what do you have for Clark kent?
Clark is the last son of Krypton.
Clark is the last of Krypton.
At least, that's what he thought thirty seconds ago.
"Uh," the kid standing in the middle of the broken-up Metropolis street in front of him says awkwardly, a gloved hand half-covering the bright and bold and undeniable emblem on his chest. There's a lot of surrounding property damage, a lot of staring civilians hovering on the sidewalk, and some very upset police officers cuffing up some very unconscious metahuman gang members. Clark can't even begin to bring himself to care about any of it. "Hey . . . ?"
"Hello," Diana says, raising a curious eyebrow at both the kid and the ridiculous mess that's somehow been made of the street. From the look of it maybe one of those gang members had some kind of tectonic-based abilities or something similar, but Clark continues not to care. "It seems we've encountered an admirer of yours, Kal."
"You're wearing that crest without permission," Bruce says flatly, looking less amused than Clark has seen him since the last time someone died on the League's watch.
Clark, meanwhile, can't say anything at all.
"Hey, Superman gave me permission, okay?!" the kid protests, bristling defensively. Clutching the emblem . . . protectively. Like he's afraid to have it taken away. "Just not, uh . . . this one."
"This one." Bruce frowns. The kid flattens his hand against his chest and just . . . shrugs, looking away. Clark can't look away from him at all. He looks like . . . he looks . . .
"Yeah," the kid says, gesturing a little directionlessly with his free hand. "I'm kinda not, like . . . local? There was like this whole thing, like with Hypertime and–it's complicated, okay? Just, like, it's an alternate reality issue. I'm sort of, uh . . . lost. Or–stranded, more like. I guess more like . . . stranded."
The kid swallows. Drops his hand away from the emblem and folds his arms over it instead.
Keeps standing there, looking like . . .
"Are you, now," Bruce says neutrally, and he's definitely going somewhere with that, but–
"You're Kryptonian," Clark blurts, because he can't hold the words back a moment longer. Diana and Bruce both go very still beside him. The kid just looks surprised.
"Uh, not really?" he says. "I mean, okay, sort of. I'm a binary clone of . . . you know, like a hybrid? Um, they based me off, well . . . our Superman. And then, like, stitched me up with human DNA to hold me together 'cuz the Kryptonian genome is a freaking nightmare and they couldn't really figure it out all that well, so otherwise I would've degraded and–uh. Sorry."
Clark feels something he doesn't think he's ever felt in his life, looking at this kid. Feels like he's been dragging himself through the uncanny valley and finally seen the other side of the thing; like he's finally crossed through the fog and darkness and come out into the clear light of day and seen what people are actually supposed to look like. Everything about him is just . . . right. The pitch of his voice, the slope of his shoulders, the way the sunlight reflects off his skin, the pattern of spokes in his irises, the color of his eyes, the weight of him in the world . . .
Clark wants to snatch this kid up and wrap him in his cape and never let anything else touch him. Never let him be hurt or upset or–or alone. Never. Not for anything.
He feels the way he's heard people describe feeling when they first met . . . when they first . . .
He feels the way he's heard people describe feeling when they first met their child. A sense of awe and wonder and . . . and . . .
He feels like he felt the first time he left the atmosphere and saw all of Earth all at once. Everything on it, everyone on it. The whole thing all together, all the same. Perfect.
Complete.
He's never loved anything this immediately, Clark realizes distantly. Not even that first full glimpse of Earth.
He can't imagine how he ever, ever could have.
"What's your name?" he asks, unable to shake the intensity of emotion held painfully tight in his chest. Not even wanting to shake it.
The kid looks–worried, almost. Puts his hands behind his back. Clark can see the full image of the El crest emblazoned in pride of place across his chest for the first time, and it makes him feel weak.
"Superboy," the kid says. "Um . . . Kon-El."
Clark's heart could burst, hearing that.
Or break.
"Kon-El," he echoes, forcing himself not to step in closer; not to crowd the kid. "I had a . . . on Krypton, before it was destroyed, there was . . ."
"A cousin. From the, uh, second house of El," the kid–Kon-El–agrees, shifting just barely anxiously. "My Superman said I . . . reminded him of him, like from what he saw in the recordings and all? So, uh . . ."
"I named you after him?" Clark asks wonderingly. He would've given the kid a human name over a Kryptonian one, himself, but then again, a public street in an alternate dimension isn't really the place for him to be introducing himself as "Jon Kent" or anything similar. Kon nods stiffly, drawing himself up a bit.
"Yeah," he says. "He said, uh–um. He said Kon-El was strong-willed. And . . . uh . . ."
He trails off, looking nervous, and then visibly steels himself and looks defensive again instead.
"He said I was family," he says, squaring his shoulders and lifting his jaw, like he's actually expecting someone to argue with him or something. "So he gave me that name."
Clark doesn't know who the hell made this kid so much as hesitate over saying that to any version of him that isn't an active supervillain, but he thinks he'd like to throw them into the Phantom Zone for a century or two. Just . . . that's all.
Or maybe three.
