Things of the form (*text*) are footnotes in the original text.
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He's faster than a speeding bullet. He's more powerful than a locomotive. He's able to leap tall buildings at a single bound. Why can't he get a girl?
At the ripe old age of thirty-one (*Superman first appeared in Action Comics, June 1938*), Kal-El (alias Superman, alias Clark Kent) is still unmarried. Almost certainly he is still a virgin. This is a serious matter. The species itself is in danger!
An unwed Superman is a mobile Superman. Thus it has been alleged that those who chronicle the Man of Steel's adventures are responsible for his condition. But the cartoonists are not to blame.
Nor is Superman handicapped by psychological problems.
Granted that the poor oaf is not entirely sane. How could he be? He is an orphan, a refugee, and an alien. His homeland no longer exists in any form, save for gigatons upon gigatons of dangerous, prettily colored rocks.
As a child and young adult, Kal-El must have been hard put to find an adequate father-figure. What human could control his antisocial behavior? What human would dare try to punish him? His actual, highly social behavior during this period indicates an inhuman self-restraint.
What wonder if Superman drifted gradually into schizophrenia? Torn between his human and kryptonian identities, he chose to be both, keeping his split personalities rigidly separate. A psychotic desperation is evident in his defense of his "secret identity."
But Superman's sex problems are strictly physiological, and quite real.
The purpose of this article is to point out some medical drawbacks to being a kryptonian among human beings, and to suggest possible solutions. The kryptonian humanoid must not be allowed to go the way of the pterodactyl and the passenger pigeon.
I
What turns on a kryptonian?
Superman is an alien, an extraterrestrial. His humanoid frame is doubtless the result of parallel evolution, as the marsupials of Australia resemble their mammalian counterparts. A specific niche in the ecology calls for a certain shape, a certain size, certain capabilities, certain eating habits.
Be not deceived by appearances. Superman is no relative to homo sapiens.
What arouses Kal-El's mating urge? Did kryptonian women carry some subtle mating cue at appropriate times of the year? Whatever it is, Lois Lane probably didn't have it. We may speculate that she smells wrong, less like a kryptonian woman than like a terrestrial monkey. A mating between Superman and Lois Lane would feel like sodomy-and would be, of course, by church and common law.
II
Assume a mating between Superman and a human woman designated LL for convenience.
Either Superman has gone completely schizo and believes himself to be Clark Kent; or he knows what he's doing, but no longer gives a damn. Thirty-one years is a long time. For Superman it has been even longer. He has X-ray vision; he knows just what he's missing. (*One should not think of Superman as a Peeping Tom. A biological ability must be used. As a child Superman may never have known that things had surfaces, until he learned to suppress his X-ray vision. If millions of people tend shamelessly to wear clothing with no lead in the weave, that is hardly Superman's fault.*)
The problem is this. Electroencephalograms taken of men and women during sexual intercourse show that orgasm resembles "a kind of pleasurable epileptic attack." One loses control over one's muscles.
Superman has been known to leave his fingerprints in steel and in hardened concrete, accidentally. What would he do to the woman in his arms during what amounts to an epileptic fit?
III
Consider the driving urge between a man and a woman, the monomaniacal urge to achieve greater and greater penetration. Remember also that we are dealing with kryptonian muscles.
Superman would literally crush LL's body in his arms, while simultaneously ripping her open from crotch to sternum, gutting her like a trout.
IV
Lastly, he'd blow off the top of her head.
Ejaculation of semen is entirely involuntary in the human male, and in all other forms of terrestrial life. It would be unreasonable to assume otherwise for a kryptonian. But with kryptonian muscles behind it, Kal-El's semen would emerge with the muzzle velocity of a machine gun bullet. (*One can imagine that the Kent home in Smallville was riddled with holes during Superboy's puberty. And why did Lana Lang never notice that?*)
In view of the foregoing, normal sex is impossible between LL and Superman.
Artificial insemination may give us better results.
V
First we must collect the semen. The globules will emerge at transonic speeds. Superman must first ejaculate, then fly frantically after the stuff to catch it in a test tube. We assume that he is on the Moon, both for privacy and to prevent the semen from exploding into vapor on hitting the air at such speeds.
