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Opinionated nerd for hire.
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C H A R A C T E R C O N C E P T P R O P O S A L
S U P E R M A N
Clark Joseph Kent ♦ Freelance Journalist ♦ Metropolis, Delaware, USA ♦ Independent
C H A R A C T E R C O N C E P T:
"I do what I can, same as anyone else. I can just do a little more."
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.
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.
C H A R A C T E R M O T I V A T I O N S & G O A L S:
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.
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.
C H A R A C T E R N O T E S:
S A M P L E P O S T:
“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?”
“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?”
In
Three DC Comics RPGs, one game. Which moves forward? You decide!
→
4 yrs ago
Forum: Casual Interest Checks
MB said OOC is going up Friday. It is Friday.
In
Three DC Comics RPGs, one game. Which moves forward? You decide!
→
4 yrs ago
Forum: Casual Interest Checks
I suppose while we're taking about creating canon, we ought to work out exactly how much of each canon we're allowed to shape. The DCU, after all, has tons of legacy characters and spin-offs and whatnot, so it may behoove us to clarify the rules around, say, if someone wants to have Wally West be the Flash first, or someone wants to play Damian as Robin before Dick Grayson shows up, etc.
In
Three DC Comics RPGs, one game. Which moves forward? You decide!
→
4 yrs ago
Forum: Casual Interest Checks
*Awakens from my thousand-year slumber, shakes off the layers of dust and rubble that have covered my corpse, and rises from my long-forgotten tomb*
I know I've done the Pitch #2 concept a thousand times, so at the moment, Pitch #3 really appeals to me. That said, I would not be heartbroken at another crack at a year-one DCU.
I know I've done the Pitch #2 concept a thousand times, so at the moment, Pitch #3 really appeals to me. That said, I would not be heartbroken at another crack at a year-one DCU.
<Snipped quote by AndyC>
Clearly I'm doing a shit job of GMing.
I've touched them a little bit, and Rogue is an integral part of my Steve Rogers story, but otherwise no, not really.
That, or I wasn't paying attention. Which is probably more likely. I'm still kicking around character concepts, but I'd likely go with Logan, so Rogue wouldn't really figure into anything I'd have in mind.
.....sooooo, has anything been done with the X-Men yet?
I'm kicking myself for this, but I'm out. Just tried to file my taxes, and the wonderful results of going from a regular w-2 employee to a 1099 means I now have to go get a second job in order to afford to keep working at my first job. Which means my spare time just dropped to less than zero. Sorry guys.
Well we're almost a week into the IC and already on our third page so out of curiosity, what are the driving factors and influences in your story?
Well, Kingdom Come is the most obvious influence-- despite my utter loathing of present-day Mark Waid and everything he stands for, his book is still one of my absolute favorite stories. Apart from that, I've wanted to do an "Old Man Logan" sort of take on Clark for a while now, and frankly over the last couple of years I've become pretty bitter and disillusioned toward the state of the cape-and-tights industry and fandom, so I figured I'd take a shot at it while I'm in this particular state of mind. Some of the grumpy-old-man Clint Eastwood movies definitely have some influence on what I've got in mind, especially Gran Torino. And probably the biggest influence once the arc actually gets moving is Grant Morrison's Flex Mentallo: Man of Muscle Mystery.
The parallel-universe angle also means I can do that without overriding what Gowi wants to do with Kara, so I can tell this sort of self-contained story, an ending while everyone else's stories are beginning. I have ideas for if I want Old Clark to stick around past one season, but I'm going into it with the mentality that this'll be a one-shot.
"This is wrong," I say to myself, pacing back and forth across the dusty concrete floor of the storm cellar underneath the farmhouse. "This is all wrong."
It's not the first time I've said something along those lines since I woke up in the bed upstairs, in a house I'd apparently just purchased, in a world somewhat familiar but definitely not my own. I'd say to myself watching the news, seeing people I'd known for nearly a century only just starting out, or the successor to a heroic legacy being the originator instead. I'd say it looking at the state of the people who populate this world, the crippled and dying culture that could have made them great now spun into the pursuit of cheap distractions and easy outrage.
Now I'm saying it as I look down on the old metal work bench and the form laid across it....at the bleached, dried bones of another version of myself, left unceremoniously in front of my house while I was out on my morning patrol.
"How could anyone know about me, here?" I ask, staring at the grinning skull, a pair of darkened sockets which used to hold eyes that could see to the farthest ends of the universe, observe quantum-level events, or spew heat that could slice through a planet like a knife through hot butter. "Superman never existed on this world. Kara came to Earth instead of Kal-El. Diana was the first public super-hero, showing up years before even I did in the rea--...in my timeline. Jonathan Kent was killed by a tornado in the late 90s, Martha Clark remarried and moved away to Missouri. The name Clark Kent shouldn't mean anything to anyone on this world, let alone Superman. So for someone to have found me out, to kill one of me and leave it at my door, it's imp--"
Impossible? HAH! Imagine you, of all people, calling something 'impossible.' Ridiculous.
"Be quiet; you're not real," I dismiss that annoying brassy voice. "I'm imagining things, hearing voices to keep myself company, that's all."
Oh, you wound me! And why exactly is the thought that you're cracking up your first guess?
"Because I watched you die, Mxyzptlk!" I shout, my hands curling into fists that could punch through the fabric of reality in my younger days. "Because....because I killed you."
