Pyrrhic
Bork Lazer
Lexisheeps
Izurich
Hound55
Sotiras
Enarr
Simple Unicycle
Pilatus
Alby47All right, thumbs up, let's do this.
| Identity |
Clark Kent/Kal-El of Krypton/Superman
| Origin & Backstory |
Strange Visitor (1978-1987)
Jonathan Kent was never much of a religious man; the praying and spritiuality, he left up to his wife, Martha. He believed that if men and women were put on this Earth for a reason, then it was up to themselves to determine what that reason was, and if there was any cosmic design at work, then it wasn't apparent to him. Martha often told him that the universe worked in 'mysterious ways'......which was a small comfort during their difficult early years of marriage, when the harvest went fallow, when Jonathan had to take out a second mortgage to keep the farm, and most devastatingly of all, when the doctor told them they would never be able to conceive children of their own.
While Martha loved Jonathan and believed in him with all her might, she wanted a family, and their inability to conceive became a strain on their marriage. One night in the summer of 1978, a drive into Smallville to visit their friends the Langs became an argument, the argument became a fight, and the fight became the two of them riding home in a heartbroken silence, both of them knowing a divorce was almost inevitable.
The inevitable, however, was denied, when a shooting star streaked over Jonathan's truck and came crashing down into Ben Sutton's corn fields not a hundred yards from the road. Pulling off the road, Jonathan and Martha rushed out to see if anyone had been hurt in the crash....and found not a meteor or a crashed satellite like they had expected, but a gleaming metallic craft, its hull a bright blue with red fins and gold trim, sparkling with multicolored lights and adorned with glyphs and runes in a language neither of them could understand....
....and sitting inside, wrapped in a red cloak, carrying a strange crystalline sphere, and completely unharmed, was a smiling baby boy. The universe, the Kents agreed, worked in mysterious ways indeed.
Minutes later, the area was swarmed with black helicopters, men in unmarked cars and no identifying badges. The alien pod was taken into the custody of the United States government for analysis.....but the pod's occupant was nowhere to be found.
Meanwhile, the Kents took the child to their home and agonized over what to do, whether to turn the baby over to the proper authorities or keep it as their own. The next day, a brief and intimidating visit from the men in black made up their minds; a lost, lonely newborn baby needed a family, not a lifetime in a laboratory. Jonathan and Martha spent the next few weeks and their meager savings forging all of the necessary documents to 'legally' adopt their first child, a beautiful black-haired boy they named Clark Joseph Kent.
Clark's childhood was a difficult and isolated one, as his 'condition' made him too fragile to play with the other boys his age, for fear of him getting hurt (though the truth was quite the opposite-- even as a toddler, Clark was inhumanly strong). This wasn't helped by Clark having sudden outbursts in school, caused by sensory overload-- sometimes, he claimed, he could see through solid objects, hear conversations on the other side of Smallville, look at radio waves in the air.....for a while, the Kents were worried that their adopted son was experiencing hallucinations, until the day he saved Jonathan from a collapsing barn roof, having heard the sound from over five miles away.
While Clark was often an outcast from his peers, he still found friends, fellow outcasts like the bookish Lana Lang, and the attention-seeking geek Pete Ross. The three were an eclectic but tightly loyal clique throughout their childhood, and Clark learned a lot from both of them. From Pete, he learned to stand up to bullies even when it meant taking a beating, and the importance of big, dramatic (and in Pete's case, often disgusting) acts to get people to hear what you had to say. From Lana, he gained enthusiasm for seeking knowledge, understanding the truth even when it wasn't what you wanted to hear, and the value and power of a really good story.
Not that Clark didn't have plenty of stories of his own. In their down-time, the three of them would make up tall tales about what they were doing when the other two weren't looking-- although at the time, Clark didn't know that Pete and Lana were simply making things up. He told them all about how he lifted his grandfather's old tractor over his head with one hand, how the 'summer blizzard' of '85 was him sneezing, and how he once tried to grab a handful of clouds for his Ma by jumping into the sky to swipe at them.
He showed them the red cloak and crytsal ball he had had since he was a baby, and tried to explain how the cloak couldn't be hurt by anything, and how when you brushed your fingers against the crystal ball just right, it would show you pictures and stories about strange people talking in a language he didn't speak.
He told them all about Krypto, his invisible dog that only he could see (dismissed by his friends and family as an imaginary friend--not unlike the 'funny man in the orange suit' and his 'super friends from the 31st Century', stories which Clark could never actually remember telling anyone). While the other kids called Clark a freak and a weirdo for constantly making up such outlandish stories, it captivated young Pete and Lana for years.
While Clark knew he was different, he never truly understood what it was that made him so. Whenever he asked his parents, Ma would always reassure him that he was simply special, and his father would allude to the costumed crime-fighters in the Justice Society....and how their being careless with their power led to their destruction. It wasn't until Clark, at age 9, saved a crashed bus full of children, many of whom claiming he was a 'miracle worker,' that his parents sat him down and had a long, honest talk about that night in Sutton's field. They didn't honestly know where he was from, or why he wound up on Earth, but told him that what truly mattered was what he chose to do with the time he had on this world.
Powers and Abilities (1987-1993)
As Clark began to enter adolescence, his strange abilities became more erratic, and harder to control. His strength, already far greater than that of other boys his age, began to skyrocket with every growth spurt he had, causing him to fear for the safety of those around him. His eyes were not only taking in the entire electromagnetic spectrum, but emitting bursts of radiation as well, everything from spikes of radio static to destructive X-Ray lasers. One night, after staring up at the stars (and trying to shake off the ghostly image of his imaginary dog sitting next to him), Clark drifted off to sleep.......only to wake up floating above the clouds. While he could always leap high into the air, this was something different entirely; Clark Kent could fly.
Worried about just how different he was becoming and fearing that he might turn into some kind of monster, Clark withdrew even further from the community, only rarely speaking to even his closest friends. The last thing he ever wanted to do was hurt someone because he couldn't control himself.
While this self-imposed solitude caused a wedge between Clark and his classmates, it caused an even further fascination for Lana, who had developed a deep-seeded crush on Clark. She frequently pried and prodded to get Clark to open up, to become more confident and proud of himself, and while he very rarely ventured out with her, he had to admit it did him a world of good.
Slowly but surely the two of them became more than friends, with Lana being the one to work up the courage to ask Clark out to their sophomore prom at age fifteen. That night they shared their first kiss, and Clark confessed everything to Lana: his feelings for her, the reasons he'd been hiding away, the things his parents had told him......and then took her hand, and flew her into the night sky. When they touched down, Lana looked into Clark's eyes, kissed him one more time, and ran away-- not just from Clark, but from home, from her family, from all of Smallville.
Heartbroken, Clark fell into a deep depression, a condition not helped when he tried to reach out to another outsider in his class: an extremely wealthy transfer student named Lex Luthor. While his time in Smallville was short, Lex's presence was felt by practically everyone in the community-- he tinkered with school property without asking and turned it into technology so advanced that some half-believed it was witchcraft, he bombarded local officials with proposals for radical overhauls of city government, and he vocally and brazenly defied teachers and authorities and anyone else he deemed 'backwards' and 'small-minded'-- which happened to be everyone he met. Despite this, Clark believed he sensed a kindred spirit in Lex, someone who saw the world in ways that no one else could, and who suffered because of it. For a short time, young Lex humored "Farmboy" and believed he could take him under his wing, so to speak, but their differences of opinion on the people around them kept them from ever truly becoming friends. Tragically, any attempt to bridge the gap between them came to an abrupt end when, during a wild experiment involving the use of a radioactive meteor fragment, Lex caused an explosion that killed his father and burned their house down, as well as covering himself in burns all over. While Clark rushed in to help, the radiation from the meteor fragment caused a crippling sickness in him, and he passed out before he could save them. Lex moved away from Smallville, practically salting the Earth to eradicate any trace that the Luthor family had ever been there.
Less than a year later, a massive storm rolled over Smallville, the already dangerous winds spinning up into a gigantic, devastating F-5 tornado. With potentially thousands of lives in danger, Clark sprang into action, moving as fast as he could to keep from being seen, pulling people out of potentially deadly spots, catching flying debris, holding up falling buildings, all to save the lives of his home town. He wasn't alone in helping out that day, as Jonathan Kent risked his own life in the storm to save a small child who had been separated from her parents. While he managed to get the child to safety, his old war wounds caught up with him, and Jonathan collapsed from over-exertion and his heart gave out. By the time emergency services were able to reach him, Clark's adopted father was dead.
After Pa's funeral, Clark went out into the old field where they had found his ship so many years ago, and pounded his fist into the ground out of frustration....causing a shock wave that people for nearly fifty miles mistook for an earthquake. The pain of losing so many people close to him so quickly, his frustration at being unable to help people without putting his family and friends at risk, and his concerns over rumors spreading about a 'guardian angel' in the wake of his actions, made Clark realize that if he was ever to find any purpose or meaning in his life, he wouldn't be able to do it here. Taking enough extra classes to graduate early at age sixteen, Clark packed up his old red cloak and alien crystal ball, kissed his mother on the cheek and promised to call once a week to catch up, and left Smallville behind to travel the world.
Valiant and Courageous (1993-2001)
For over seven years, Clark traveled the world alone, helping people whenever and wherever he could, only to disappear from their lives as soon as the danger had passed. While he longed to connect to the people he met along the way, the distrust and fear he met when people saw what he could do taught him to keep his distance, to simply be a 'ghost' that came and went without leaving any trace of who he was, only what he did.
Needing a reason to be found in dangerous places where his powers could be needed, Clark took up journalism, and paid his way through the world as a freelance reporter. He was embroiled in wars, and even in days of heavy fighting, the loss of life was minimal when he was around. He exposed terrorist cells and criminal organizations, shedding light on corruption and injustice whenever he found it. Clark Kent would have been making quite a name for himself, if another fearless reporter named Lois Lane hadn't been consistently beating him to the by-line. While he was never comfortable writing about the mysterious life-saving intervention of a mysterious stranger, Ms. Lane was eager to track this being down, and Clark found himself having to be more and more careful to keep the rival reporter off his heels.
Around his twentieth birthday, Clark finally managed to unlock the secrets of the mysterious crystal sphere that had come with him in his ship. As he expected, it was some sort of alien computer, and while navigating the orb's interface was nearly impossible, the images and impressions he got from it were astounding, glimpses of a world and a people that he had never seen, but that he immediately knew were his heritage. Strangely, the computer orb also seemed to contain some form of homing beacon, which always pointed due North. Eventually his curiosity led Clark to follow this beacon, traveling all the way to the North Pole, and there he found something incredible.
Hidden beneath the polar ice cap, expanding for miles in all directions, was a massive complex, an alien fortress that had been lying in wait for years for his arrival. Upon interacting with the Fortress's own computer systems, Clark's orb became far more active, speaking to Clark in his own language and telling him the truth of things.
