Читать книгу Mind Candy - Lawrence Watt-Evans - Страница 9

Superman: Previous Issues

Published in The Man from Krypton; based on an earlier column in Comics Buyer’s Guide

Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive—Superman is practically a symbol of power. What’s more, he fights for truth, justice, and the American way; he’s an icon of power used for good, power handled responsibly. It may be Spider-Man who actually said “With great power comes great responsibility,” but the big blue Boy Scout was living it twenty years before Spidey spun his first web.

Superman has powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men; he could make himself ruler of the world, take anything he wants, kill anyone who got in his way—but he doesn’t. He’s a good guy, the ultimate good guy; he apparently isn’t even tempted to abuse his powers. He’s wholesome and noble and selfless. His foster parents raised him that way, and he’s true to his upbringing.

It’s long been recognized that this is part of what makes him boring sometimes, or at least hard to write good stories about; he’s too powerful, too perfect. No menace can really endanger him; he’s invulnerable. His moral choices are never really difficult; the Kents gave him so strong a sense of right and wrong that there’s not much room for self-doubt. DC’s editorial powers have more than once tried to make things easier for their scripters by cutting him back to a more human scale, but it never really sticks, because he’s Superman. If he isn’t power incarnate and a moral paragon, he’s not the same iconic character.

He’s practically perfect in every way—that’s what makes him Superman.

At least, on the outside.

But even though he’s Superman, he has issues. It’s implicit in his background. He’s kept them concealed all these years, but if you know where to look, you can find them. Especially if you look at the version of the character I grew up with, the so-called “Silver Age” or “pre-Crisis” Superman that existed from about 1955 to 1985.

A starting point to show you what I mean is his clothes. They say clothes make the man, and certainly part of what makes Superman the icon he is is that familiar outfit of blue tights, red shorts, red boots, yellow belt, and that flowing red cape. He always wears it—and I do mean always.

In those pre-Crisis years, Superman’s costume was indestructible. He needed an indestructible costume when he was out there getting blasted by rayguns, or strolling unscathed through nuclear explosions, or taking a swim through the sun’s photosphere. So where did that costume, so much a part of the Superman legend come from?

Well, as any long-time DC reader can tell you, Ma Kent (Martha Clark Kent, to give her full name) made it for him by sewing together the blankets that were wrapped around him in the rocket that sent him from Krypton to Earth. He wears it under his street clothes, in order, he says, to be ready to change to Superman at an instant’s notice.

That very recognizable costume was at the heart of a good many stories back in the Silver Age; people tried to steal it, it showed through Clark Kent’s torn clothing at inconvenient times, and so forth. It’s always been a major part of Superman’s life.

And it must be inconvenient. Think about it; Clark Kent can’t open his shirt collar on a hot day because that dumb suit would show. Wearing shorts when it’s 95° and everyone else is in cut-offs takes a major decision and costs much worry, because it means he has to take off the longjohns. (The heat doesn’t bother him, but Clark Kent’s reputation for eccentricity mustn’t get out of hand.)

Now, some other superheroes may have some justification for wearing a super-suit under their clothes, but this is a man who can move faster than light, and clothes that can be stretched or compressed almost infinitely. The Flash used to keep his super-suit compressed into a ring—Supes could surely do the same, and would no longer need to worry about rayguns or moths putting holes in his clothes that let that tell-tale red and blue show through. He could leave the suit in his Fortress, or in orbit, and still reach it and change clothes and get to anywhere on the face of the Earth in a seventh of a second. So why doesn’t he?

Well, remember where that suit came from. It’s not made from ordinary fabric, but from Kryptonian blankets—that’s how it survives all the abuse it gets.

In fact, it’s made from the very blankets that were wrapped around him when he was an infant. The blankets he slept under. The cute little blankets his mother tucked him into.

That’s right, friends—the super-suit is Superman’s baby blanket. It’s his security blanket—not figuratively, but literally. The last son of Krypton doesn’t just carry a piece of his old baby blanket in his pocket, as some insecure people do, he’s wearing it.

Told you he has issues.

But hey, we can cut him some slack. Despite being the most powerful being in the world, the guy has a rough life—he saves the universe almost daily, both his parents and his adoptive parents are dead (let’s ignore the occasional dumb stories where Jor-el and Lara turn up in the Survival Zone or wherever), he has lots of secrets he can’t share with anyone, there’s nobody around with whom he can knock back a few beers, get tipsy, and arm-wrestle—he can’t get tipsy at all, so far as I know, and certainly not without risking very serious trouble.

That’s something that people don’t seem to consider. At the end of a long day of rounding up bank robbers and mad scientists, how does Superman relax? Because he is so incredibly powerful, he just can’t let himself go—not anywhere inhabited, anyway. He’s liable to wreck several square blocks if he tries. He can’t kick the furniture to blow off stress—he’ll be punting footstools into orbit. He can’t slap a friend on the back without maybe killing him. People admire him, they’re in awe of him—but they’ve got to be a little scared, as well, when dealing with someone who can kill them by breathing hard.

He lives half his life in a really unnatural, assumed role as Clark Kent just so he can deal with people on an equal basis occasionally, and even then, he has to be constantly on guard against doing something superhuman. The guy has got to be lonely and under constant stress.

So is it really surprising that he carries a security blanket?

