Halloween

ID: Okay, Halloween is a big time for people in costume, so what were you up to this year?

S: Lois actually had a Batwoman costume custom-made this year.

ID: Batwoman? Now that is kinky.

S: I don’t follow.

ID: Well, on the one hand, the current Batwoman is, I believe, a lesbian, so it plays into that straight man with a curvy woman fantasy, and it also means next time you see Bruce you’ll have a weird imprint of disrobing the feminine version of his namesake in your brain. Man, a Superman/Batwoman sextape would sell like hot hot hot cakes. If you want, I could produce- I mean, I’m no Sleez but I do happen to know my way around an HD camera.

S: You think I wore my own costume for Halloween?

ID: You didn’t?

S: Nope. I went as Deadman. I figured, since you can see my ribs poking out, and my skins taken on this pale hue- I figured I could pull it off. Plus there’s the whole macabre joke about me being a dead man.

ID: That is dark. Did Lois laugh?

S: Not at first. But I kept doing my Boston Brand imitation all night long, and frankly, it sounds a bit like Warwick Davis from the Leprechaun movies, and by the end of the night I’d just started rolling with that and introducing myself by saying, “I’m the Leprechaun.”

ID: That’s, um, that’s actually not much like Warwick Davis at all. That’s a bad Mike Myers impression doing a bad Warwick Davis impression in Wayne’s World. And I’m actually not entirely sure what to think about the fact that you A) have seen that movie, and B) apparently quote it when drinking.

S: Hey, I was still moderately young and hip in the early nineties… or maybe Jimmy made me watch it- I don’t really know.

But I wanted to comment upon a phenomenon. I think it was last year that Plastic Man said to me that you could tell how highly regarded (or at least reviled) you were by the amount of people dressed as you at Halloween. Last year, Bruce “accidentally” forwarded a sales report on licensed costumes, detailing that Batman had outsold Superman costumes nearly 2 to 1. Granted, my survey this year isn't scientific, but judging from the sample that came to my door, it seemed I'd overtaken him by a slim margin- and that's despite not having a follow up movie last year (like he did). So yeah... I'm a little happy.

Granted, neither one of us were anywhere near the Harry Potter numbers- and I'm also a bit weirded out by the number of Harry Potter women in drag, with too-short skirts and shirts and expressions that were less-than-wholesome.

Oh, but that made me remember something I forgot last week, and you know I’ve been forgetting things more, but I remembered part of why I wanted to talk about Harry Potter. You know, I wrote a book, once. And I don’t mean Under A Yellow Sun- that barely qualifies as a novella (or literature, for that matter). I remember thinking greedily at the time that that was it, my big break, my chance to escape my own mediocrity- as Clark Kent, anyway. I mean, in the other personae, wearing the costume and being that other person who is smarter and more confident and just better than me in every way, I could do all kinds of things. But as Clark Kent, there were, and sometimes still are, days when I really did feel like the dumb, naïve hick son of a farmer out of Kansas.

ID: You’ve won a Pulitzer.

S: I know, but that doesn’t mean I felt I deserved it, or that even if I sometimes do that I don’t have moments of insecurity. But we’re not talking about that, or at least I wasn’t meaning to, my point, and you know how hard it’s getting for me to focus, is that I wrote something fictional. Maybe even literary. I’d written a novel about a teenager who one day finds out he has abilities, and then joins up with superheroes. It was very much a Harry Potter for the tights set- in fact, there’s a pretty good chance I was writing it around the same time as Rowling was writing her first Potter. But then Ja- one of the Robins passed away. And at that point I couldn’t stomach the idea of encouraging children to think about what we did in a positive light. I mean, if even one kid had got themselves hurt… I haven’t even thought about publishing it, honestly, until just now. I put it out of my mind, because the alternative, it’s too much to even think about.

I mean, I fail, regularly. There’s people I should be nicer to, some I can’t save, even problems I can’t tackle, like Perry smoking cigars, but I recognized that I would be creating failure. That it was an inevitability that children would read that book and think, “Hey, heroes are real, I should do this-” it was only a question of when something would go wrong and not if.

ID: I’m not sure what to say to any of that.

S: You don’t have to. I’m not changing my mind about the book- I’m not saying it should be published posthumously. If anything I’m saying it shouldn’t. But a small part of me just wanted it out there in the world, that the book exists. I think there’s a small part of writing that’s about being heard- not even heard clearly or understood, those are separate from it- I just wanted its existence, and maybe by extension mine, to be known. It seems stupid to say it out loud. But a story about an awkward kid with glasses, and competence no one knows about- that idea hits pretty close to home with me. I guess putting it away all this time, without acknowledging it, it was kind of like trapping that person in his awkward stage, shuttered away and unable to grow into the impressive person he was supposed to emerge as by story’s end. I guess, in a way, that’s what Halloween’s about: we all want to be something, something funnier or scarier or more heroic or even sexier, but we all want to be someone better.

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.

Absent Friends

Insanity Disco: You've given your share of eulogies, which gives you a macabre kind of perspective on it. Who would you like to eulogize you?

S: I'd like Lois to do it- I've asked her to do it- but I don't think she will. She says as a reporter she's too close to it- and that as a wife she's going to be too distraught to do it right. I think Diana would do it if she had to, and that she has an eloquence few people credit her for, but I think the both of them will be enough to force Bruce to give it.

ID: And you smile a little at that; is it because you're happy he'll be giving your send-off, or because you like the idea of him browbeaten by the two strongest women you know.