He can catch the semen, of course, before it evaporates in vacuum. He's faster than a speeding bullet.
But can he keep it?
All known forms of kryptonian life have superpowers. The same must hold true of living kryptonian sperm. We may reasonably assume that kryptonian sperm are vulnerable only to starvation and to green kryptonite; that they can travel with equal ease through water, air, vacuum, glass, brick, boiling steel, solid steel, liquid helium, or the core of a star; and that they are capable of translight velocities.
What kind of a test tube will hold such beasties?
Kryptonian sperm and their unusual powers will give us further trouble. For the moment we will assume (because we must) that they tend to stay in the seminal fluid, which tends to stay in a simple glass tube. Thus Superman and LL can perform artificial insemination.
At least there will be another generation of kryptonians.
Or will there?
VI
A ripened but unfertilized egg leaves LL's ovary, begins its voyage down her Fallopian tube.
Some time later, tens of millions of sperm, released from a test tube, begin their own voyage up LL's Fallopian tube.
The magic moment approaches...
Can human breed with kryptonian? Do we even use the same genetic code? On the face of it, LL could more easily breed with an ear of corn than with Kal-El. But coincidence does happen. If the genes match...
One sperm arrives before the others. It penetrates the egg, forms a lump on it's surface, the cell wall now thickens to prevent other sperm from entering. Within the now-fertilized egg, changes take place...
And ten million kryptonian sperm arrive slightly late.
Were they human sperm, they would be out of luck. But these tiny blind things are more powerful than a locomotive. A thickened cell wall won't stop them. They will *all* enter the egg, obliterating it entirely in an orgy of microscopic gang rape. So much for artificial insemination.
But LL's problems are just beginning.
VII
Within her body there are still tens of millions of frustrated kryptonian sperm. The single egg is now too diffuse to be a target. The sperm scatter.
They scatter without regard to what is in their path. They leave curved channels, microscopically small. Presently all will have found their way to the open air.
That leaves LL with several million microscopic perforations all leading deep into her abdomen. Most of the channels will intersect one or more loops of intestine.
Peritonitis is inevitable. LL becomes desperately ill.
Meanwhile, tens of millions of sperm swarm in the air over Metropolis.
VIII
This is more serious than it looks.
Consider: these sperm are virtually indestructible. Within days or weeks they will die for lack of nourishment. Meanwhile they cannot be affected by heat, cold, vacuum, toxins, or anything short of green kryptonite. (*And other forms of kryptonite. For instance, there are chunks of red kryptonite that make giants of kryptonians. Imagine ten million earthworm size spermatozoa swarming over a Metropolis beach, diving to fertilize the beach balls... but I digress.*) There they are, minuscule but dangerous; for each has supernormal powers.
Metropolis is shaken by tiny sonic booms. Wormholes, charred by meteoric heat, sprout magically in all kinds of things: plate glass, masonry, antique ceramics, electric mixers, wood, household pets, and citizens. Some of the sperm will crack lightspeed. The Metropolis night comes alive with a network of narrow, eerie blue lines of Cherenkov radiation.
And women whom Superman has never met find themselves in a delicate condition.
Consider: LL won't get pregnant because there were too many of the blind mindless beasts. But whenever one sperm approaches an unfertilized human egg in its panic flight, it will attack.
How close is close enough? A few centimeters? Are sperm attracted by chemical cues? It seems likely. Metropolis had a population of millions; and kryptonian sperm could travel a long and crooked path, billions of miles, before it gives up and dies.
Several thousand blessed events seem not unlikely. (*If the pubescent Superboy plays with himself, we have the same problem over Smallville.*)
Several thousand lawsuits would follow. Not that Superman can't afford to pay. There's a trick where you squeeze a lump of coal into its allotropic diamond form...
IX
The above analysis gives us part of the answer. In our experiment in artificial insemination, we must use a single sperm. This presents no difficulty. Superman may use his microscopic vision and a pair of tiny tweezers to pluck a sperm from the swarm.