The orb introduced itself as Kelex, an AI assigned to oversee and assist members of the House of El. Clark's true name was Kal-El, the last surviving member of his House, and indeed, the last survivor of his home world, the lost planet of Krypton. Facing a world-shattering cataclysm, Kal's biological father Jor-El had tried to enact a desperate plan to save his people: warping the entire population into the extradimensional void known as the Phantom Zone, then sending a single survivor on the material plane to a hospitable planet and bringing the population out into a pre-established colony. Sadly, Jor-El did not have enough time to put his plan into motion, and he chose to save the life of his son in the one ship capable of delivering him to safety; the colony meant to house millions of Kryptonians would now be a refuge for one, a Fortress of Solitude.
Krypton, Kal learned, was a world of adventurers and scientists, of dangers and wonders. Its people had eschewed traditional gods and demons in favor of worshipping a set of ideals called the Jirrod, and each of the Great Houses strove to be the embodiment of one of these ideals. The House of El, Kal's bloodline and legacy, represented above all other things, Hope. And Clark Kent, the mild-mannered son of Smallville--also Kal-El, the Last Son of Krypton-- swore to himself that he would strive to the ideal of Hope that his lost world had entrusted in him, and his adopted world so badly needed.
Up in the Sky! (2001-2002)
After seeing the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001, Clark Kent realized he could no longer hide himself from humanity. Putting on his old indestructible red cape, and a T-shirt with the House of El's insignia painted on it, he openly and directly intervened on what appeared to be a follow-up attack in Metropolis a few days later, diverting the plane from crashing into the old Science Spire and setting it down in the river, before disabling the terrorists inside. Dubbed "Superman" by Lois Lane, the super-powered vigilante quickly began a career in righting the wrongs in the city of Metropolis and the world at large.
Realizing the scale of the job he had taken upon himself, Clark took a permanent residence in Metropolis, renting out a small apartment in the Hob's Bay area with an old contact of his, a Daily Planet photographer named Jimmy Olsen. Clark and Jimmy became fast friends, and Jimmy eventually convinced Clark to apply for a job at the Planet. While Clark blew the initial interview with Chief Editor Perry White, he ended up getting the job after a glowing recommendation from his old freelancer rival Lois Lane, who had started working at the Planet a few months earlier. Together, Lois and Clark exposed the terrorists behind the failed attack on the Science Spire, and revealed that they were not in fact Islamic extremists, but instead were being blackmailed into cooperation by the vicious criminal syndicate known as Intergang.
What Bruno Mannheim's motivation was for destroying the Spire remained a mystery, but the more Lois exposed in the wake of Superman's resulting battles with Intergang showed that while Mannheim was indeed the one pulling the strings of the crime syndicate, someone else was manipulating Mannheim from higher up.
Mannheim threw everything he had at Superman to no avail, until his pressuring of Amertek scientists to develop anti-Superman weapons resulted in a catastrophic explosion which created the radioactive villain known as the Atomic Skull. The Skull fought Superman across the entire city, and while the villain was eventually defeated, there were many who noted Superman's apparent weakness towards certain forms of radiation.
Six months after Superman's debut in Metropolis, the world was shocked to see the City of Tomorrow suddenly and inexplicably disappear, as if the entire thing had just been snatched up into thin air. Springing into action, Superman discovered this was the work of The Collector of Worlds, an ancient and malevolent artificial intelligence which traveled the universe looking for 'doomed' worlds and, upon finding one, would capture a population center for study and then abandon the planet to its destruction. Kelex was able to impart this information to Kal because a few short years before Krypton's end, The Collector had come and taken the shining city of Kandor. The Collector's intelligence spread throughout intelligent civilizations across the cosmos, using a different name on every world where it allowed itself to be 'invented.' On Krypton, the last place it had been, it used the name Brainiac.
Superman tracked Brainiac's ship in the upper atmosphere before it was able to warp away, and attacked it, crashing through the ship's defenses and legions of drones before making his way to the Collector's den. There, he found hundreds of 'bottle cities,' pocket universes where millions of lives were trapped in nightmarish isolation. The Brainiac AI assumed a physical form and subdued Superman, attempting to add the orphaned Kryptonian to his collection, but was unable to decide whether to add it to Kandor or to Metropolis. This hesitation was all Superman needed to break free, disabling Brainiac's ship and reversing the 'bottling' process to restore Metropolis to its proper location in timespace. The Collector ship crashed to Earth and was allegedly taken into SHIELD custody for study, but the Bottle Cities were taken by Superman to the Fortress of Solitude, in the hopes that he could one day set them free.
Superman's first year as an publicly active hero closed in a dramatic fashion, as a terrorist group called the Olmec Dawn captured a nuclear missile silo on the West Coast, calling for the destruction of Superman and all other non-human influences on the world. Planning to destroy the 'alien invader' along with themselves, they launched a missile at the heart of Metropolis, then set a second warhead to explode inside the silo, located extremely close to the San Andreas Fault. While Superman was able to extract the terrorists from the silo, he was unable to stop the first explosion, and had to spend precious time preventing catastrophic damage to the West Coast in the resulting earthquakes, before speeding back across the country as fast as he could to divert the second missile into space. The missile exploded in high orbit before Superman could get away, and the Man of Steel fell miles down to Earth.....but, incredibly, survived.
In the wake of this event, investigations led by Lois and Clark, as well as confession from the terrorists captured by Superman, revealed that the "Olmec Dawn" was working for a network of criminal organizations that, when the evidence was followed to the very top, led to LexCorp C.E.O. Lex Luthor. Indicted for responsibility behind the attacks, Lex was cleared of all charges, but not before having to spent a single night in prison. This indignity, the realization that someone could not only oppose him but actively punish him, sparked a hatred in Luthor that would last a lifetime.
Speeding Bullets (2002-2004)
With his original costume destroyed by the nuclear blasts, Superman had a new outfit created for him inside the Fortress, blending the traditional attire of Krypton's elite Sapphire Guard with the colorful outfits of the old Justice Society of America. With a new, more durable look, Superman was ready to take on an increasingly dangerous and uncertain world.
Over the next two years, Superman's gallery of enemies continued to grow. A thrill-seeking internet personality named Leslie Willis was transformed into the anarchic Livewire, who could absorb and emit huge amounts of electrical energy. A LexCorp janitor named Rudy Jones was mutated into the monstrous Parasite, who fed off of the energy of anything he touched. An amoral hacker named Oz Loomis took up the alias Prankster, and delighted in creating havoc for Superman by manipulating Metropolis's central operating systems. And a US Army soldier named John Corben was bonded into an experimental Kryptonite-powered battle-suit to combat metahumans, taking the codename 'Metal-Zero' but upon his death, the suit's AI continued on, becoming the deranged cybernetic psychotic Metallo.
Each of these villains threatened Superman or the city in their turn, but time after time the Man of Tomorrow overcame his adversaries, his reputation growing brighter and brighter with every consecutive victory.
This string of wins came to an end when a large black spaceship appeared in the skies over Earth. This ship, identified by Kelex as the Black Zero, was the flagship of General Zod, a rogue Kryptonian whose followers had been banished to the Phantom Zone. Free of the extradimensional void, they followed Kal-El's Star Drive signature to Earth, and intended to create a 'New Krypton.' Using a massive terraforming device called the World Engine, Zod and his followers planned to wipe out all life on Earth and begin anew.
Superman engaged Zod, begging him to leave and start over on a new world, but the fanatical Zod saw Earth's destruction as his revenge on Jor-El, Kal's father, who had sentenced him to the Phantom Zone. Since Zod refused to be reasoned with, the only option was to stop him by force. The resulting Battle of Metropolis was devastating, leaving huge portions of the city destroyed between the World Engine's gravitational shockwaves and the subsequent battle between the enemy Kryptonians. In the end, Superman was able to destroy the World Engine, then caused the Black Zero's Star Drive to implode on itself, creating a singularity that pulled most of the ship--as well as Zod and his minions--back into the void from which they had escaped.
While the world was saved, the damage done was absolutely devastating. Tens of thousands of people were killed in the battle, and much of Metropolis lay in ruins. Ever the opporunist, Lex Luthor took the initiative in leading the reconstruction of the city, and sowed a narrative in the media blaming Superman for the entire incident, claiming that Zod and his army would have never come to Earth if it weren't for the alien's presence. Several higher-ups in the military agreed, and LexCorp secured numerous extremely lucrative contracts for the development of anti-Kryptonian weaponry.
Despite this, there were several who remained loyal to Superman, citing all of the millions of people he had saved in spite of the carnage, and all the good he had done in the past. In the painful reconstruction of Metropolis, other heroes emerged following Superman's example, most notably the inudstrialist turned vigilante Steel, and the JSA-inspired Guardian.
Also, an unexpected fallout from the Zod invasion was the escape of an animal from the Phantom Zone: none other than Krypto, Clark's invisible dog he had until now believed to be only in his imagination. As people and cities and whole nations turned against Superman, Clark at least had the small comfort of his loyal dog at his side.
The World's Finest (2004-2005)
Clark had been aware of the presence of other heroes and vigilantes working in other cities, but had never gone out of his way to contact them-- while he considered the old JSA an inspiration, the group's eventual failure led him to be skeptical of attempting another 'super-team.' However, when he heard that the Batman of Gotham City was recruiting children in his war against the criminal underworld, he could not ignore it-- recklessly endangering a child was unconscionable, and he intended to set the Batman straight.
Seeking the vigilante out in Gotham, Superman caught up with Batman, and the two of them engaged in a brief verbal skirmish, correctly guessing each other's secret identities and arguing over the efficacy of the other's actions. However, their dispute was interrupted by the rampage of the undead creature Solomon Grundy, and the two of them joined forces to take the monster down. Upon seeing the Batman in action, his careful attention to detail and his willingness to endanger his own life to save those of others--including his protégé Robin-- Superman concluded that Batman could be trusted, and the two stayed in contact, realizing they could be more effective working together than alone.
Not long after this, Superman encountered another metahuman like himself, attempting to stop a war from breaking out between the nations of Pokolistian and Bialya. The metahuman in question, the stunningly gorgeous Wonder Woman, claimed that the hostilities in the region were caused by another superhuman entity, calling himself Ares. Together, Superman and Wonder Woman routed Ares and got the two nations' diplomats to speak to each other, avoiding a potentially bloody conflict.
In addition to being a powerful new ally, Wonder Woman was someone who Superman believed he could relate to, someone who saw the world the way he did, and struggled with the increasing distance between himself and humanity. The Amazonian Princess sympathized, and the two became fast friends, and briefly lovers. Despite their mutual attraction for each other, they realized that a relationship would complicate their respective duties-- to say nothing of Clark's increasingly complicated love life in Metropolis, given that Lois had been making advances at Kent, and that his old flame Lana Lang had come to Metropolis to help with the relief effort-- and after a few brief affairs, Clark and Diana agreed to keep their relationship strictly professional.