No, not carries—wears. In fact, he flaunts it, though of course no one recognizes it for what it is. He stands there, chest out, as the bullets bounce off, and you can just imagine him thinking, “You can’t hurt me! I have my blankie!”

This explains why he pretty much never takes it off even when he is relaxing. All those scenes in the Fortress of Solitude when he’s taking it easy, playing chess against his super-robot or whatever, writing in his diary by carving Kryptonian words into solid steel plates with his fingernail, or whatever, does he ever slip out of his work clothes and into a dressing gown? When he takes a refreshing dip in a lava pool, does he ever strip down to his shorts to feel that warm tingle on his chest? Nope—the big red S stays firmly in place at all times.

That’s a little eccentric—as well as unhygienic. Most of us don’t wear the same underwear day in and day out, and we have good reasons for that. Although we see that Superman does clean his super-suit sometimes—by flying through the sun while wearing it.

That’s right, he usually doesn’t take it off even to wash it. This guy has it bad. Most people with security blankets at least put them down occasionally.

But then, Superman does have it rough. His home planet blew up; his species is effectively extinct. Yes, humans look the same, but we know they aren’t—we can’t clean our clothes by flying through the sun. Compared to Superman, we and all our creations are ridiculously fragile; if he ever forgets for even a second just how delicate we are, he could kill dozens of people. He must live his entire life as if he were walking through card houses floored with eggshells. Just cracking his knuckles might shatter windows! He can’t belch, he can’t fart, without worrying about killing innocent bystanders.

That suit at least gives him something he doesn’t need to worry about damaging!

And it’s something safe and comforting. Remember that there are other bits of his home planet still around—and they’re trying to kill him. Kryptonite isn’t just a bunch of green meteors to him; it’s his homeland, his ancestral soil, the old country that sent him to America.

And it’s poisonous.

This is a man who really can’t go home again; his home is gone, and any souvenir he might find is toxic.

Any souvenir, that is, except that silly suit he wears.

And then there’s the way he’s treated by the people around him. He’s an immigrant to our planet, and he’s tried his best to fit in, he’s done everything he can to be a good person, a good man, a good American, and how do people react to him?

Well, a fair number of the people he meets are trying to kill him. Everyone from street punks to Lex Luthor feels free to take shots at him, with guns and knives and death-rays, and nobody ever takes that seriously. Yes, they go to jail for robbing banks, or trying to conquer the world without a permit, or whatever, but does it ever occur to anyone to file felony assault charges? These guys punch Superman, they shoot at him, stab him, run cars into him, hit him with missiles and energy beams and giant robot fists, and the cops never even ask him if he wants to press charges. Sure, he’s unhurt, but that’s not the point! He was still assaulted. Someone could ask.

That’s his enemies—but what about his friends? They’re constantly demanding his help, asking to be rescued, inviting him to help out with charity events, but do they ever just suggest a cup of coffee and a chat? Do they respect his privacy? Lois Lane and Lana Lang spend an absurd amount of time and effort trying to find out his “secret identity”—that’s the thanks he gets for saving their lives and admitting to them in the first place that he has a secret identity?

Let’s face it, for the pre-Crisis Superman, most of his alleged friends aren’t so much friends as sycophants. Lois Lane wants him not because she actually knows him, but because he’s the ultimate trophy male—brains and brawn beyond human ken, all in a well-built package. She spends more time trying to blackmail him or spy on him than she does just talking to him.

And Jimmy Olsen isn’t so much a friend as his Number One Fan, basking in the admiration of his fellow nerds because he’s buddies with the demi-god in the blue tights.

The only people who come close to treating Superman as one of their own, rather than as a celebrity, are the other superheroes—and let’s face it, hanging out with a guy who dresses up as a giant bat, or a guy in a Robin Hood costume who puts boxing gloves on arrows, is not exactly a healthy social life. These people are freaks, just as much as Superman himself, even if they can’t juggle asteroids. Clark Kent grew up wanting to fit in, to be the all-American boy; spending time with these weirdos may be better than nothing, but he’s got to feel a little like the captain of the football team forced to eat lunch at the geeks’ table.

Of course, that’s why he has his Clark Kent identity, so he can pretend to be normal—but even there, he can’t be comfortable. He has to worry constantly about giving himself away. If Superman accidentally leaves a palm-print in solid steel, it’s not a big deal; people will just ooh and ah, and it may wind up as a souvenir somewhere, but it’s of no real consequence. If Clark Kent accidentally puts a finger through a desktop, though, that’s a real problem—someone might put two and two together.

As the TV show “Smallville” has repeatedly pointed out, any time he’s out there pretending to be an ordinary human, he’s lying. He’s hiding who he is from his alleged closest friends, keeping secrets from the people he claims to love. That’s got to be rough on a guy who wants, more than anything else in the world, to do what’s right and be loved for it.

So if you ask me, along with everything else, he wears that suit under his clothes to remind him who he is—that he’s never really Clark Kent; he’s the freak, the alien, the Superman, who can’t let himself go for an instant, who can’t trust anyone, who can’t let anyone trust him, who must always be on guard—but who still has the comforting presence of his baby blanket, reminding him that once, as a baby, he did have the unconditional love of a mother, and the calm certainty that he was safe.

I can’t begrudge him that small comfort, I suppose. After all, he’s saved the world repeatedly, and is doing everything he can to make it a better place.

But jeez, I wish he washed that thing more often.