadistic, insecure, and vindictive megalomaniac, having left quite a few bodies in his wake in his schemes for more power and control. While publicly he denounces the superheroes and vigilantes of the world as ‘inhuman,’ he has secretly been using stolen alien technology for years to develop his corporate empire.

Brainiac: A hyper-intelligent artificial intelligence app developed by Lex Luthor, Brainiac is embedded into every LexCorp device in the world, and in several of its competitors. During its unveiling, Luthor claimed it would not only give people unlimited instant access to any information they could possibly want, but even begin to train their minds to become more intelligent with increased use. According to the rogue Toyman AI, however, this intelligence is far more powerful than even Luthor realizes, and is only giving the billionaire technocrat the mere illusion of control.

Bruno Mannheim: An old-fashioned gangster at heart, Mannheim has been the king of Metropolis’s criminal underworld for years. In the wake of Superman’s arrival, his empire has begun to crumble, and he is reaching to increasingly desperate measures to preserve what is his.

Livewire: Originally an anti-Superman activity turned into a violent metahuman terrorist, Livewire’s body has transformed into a mass of living electrical plasma, allowing her to travel at the speed of light project electrical arcs with voltage well into the millions, and pass through solid matter. Her physical form was dispersed when Superman dunked her into the ocean and shorted her out, but it is only a matter of time before her consciousness reconstitutes a new body.

The Parasite: The creature that was formerly LexCorp janitor Rudy Jones was mutated into an abomination, a monster that drains the electrical charge of anything it touches, converting that energy into bio-mass on its own body. Capable of killing a human near instantaneously, the Parasite can use this drained energy to increase its own mass, creating armor plating that can shrug off tank shells, or claws and spurs that can pierce solid steel, or tentacles that can extend its lethal reach by hundreds of yards. Parasite believes that absorbing the energy of Superman is the only thing that can stop its insatiable hunger, and will stop at nothing for the chance to feed again. Currently in super-maximum security confinement on the Raft.

The Atomic Skull: The tragic result of military experiments to create their own metahumans, a trio of special forces operatives named Joseph Martin, John Corben, and Nathaniel Tryon were fused together into an insane, monstrous abomination that emits lethal blasts of radiation. Currently in super-maximum security confinement on the Raft.

The Toyman: Originally believed to be a black-hat hacker and cyber-terrorist named Winslow Schott, Toyman was actually an artificial intelligence based on the now-dead Schott’s digitized thought patterns. Tormenting Superman and the citizens of Metropolis again and again, the sadistic AI saw humans at little more than toys, playthings to be bent and smashed and broken for its own amusement. The combined efforts of Superman and Batman were able to shut the program down, and the Toyman is believed to have been destroyed completely.

HI THERE!

MISTER MXYZPTLK: A CLEVER, DASHING, EXTREMELY GOOD-LOOKING, SPECTACULAR-IN-BED, ALL-SEEING AND ALL-POWERFUL ENTITY FROM A HIGHER PLANE OF REALITY, WHO OCCASIONALLY CHIMES IN WITH PITHY COMMENTS ABOUT THE FUTILITY OF YOUR EXISTENCE AND HOW YOU’RE ALL A BUNCH OF WORTHLESS SACKS OF QUIVERING MEAT SPENDING YOUR DAYS TRYING TO DISTRACT YOURSELVES FROM THE FACT THAT YOU’RE ALL GOING TO DIE SOME DAY-- AND IF THINGS DON’T GO YOUR WAY, THAT SOME DAY MAY COME VERY, VERY SOON….

