Hospital

Impending Demise: You’re in a hospital room, one your doctors don’t seem optimistic you’ll walk out of.

Superman: Yes.

ID: What happened? A few weeks ago you didn’t look- you’re a shell of the man you were even a month ago.

S: The League. We did what we always do, stepped up to a challenge with everything we had, with sometimes unorthodox methodology.

ID: Care to elaborate?

S: Kryptonite radiation therapy. The thinking was, if normal radiation didn’t work on the cancer cells, maybe the kind of radiation I’m vulnerable to would work like normal radiation on a human being. Apparently Bruce has been trying to set it up for six months, now, tracking down anyone with even a passing experience with kryptonite, Metallo, the Kryptonite Man. The missing link, though, the one they needed to piece everything together was Conduit. He is able to project kryptonite radiation, so he was the one who really held the key. But from what we gather Lex Luthor had the same notion, and had taken Conduit and put him into a kind of supervillian witness protection program. Bruce has been harrowing Lex and his interests ever since, including a few hostile takeovers of his assets- he’d been hoping to make revenge too expensive for Lex. But he was also coordinating one of the most sophisticated man-hunts in the history of the League, involving the Birds of Prey as they like to be called, and the Martian Manhunter, to name only a few.

Eventually Bruce tracked Conduit back to Kansas. And I hope I’m not uh talking out of school, but I say back to Kansas because he and I grew up in the same home town. His real name is Ken Braverman. His parents were actually driving to the hospital for his birth when my rocket from Krypton arrived. A chunk of the ship broke off entering the atmosphere and landed in the road in front of the Braverman’s car, and caused his dad to put the car into a ditch. Ken was born in the backseat, and their proximity to the piece of the rocket meant that he absorbed a lot of kryptonite radiation.

We were both pretty close to the same age. Because of the radiation Ken had a lot of health problems growing up: he was small, and frail, got sick a lot. Because of that people picked on him. I tried to stand up for him, but, sometimes when you don’t feel strong enough the last thing in the world you want is for someone else to fight your battles. I think if Ken hadn’t been dosed with radiation, if he hadn’t been sick, I think we probably would have been friends.

Anyway, by high school, Ken’s health had reversed track, and rather than being weaker than most everybody, he was stronger, and faster. But he had a hell of a chip on his shoulder, too. He remembered every single person who put him down, every single person who ever laughed at his frailty. And he remembered every perceived slight, every time he felt I’d put him down trying to stand up for him.

Only he was still having side effects from the radiation, and he was in an increasing amount of pain. He got into contact with the CIA, who were interested in studying him and the positive effects of the radiation, in exchange for curing the negative side effects. Well, cure can be a relative term. Somehow, Ken’s body had become wholly radioactive, and was in a constant state of decay. Growing up that wasn’t much of an issue, since there was a steady creation of new cells, but as he was reaching adulthood, his body was producing fewer and fewer cells, but the rate of decay was the same, and the only thing they could do was mitigate his suffering. They designed a suit to contain the radiation, with a built in pain-relief system.

When he wasn't of any scientific interest anymore, his abilities became his only bargaining chip, so he started working as an operative. But pain makes people do stupid things. On a mission in France, Ken nearly killed a government attaché when his cover was blown, and the CIA decided to cut him loose.

Ken needed expertise to keep his containment suit operational, but since he didn’t have any money, he had to pay his way in trade. And the only people with the expertise to work on that kind of tech who wanted the services of a spook in trade were not the kinds of people you wanted to be indebted to. But for Ken it was a godsend, because one of them had enough experience with nuclear reactors that he recognized that a partial solution to Ken’s problem might be venting. For me, and people who ran into Conduit, however, it was a little less pleasant.

But over the years Ken and I had developed a bit of a rivalry. Once he got healthy we competed in sports. He asked Lana to prom, though she eventually went with me. It was a lot of little things that built up, like his verbally abusive father, who for some damn reason would talk me up in the same breath he’d talk his own son down. And once he was operating in the open as Conduit, often out of Metropolis, we came into conflict again. And because we knew each other, he figured out who I was, where I’d come from, and even made a half-hearted attempt at killing people he knew I was close with. I’m not absolving him of responsibility, but really, I think pain makes you do stupid things, emotional pain doubly so.

That was the beauty and simplicity of Lex’s plan, hiding him in plain sight, as it were, in my home town, but nothing stays hidden from Bruce forever, and eventually he found him. But then there was the issue of convincing Ken to help, and I have to give credit where it’s due. Bruce has a lot of speeds, philanthropist, entrepreneur, the bad cop that is Batman, a lot of ways to convince or threaten or bribe someone to do what he wants. But he’d figured enough out about Ken to know he wouldn’t cave to any of those. So he told him I was dying, that he was my last hope, that at the very least he should look me in the eye and tell me his decision face to face. It was one last chance to gloat, if he wanted it, or a chance to be the better man if he chose that instead. And Ken took him up on it, and to my surprise, once Ken was in the room with me, he couldn’t be angry any more. He actually, actually hugged me. I think, that, there are some times when you think you have forever to let something play out, that the fight you had with your parents or your friend or whoever, will be resolved at some point. But being faced with a definite conclusion, I don’t think Ken wanted me to die, all these years, because when it came down to it, Ken Braverman tried to save my life. It wasn’t something I saw coming.

