Death Penalty

Innocent Decapitation: I'd like to talk about the time you murdered three people.

Superman: You're an ass.

ID: I'm just going off of John Byrne's cue on this one.

S: Yeah, well he's a bit of an ass, too. You remember the incident with Barda- yeah, he hung that entirely around her neck- said something about her lacking the moral fortitude to resist, but for some reason gave me a pass.

ID: I’ll more than grant you that. But let's talk about the executions. Give me the background, because this is one of the subjects you and Lois haven't really written about to the extent you've discussed other, uh, events, for lack of a better term.

S: The story’s different than the one in the comic books. Zod, Ursula, and Non were originally leaders of a Kryptonian rebellion, and for their treason they were locked away. Ironically, because they were imprisoned, they were spared the fate of the rest of our race. But when they broke loose, they engaged in a campaign of genocide that spanned solar systems.

ID: I assume you’re not using the term “genocide” lightly.

S: I mean they destroyed entire planets teeming with life, including seven separate sentient species that had evolved to the point of written language. At least seven cultures- millions if not billions of intelligent lives- lost. And that was a single, small corner of the galaxy- and there are at least hundreds of similar nearby worlds that were in danger. I never invoke the term genocide lightly.

But to make a very long story shorter, I was eventually contacted by a group of Kryptonian colonists, and intervened. When I arrived, the colony had been massacred, women, children, the elderly- I didn’t see evidence that any of the colonists had even put up token resistance, let alone anything that would qualify them as combatants, but they were tortured, brutalized and worse.

And what happened then happened very fast. When I saw the damage, I immediately sped around the colony, looking for a survivor, someone I could still save- but there was no one. And Zod had seen me, and pointed me out to the others, and they rushed at me at a speed approaching light. The shockwave created by the collision nearly tore that planet in half- and that was just the beginning.

I fought them across worlds- across galaxies. The conflict destroyed dozens of uninhabited planets. And it became evident not only that as they gathered yellow solar radiation they would eventually eclipse my strength and win- but that their violence and fury would not end with me or the lives they’d already taken.

So I escaped and came up with a plan, a last, desperate gambit to use kryptonite. Specifically, I rigged powdered kryptonite to an explosive device, meant to scatter the element into the air. I set it off when they were all close enough for me to grab onto, and force them to stay, breathing it in. I think Zod realized it first, and screamed as the green dust enveloped him, tried to push off of me, tried to hold his breath; I jabbed him, hard, in the stomach, ground it in- and his reflex gasp brought in enough of the poison to kill him- albeit not immediately.

Ursula turned to me, and she understood from Zod what was happening, but understood, too, that fighting wouldn’t work. I was still stronger than them- though likely only for a few hours more. She touched my hand gently, and with tears in her eyes said, “Please, it doesn’t have to be this way.” Her mouth began to twitch, and she started to sob until her lungs were empty, but she held out, opened her eyes, pleading without being able to speak. But still I held her firm, and she collapsed to the ground; by that point I was too weak to hold her up, and I fell to my knee, and she started gasping in and sobbing.

And my hands were full, holding Zod in my right hand with Ursula in the left; I was certain if I let them go they’d try to run- and if they did I couldn’t be sure they’d die. I’d tried to wrap my legs around Non, but Non was larger, stronger- at least as strong as I was at that point. He’d pulled away- though I didn’t think he’d gotten out of the cloud.

Back on Krypton, Non had worked with my father, but unlike him, he had went against the council, and tried to warn people about the planet’s imminent destruction. For that “crime,” the council took away from him what had mattered most: his mind. My father told me that after his lobotomy he was barely functional, and the only part of his old friend he recognized in Non was his rage.

But I think there was more, maybe buried under his anger, and disappointment. Because Non came towards me in the cloud of green dust. I couldn’t have stopped him, couldn’t have even defended myself, but he nodded, and gave me a little smile, like he finally understood: why Zod’s rebellion had gone so wrong, how far from himself he must have been to go along, and crucially, how that lapsed judgment meant he could be compromised again- and the consequences of that. Then he took a deep breath in, and as he let it out he sat down on the ground, cross-legged, to wait to die.

And I honestly expected to die with them; I thought that was a fitting end. Except that I didn’t die. I laid there, on a desert planet’s surface, waiting for the dust to kill me, too. Even when the wind took the dust cloud away, I expected the kryptonite already in my lungs to kill me. And it hurt. In fact- I’ve felt that kind of pain, like breathing in glass, twice since- when Doomsday “killed” me, and now, with the cancer. But it didn’t kill me.

I passed into a, well, I think it was basically a coma. By the time I came to, the other three were dead. I decided to cremate them in one of that planet’s volcanoes, but they’re bodies had absorbed so much of the kryptonite that while carrying them I was virtually powerless. So I carried their bodies, one at a time, to the summit of the nearest volcano, which thankfully ended up being only a dozen kilometers away, and dropped them in. The kryptonite guaranteed that the chemical bonds in their cells were weak enough to break in the volcanic heat, and their bodies burned to ash.

ID: Were you at all concerned about the Kryptonians’ remains being used for something sinister?

S: The thought occurred to me. That’s why I kept the planet’s location a secret, up until I learned about the Green Lantern Corps. I took them to the planet, and they helped locate every last charred DNA molecule, so that it could be kept out of the wrong hands.

ID: And did all of this effect your stance on capital punishment?

S: I made the most difficult decision of my entire life that day, and it still haunts me. I took three lives, and it’s very little consolation that I did not take them lightly. Still, it was necessary, and it was right- and I hate that we live in a circumstance where that can be the case. But the reason it was necessary, and the reason it was right, was that there were no other viable options. There is no prison that would hold me-and once they’d absorbed yellow solar radiation, there was no prison that could hold them. There was no hope for peace, and no safety, not for anyone, while they still lived. Taking a life, it changes everything… and nothing.

When I got back to Earth, I wanted to quit. Retire. I told everyone who knew who I was that I was done. And I thought I was. Just thinking about what I’d done- what I’d had to do- it made me sick inside. And I was getting ready for work, I think I’d just gotten out of the shower, and I heard someone on the street whisper, “His bike won’t stop,” and a second later someone else say, “That bus is going to hit him.” And I could tell by the acoustics that it was coming from Southside, that long hill down towards the docks, and before I realized it I was flying there at full speed, my cape billowing behind me. There hadn’t even been a momentary thought, it just happened, I was doing it. And I scooped up the poor kid just before his bike went under one of those big city buses. Our trajectory took us a few hundred feet in the air, and he was terrified, scrambling like a cat to get out of my arms as his heart raced, so I asked, “What’s your name, son?” And that was when it hit him, that he hadn’t died and wouldn’t now, and he calmed immediately and told me: Jeremy Beckman. As I sat him back down on the sidewalk I said to him, “Jeremy Beckman, I think you saved my life today.”

ID: Are you okay? We can stop here if you’d like.

S: No, I… I really have been blessed with this life, I know that. Most people don’t get to, to see people express that kind of gratitude, and kindness. And every day is like that for me- has been like that for me- and I think that’s a special moment for me, because for that one brief moment, I realized that all this time, I hadn’t been saving other people- by giving me a purpose, they’d been saving me. I’ve had really dark times in my life, but every time I think I want to give up, something small and seemingly innocuous like that happens to make me realize life is worth it. And I’m going to miss it.

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.