Fathers

Inescapable Dadhood: Have you watched that new show [editor’s note: at least new to Hulu] Defying Gravity?

Superman: Yeah, I’ve seen a few episodes. I’ve actually been a little concerned they’re going to pan over to “beta” and its going to resemble J’onn.

ID: That’s right. J’onn’s native Martian form, when he isn’t shapeshifting it to be more humanoid, is a little more, um, insect-like, I guess, craggier and elongated and perhaps a little scarier.

S: So is that what we’re going to talk about?

ID: Not exactly, it just got me contemplating, something I think I remember hearing you talk about in an interview somewhere, that your dad was actually a bit of a rocketry enthusiast growing up.

S: Yeah, my dad was young enough during the Apollo missions that he kind of dreamed of going into space. And when he was a kid he was a pretty big sci fi geek, especially H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds.

My mom used to tell about the first week after my parents found me, and my dad was just freaked out. He was convinced I couldn’t be a child, that my species just had to look like children, or worse, be shapechangers who were hiding our true, hideous form until the moment was right to strike. He barely slept that week, and once, mom actually caught him trying to sneeze on me- you know, like in War of the Worlds, just to see if I had even that vulnerability.

And, you know, I actually did get a little cold. And that changed everything. I think he’d been worried, you know, because I was an alien, and, at least potentially, I could have caused significant damage to their reputation- even destroyed their home. But after that, he stopped seeing me as something else- something other- and started seeing me as an infant, a child desperately in need of protection.

He stayed with me the entire time I was sick- wouldn’t even let mom in the room, you know, because anytime I’d cough, anything not nailed down would go flying. It was dangerous.

About midway through, he was trying to feed me, and I got this lump of phlegm in my throat and I hacked really hard, and his hand, the one that had been holding the bowl near my mouth, shot back against the wall, and the bowl shattered. He cut himself pretty bad, and of course, I’m just a baby, so all I know is there’s blood and that I don’t like that so I’m crying, and he picked me up out of my crib and just held me- didn’t even worry about his cut hand. After a couple of minutes I’d quieted down, and mom came in to check, saw the blood, and he said, “It’s mine, Martha, just a little scratch on my hand,” and winced as he added, “and we broke one of your bowls.” She took him upstairs and put in, well, she says it was eight stitches, he insists it was 28, so knowing them he’s trying to grow his legend and she was trying to keep him humble, so the truth’s probably somewhere between. But that’s really when he became my dad.

ID: One follow-up: do you think your dad gave you the cold?

S: I don’t. I’d only been exposed to a little bit of solar radiation, so I wasn’t quite as durable as I might have been. I’m sure the crash only further weakened my immune system. It could have been any number of things, really.

ID: Do you think you’re equivocating?

S: Of course. He’s my dad. It’s almost impossible to think the worst of him.

ID: But that’s something your adopted father and your birth one have in common, a passion for extraplanetary exploration.

S: Yeah. My biodad, wow, just using the term makes me feel really old, was always really passionate about space. He loved Krypton, he did, but I think there was something in him that wanted to look beyond our planet, at the future of the species. I think he believed that Krypton, while it was our home, was an anchor- chaining us to less productive parts of our past.

And I ended up being very fortunate. My father eventually planned for us to be able to move vast swaths of the population, and resources, in massive, basically interstellar zeppelins, but he had his miniature working prototype ready when Krypton became unstable. Had he not been forced to do his research underground, without access to normal routes of funding, not to mention assistants and staff- it’s frustrating to think that an entire world died for lack of proper caution.

ID: And I want to play devil’s advocate for a moment- largely because I enjoy inconveniencing you, but what was your mother, um, Lara, is it, up to at the time?

S: If you’re asking of my mother was his lab assistant, or if she was the Kryptonian equivalent of a housewife? No. Mom came from a high-powered political family. My father’s family had a rich history, but we had never really been particularly liked or respected, despite many contributions. My mom came from basically Krypton’s equivalent of the Kennedy or maybe Bush family. She spent most of her time agitating politically. But, rather than marry within higher-powered circles, she married my father for love, which, somewhat tragically, is why she didn’t have the power to popularize my father’s findings about Krypton’s fate.

ID: To tear us slightly adrift of topic, have you ever thought about becoming a father? And of course, there’s the converse, have you ever worried about knocking a woman up with an unabortable fetus?

S: It’s something Lois and I talked about. I think, eventually, we might have given it the old college try- but there are certainly more inherent physical dangers involved. Two humans procreating introduces risks to both the mother and child, but throwing a Kryptonian into the mix- that complicates it further. As to accidentally being a father of an unterminatable pregnancy- I think I had a few odd nightmares in college, but never anything serious or conscious.

But I think I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to be a dad. I think it’s only natural, have two really great, caring, attentive fathers, to not want to be able to be that for someone else. I guess I always figured I was working for a better world, and waiting for that before I decided to bring a new life into it. And I think there’s a lot of that sentiment in our community- I think that’s where you get all the protégés we have. But it looks like that isn't going to happen. But I'm not mad, or sad- I don't have any regrets about it. I'm glad I've lived the life I have, the way I have- I wouldn't trade any friendship or life I saved, not even my failures or humiliations. I'd have liked things to have been different, but I'm thankful at least for the way things were.

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.