ID: Tried?

S: Yeah. It didn’t work. The cancer’s more resistant to kryptonite radiation than the rest of my cells. It actually did a fair amount of damage to me, while the cancer was hardly touched.

ID: I’m sorry.

S: Thank you.

ID: The prognosis isn't good.

S: No. But that symbol I wore on my chest all these years, my family crest, it represents hope. I don't think at this point that I'm hoping for my own survival, but I do hope that the world will still thrive when I'm gone.


We’ll be trying to bring you a new section of the interview every Tuesday. Some of the questions have already been prepared by the interviewer, but to ask Superman a question, leave a comment or send an email to DeathofSuperman@gmail.com.

Kryptonite

Igneous Dereliction: I have to ask. You’ve sort of made the assumption that your cancer is a result of exposure to sunlight, but I wonder if you have considered something: what if it’s been caused by kryptonite radiation?

Superman: The thought’s crossed my mind. Especially because Lex- well, he was riddled with cancer, and certainly would have died if he hadn’t transferred his body into his own clone- so there’s certainly a precedent.

ID: But

S: But I tend to reject that- I try to reject it. Because it’s a painful thing to admit if it’s true. On the one hand you have the fact that while I narrowly avoided the destruction of Krypton, it’s violent end seems to have managed to finish me anyway- almost painfully poetic. On the other, and, really, more terrible side, you have the fact that, if it’s even remotely true, Lex Luthor managed to play a role, however small it may have been, in my death. And I don’t like that idea. Even if kryptonite had the carcinogenic effects of a packet of Sweet’n Low- him taking any credit for my death is too much. In actual medical fact, it’s likely a combination of the two, added to all of the other various radiations and rays and, God, I’ve been exposed to all manner of things over the years. I suppose I should be grateful I haven’t been sprouting any extra eyes, through the years, or been rendered impotent.

ID: Uh

S: That is not an invitation to probe that subject deeper.

ID: Okay, but I'd like to probe your relationship with Lex Luthor, if we could. The two of you have known each other a long time- LuthorCorp's regional headquarters is in the same county where you grew up. If you can believe the WB show, you were actually friendly growing up.

S: The show's a bit more Dawson's Creek than my adolescence was, but yes, Lex and I knew each other, once upon a time.

ID: I wish he was in the room, because I'd love to ask him what you were like as a teenager, too, but what was he like?

S: Lex was Lex. A lot of his insecurities and frustrations were still only boiling at that point- rather than boiling over- but he was still brilliant- still self-absorbed, still ambitious and perhaps a little unbalanced. But he was nicer, then. He cared about people; I think, probably somewhere, deep down, he still does, but on his agenda anymore they rank so low as to be considered just pieces in a chess game, worth his consideration only so long as they retain some value to him.

ID: You have a grudging respect and disappointment for Lex, and some editorialists, perhaps sponsored by Luthor, have theorized that it's out of intimidation for Lex's mind. But I've also heard, mostly in gossip, but still, I've heard it often enough and from enough sources to know that you dabble in science, and not just human sciences, but with some of the Martian and Kryptonian tech you have access to. These same rumors say that you're brilliant in your own right, without ever going so far as to quantify. So just how smart are you?

S: Seriously? I've never taken an IQ test, or anything similar, but I've tried my hand at some quantum physics, but frankly my schedule rarely stays clear long enough for me to delve too deeply into intellectual pursuits.

ID: Okay, what about sudden world harmony. Maybe John Henry Irons figures out how to replicate Green Lantern technology across the world, eliminating all resource-related problems; virtually all globaly conflict dies, as no nation is capable of eliminating any other (or any of its own minorities). Basically, you and every other superhuman gets to retire. Do you see yourself retiring to your Fortress of Solitude to finish important scientific things?

S: I don't know. I think, because I didn't find out about my heritage until I was older, that I didn't get into science in the same way as I might have. And by then, I'd really gotten obsessed with watching humanity, and watching over them.

I guess I'm enough of my father's son that I've always wanted to try. I really was blessed with my Kryptonian father's mind, at least in general, and I think I have an innate analytical skill that I certainly never honed.

But it's always been an itch, like a person who picks up a guitar and finds out they have a talent for it, but never learns to play. It was sort of what I assumed I'd get up to in my twilight years, when my hair started to gray in a distinguished fashion at my temples.

ID: But now that doesn't seem like an option anymore.

S: No, it doesn't. But I have trouble giving up hope- even if it's fool's hope. I can't help, even when we talk about my death, even when I wake up aching, that in a year's time I'll be reading this interview with a smile on my face at how naïve and premature our predictions of doom had been. And I think, given time, science or whatever would catch up to me, and the chances of my dying would decrease substantially- but of course, time is the one thing I may not have. And maybe that's it- maybe time is my kryptonite, now.

We’ll be trying to bring you a new section of the interview every Monday. Some of the questions have already been prepared by the interviewer, but to ask Superman a question, leave a comment or send an email to DeathofSuperman@gmail.com.