While Superman had his share of hard-fought wins and often paid steep costs for victory, he had never actually been defeated at anything before. This changed when, in order to raise money for charity, Superman challenged the speedster known as the Flash to a race around the world. While the two stayed neck and neck for a time, Flash eventually poured on the speed and left the Man of Steel in the dust, shocking the world as the first man to defeat Superman.
Slowly but surely, Superman's list of allies grew, in the hopes that if another threat arises that he couldn't handle alone, they would be able to overcome it together.
Truth and Justice (2006-2008)
The threat that many of them worried about manifested in the form of the Star'ro, a race of parasitic aliens who invaded Earth with the intention of feeding off of the sentient thoughts of all life on the planet. Individually, Superman and the other heroes were overwhelmed by the Star'ro parasites, and all seemed to be lost, were it not for the intervention of the psychic Martian Manhunter. Acting in concert, Superman and seven other powerful defenders (Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Martian Manhunter, Green Lantern, Aquaman, and Hawkgirl) managed to drive off the Star'ro threat, saving mankind.
The eight heroes, realizing the potential they had to change the world for the better, banded together, taking their cue from the old Justice Society and naming themselves the Justice League. With deep resources and immense power, the League became a major world power overnight, much to the concern of the powers that be.
The League's first real test in action was against a purported opposite number, led by the villain Libra and calling themselves the 'Injustice Gang.' Despite a few close shaves, the League came through in the end and defeated Libra and his gang. Though the routing of the Injustice Gang was a resounding victory, it would hardly be the only time the League would be tested by rival factions.
Superman himself ran afoul of a band of anarchistic metahumans calling themselves The Elite. Led by a nihilistic punk named Manchester Black, the Elite saw the opportunity not just to challenge the governments and authorities of the world, but destroy them. They repeatedly hunted down and exterminated corrupt politicians, unethical bankers and businessmen, and even made an attempt on the life of Superman's nemesis Lex Luthor, which backfired so spectacularly that Superman had to intervene to save Black and his cronies from Luthor's trap. Eventually things came to a head, and Superman challenged the Elite head-on, and was nearly killed in the ensuing battle, but due to some clever planning ahead of time, defeated Manchester and his crew one by one. The Elite were imprisoned for their crimes, but mysteriously disappeared when being 'transferred' into the custody of SHIELD.
Around this time, Clark Kent had spent so much time working with Lois that he felt she deserved to know the truth. He confessed to her his identity as Superman--something that Lois had guessed since the day they met, but kept to herself unless she could prove it. Finally relieved that he no longer had to keep secrets from her, Clark also confessed his feelings for Lois, and the two began dating.
Never-Ending Battle (2008-Present)
One morning in 2008, Clark woke up to discover that the sky and grass had switched places, the air had been replaced with chlorine, and everyone on Earth had been turned into cardboard cutouts of themselves. This was the work of an entity known as Mr. Mxyzptlk, an imaginary bogeyman from Clark's childhood who was, in fact, a mischievous force from a higher plane of reality called the Fifth Dimension. Mxyzptlk was entertained by Superman's adventures, and decided to amuse himself by making the Man of Steel's life increasingly difficult, warping reality further and further until either the universe tore itself apart or Superman managed to figure out the imp's weakness. Eventually, by drawing one bit of information at a time from the imp's relentless taunting, Clark pieced together that Mxyzptlk could be banished by tricking him into saying his name backwards.....which he promptly did.
A sore loser, Mxyzptlk grabbed Superman just as he was phasing out of timespace and pulled him into the Underverse, a chaotic realm of 'cosmic feedback' where matter and energy existed as distorted echoes of themselves. While there, Superman was infected with a self-replicating form of un-stuff Mxyzptlk referred to as 'bizarro matter,' and the infection grew until it split off from Clark and formed a deranged copy, a Bizarro Superman.
Incalculably powerful and with a mind of constant opposites, Bizarro put together a machine that could bore through dimensions back into regular timespace (Bizarro knew how to do this because Superman didn't, of course), and threatened to go on a rampage that could destroy the entire Earth. However, after a short but painful dust-up with the creature, Superman realized he could convince Bizarro to do the opposite of whatever he did. And since Superman worked out of the North Pole and could do nothing, it made sense to Bizarro that it should live at the South Pole and do nothing. It flew away to the Antarctic, where it would remain perfectly still for years.
A few months later, a spaceship came crashing down to Earth, and much to Superman's surprise, the being inside was a fellow Kryptonian, a young girl bearing the crest of his family's House. Introducing herself as Kara-El, the girl seemed to absorb solar energy far faster than Kal could, and soon developed a suite of superpowers equal to Superman's. Kal took his newfound cousin to the Fortress where she could learn what had happened in the years between her escape from Krypton and her arrival on Earth, and Clark and Lois helped set her up with a cover identity to avoid Superman's ever-increasing list of enemies.
Said enemies would soon band together, as a team of rogues calling themselves the SRS ('Superman Revenge Squad') laid siege to Metropolis, taking out Steel and Guardian and demanding a showdown with Superman. The combined forces of Parasite, Livewire, Riot, Silver Banshee, and Terra-Man proved too much for Superman to fight alone......but just when things looked bleak, Kara arrived on the scene, sporting a similar costume to Superman's, to even the odds. The SRS were defeated, and the world quickly learned that there was now a Supergirl to protect them.
The SRS, however, were not the only alliance between Superman's enemies. In the years since Brainiac's invasion, Lex Luthor had frequently attempted to access the alien AI's inner workings, to unlock the secrets of ancient and incredibly advanced technology. Luthor managed to re-activate the AI and strike a partnership with it.
Together, Luthor and Brainiac formulated a plot that would destroy their mutual enemy once and for all. Luring Superman into a confrontation with the resurrected Brainiac, Luthor caught the Man of Steel in a wormhole, teleporting him through space and directly into the exploded remains of Krypton, now a ring of continent-sized shards of pure Kryptonite. Exposure to such incredible amounts of K-radiation would kill Superman almost instantly....
....and 'almost' is all that Mr. Mxyzptlk needed. In the fleeting microseconds before Superman's death, the Fifth Dimensional imp stopped time and gave Superman an offer: he would save Clark's life, in exchange for a 'terrible secret' that would be determined at a later date. Leery of the imp but out of other options, Superman agreed to his terms, and Mxyzptlk sent him back to Earth.....in the 31st Century.
Disoriented and confused, Superman found it difficult to get his bearings in the far future, until he was found by the Legion of Super-Heroes, who restored memories of the times they had visited him in his past. Recognizing his old allies and remembering his previous visits to the future, Clark quickly regained his composure, until they were attacked by one of the Legion's arch-foes, the Time Trapper.
Together, Superman and the Legion defeated the Time-Trapper, but not before Clark learned the 'terrible secret' that was part of Mxyzptlk's bargain, by accidentally looking at the wrong files in Brainiac-5's database.....
Using a Legion time-bubble to return to the present, Superman returned to the present just a few seconds after Brainiac and Luthor had teleported him away, and defeated the two, exposing Luthor as a criminal and throwing Brainiac into the sun.
With Supergirl becoming an increasingly great hero with each passing day and Lois beginning to talk marriage, things seemed to be looking up for Clark. Or they would be, had he not seen Mxyzptlk's 'terrible secret'.....
.....according to Brainiac-5's records, Superman would be dead in less than five years.
| Attributes |
Superman is a Kryptonian, one of quite possibly the most physically advanced beings the universe has ever known. Clark's abilities develop slowly during his early life, but seem to continually grow more and more potent as he goes on. Like exercising a muscle, the more he uses an ability, the stronger it becomes, some improving only gradually, some scaling up dramatically after repeated use. Kryptonians were a race that prided itself in its technology and ingenuity, and in order to survive and thrive on the unforgiving environment of Krypton, they had actually taken control of their species' evolution. Utilizing methods far beyond anything humans would consider to be any known form of genetic engineering or biotechnology, they shaped their own cellular structure to cope with their planet's crushing gravity (the fact that they had not evolved along those lines already suggesting that they may not have originally been from Krypton at all), transforming every cell in their bodies into microscopic fusion generators capable of seemingly impossible feats.
Flight: Superman can manipulate his personal gravitational field, causing a small, almost frictionless anti-gravity bubble around himself and, with some concentration, any person or object he touches. This allows him to fly through the air with ease, and assists him in lifting objects that should structurally collapse when moved.
Super-Strength: Superman's physical strength is incalculable, and has only grown with each passing day on Earth. Capable of lifting millions of tons of mass with virtually no effort, it is unknown whether his strength has any limits at all.
Invulnerability: Superman is resistant to virtually any and all physical means of harm. He has been bombarded with heavy artillery, buried under billions of tons of rock, been exposed to the vacuum of space, near-absolute-zero cold and the heart of nuclear explosions, and has come out with barely a scratch. While it is possible to injure or even kill Superman, thus far it seems it can only be done in ways that negate or subvert his powers. Attempting to defeat the Man of Tomorrow with sheer brute force is seemingly impossible.
Super-Speed: Superman is one of the fastest beings on the planet, at least among those who cannot tap into the Speed Force. The anti-gravity field that surrounds him in flight reduces friction to nearly zero, allowing him hypersonic flight with little concern for environmental damages. It is possible that he can travel near or at the speed of light, but because he cannot access the Speed Force, he would be subject to the phenomenon of time dilation, and therefore he keeps his movements at sub-relativistic speeds.
Super-Senses: Superman's mind perceives the universe in a way that is alien to human conception. His senses are fine-tuned so that they can take in sensations from nearly anywhere on Earth as they happen--hearing sounds long before they could reach his ears, for example. This is due to his brain processing information at unfathomable speed and detail, becoming sensitive to vibrational changes to the environment on a quantum level, and subconsciously calculating the most likely cause and outcome of these changes in the universe around him. While it would not be accurate to say that he can 'hear' a gunshot on the other side of the planet as it happens, the infinitessimal changes in his environment allow his subconscious brain to 'guess' that it is happening, which then produces the 'sound' of the gunshot in Superman's mind.
All this is to say that Superman can see, hear, taste, smell, and feel everything happening on a planet at any time-- the trick, then, in the higher workings of his brain, is determining what events demand his attention the most. While his brain is absorbing and processing information on an unimaginable scale, his conscious mind is roughly equal to an average human being.
Superman's famous 'X-Ray' vision is a combination of his microscopic and telescopic vision, focusing on an object by 'zooming in' on the obstructing object's atomic structure and then past it. This, combined with his other senses creating a nearly 100% accurate model of the surrounding environment in his mind, allow him to see a complete image of people and objects, externally and internally, at will. His eyes are also sensitive to the entire electromagnetic spectrum, allowing him to see radio and wireless waves, pick up E-M disturbances like an enemy using a cloaking device, detect activity in various locations of the brain to determine a person's emotions or discern lies, and even see the bio-electric field that makes up a person's 'soul.'