Post Catalogue:

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"Toy Soldiers" Arc:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4
• Part 5 (Segue to Multi-Player Event)

Multi-Player Event: Enter the Silver Surfer

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4
• Part 5
• Part 6
• Part 7

Toys in the Attic (Toyman cont'd)

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4

Bat Country (Batman Crossover, Toyman conclusion)

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4
• Part 5
• Part 6
• Part 7
• Part 8
• Part 9 (by Master Bruce)
• Part 10
• Part 11 (by Master Bruce)
• Part 12
• Part 13 (by Master Bruce)
• Part 14
• Part 15 (by Master Bruce)
• Part 16
• Part 17 (by Master Bruce)
• Part 18
• Part 19 (by Master Bruce)
• Part 20
• Part 21 (by Master Bruce)
• Part 22
• Part 23 (by Master Bruce)
• Part 24
• Part 25 (Co-wrote w/Master Bruce)

Season Finale

CLOSED - Ultimate One Universe: Season One

Best Character @HenryJonesJr's Spider-Gwen. If there's one thing I absolutely loathe about modern geek culture, it's the obsession with getting rid of established classic characters and replacing them with race- or gender-swapped proxies. I think it's generally done less out of love for a character and more to push politics I don't support, I think it causes more problems in the fandoms than it solves, and I think it brings out the worst in people on both sides of the argument. Fucking hate it. So for Henry to lean into my absolute biggest pet peeve, relegate my favorite character in all of fiction to sidekick duty, and still win me over and make Spider-Gwen a character I genuinely look forward to reading, is a major testament to his capability as a writer to really bring a character to life.

(It should be noted that @Sep managed to pull off this same feat as well with Iris, so I guess take that as an honorable mention)

Best Character Development @Lord Wraith's Thor. The best stories are often ones that take a while to tell, and Donald Blake's gradual but inevitable transformation into the God of Thunder has been a real treat to watch.

Best Season @Byrd Man's John Constantine. I'll be honest, when this game was first announced, I'd be lying if I said I thought we'd all be here by season's end-- we old Hypesters are notorious for dropping out as soon as we start to lose momentum. But if there's one guy who never let his momentum drop from the word 'go,' it was Byrd, plowing through the season like the goddamn Juggernaut with a fantastic set of punchy and entertaining magic-noir stories.

Best Antagonist Some really fun villains all around, including Black Tarantula, Silver Surfer, and even Victor Creel of all people, but if I've gotta pick one, it's gonna be @Master Bruce's take on the Riddler, Edward 'Nashton.' It shouldn't really be any surprise that MB did a good job with a Gotham character, but to take a character that so often either gets dismissed as a second-rate gag villain or cranked up to ridiculous levels to drive home that he's not the Joker you guys, and make him a cunning and truly menacing threat to the Batman even while ostensibly working on the side of the law, is no mean feat.

Best Supporting Cast Again, lots of great picks to choose from, but I think I'm gonna have to go with @Eddie Brock's Avengers. It would've been really easy to lean on having just, say, Bucky or Falcon or Black Widow palling around with Cap, but his fantastic revision of Diana Prince in a setting where someone else has already claimed the Wonder Woman mantle is pretty damn stellar.

Best World-building There really isn't any other choice but @Master Bruce's Gotham City. There was some great work all around from everyone, but the level of depth and detail that went into creating this version of Gotham and the people in it is just kinda staggering.

Best Concept This was a very, very close call, but I'm gonna give my vote to @DocTachyon's Vigilante/Ghost Rider, with @Morden Man's Fantastic Four as a very close second. When we do these universe-crossover games, there's always someone who wants to mix and match origins, and it's usually pretty obvious stuff. What if Bruce Wayne was Daredevil, what if Captain America led the Justice Society, what if Dick Grayson got bitten by the radioactive spider, etc. So to take two characters I would have never, in a million years, have thought of combining-- one of whom being a DC D-lister who I don't think anyone's ever given a damn about, the other a Marvel side character who has coasted by his entire existence solely on looking cool-- and to turn them into a well-rounded and extremely fun character is something really special. Anyone can take two concepts that are similar on the surface and mash them together into something that should be a crowd-pleaser, but Doc was able to spin straw into goddamn gold.

CLOSED - Ultimate One Universe: Season One

*reads the last post*

@HenryJonesJr

Bring it. I ain't scared of no mirror match (even if I am sick to death of the "what if Superman was a bad guy" angle)