X
In its eagerness the single sperm may crash through LL's abdomen at transonic speeds, wreaking havoc. Is there any way to slow it down?
There is. We can expose it to gold kryptonite.
Gold kryptonite, we remember, robs a kryptonian of all of his supernormal powers, permanently. Were we to expose Superman himself to gold kryptonite, we would solve all his sex problems, but he would be Clark Kent forever. We may regard this solution as somewhat drastic.
But we can expose the test tube of seminal fluid to gold kryptonite, then use standard techniques for artificial insemination.
By any of these methods we can get LL pregnant, without killing her. Are we out of the woods yet?
XI
Though exposed to gold kryptonite, the sperm still carries kryptonian genes. If these are recessive, then LL carries a developing human fetus. There will be no more Supermen; but at least we need not worry about the mother's health.
But if some or all of the kryptonian genes are dominant...
Can the infant use his X-ray vision before birth? After all, with such a power he can probably see through his own closed eyelids. That would leave LL sterile. If the kid starts using heat vision, things get even worse.
But when he starts to kick, it's all over. He will kick his way out into open air, killing himself and his mother.
XII
Is there a solution?
There are several. Each has drawbacks.
We can make LL wear a kryptonite (*For our purposes, all forms of kryptonite are available in unlimited quantities. It has been estimated, from the startling tonnage of kryptonite fallen to Earth since the explosion of Krypton, that the planet must have outweighed our entire solar system. Doubtless the "planet" Krypton was a cooling black dwarf star, one of a binary pair, the other member being a red giant.*) belt around her waist. But too little kryptonite may allow the child to damage her, while too much may damage or kill the child. Intermediate amounts may do both! And there is no safe way to experiment.
A better solution is to find a host-mother.
We have not yet considered the existence of a Supergirl. (*She can't mate with Superman because she's his first cousin. And only a cad would suggest differently.*) She could carry the child without harm. But Supergirl has a secret identity, and her secret identity is no more married than Supergirl herself. If she turned up pregnant, she would probably be thrown out of school.
A better solution may be to implant the growing fetus in Superman himself. There are places in a man's abdomen where a fetus could draw adequate nourishment, growing as a parasite, and where it would not cause undue harm to surrounding organs. Presumably Clark Kent can take a leave of absence more easily than Supergirl's schoolgirl alter ego.
When the time comes, the child would be removed by Caesarian section. It would have to be removed early, but there would be no problem with incubators as long as it was fed. I leave the problem of cutting through Superman's invulnerable skin as an exercise for the alert reader.
The mind boggles at the image of a pregnant Superman cruising the skies of Metropolis. Batman would refuse to be seen with him; strange new jokes would circulate the prisons...and the race of Krypton would be safe at last.
Sorry guys I'm thinking about new 52 superman. That was really good for me. Well until it got bogged down in the constant and genuinely impossible to follow crossovers but there were some good arcs & I loved fhe concept of an angrier scrappier clark with less support and almost no social net I found it very breaking the character to its bare bones compelling plus the us military was the overt enemy
just started playing batman: arkham asylum for the first time and bruce is literally pulling out solid metal grates that are bolted into stone and bending the grates. and i just think superbat where clark is the one with the strength kink would go triple platinum.
sure, clark could do all that with his pinky finger if he wanted to, but after seeing bruce do it, he doesn't want to.
on one of their first missions together, they're sneaking in to one of luthor's compounds, and batman brings them to a vent. it's solid metal, secured well just like the rest of luthor's building. clark leans forward to peek over batman's shoulder at it.