In addition to this, Superman can adjust his perception of the passage of time, slowing it down to the zeptosecond level, able to sense events so quickly that they can hardly be said to have happened at all. However, this does not necessarily mean he can respond and move at the same speed--on a human scale, this would be the difference between seeing a bullet flying at you and being able to dodge it.
Heat-Vision: Superman takes in and processes energy at an enormous rate, and can release that energy through a series of biological focusing lenses in his eyes. This venting of his bio-energy most commonly manifests itself in the form of intense X-ray lasers, capable of cutting through titanium. These lasers can be broad enough to cover a hemisphere, or focused tightly enough to carve electrons off of an atom. Of all of Superman's powers, his Heat-Vision is the one that drains the most of his energy stores, and excessive use can deplete his powers entirely. As a result, he tends to use this ability sparingly, typically only using it for utilitarian purposes such as a cutting or welding torch, and only using its full offensive capability when all other options have failed.
While Superman is one of the most immensely powerful beings known to man, that does not make him indestructible or immortal. In the years since his debut, several methods have been found that can undermine or subvert his powers, cause him immense physical pain, or even kill him outright.
Kryptonite: By far the most infamous (and most effective) countermeasures against Superman, Kryptonite is a highly radioactive isotope of Kryptonian Sunstone, irradiated by the planet's destruction. Its radiation signature is unique in that it is astoundingly energetic (less than an miligram of Kryptonite could power Metropolis for a decade, or alternatively wipe out most of New England if treated into an explosive), yet completely clean. It is harmless to all organic life, except for lifeforms that contain traces of Sunstone in their genetic makeup.....namely, lifeforms from the planet Krypton. Exposure to Kryptonite interrupts the metabolic processes that take in solar energy, causing cell death in a Kryptonian lifeform. It causes crippling sickness, agonizing physical pain, the loss of any extranormal physical abilities, and if exposed for roughly one minute, death.
Even after the Kryptonite is removed, recovery from it is long and painful. A return to full power can take days, even weeks depending on the severity of the exposure. Early in Superman's career, Lex Luthor stabbed him in the side with a shard, creating a scar that has never fully healed.
Thankfully, only one fragment of Kryptonite ever made it to Earth: a two-pound meteorite that landed in Smallville not far from the pod which brought Kal-El to the planet. While a few ounces of the rock were broken off and now power the cybernetic monster Metallo, the rest of the Kryptonite is the exclusive property of Lex Luthor.
K-2: In the wake of General Zod's invasion of Earth, SHIELD and other military organizations agreed that humanity needed weaponry that could neutralize Kryptonians should they ever threaten the Earth again. Spearheaded by LexCorp, the goal was the creation of mass-produced, lab-grown synthetic Kryptonite, and after nearly five years of painstaking research and setbacks, a facsimile was produced. Dubbed 'K-2,' this yellow-green crystal emits a radiation similar, but not identical to Kryptonite, enough that could cause Superman extreme pain and disorientation, and could theoretically kill him if used in sufficient quantities. Unfortunately, K-2 has a very short half-life, and most K-based weapons are expended after a single use. Worse, its radiation signature is not as clean as true Kryptonite, and quickly becomes toxic to humans and other lifeforms as well.
Red Sun: Kal-El and other Kryptonians process solar energy at an incredible rate, and it is theorized this is because their bodies believe Earth, an alien environment, to be a hostile one, and thus they are storing energy in an 'emergency mode' at all times. Exposing Superman to an environment more similar to that of Krypton-- higher gravity, thinner atmosphere, or most effectively, the dim energy of a red sun-- will cause his body to believe it is in a 'safe' environment, and thus shut down the energy-storing processes. While this does not drain his powers the same way as Kryptonite does, it 'deactivates' them as long as the environmental conditions are in effect, rendering him effectively powerless.
Magic: Magic is, by its definition, not subject to the regular laws of nature, and as such, Superman has no inherent defense against it. A blade that is enchanted to cut through anything will cut through Superman just as easily as anything else, for example. This makes him understandably wary of anyone who claims supernatural abilities.
Sensory Overload: As previously mentioned, Superman takes in and processes sensation on a seemingly unthinkable level. Disrupting that sensory input, however, can cause him serious pain and disorientation. The most common effective method of doing so would be the use of hypersonic weaponry, throwing Superman off long enough to enact another, potentially more lethal attack against him.
Psychic Attacks: Superman has gone through intense mental training to defend his mind against intruders, but this does not mean he is immune to it. A powerful enough psychic could telekinetically control Superman's body, access his memories, or even take control of him entirely. While doing so is exceedinly difficult, it is not impossible.
Physical Force: Beings of equal or greater strength than Superman are not common, but they do exist. Villains like General Zod or the monstrous Bizarro have been able to match and even overpower the Man of Steel, and it is possible that such a being could overwhelm Superman's invulnerability enough to break bones, rupture organs, or sever his spinal column, which would kill him just as effectively as a normal human.
| Character Notes |
Setting and Locations:
Metropolis, DE is a sprawling, highly populated major city in New England, rival to New York or Gotham as the 'king' city of the Eastern Seaboard. For most of its existence, Metropolis was a tough place to live, as its struggling economy and notoriously corrupt local government made it a breeding ground for organized crime. This can still be seen in the names of many locales in the city, most notably the bleak nickname of the Hob's Bay area as "Suicide Slum."
The city began something of a renaissance when billionaire industrialist Lex Luthor placed his corporate headquarters in the heart of the city, offering work to millions and buying up countless smaller businesses to reinvigorate them practically overnight. By 2001, nearly one in every three of Metropolis' seven million citizens, from white-collar executives to fast food workers, from respected city officials to beat cops and gangsters, worked for Lex Luthor, whether they knew it or not.
Superman's arrival in Metropolis sparked something of a cultural revolution in the city, as fascination with superheroes and their trends is one of the favored passtimes of Metropolitan citizens. While capes and boots aren't exactly common among normal men and women, the bright costumes and vibrant personalities of the Justice League and their like have become ingrained in the city's identity. While Gotham is infamous for its heroes and villains working in the shadows, Metropolis is a place one goes to get noticed.
Locations of note:
LexCorp
The Daily Planet
STAR Labs Metropolis branch
Centennial Park
Glennmorgan Square
Steelworks
The Science Spire
Smallville, KS is, as the name suggests, a small farming community in the Midwest. Settled by pioneers in the 1800s, Smallville has enjoyed a rather quiet, unassuming existence, at least on the surface. Ever since Kal-El's pod landed there, the US government has kept a file on the city and all of the strange occurrences documented there. Most dismiss this as the same sort of tourist-trap atmosphere surrounding cities like Roswell, however, and the citizens of Smallville are more than happy to brush off wild stories about space-men and 'guardian angels' with a laugh and perhaps a cold beer.
Locations of note:
The Kent Family Farm
Smallville High School
ruins of the Luthor Mansion
The Fortress of Solitude is a gigantic hidden complex deep beneath the North Pole. Originally meant to be used as a sort of transitional colony while the people of Krypton relocated to Earth (or failing that, another habitable planetoid), it has since been repurposed as Superman's base of operations and personal sanctuary. It is where he studies the history and culture of his lost people, keeps records of his adventures, and houses technology too dangerous to fall into the wrong hands. Overseen by the AI Kelex, it is also something of a museum, a time capsule in which Superman commemorates his friends and allies, as well as his enemies and his failures, in the hopes that he and those who follow behind him will learn from his past in order to secure a better future.
Points of Interest:
The Kelex computer interface
The Intergalactic Zoo
The Hall of Bottle Cities
The Phantom Zone Portal
The Cosmic Observatory
The Sunstone Furnace
The Foundry
Supporting Cast:
| Character Goals |
I plan on bringing Superman to a higher standard of storytelling, telling unique and interesting stories that could only be done with a character as wonderfully insane as Superman. That said, I don't plan on making fluffy 'love-letter' pieces that go on and on about how great and important the character is because, to be honest, those get boring very quickly. I want Superman's world to be dangerous, action-packed, energetic, and fun.
I have a few ideas that I've been dying to try with an older, more experienced Superman, that we rarely ever get to see considering how many Year One/early days interpretations we usually get in this kind of game. So the opportunity to play a Superman that knows his way around things is the kind of thing that makes my mouth water, so to speak.
| Sample Post |
"Lois! Are you all right?"
The sky is on fire, and seven billion people are screaming.
Hours ago, a psychotic and tortured soul who went by the name 'Ruin' enacted a suicidal plan to bring about the apocalypse. Creating a massive gravitational tether, Ruin used it to grab hold of Earth's moon and set it on a collision course with the planet.
"I'm fine, what the hell is going on out there?" Lois says, standing up from her desk.
"The moon is about to crash into the Earth," I let her know. "I stopped the machine that was generating the gravity well, but the damage has been done."
"But, I mean.....you've got this, right?" she asks, with a hopeful nod.
"I think so," I say, looking up at the blackened scorched sky as the continent-sized satellite bears down on us. "Firestorm and Red Tornado are doing everything in their power to mitigate the damage to the planet's atmosphere. Aquaman is working with Captain Atom to keep the tidal forces from drowning everyone, and a few of the Green Lanterns are constructing braces to keep the tectonic plates from shaking apart. Meanwhile, Reed Richards has gotten a Mother Box operational and is ready to open a Boom Tube if things go south, and Flash will evacuate everyone through the Tube to safety."
"Everyone in Metropolis?"
"Everyone on Earth."
Lois seems sufficiently impressed.
"That seems to cover the collateral damage," she says. "But what about, you know, the moon about to slam into the Earth and destroy the world?!"
"That's my job."
"What exactly are you going to do, Smallville?"
I look up at the crashing moon, and I crack my knuckles.
"The moon is falling, and I'm Superman." I say, turning back to her with a smile. "What do you think I'm going to do?"
"....you're seriously going to try and--"
"All in a day's work," I say with a wink, and take to the skies, to take the cataclysm head-on.....
| Identity |
Clark Kent/Kal-El of Krypton/Superman
| Origin & Backstory |
Strange Visitor (1978-1987)
Jonathan Kent was never much of a religious man; the praying and spritiuality, he left up to his wife, Martha. He believed that if men and women were put on this Earth for a reason, then it was up to themselves to determine what that reason was, and if there was any cosmic design at work, then it wasn't apparent to him. Martha often told him that the universe worked in 'mysterious ways'......which was a small comfort during their difficult early years of marriage, when the harvest went fallow, when Jonathan had to take out a second mortgage to keep the farm, and most devastatingly of all, when the doctor told them they would never be able to conceive children of their own.
