Free Press

Superman: [I know this isn’t our] usual process, but I want to say something: it’s good to be free.

Invader Dim: Care to, uh, qualify that?

S: Sure. I’ve been working for the last several months, really, going back to fall of last year, on a series on homelessness in Metropolis, and the implications it has for the rest of the country and maybe even the rest of the world.

Homelessness is an important issue, but because of my failing health, I’d grown… concerned that it was a story I wasn’t going to have a chance to finish. I found myself really neuroticizing over it, to the point where I’d wake up in a cold sweat, and my wife would, well, she can be very tender, and she would sit up, watching my sleep. And I’d made arrangements; she was more than happy to take on the story if I couldn’t finish, but it would have taken her months to catch up, to reestablish a rapport with interviewees, to try to get the feel for the story I was trying to tell without taking it over. But all of that worrying, about deadlines, no pun intended, it’s behind me now.

It’s done. I mean, there are a few pages left, I guess, and some T’s to cross, but it’s finished. If there were a Kryptonite meteor heading towards the planet I could finish what’s left in a fraction of a second at my typewriter- but I’m kind of letting it lie for the moment, letting it all sink in.

ID: Well congratulations. But how’s that feel? It’s sort of one less thing tethering you to your life.

S: That’s very true. And if I were at all concerned that it’s my unfinished business that’s kept me here this long, that might be a concern for me. But as important as the issue of homelessness is to me, as personally important as getting this story done was, it pales in comparison to how much I don’t want to disappoint my loved ones, or say goodbye to them too soon.

ID: So does this mean you’re retired as a journalist? Is that your last hurrah?

S: The Planet isn’t hiring, if that’s what you’re getting at- but no. I’ll still take on some smaller pieces, you know, things with a quick turn-around. I’m just done with bigger pieces for the time being; I’d hate to leave unfinished business behind. But journalism, it’s such a part of who I am- and I’m not dead yet.

ID: You seem very passionate about your profession; what do you think is behind that?

S: I think it comes from being a stranger on this planet. The first several years I was here were just completely fascinating. Everything was new and exciting and different, and even though I didn’t know Krypton, I felt how it was- I’m sure that doesn’t make sense. But I was just a baby when I left there, so I don’t have really any concrete memories, but there was a texture and a flavor and a smell that the place had, and Earth was very different- like if your whole life you only knew about vanilla ice cream, and suddenly you discovered chocolate.

But I think because I’ve always been a bit of an outsider, because of where I come from, and because I’ve had to hide so much of who I am, that I spent a lot of time looking in. Observing people, not just to be able to blend in better, but because they fascinated me. They were so different and yet so much like me, the other, as psychologists term it. Reporting, for me, has always been as much about exploring my own humanity as examining specific stories or events.

ID: Okay. You won a Pulitzer for, um, it was the Intergang piece, I think, but what would you say is your proudest journalistic achievement?

S: Journalistic? I’m not sure. The Intergang expose was really important, I thought, but I don’t know. I think the biggest stories are the ones I haven’t been able to break, stories of courage I’ve witnessed from within the League, a lot of which I’ve actually written up, and, now that the cat’s out of the bag, so to speak, about my identity, I’m toying with the idea of letting them publish those memoirs, you know, use the proceeds for public works. But if I had to say my most important literary work, I think it had to do with one of those things I normally couldn’t say. You know, when you’re a reporter, you’re often relegated not to the things you think, or even the things you know, but to the things you can prove. So I felt stymied for a long time, because Lex was always very good about covering his tracks, and keeping himself at arms’ length from suspicion. But when I wrote my novel, I actually got to be more truthful than in most of my reporting, because I didn’t have to pare back to the proveable facts in evidence.

ID: I’ve heard Luthor actually liked "Under A Yellow Sun"- particularly the thinly veiled reference to himself as a villain.

S: That was one of the most surreal moments for me, really. I knew, sort of from the beginning, that there was a danger, satirizing someone as rich and powerful as Luthor. I mean, opposing him as Superman took considerably less courage, because what was he going to do? The world knew I was an alien and had accepted me despite it; there was really nothing he could say or do to get people to stop trusting me as Superman, get them to refuse to accept my help (though not for lack of trying).

But as Clark it was different. He could have hounded me, and my friends, my family, financially. He could have declared fiscal war, made it impossible for my parents to keep up with property taxes on their farm, bought and closed the Planet, sued me, and it wouldn’t matter if I won, he could keep appealing, keep filing. Luthor’s proven himself incredibly adept at destroying people with his money.

And he did none of those things. We were at, God, some kind of a social function, and he came up and made a point to vigorously shake my hand and tell me how much he liked the book.

Now, it’s been suggested by some of the people who’ve heard the story that Lex didn’t get it, that he couldn’t see himself in the flawed and failing Machiavellian businessman. My wife thinks that it was really just an ego thing, that he so adored the idea that that many people would be reading about him, thinking about him, knowing him, that the fact that the last few chapters weren’t about his triumph but his downfall could be easily papered over, because the really important thing was that the story was about him.

And I don’t know, he might be fuming, now that he knows that the man who wrote the book is the same that he’s seen as his arch nemesis, that he’s obsessed over for for years. But I suspect that he isn’t. I suspect that he’s reread the book since my identity came out, that for him it will have a similar introspective quality, that in the writing I learned a lot about Lex just by trying to project myself into his head, and that Lex is, right now, wringing his hands across the cover of that book, trying to climb inside mine.

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.