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Some cool Easter eggs I caught watching My Adventures with Superman that I want to show to people so they can be in on it with comic book readers
My episode 1 easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman post is here
My episode 2 easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman post is here
My episode 3 easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman post is here
My episode 4 easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman post is here
My episode 5 easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman post is here
My episode 6 easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman post is here
My episode 7 easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman post is here and here
My episode 8 easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman post is here
My episode 9 easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman post is here
(SPOILERS if you haven't seen the show yet):
We start things off with Jor-El and Clark meeting and like the last time, Jor-El speaking in Kryptonese much like how Jor-El in the comics did in Man of Steel #6 (1986)...
as seen in this panel (W&P: John Byrne, I: Dick Giordano, C: Tony Zuiko, L: John Costanza) where Clark meets a ghostly projection of his father at night speaking Krypton's native tongue to him. BTW Man of Steel (1986) is a fantastic read. Highly recommend finding it at your local comic shop.
After Lois, Jimmy and Clark get promoted from interns to reporters at the Daily Planet we see the three of them will be having Thanksgiving with the Kents. Ma Kent shows Lois the newspaper she framed that all three of them wrote much like how her comic book counterpart made a scrap book out of the newspaper headlines of Clark's various heroic adventures in Man of Steel #1 (1986) as seen here in the panel (W&P: John Byrne, I: Dick Giordano, C: Tony Zuiko, L: John Costanza).
The camera then moves and see see kid Clark and the things he did back then. The baseball photo kinda reminds me of this fantastic moment in Batman/Superman #3 (2013) by Greg Pak, Yildiray Cinar, Matt Lackey and John Kalisz, and Rob Leigh:
On Earth-2 Clark and Bruce met as young kids after the car, Alfred drove broke down and both had some fun playing baseball. It's a very cute flashback that highlights no matter where in the multiverse, a Superman-Batman friendship is constant.
Lois's father shows up to the Thanksgiving dinner and I got double confirmation now that it is General Sam Lane. I talked more about his deal here.
Later in the episode we have the awkward parents and their children who are dating each other moment and General Lane here asks if Clark was in the military. In one non-canon series, Superman Year One by Frank Miller and John Romita Jr., Clark signs up for the military after high school. Kind of a weird miniseries, not the best Superman comic, not the worst at least.
Things go from bad to worse when the area where Clark landed activates thanks to the presence of Kryptonite from the League of Lois Lanes sphere that held it and we see that symbol on the robots that the giant ship sends and on this person at the end of the episode. If you know your DC universe, that symbol belongs to Brainiac and we can conclude that the one with the symbol on their head is Brainiac as well.
Brainiac makes his first appearance in Action Comics #242 (1958) (cover art by Curt Swan and Stan Kaye). At this point Brainiac was a "twelve level" intellect alien who shrunk cities for his collection to help repopulate his dead planet, one of the cities is Krypton's capital city, Kandor. Several retcons later we learn that Brainiac is a robot created by the Computer Tyrants of Colu, Brainiac's home planet to spy and conquer worlds. The Brainiac that has a closer connection to Clark and his Kryptonian people kinda like what MAwS is doing was in Superman the Animated Series...
where Krypton was very depended on their AI, Brainiac who then screwed them all over when the planet was about to explode and saved his metal ass and has then became a thorn at Superman's side in the cartoon ever since. MAwS is doing something similar as we see Brainiac's symbol on the robots that were deployed from the ship and the very robotic looking body Brainiac has at the end of the episode.
As we see Clark try to stop the portal and ship, he breaks into the hull and battles the robots in it. As he's getting pummeled, AI Jor-El helps neutralize the robots. It's kinda the same idea that what Man of Steel (the movie) was trying to go for when Lois was on Zod's ship and AI Jor-El was helping her navigate throughout the place. As I said before in the last post, Shin Ultraman is a better Superman movie (and a highly recommend watching) than what Zack Snyder was trying to do in Man of Steel.
We wrap up episode 10 with the Kents, Lois, and Jimmy enjoying a Thanksgiving dinner and we see that Jonathan was able to get the turkey to temperature so Clark heats it more with his heat vision. Superman sometimes does this do heat very mundane things like coffee as seen in this panel of Super Sons #9 (2017) (W: Peter Tomasi, P&I: Jorge Jimenez, C: Alejandro Sanchez, L: Rob Leigh). Highly recommend reading Super Sons and watching the animated movie too!
Congrats to Jimmy on selling Flamebird for $5.6 million. I talk more about flamebird here. Missed opportunity to have it be $5.2 million cuz DC's love of the number 52, but whatever.
The final scene of the episode gives us this moment where Brainiac tells this Kryptonian Warrior a planet they can conquer. The warrior then states that Earth will kneel. The most infamous Kryptonian that likes to mention conquered people kneeling is General Zod and so this character here might be Zod. No confirmation yet but I'm like 99% sure. When we get a confirmation, I'll talk more about Zod later.
And with that we are done with season 1 of My Adventures with Superman and if you made it this far be sure to check out my other easter eggs post:
My episode 1 easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman post is here
My episode 2 easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman post is here
My episode 3 easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman post is here
My episode 4 easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman post is here
My episode 5 easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman post is here
My episode 6 easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman post is here
My episode 7 easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman post is here and here
My episode 8 easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman post is here
My episode 9 easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman post is here
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