While Martha loved Jonathan and believed in him with all her might, she wanted a family, and their inability to conceive became a strain on their marriage. One night in the summer of 1978, a drive into Smallville to visit their friends the Langs became an argument, the argument became a fight, and the fight became the two of them riding home in a heartbroken silence, both of them knowing a divorce was almost inevitable.
The inevitable, however, was denied, when a shooting star streaked over Jonathan's truck and came crashing down into Ben Sutton's corn fields not a hundred yards from the road. Pulling off the road, Jonathan and Martha rushed out to see if anyone had been hurt in the crash....and found not a meteor or a crashed satellite like they had expected, but a gleaming metallic craft, its hull a bright blue with red fins and gold trim, sparkling with multicolored lights and adorned with glyphs and runes in a language neither of them could understand....
....and sitting inside, wrapped in a red cloak, carrying a strange crystalline sphere, and completely unharmed, was a smiling baby boy. The universe, the Kents agreed, worked in mysterious ways indeed.
Minutes later, the area was swarmed with black helicopters, men in unmarked cars and no identifying badges. The alien pod was taken into the custody of the United States government for analysis.....but the pod's occupant was nowhere to be found.
Meanwhile, the Kents took the child to their home and agonized over what to do, whether to turn the baby over to the proper authorities or keep it as their own. The next day, a brief and intimidating visit from the men in black made up their minds; a lost, lonely newborn baby needed a family, not a lifetime in a laboratory. Jonathan and Martha spent the next few weeks and their meager savings forging all of the necessary documents to 'legally' adopt their first child, a beautiful black-haired boy they named Clark Joseph Kent.
Clark's childhood was a difficult and isolated one, as his 'condition' made him too fragile to play with the other boys his age, for fear of him getting hurt (though the truth was quite the opposite-- even as a toddler, Clark was inhumanly strong). This wasn't helped by Clark having sudden outbursts in school, caused by sensory overload-- sometimes, he claimed, he could see through solid objects, hear conversations on the other side of Smallville, look at radio waves in the air.....for a while, the Kents were worried that their adopted son was experiencing hallucinations, until the day he saved Jonathan from a collapsing barn roof, having heard the sound from over five miles away.
While Clark was often an outcast from his peers, he still found friends, fellow outcasts like the bookish Lana Lang, and the attention-seeking geek Pete Ross. The three were an eclectic but tightly loyal clique throughout their childhood, and Clark learned a lot from both of them. From Pete, he learned to stand up to bullies even when it meant taking a beating, and the importance of big, dramatic (and in Pete's case, often disgusting) acts to get people to hear what you had to say. From Lana, he gained enthusiasm for seeking knowledge, understanding the truth even when it wasn't what you wanted to hear, and the value and power of a really good story.
Not that Clark didn't have plenty of stories of his own. In their down-time, the three of them would make up tall tales about what they were doing when the other two weren't looking-- although at the time, Clark didn't know that Pete and Lana were simply making things up. He told them all about how he lifted his grandfather's old tractor over his head with one hand, how the 'summer blizzard' of '85 was him sneezing, and how he once tried to grab a handful of clouds for his Ma by jumping into the sky to swipe at them.
He showed them the red cloak and crytsal ball he had had since he was a baby, and tried to explain how the cloak couldn't be hurt by anything, and how when you brushed your fingers against the crystal ball just right, it would show you pictures and stories about strange people talking in a language he didn't speak.
He told them all about Krypto, his invisible dog that only he could see (dismissed by his friends and family as an imaginary friend--not unlike the 'funny man in the orange suit' and his 'super friends from the 31st Century', stories which Clark could never actually remember telling anyone). While the other kids called Clark a freak and a weirdo for constantly making up such outlandish stories, it captivated young Pete and Lana for years.
While Clark knew he was different, he never truly understood what it was that made him so. Whenever he asked his parents, Ma would always reassure him that he was simply special, and his father would allude to the costumed crime-fighters in the Justice Society....and how their being careless with their power led to their destruction. It wasn't until Clark, at age 9, saved a crashed bus full of children, many of whom claiming he was a 'miracle worker,' that his parents sat him down and had a long, honest talk about that night in Sutton's field. They didn't honestly know where he was from, or why he wound up on Earth, but told him that what truly mattered was what he chose to do with the time he had on this world.
Powers and Abilities (1987-1993)
As Clark began to enter adolescence, his strange abilities became more erratic, and harder to control. His strength, already far greater than that of other boys his age, began to skyrocket with every growth spurt he had, causing him to fear for the safety of those around him. His eyes were not only taking in the entire electromagnetic spectrum, but emitting bursts of radiation as well, everything from spikes of radio static to destructive X-Ray lasers. One night, after staring up at the stars (and trying to shake off the ghostly image of his imaginary dog sitting next to him), Clark drifted off to sleep.......only to wake up floating above the clouds. While he could always leap high into the air, this was something different entirely; Clark Kent could fly.
Worried about just how different he was becoming and fearing that he might turn into some kind of monster, Clark withdrew even further from the community, only rarely speaking to even his closest friends. The last thing he ever wanted to do was hurt someone because he couldn't control himself.
While this self-imposed solitude caused a wedge between Clark and his classmates, it caused an even further fascination for Lana, who had developed a deep-seeded crush on Clark. She frequently pried and prodded to get Clark to open up, to become more confident and proud of himself, and while he very rarely ventured out with her, he had to admit it did him a world of good.
Slowly but surely the two of them became more than friends, with Lana being the one to work up the courage to ask Clark out to their sophomore prom at age fifteen. That night they shared their first kiss, and Clark confessed everything to Lana: his feelings for her, the reasons he'd been hiding away, the things his parents had told him......and then took her hand, and flew her into the night sky. When they touched down, Lana looked into Clark's eyes, kissed him one more time, and ran away-- not just from Clark, but from home, from her family, from all of Smallville.
Heartbroken, Clark fell into a deep depression, a condition not helped when he tried to reach out to another outsider in his class: an extremely wealthy transfer student named Lex Luthor. While his time in Smallville was short, Lex's presence was felt by practically everyone in the community-- he tinkered with school property without asking and turned it into technology so advanced that some half-believed it was witchcraft, he bombarded local officials with proposals for radical overhauls of city government, and he vocally and brazenly defied teachers and authorities and anyone else he deemed 'backwards' and 'small-minded'-- which happened to be everyone he met. Despite this, Clark believed he sensed a kindred spirit in Lex, someone who saw the world in ways that no one else could, and who suffered because of it. For a short time, young Lex humored "Farmboy" and believed he could take him under his wing, so to speak, but their differences of opinion on the people around them kept them from ever truly becoming friends. Tragically, any attempt to bridge the gap between them came to an abrupt end when, during a wild experiment involving the use of a radioactive meteor fragment, Lex caused an explosion that killed his father and burned their house down, as well as covering himself in burns all over. While Clark rushed in to help, the radiation from the meteor fragment caused a crippling sickness in him, and he passed out before he could save them. Lex moved away from Smallville, practically salting the Earth to eradicate any trace that the Luthor family had ever been there.
Less than a year later, a massive storm rolled over Smallville, the already dangerous winds spinning up into a gigantic, devastating F-5 tornado. With potentially thousands of lives in danger, Clark sprang into action, moving as fast as he could to keep from being seen, pulling people out of potentially deadly spots, catching flying debris, holding up falling buildings, all to save the lives of his home town. He wasn't alone in helping out that day, as Jonathan Kent risked his own life in the storm to save a small child who had been separated from her parents. While he managed to get the child to safety, his old war wounds caught up with him, and Jonathan collapsed from over-exertion and his heart gave out. By the time emergency services were able to reach him, Clark's adopted father was dead.
After Pa's funeral, Clark went out into the old field where they had found his ship so many years ago, and pounded his fist into the ground out of frustration....causing a shock wave that people for nearly fifty miles mistook for an earthquake. The pain of losing so many people close to him so quickly, his frustration at being unable to help people without putting his family and friends at risk, and his concerns over rumors spreading about a 'guardian angel' in the wake of his actions, made Clark realize that if he was ever to find any purpose or meaning in his life, he wouldn't be able to do it here. Taking enough extra classes to graduate early at age sixteen, Clark packed up his old red cloak and alien crystal ball, kissed his mother on the cheek and promised to call once a week to catch up, and left Smallville behind to travel the world.
Valiant and Courageous (1993-2001)
For over seven years, Clark traveled the world alone, helping people whenever and wherever he could, only to disappear from their lives as soon as the danger had passed. While he longed to connect to the people he met along the way, the distrust and fear he met when people saw what he could do taught him to keep his distance, to simply be a 'ghost' that came and went without leaving any trace of who he was, only what he did.
Needing a reason to be found in dangerous places where his powers could be needed, Clark took up journalism, and paid his way through the world as a freelance reporter. He was embroiled in wars, and even in days of heavy fighting, the loss of life was minimal when he was around. He exposed terrorist cells and criminal organizations, shedding light on corruption and injustice whenever he found it. Clark Kent would have been making quite a name for himself, if another fearless reporter named Lois Lane hadn't been consistently beating him to the by-line. While he was never comfortable writing about the mysterious life-saving intervention of a mysterious stranger, Ms. Lane was eager to track this being down, and Clark found himself having to be more and more careful to keep the rival reporter off his heels.
Around his twentieth birthday, Clark finally managed to unlock the secrets of the mysterious crystal sphere that had come with him in his ship. As he expected, it was some sort of alien computer, and while navigating the orb's interface was nearly impossible, the images and impressions he got from it were astounding, glimpses of a world and a people that he had never seen, but that he immediately knew were his heritage. Strangely, the computer orb also seemed to contain some form of homing beacon, which always pointed due North. Eventually his curiosity led Clark to follow this beacon, traveling all the way to the North Pole, and there he found something incredible.
Hidden beneath the polar ice cap, expanding for miles in all directions, was a massive complex, an alien fortress that had been lying in wait for years for his arrival. Upon interacting with the Fortress's own computer systems, Clark's orb became far more active, speaking to Clark in his own language and telling him the truth of things.
The orb introduced itself as Kelex, an AI assigned to oversee and assist members of the House of El. Clark's true name was Kal-El, the last surviving member of his House, and indeed, the last survivor of his home world, the lost planet of Krypton. Facing a world-shattering cataclysm, Kal's biological father Jor-El had tried to enact a desperate plan to save his people: warping the entire population into the extradimensional void known as the Phantom Zone, then sending a single survivor on the material plane to a hospitable planet and bringing the population out into a pre-established colony. Sadly, Jor-El did not have enough time to put his plan into motion, and he chose to save the life of his son in the one ship capable of delivering him to safety; the colony meant to house millions of Kryptonians would now be a refuge for one, a Fortress of Solitude.