Awww, and so I'm some manifestation of your guilty conscious then, is that it? The ghosts of your pasts, your biggest failures come back to haunt you? Maybe you're right. Maybe after all this time, you've finally gotten a screw loose. Or maybe, juuuuuust maybe, it has something to do with what's under that tarp behind--
"Enough," I cut him off, gripping the edge of the workbench, steel squishing like clay between my fingers. "That's something to deal with later. Right now I've got a murder to solve."
Oh? And since when were you the detective type?
"I was an investigative journalist," I answer. "Now then. I picked the site clean before moving the corpse. No tracks, no fingerprints, no residue from a Boom Tube or trace elements of magic in the air. The bones don't show any signs of damage, no cellular decay or leftover radiation, which rules out Kryptonite."
And what about the big question, eh?
"What question would that be?"
The one you're afraid to ask yourself. The one that's literally staring you right in the face right now! Who is the victim?
"That's obvious. It's a Su--"
Of course it's a Superman, you ninny! But whichSuperman is it?"
That stops me in my tracks.
This world doesn't have a Superman, does it? And why would that be? Did Super-gal just swap places with lil' baby Kal at the last second? Or did something else happen to him?
"If that's the case, then--"
Or maybe, it's some rando from another universe, the first in a trail of breadcrumbs to lead you on a merry chase against a multiversal Super-Serial-Killer. After all, it's not like you're a stranger to this kind of thing. Maybe Darkseid or Mandrakk ain't quite as defeated as you thought, an' they're targeting anyone an' everyone with an S on their chest.
"I'm not afraid of Darkseid, or--"
Or maybe, that stiff on the slab isn't just from another set of space, but a different stretch of time. Maybe someone's drawing you out by sending you, well.....you.
I hadn't really considered the possibility, but the thought of it......the thought that someone could be sending me my own bones as some kind of sick message, well......I can't imagine that would sit well with anyone. You stare down death as many times as I have, and the thought of your own mortality starts to lose its meaning. I've survived catastrophes that sundered entire galaxies, been exposed to enough Kryptonite and magical attacks to wipe out my home planet all over again a hundred times over. I lived through my entire universe collapsing. The idea that I could die at all, just doesn't seem possible.
Then again, like he said, the idea of Superman calling something impossible is ridiculous in and of itself.
"All right, then," I say, squaring my shoulders and putting on a brave face. "I may not have access to the Fortress in this universe. I don't have the technology from the Watchtower at my disposal. I don't even have the password to use the Bat-Computer here. But I can think of one way to get an idea of who this Superman is."
I snap my fingers. Then again. And a third time. Each time, I listen to the sound, the sharp click of my fingertip slapping against the meat of my thumb. I focus my hearing, closer and closer, beyond the immediate sound....and I start to hear the deep vibrations.
All matter in the universe is composed of atoms. These atoms are in turn composed of smaller subatomic particles, which are then composed of quarks, gluons, gravitons, et cetera. These break down further and further, until finally reaching one-dimensional 'strings' that vibrate on certain frequencies. At the core level, everything in every potential universe is composed of vibrations, entire timelines and universes separated only by the frequencies at which they vibrate. Barry used to take advantage of that fact to hop between universes. As did Ultraman and the Crime Syndicate. And the Anti-Monitor, who killed Kara....
I tune out the noise of reality around me, and I focus on that sub-quantum, nigh-imperceptible frequency, the starting tone of my old universe. Literally nothing in this world should make that same sound.
I rap my knuckles against the edge of the work bench, and sure enough, the deep vibration of this universe's matter is ever-so-slightly different, just a hair's breadth higher in pitch.
Now for the moment of truth, pal.....
I hold my hand over the skull of the Superman laid out before me......
*KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK*
I flinch, so focused on my test that I'm genuinely caught off-guard by the knocking from upstairs. Krypto is barking again. Someone's at my front door.
"Erm, one second!" I call out, frantically searching for something to cover the dead Superman's bones before using the tarp draped over an object in the corner. I'm nearly blinded by the opalescent light the object lets out, but I figure that will be easier to explain than the skeleton on the table.
Draping the tarp over the bones, I head up the stairs, closing the door to the cellar behind me. I undo the dead bolt to the front door and open it, to find.....
"Hi, I'm sorry to bother you," she says, a warm smile brightened by glittering green eyes. "I wasn't sure if there was anyone here, but I'd heard in town that someone had bought the old Kent farm, and since I live in the next one over, I thought, well, I ought to say hello to my new neighbor."
She's older than the one I knew, probably in her early to mid fifties. Her striking red hair has faded to a strawberry blonde, her eyes lined with crow's feet, skin starting to wrinkle and sag. Her smile, though, is every bit as infectious as the one I'd spent all those days and nights with so long ago.
"I, erm.....well, hello," I stammer for a moment. "Sorry, I was in the middle of--"
"Oh! Well, I can just come back later if you--"
"No no, it's not a problem," I say, "I just...haven't had a visitor since I came here."
What are you doing, Clark? This isn't your world. This isn't your timeline. She isn't--
"Well, I'm glad I could be the first to welcome you to Smallville, Mister...."
For a moment, I juggle all of the different aliases I've used through the years-- Smith, White, Clayton, Ellis--
"Kent," I blurt out the truth. "Clark Kent."
She smiles and extends her hand.
"Lana Lang," she introduces herself. "Nice to meet you, Clark Kent."
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