"i can get that, if you—"
batman cuts him off by digging his fingers behind the grate and pulling. the metal bends under his strength, creaking as it's pulled from the wall, half-inch thick bolts and all. batman glances back at clark, the barest of smirks on his lips. clark's jaw snaps shut so fast he bites his tongue.
and the more he watches, the more he goes insane. batman carries clark over his shoulder once when he's injured, and all clark can think about for a while is the flex of batman's arm around his waist. clark rushes to hold up a collapsing ceiling and protect civilians, but batman is already there, braced against a pillar, and now clark can hardly focus. batman rescues a dozen civilians from a sinkhole, sometimes pulling them out two at a time—clark wishes he could feel batman's iron grip around his wrists, or have his large thighs pressing down on him.
he comes to the cave once when bruce is working out, all slick and flushed and powerful. clark barely stops himself from drooling.
it's the raw physicality of it. the way his muscles tense and bulge with exertion, the little grunt bruce releases after doing something that requires a decent amount of strength, the sharp exhale when he lets go of the weight. it all drives clark wild.
batman catches him watching. clark thinks he's done for, an apology behind his teeth—but bruce only smirks at him, and deliberately shoulders more weight.
i'll always prefer clark having his powers from day one for like, genuine characterization & lore reasons—but also because "baby that's just strong as fuck" is incredibly funny to me:
superman (1939) #1 | superman: the movie (1978) | secret origins (2014) #1
best thing about Red K Clark is he really just looks in the mirror and says “bitch, you should be in the club” in response to all his latest traumatic events
Something something Superbat where both are yearning and Bruce is driven to madness because he wants to kiss this stupid man so bad he's crazy with it but he doesn't want to forget his first kiss because of the 'super-amnesia' kiss. Bruce doesn't know that Superman can control it. And while Clark is just as desperate in his yearning, he hold back because every time a perfect kiss timing comes Bruce will evade him like a plague.
reference: Superman vs. Meshi #16 manga
#Extra: The last panel is cracking me up like why would you put your crush and whatever situationship you have with Batman side by side like that TT
I work in healthcare, specifically mental healthcare. I used to work at a rehab facility where I would see broken men and women come in time and time again, they'd get clean, they'd come back after a week being out. I now work with the developmentally and mentally disabled. I've worked in this type of field for three years now and it's starting to take a toll on me. You hear things, see things, know things about clients that you have to keep to yourself. For their own privacy and, in some cases, for their own protection. It hurts, and anyone else in any kind of healthcare understands what I mean.
This panel. This scene. It speaks volumes to me, it's a hyperbolic example of what being a helper is. You can't save everyone, you can't really save anyone for that matter. On the best days you can guide someone to save themselves, but the other days...
The other days all you can do is hold someone while you see their life slip away. In my case it's never been an actual life slipping away and I can't begin to imagine how that feels. But I work with dementia patients. I've seen them go from lucid to having to go to higher care due to their mental deterioration getting so bad that they barely know who they are anymore. I've seen people, good people who fought to get healthy and overcome their own demons, come back to me in less than a month. The broken look having returned to eyes that they spent so long getting the spark back to. And every time, every goddamn time they'd look me in the eyes and tell me "don't blame yourself. I did this. Not you".
The amount of times I've gotten home and would "spend the next hour alone in the stratosphere, screaming so loud it knocks satellites out of orbit" hurts to think about. How many times I've just had to sit in my car, knowing I'd have to go home but not having the strength to do it. Somehow managing to drive myself home, all the while feeling numb and knowing that, despite my best efforts, I couldn't actually help anyone this time.
But that's why Superman, and even moreso Absolute Superman, is so important to me. Because I see myself in him, I see who I strive to be and who I want to be. He helps remind me that, sometimes, all a person needs is to be held. Not saved. Just held.
In honor of my beloved Clark Kent's birthday/"earthday", June 18th — and acting as an incredibly late celebration of the day that supposedly aligns with his Kryptonian birthday — here's a few Earth-1 issues that mention his birthdays!
Action Comics (1938) #241 — fun fact: this issue has the exact same cover month as Action #1!
World's Finest Comics (1941) #235
Superman (1939) #249 & 263
Superman (1939) Annual #11 (aka "For the Man Who Has Everything")
And here's some other media!
Superboy (1988) S2:E18–19
And maybe give a listen to an Adventures of Superman radio show episode in honor of Bud Collyer, the Superman voice actor who also had a June 18th birthday!
stormborns
dailybridgerton
areudirty
titsay
andulkaphoto
annaxmalina