Krypton, Kal learned, was a world of adventurers and scientists, of dangers and wonders. Its people had eschewed traditional gods and demons in favor of worshipping a set of ideals called the Jirrod, and each of the Great Houses strove to be the embodiment of one of these ideals. The House of El, Kal's bloodline and legacy, represented above all other things, Hope. And Clark Kent, the mild-mannered son of Smallville--also Kal-El, the Last Son of Krypton-- swore to himself that he would strive to the ideal of Hope that his lost world had entrusted in him, and his adopted world so badly needed.
Up in the Sky! (2001-2002)
After seeing the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001, Clark Kent realized he could no longer hide himself from humanity. Putting on his old indestructible red cape, and a T-shirt with the House of El's insignia painted on it, he openly and directly intervened on what appeared to be a follow-up attack in Metropolis a few days later, diverting the plane from crashing into the old Science Spire and setting it down in the river, before disabling the terrorists inside. Dubbed "Superman" by Lois Lane, the super-powered vigilante quickly began a career in righting the wrongs in the city of Metropolis and the world at large.
Realizing the scale of the job he had taken upon himself, Clark took a permanent residence in Metropolis, renting out a small apartment in the Hob's Bay area with an old contact of his, a Daily Planet photographer named Jimmy Olsen. Clark and Jimmy became fast friends, and Jimmy eventually convinced Clark to apply for a job at the Planet. While Clark blew the initial interview with Chief Editor Perry White, he ended up getting the job after a glowing recommendation from his old freelancer rival Lois Lane, who had started working at the Planet a few months earlier. Together, Lois and Clark exposed the terrorists behind the failed attack on the Science Spire, and revealed that they were not in fact Islamic extremists, but instead were being blackmailed into cooperation by the vicious criminal syndicate known as Intergang.
What Bruno Mannheim's motivation was for destroying the Spire remained a mystery, but the more Lois exposed in the wake of Superman's resulting battles with Intergang showed that while Mannheim was indeed the one pulling the strings of the crime syndicate, someone else was manipulating Mannheim from higher up.
Mannheim threw everything he had at Superman to no avail, until his pressuring of Amertek scientists to develop anti-Superman weapons resulted in a catastrophic explosion which created the radioactive villain known as the Atomic Skull. The Skull fought Superman across the entire city, and while the villain was eventually defeated, there were many who noted Superman's apparent weakness towards certain forms of radiation.
Six months after Superman's debut in Metropolis, the world was shocked to see the City of Tomorrow suddenly and inexplicably disappear, as if the entire thing had just been snatched up into thin air. Springing into action, Superman discovered this was the work of The Collector of Worlds, an ancient and malevolent artificial intelligence which traveled the universe looking for 'doomed' worlds and, upon finding one, would capture a population center for study and then abandon the planet to its destruction. Kelex was able to impart this information to Kal because a few short years before Krypton's end, The Collector had come and taken the shining city of Kandor. The Collector's intelligence spread throughout intelligent civilizations across the cosmos, using a different name on every world where it allowed itself to be 'invented.' On Krypton, the last place it had been, it used the name Brainiac.
Superman tracked Brainiac's ship in the upper atmosphere before it was able to warp away, and attacked it, crashing through the ship's defenses and legions of drones before making his way to the Collector's den. There, he found hundreds of 'bottle cities,' pocket universes where millions of lives were trapped in nightmarish isolation. The Brainiac AI assumed a physical form and subdued Superman, attempting to add the orphaned Kryptonian to his collection, but was unable to decide whether to add it to Kandor or to Metropolis. This hesitation was all Superman needed to break free, disabling Brainiac's ship and reversing the 'bottling' process to restore Metropolis to its proper location in timespace. The Collector ship crashed to Earth and was allegedly taken into SHIELD custody for study, but the Bottle Cities were taken by Superman to the Fortress of Solitude, in the hopes that he could one day set them free.
Superman's first year as an publicly active hero closed in a dramatic fashion, as a terrorist group called the Olmec Dawn captured a nuclear missile silo on the West Coast, calling for the destruction of Superman and all other non-human influences on the world. Planning to destroy the 'alien invader' along with themselves, they launched a missile at the heart of Metropolis, then set a second warhead to explode inside the silo, located extremely close to the San Andreas Fault. While Superman was able to extract the terrorists from the silo, he was unable to stop the first explosion, and had to spend precious time preventing catastrophic damage to the West Coast in the resulting earthquakes, before speeding back across the country as fast as he could to divert the second missile into space. The missile exploded in high orbit before Superman could get away, and the Man of Steel fell miles down to Earth.....but, incredibly, survived.
In the wake of this event, investigations led by Lois and Clark, as well as confession from the terrorists captured by Superman, revealed that the "Olmec Dawn" was working for a network of criminal organizations that, when the evidence was followed to the very top, led to LexCorp C.E.O. Lex Luthor. Indicted for responsibility behind the attacks, Lex was cleared of all charges, but not before having to spent a single night in prison. This indignity, the realization that someone could not only oppose him but actively punish him, sparked a hatred in Luthor that would last a lifetime.
Speeding Bullets (2002-2004)
With his original costume destroyed by the nuclear blasts, Superman had a new outfit created for him inside the Fortress, blending the traditional attire of Krypton's elite Sapphire Guard with the colorful outfits of the old Justice Society of America. With a new, more durable look, Superman was ready to take on an increasingly dangerous and uncertain world.
Over the next two years, Superman's gallery of enemies continued to grow. A thrill-seeking internet personality named Leslie Willis was transformed into the anarchic Livewire, who could absorb and emit huge amounts of electrical energy. A LexCorp janitor named Rudy Jones was mutated into the monstrous Parasite, who fed off of the energy of anything he touched. An amoral hacker named Oz Loomis took up the alias Prankster, and delighted in creating havoc for Superman by manipulating Metropolis's central operating systems. And a US Army soldier named John Corben was bonded into an experimental Kryptonite-powered battle-suit to combat metahumans, taking the codename 'Metal-Zero' but upon his death, the suit's AI continued on, becoming the deranged cybernetic psychotic Metallo.
Each of these villains threatened Superman or the city in their turn, but time after time the Man of Tomorrow overcame his adversaries, his reputation growing brighter and brighter with every consecutive victory.
This string of wins came to an end when a large black spaceship appeared in the skies over Earth. This ship, identified by Kelex as the Black Zero, was the flagship of General Zod, a rogue Kryptonian whose followers had been banished to the Phantom Zone. Free of the extradimensional void, they followed Kal-El's Star Drive signature to Earth, and intended to create a 'New Krypton.' Using a massive terraforming device called the World Engine, Zod and his followers planned to wipe out all life on Earth and begin anew.
Superman engaged Zod, begging him to leave and start over on a new world, but the fanatical Zod saw Earth's destruction as his revenge on Jor-El, Kal's father, who had sentenced him to the Phantom Zone. Since Zod refused to be reasoned with, the only option was to stop him by force. The resulting Battle of Metropolis was devastating, leaving huge portions of the city destroyed between the World Engine's gravitational shockwaves and the subsequent battle between the enemy Kryptonians. In the end, Superman was able to destroy the World Engine, then caused the Black Zero's Star Drive to implode on itself, creating a singularity that pulled most of the ship--as well as Zod and his minions--back into the void from which they had escaped.
While the world was saved, the damage done was absolutely devastating. Tens of thousands of people were killed in the battle, and much of Metropolis lay in ruins. Ever the opporunist, Lex Luthor took the initiative in leading the reconstruction of the city, and sowed a narrative in the media blaming Superman for the entire incident, claiming that Zod and his army would have never come to Earth if it weren't for the alien's presence. Several higher-ups in the military agreed, and LexCorp secured numerous extremely lucrative contracts for the development of anti-Kryptonian weaponry.
Despite this, there were several who remained loyal to Superman, citing all of the millions of people he had saved in spite of the carnage, and all the good he had done in the past. In the painful reconstruction of Metropolis, other heroes emerged following Superman's example, most notably the inudstrialist turned vigilante Steel, and the JSA-inspired Guardian.
Also, an unexpected fallout from the Zod invasion was the escape of an animal from the Phantom Zone: none other than Krypto, Clark's invisible dog he had until now believed to be only in his imagination. As people and cities and whole nations turned against Superman, Clark at least had the small comfort of his loyal dog at his side.
The World's Finest (2004-2005)
Clark had been aware of the presence of other heroes and vigilantes working in other cities, but had never gone out of his way to contact them-- while he considered the old JSA an inspiration, the group's eventual failure led him to be skeptical of attempting another 'super-team.' However, when he heard that the Batman of Gotham City was recruiting children in his war against the criminal underworld, he could not ignore it-- recklessly endangering a child was unconscionable, and he intended to set the Batman straight.
Seeking the vigilante out in Gotham, Superman caught up with Batman, and the two of them engaged in a brief verbal skirmish, correctly guessing each other's secret identities and arguing over the efficacy of the other's actions. However, their dispute was interrupted by the rampage of the undead creature Solomon Grundy, and the two of them joined forces to take the monster down. Upon seeing the Batman in action, his careful attention to detail and his willingness to endanger his own life to save those of others--including his protégé Robin-- Superman concluded that Batman could be trusted, and the two stayed in contact, realizing they could be more effective working together than alone.
Not long after this, Superman encountered another metahuman like himself, attempting to stop a war from breaking out between the nations of Pokolistian and Bialya. The metahuman in question, the stunningly gorgeous Wonder Woman, claimed that the hostilities in the region were caused by another superhuman entity, calling himself Ares. Together, Superman and Wonder Woman routed Ares and got the two nations' diplomats to speak to each other, avoiding a potentially bloody conflict.
In addition to being a powerful new ally, Wonder Woman was someone who Superman believed he could relate to, someone who saw the world the way he did, and struggled with the increasing distance between himself and humanity. The Amazonian Princess sympathized, and the two became fast friends, and briefly lovers. Despite their mutual attraction for each other, they realized that a relationship would complicate their respective duties-- to say nothing of Clark's increasingly complicated love life in Metropolis, given that Lois had been making advances at Kent, and that his old flame Lana Lang had come to Metropolis to help with the relief effort-- and after a few brief affairs, Clark and Diana agreed to keep their relationship strictly professional.
While Superman had his share of hard-fought wins and often paid steep costs for victory, he had never actually been defeated at anything before. This changed when, in order to raise money for charity, Superman challenged the speedster known as the Flash to a race around the world. While the two stayed neck and neck for a time, Flash eventually poured on the speed and left the Man of Steel in the dust, shocking the world as the first man to defeat Superman.
Slowly but surely, Superman's list of allies grew, in the hopes that if another threat arises that he couldn't handle alone, they would be able to overcome it together.