S: Can't it be both? No, um, I think Bruce will give a fine speech; I think he'll agonize too much over it, but I think in the end him giving the speech will be good for his soul, and good for ours- our community; it'll put him at the head of our table, so to speak, and I can't think of anybody better to be there.

ID: Not Diana?

S: God, I’m treading carefully, here, trying not to sound sexist- Diana’s a fine woman, but she isn’t a leader. She’s more important than that. A leader, really, is just a figurehead, someone to follow into what, under normal circumstances, would be an insane situation. When it comes to joining the fray, there is no one as stalwart or as fierce as Diana- but the fact is that she’s very much a single combatant. In part because she is a woman, really the first superhuman female to come to anyone’s mind, she has always maintained a certain degree of self-reliance. She doesn’t wait to see what a Flash is going to do, or a Green Lantern, or J’onn, or anyone else- not even me or Bruce- she leaps into battle to take care of what she thinks needs to be taken care of. Bruce, by contrast, relies on the rest of us- loathe as he might be to admit that- but when a building’s falling on a crowd, he can’t do more than save a few of the people himself, people he can carry out from under it- so he’s been forced for a long time to rely on the rest of us, which has really helped build him up as a coordinator and as a leader.

ID: But you prefaced that by worrying about sounding sexist. Why?

S: Because I think in a way it is influenced by gender. And I’m not saying the League couldn’t follow a strong woman’s lead, I just think that for some of us it would take an adjustment, perhaps even a revelatory moment. I don’t think I’m one of those people- but I think it would be naïve to think that in such a testosterone heavy community there wouldn’t be some flare-ups.

ID: Hmm. We may come back to that later, but today I want to focus on people you’ve lost. I'm not sure how much you believe in an afterlife beyond the waiting room you've said you met your father in, but could you talk about some of the people who preceded you you'd like to meet again.

S: Obviously, there’s my father; I find myself hoping there is at least some kind of a purgatory, because I’d like to see him again. We didn’t always, see eye to eye isn’t quite right, but I think maybe I stopped being entirely his son when I found out I, well, wasn’t. I think the fact that I was an alien, that I felt like an alien, that I felt like I was alien even to my own parents- I think it pushed him away.

I remember quite clearly one day, I used my abilities in town. I mean, there was a fire, and I did help save this little boy and his dog, but what I didn’t realize at the time was my dad was at the store across the street, and he saw. Truth be told, it wasn’t that he saw that, but that he saw that Lana was there, that she had that aura about her, admiration mixed with a tinge of worry, and he knew me well enough to know I was showing off. And it wasn’t that I saved the boy, but that I didn’t even think about how easy it would have been for the Fire Department to get to him, and beyond that, how stupid I was doing it all just to impress a girl. And he said he knew he’d raised me better than that, that he didn’t recognize his own son at that moment.

And I’ll never forget what I said, because I think it may have been the single most spiteful thing I’ve ever done, but I told him, “Because I’m not.” And I think I hurt him in a way I never intended, I think I caused serious long-term damage to our relationship. I never took into account that, as hard as finding out that I was adopted had been on me, it had had consequences for those I cared about, too. I don’t think he ever looked at me the same way; I don’t know if he ever would have been able to, but I think, dying the way he did, we’ll never get that chance to iron it over.

ID: And what about Connor [Note: Superboy, Superman’s adolescent clone]?

S: I miss him. I always used to, well, I guess I just didn’t understand it, Bruce’s relationship with his second Robin. He was headstrong- maybe even bratty- and he and Bruce were at cross-purposes almost from the moment they met. But when he died, Bruce mourned him as hard as he’d mourned his parents- maybe harder, since that Robin was just a kid, which only increased the tragedy. And it really wasn’t until Connor that I understood.

From the moment I first saw him, Connor was a jackass. I remember he sued me over the use of my name and insignia- and he wore his hair like one of the New Kids on the Block- only this was half a decade after they’d disappeared.

ID: I do remember you sporting an, ahem, party in the back hairstyle about that time, just so you don’t start throwing stones in your glass fortress.

S: I’d just come back from the dead. I think it’s safe to say I wasn’t entirely in my right mind in those days.

ID: Fair enough. But you mentioned something that’s always been kind of rumored, something that’s delicate so I’ll try and be gentle, but, one of the Robin’s was killed. Do you think Batman bears any responsibility for that, perhaps in the form of criminal negligence?

S: Criminally, I don’t know. I tend not to pay too much attention to the word criminal, since vigilantism, which, frankly, is what a large part of what I do is, is technically criminal in the eyes of the law. But a better way to look at it would be is he morally negligent.

I don’t want to go too much into that particular Robin’s life, because I don’t have the right to reveal it, but I’ll say this: he was headed for a bad life, a hard life, and in all likelihood a violent end. What Bruce did, what he tried to do, was give him structure, and discipline, and an outlet for all the things that were going to get him into trouble. Morally, I think Bruce’s intentions were good ones, but at the end of the day that doesn't matter, because Jason died.

But if you’re asking if Bruce bear’s responsibility for his Robin’s death- no, I don’t think he does, but at the same time, I know he disagrees. And I think every single day for the rest of his life Bruce is going to bear responsibility for his death; I don’t know if that’s right or not, but it’s a cross he won’t ever even attempt to set down.

ID: Do you think, given the death at least of one Robin, that using minors as vigilantes is a practice that should be discontinued?

S: I sincerely believe that what we do is a calling. Some people have the skills and the drive and desire to do what we do. What we do can also be, unfortunately, very dangerous. I just hope we continue to train and protect the next generation as best we can- it’s a standard I think we’ve tried to stick to, and one I hope we can live up to.

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.