Truth and Justice (2006-2008)
The threat that many of them worried about manifested in the form of the Star'ro, a race of parasitic aliens who invaded Earth with the intention of feeding off of the sentient thoughts of all life on the planet. Individually, Superman and the other heroes were overwhelmed by the Star'ro parasites, and all seemed to be lost, were it not for the intervention of the psychic Martian Manhunter. Acting in concert, Superman and seven other powerful defenders (Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Martian Manhunter, Green Lantern, Aquaman, and Hawkgirl) managed to drive off the Star'ro threat, saving mankind.
The eight heroes, realizing the potential they had to change the world for the better, banded together, taking their cue from the old Justice Society and naming themselves the Justice League. With deep resources and immense power, the League became a major world power overnight, much to the concern of the powers that be.
The League's first real test in action was against a purported opposite number, led by the villain Libra and calling themselves the 'Injustice Gang.' Despite a few close shaves, the League came through in the end and defeated Libra and his gang. Though the routing of the Injustice Gang was a resounding victory, it would hardly be the only time the League would be tested by rival factions.
Superman himself ran afoul of a band of anarchistic metahumans calling themselves The Elite. Led by a nihilistic punk named Manchester Black, the Elite saw the opportunity not just to challenge the governments and authorities of the world, but destroy them. They repeatedly hunted down and exterminated corrupt politicians, unethical bankers and businessmen, and even made an attempt on the life of Superman's nemesis Lex Luthor, which backfired so spectacularly that Superman had to intervene to save Black and his cronies from Luthor's trap. Eventually things came to a head, and Superman challenged the Elite head-on, and was nearly killed in the ensuing battle, but due to some clever planning ahead of time, defeated Manchester and his crew one by one. The Elite were imprisoned for their crimes, but mysteriously disappeared when being 'transferred' into the custody of SHIELD.
Around this time, Clark Kent had spent so much time working with Lois that he felt she deserved to know the truth. He confessed to her his identity as Superman--something that Lois had guessed since the day they met, but kept to herself unless she could prove it. Finally relieved that he no longer had to keep secrets from her, Clark also confessed his feelings for Lois, and the two began dating.
Never-Ending Battle (2008-Present)
One morning in 2008, Clark woke up to discover that the sky and grass had switched places, the air had been replaced with chlorine, and everyone on Earth had been turned into cardboard cutouts of themselves. This was the work of an entity known as Mr. Mxyzptlk, an imaginary bogeyman from Clark's childhood who was, in fact, a mischievous force from a higher plane of reality called the Fifth Dimension. Mxyzptlk was entertained by Superman's adventures, and decided to amuse himself by making the Man of Steel's life increasingly difficult, warping reality further and further until either the universe tore itself apart or Superman managed to figure out the imp's weakness. Eventually, by drawing one bit of information at a time from the imp's relentless taunting, Clark pieced together that Mxyzptlk could be banished by tricking him into saying his name backwards.....which he promptly did.
A sore loser, Mxyzptlk grabbed Superman just as he was phasing out of timespace and pulled him into the Underverse, a chaotic realm of 'cosmic feedback' where matter and energy existed as distorted echoes of themselves. While there, Superman was infected with a self-replicating form of un-stuff Mxyzptlk referred to as 'bizarro matter,' and the infection grew until it split off from Clark and formed a deranged copy, a Bizarro Superman.
Incalculably powerful and with a mind of constant opposites, Bizarro put together a machine that could bore through dimensions back into regular timespace (Bizarro knew how to do this because Superman didn't, of course), and threatened to go on a rampage that could destroy the entire Earth. However, after a short but painful dust-up with the creature, Superman realized he could convince Bizarro to do the opposite of whatever he did. And since Superman worked out of the North Pole and could do nothing, it made sense to Bizarro that it should live at the South Pole and do nothing. It flew away to the Antarctic, where it would remain perfectly still for years.
A few months later, a spaceship came crashing down to Earth, and much to Superman's surprise, the being inside was a fellow Kryptonian, a young girl bearing the crest of his family's House. Introducing herself as Kara-El, the girl seemed to absorb solar energy far faster than Kal could, and soon developed a suite of superpowers equal to Superman's. Kal took his newfound cousin to the Fortress where she could learn what had happened in the years between her escape from Krypton and her arrival on Earth, and Clark and Lois helped set her up with a cover identity to avoid Superman's ever-increasing list of enemies.
Said enemies would soon band together, as a team of rogues calling themselves the SRS ('Superman Revenge Squad') laid siege to Metropolis, taking out Steel and Guardian and demanding a showdown with Superman. The combined forces of Parasite, Livewire, Riot, Silver Banshee, and Terra-Man proved too much for Superman to fight alone......but just when things looked bleak, Kara arrived on the scene, sporting a similar costume to Superman's, to even the odds. The SRS were defeated, and the world quickly learned that there was now a Supergirl to protect them.
The SRS, however, were not the only alliance between Superman's enemies. In the years since Brainiac's invasion, Lex Luthor had frequently attempted to access the alien AI's inner workings, to unlock the secrets of ancient and incredibly advanced technology. Luthor managed to re-activate the AI and strike a partnership with it.
Together, Luthor and Brainiac formulated a plot that would destroy their mutual enemy once and for all. Luring Superman into a confrontation with the resurrected Brainiac, Luthor caught the Man of Steel in a wormhole, teleporting him through space and directly into the exploded remains of Krypton, now a ring of continent-sized shards of pure Kryptonite. Exposure to such incredible amounts of K-radiation would kill Superman almost instantly....
....and 'almost' is all that Mr. Mxyzptlk needed. In the fleeting microseconds before Superman's death, the Fifth Dimensional imp stopped time and gave Superman an offer: he would save Clark's life, in exchange for a 'terrible secret' that would be determined at a later date. Leery of the imp but out of other options, Superman agreed to his terms, and Mxyzptlk sent him back to Earth.....in the 31st Century.
Disoriented and confused, Superman found it difficult to get his bearings in the far future, until he was found by the Legion of Super-Heroes, who restored memories of the times they had visited him in his past. Recognizing his old allies and remembering his previous visits to the future, Clark quickly regained his composure, until they were attacked by one of the Legion's arch-foes, the Time Trapper.
Together, Superman and the Legion defeated the Time-Trapper, but not before Clark learned the 'terrible secret' that was part of Mxyzptlk's bargain, by accidentally looking at the wrong files in Brainiac-5's database.....
Using a Legion time-bubble to return to the present, Superman returned to the present just a few seconds after Brainiac and Luthor had teleported him away, and defeated the two, exposing Luthor as a criminal and throwing Brainiac into the sun.
With Supergirl becoming an increasingly great hero with each passing day and Lois beginning to talk marriage, things seemed to be looking up for Clark. Or they would be, had he not seen Mxyzptlk's 'terrible secret'.....
.....according to Brainiac-5's records, Superman would be dead in less than five years.
| Attributes |
Superman is a Kryptonian, one of quite possibly the most physically advanced beings the universe has ever known. Clark's abilities develop slowly during his early life, but seem to continually grow more and more potent as he goes on. Like exercising a muscle, the more he uses an ability, the stronger it becomes, some improving only gradually, some scaling up dramatically after repeated use. Kryptonians were a race that prided itself in its technology and ingenuity, and in order to survive and thrive on the unforgiving environment of Krypton, they had actually taken control of their species' evolution. Utilizing methods far beyond anything humans would consider to be any known form of genetic engineering or biotechnology, they shaped their own cellular structure to cope with their planet's crushing gravity (the fact that they had not evolved along those lines already suggesting that they may not have originally been from Krypton at all), transforming every cell in their bodies into microscopic fusion generators capable of seemingly impossible feats.
Flight: Superman can manipulate his personal gravitational field, causing a small, almost frictionless anti-gravity bubble around himself and, with some concentration, any person or object he touches. This allows him to fly through the air with ease, and assists him in lifting objects that should structurally collapse when moved.
Super-Strength: Superman's physical strength is incalculable, and has only grown with each passing day on Earth. Capable of lifting millions of tons of mass with virtually no effort, it is unknown whether his strength has any limits at all.
Invulnerability: Superman is resistant to virtually any and all physical means of harm. He has been bombarded with heavy artillery, buried under billions of tons of rock, been exposed to the vacuum of space, near-absolute-zero cold and the heart of nuclear explosions, and has come out with barely a scratch. While it is possible to injure or even kill Superman, thus far it seems it can only be done in ways that negate or subvert his powers. Attempting to defeat the Man of Tomorrow with sheer brute force is seemingly impossible.
Super-Speed: Superman is one of the fastest beings on the planet, at least among those who cannot tap into the Speed Force. The anti-gravity field that surrounds him in flight reduces friction to nearly zero, allowing him hypersonic flight with little concern for environmental damages. It is possible that he can travel near or at the speed of light, but because he cannot access the Speed Force, he would be subject to the phenomenon of time dilation, and therefore he keeps his movements at sub-relativistic speeds.
Super-Senses: Superman's mind perceives the universe in a way that is alien to human conception. His senses are fine-tuned so that they can take in sensations from nearly anywhere on Earth as they happen--hearing sounds long before they could reach his ears, for example. This is due to his brain processing information at unfathomable speed and detail, becoming sensitive to vibrational changes to the environment on a quantum level, and subconsciously calculating the most likely cause and outcome of these changes in the universe around him. While it would not be accurate to say that he can 'hear' a gunshot on the other side of the planet as it happens, the infinitessimal changes in his environment allow his subconscious brain to 'guess' that it is happening, which then produces the 'sound' of the gunshot in Superman's mind.
All this is to say that Superman can see, hear, taste, smell, and feel everything happening on a planet at any time-- the trick, then, in the higher workings of his brain, is determining what events demand his attention the most. While his brain is absorbing and processing information on an unimaginable scale, his conscious mind is roughly equal to an average human being.
Superman's famous 'X-Ray' vision is a combination of his microscopic and telescopic vision, focusing on an object by 'zooming in' on the obstructing object's atomic structure and then past it. This, combined with his other senses creating a nearly 100% accurate model of the surrounding environment in his mind, allow him to see a complete image of people and objects, externally and internally, at will. His eyes are also sensitive to the entire electromagnetic spectrum, allowing him to see radio and wireless waves, pick up E-M disturbances like an enemy using a cloaking device, detect activity in various locations of the brain to determine a person's emotions or discern lies, and even see the bio-electric field that makes up a person's 'soul.'
In addition to this, Superman can adjust his perception of the passage of time, slowing it down to the zeptosecond level, able to sense events so quickly that they can hardly be said to have happened at all. However, this does not necessarily mean he can respond and move at the same speed--on a human scale, this would be the difference between seeing a bullet flying at you and being able to dodge it.
Heat-Vision: Superman takes in and processes energy at an enormous rate, and can release that energy through a series of biological focusing lenses in his eyes. This venting of his bio-energy most commonly manifests itself in the form of intense X-ray lasers, capable of cutting through titanium. These lasers can be broad enough to cover a hemisphere, or focused tightly enough to carve electrons off of an atom. Of all of Superman's powers, his Heat-Vision is the one that drains the most of his energy stores, and excessive use can deplete his powers entirely. As a result, he tends to use this ability sparingly, typically only using it for utilitarian purposes such as a cutting or welding torch, and only using its full offensive capability when all other options have failed.
While Superman is one of the most immensely powerful beings known to man, that does not make him indestructible or immortal. In the years since his debut, several methods have been found that can undermine or subvert his powers, cause him immense physical pain, or even kill him outright.
Kryptonite: By far the most infamous (and most effective) countermeasures against Superman, Kryptonite is a highly radioactive isotope of Kryptonian Sunstone, irradiated by the planet's destruction. Its radiation signature is unique in that it is astoundingly energetic (less than an miligram of Kryptonite could power Metropolis for a decade, or alternatively wipe out most of New England if treated into an explosive), yet completely clean. It is harmless to all organic life, except for lifeforms that contain traces of Sunstone in their genetic makeup.....namely, lifeforms from the planet Krypton. Exposure to Kryptonite interrupts the metabolic processes that take in solar energy, causing cell death in a Kryptonian lifeform. It causes crippling sickness, agonizing physical pain, the loss of any extranormal physical abilities, and if exposed for roughly one minute, death.
Even after the Kryptonite is removed, recovery from it is long and painful. A return to full power can take days, even weeks depending on the severity of the exposure. Early in Superman's career, Lex Luthor stabbed him in the side with a shard, creating a scar that has never fully healed.
Thankfully, only one fragment of Kryptonite ever made it to Earth: a two-pound meteorite that landed in Smallville not far from the pod which brought Kal-El to the planet. While a few ounces of the rock were broken off and now power the cybernetic monster Metallo, the rest of the Kryptonite is the exclusive property of Lex Luthor.
K-2: In the wake of General Zod's invasion of Earth, SHIELD and other military organizations agreed that humanity needed weaponry that could neutralize Kryptonians should they ever threaten the Earth again. Spearheaded by LexCorp, the goal was the creation of mass-produced, lab-grown synthetic Kryptonite, and after nearly five years of painstaking research and setbacks, a facsimile was produced. Dubbed 'K-2,' this yellow-green crystal emits a radiation similar, but not identical to Kryptonite, enough that could cause Superman extreme pain and disorientation, and could theoretically kill him if used in sufficient quantities. Unfortunately, K-2 has a very short half-life, and most K-based weapons are expended after a single use. Worse, its radiation signature is not as clean as true Kryptonite, and quickly becomes toxic to humans and other lifeforms as well.
Red Sun: Kal-El and other Kryptonians process solar energy at an incredible rate, and it is theorized this is because their bodies believe Earth, an alien environment, to be a hostile one, and thus they are storing energy in an 'emergency mode' at all times. Exposing Superman to an environment more similar to that of Krypton-- higher gravity, thinner atmosphere, or most effectively, the dim energy of a red sun-- will cause his body to believe it is in a 'safe' environment, and thus shut down the energy-storing processes. While this does not drain his powers the same way as Kryptonite does, it 'deactivates' them as long as the environmental conditions are in effect, rendering him effectively powerless.
Magic: Magic is, by its definition, not subject to the regular laws of nature, and as such, Superman has no inherent defense against it. A blade that is enchanted to cut through anything will cut through Superman just as easily as anything else, for example. This makes him understandably wary of anyone who claims supernatural abilities.
Sensory Overload: As previously mentioned, Superman takes in and processes sensation on a seemingly unthinkable level. Disrupting that sensory input, however, can cause him serious pain and disorientation. The most common effective method of doing so would be the use of hypersonic weaponry, throwing Superman off long enough to enact another, potentially more lethal attack against him.
Psychic Attacks: Superman has gone through intense mental training to defend his mind against intruders, but this does not mean he is immune to it. A powerful enough psychic could telekinetically control Superman's body, access his memories, or even take control of him entirely. While doing so is exceedinly difficult, it is not impossible.
Physical Force: Beings of equal or greater strength than Superman are not common, but they do exist. Villains like General Zod or the monstrous Bizarro have been able to match and even overpower the Man of Steel, and it is possible that such a being could overwhelm Superman's invulnerability enough to break bones, rupture organs, or sever his spinal column, which would kill him just as effectively as a normal human.
| Character Notes |
Setting and Locations:
Metropolis, DE is a sprawling, highly populated major city in New England, rival to New York or Gotham as the 'king' city of the Eastern Seaboard. For most of its existence, Metropolis was a tough place to live, as its struggling economy and notoriously corrupt local government made it a breeding ground for organized crime. This can still be seen in the names of many locales in the city, most notably the bleak nickname of the Hob's Bay area as "Suicide Slum."
The city began something of a renaissance when billionaire industrialist Lex Luthor placed his corporate headquarters in the heart of the city, offering work to millions and buying up countless smaller businesses to reinvigorate them practically overnight. By 2001, nearly one in every three of Metropolis' seven million citizens, from white-collar executives to fast food workers, from respected city officials to beat cops and gangsters, worked for Lex Luthor, whether they knew it or not.
Superman's arrival in Metropolis sparked something of a cultural revolution in the city, as fascination with superheroes and their trends is one of the favored passtimes of Metropolitan citizens. While capes and boots aren't exactly common among normal men and women, the bright costumes and vibrant personalities of the Justice League and their like have become ingrained in the city's identity. While Gotham is infamous for its heroes and villains working in the shadows, Metropolis is a place one goes to get noticed.
Locations of note:
LexCorp
The Daily Planet
STAR Labs Metropolis branch
Centennial Park
Glennmorgan Square
Steelworks
The Science Spire
Smallville, KS is, as the name suggests, a small farming community in the Midwest. Settled by pioneers in the 1800s, Smallville has enjoyed a rather quiet, unassuming existence, at least on the surface. Ever since Kal-El's pod landed there, the US government has kept a file on the city and all of the strange occurrences documented there. Most dismiss this as the same sort of tourist-trap atmosphere surrounding cities like Roswell, however, and the citizens of Smallville are more than happy to brush off wild stories about space-men and 'guardian angels' with a laugh and perhaps a cold beer.
Locations of note:
The Kent Family Farm
Smallville High School
ruins of the Luthor Mansion
The Fortress of Solitude is a gigantic hidden complex deep beneath the North Pole. Originally meant to be used as a sort of transitional colony while the people of Krypton relocated to Earth (or failing that, another habitable planetoid), it has since been repurposed as Superman's base of operations and personal sanctuary. It is where he studies the history and culture of his lost people, keeps records of his adventures, and houses technology too dangerous to fall into the wrong hands. Overseen by the AI Kelex, it is also something of a museum, a time capsule in which Superman commemorates his friends and allies, as well as his enemies and his failures, in the hopes that he and those who follow behind him will learn from his past in order to secure a better future.
Points of Interest:
The Kelex computer interface
The Intergalactic Zoo
The Hall of Bottle Cities
The Phantom Zone Portal
The Cosmic Observatory
The Sunstone Furnace
The Foundry
Supporting Cast:
(To be filled in.)
Lois Lane
Jimmy Olsen
Matha Kent
Lana Lang
Pete Ross
Daily Planet Crew:
Perry White
Cat Grant
Ron Troupe
Steve Lombard
Chloe Sullivan
Richard White
Allies:
Steel
The Guardian
Krypto
Supergirl
Enemies:
Class A "World-level" enemies:
Lex Luthor
Brainiac
General Zod
Bizarro
Mr. Mxyzptlk
Class B "City-level" enemies:
Parasite
Metallo
Livewire
Prankster
Silver Banshee
Atomic Skull
Terra-Man
Riot
Criminal/Hostile Organizations:
Intergang
The Toymen
Superman Revenge Squad
The Elite
Cadmus
Lois Lane
Jimmy Olsen
Matha Kent
Lana Lang
Pete Ross
Daily Planet Crew:
Perry White
Cat Grant
Ron Troupe
Steve Lombard
Chloe Sullivan
Richard White
Allies:
Steel
The Guardian
Krypto
Supergirl
Enemies:
Class A "World-level" enemies:
Lex Luthor
Brainiac
General Zod
Bizarro
Mr. Mxyzptlk
Class B "City-level" enemies:
Parasite
Metallo
Livewire
Prankster
Silver Banshee
Atomic Skull
Terra-Man
Riot
Criminal/Hostile Organizations:
Intergang
The Toymen
Superman Revenge Squad
The Elite
Cadmus
| Character Goals |
I plan on bringing Superman to a higher standard of storytelling, telling unique and interesting stories that could only be done with a character as wonderfully insane as Superman. That said, I don't plan on making fluffy 'love-letter' pieces that go on and on about how great and important the character is because, to be honest, those get boring very quickly. I want Superman's world to be dangerous, action-packed, energetic, and fun.
I have a few ideas that I've been dying to try with an older, more experienced Superman, that we rarely ever get to see considering how many Year One/early days interpretations we usually get in this kind of game. So the opportunity to play a Superman that knows his way around things is the kind of thing that makes my mouth water, so to speak.
| Sample Post |
"Lois! Are you all right?"
The sky is on fire, and seven billion people are screaming.
Hours ago, a psychotic and tortured soul who went by the name 'Ruin' enacted a suicidal plan to bring about the apocalypse. Creating a massive gravitational tether, Ruin used it to grab hold of Earth's moon and set it on a collision course with the planet.
"I'm fine, what the hell is going on out there?" Lois says, standing up from her desk.
"The moon is about to crash into the Earth," I let her know. "I stopped the machine that was generating the gravity well, but the damage has been done."
"But, I mean.....you've got this, right?" she asks, with a hopeful nod.
"I think so," I say, looking up at the blackened scorched sky as the continent-sized satellite bears down on us. "Firestorm and Red Tornado are doing everything in their power to mitigate the damage to the planet's atmosphere. Aquaman is working with Captain Atom to keep the tidal forces from drowning everyone, and a few of the Green Lanterns are constructing braces to keep the tectonic plates from shaking apart. Meanwhile, Reed Richards has gotten a Mother Box operational and is ready to open a Boom Tube if things go south, and Flash will evacuate everyone through the Tube to safety."
"Everyone in Metropolis?"
"Everyone on Earth."
Lois seems sufficiently impressed.
"That seems to cover the collateral damage," she says. "But what about, you know, the moon about to slam into the Earth and destroy the world?!"
"That's my job."
"What exactly are you going to do, Smallville?"
I look up at the crashing moon, and I crack my knuckles.
"The moon is falling, and I'm Superman." I say, turning back to her with a smile. "What do you think I'm going to do?"
"....you're seriously going to try and--"
"All in a day's work," I say with a wink, and take to the skies, to take the cataclysm head-on.....
