Independent Domicile: I want to say, before we begin, because this interview's only being recorded and transcribed- that is to say there's no audio- and I know you've been staying away from the public eye as much as you can, but since we started the interview you've lost forty pounds. Your skin is pale, clothes fit loosely.
Superman: Well, for the sake of parity, I want to state you look like crap, too.
(laughs, breaks into a fit of coughing)
ID: How are you doing, really?
S: The days are harder. And I think it's all really sunk in. I've been living with the reality of my own mortality for a while now, but it's really starting to feel real now. I guess, I guess I got cocky. You know, I've been in so many strange places, been confronted with so many weird threats, there was a part of me that believed that God, the universe, whatever, had some kind of plan for me, that I was invulnerable until I'd done that one great thing that I'd been shot across space in a rocket to do. And I don't think I've done it yet; there's no sense of closure to my life, no finality to it yet.
You know, fighting Doomsday, there was something epic about that. It had grandeur, and spectacle; I could see paintings of that immortalized in the Smithsonian and the Louvre, and while the idea makes me blush a little, stopping him, stopping murder incarnate, that felt like something purposeful. When Lois held me in her arms, and I wasn't even aware enough or strong enough anymore to see, but I knew she was holding me in her arms, and I felt that maybe that was that, that I'd fulfilled my purpose, that what I'd accomplished was something really good and truly great, and that I could pass on from that point and be peaceful. And nothing since has had that kind of closure for me.
ID: So do you think there's something to that? I mean, and I don't know where I read it, so maybe it's just a gossip-column thing, but your father had a heart attack around that time, and went and found you in some kind of an afterlife and convinced you to come back. Do you think that, maybe, that was a mistake, that you were supposed to stay dead after that?
S: It's a thought, isn't it? But honestly, no. I don't think that's true because I was supposed to marry Lois. As sure as I know anything, I know that, and to do that, I had to come back after Doomsday.
ID: So what about that, then, marrying Lois? Isn't that closure enough for you?
S: I don't know. I remember the first time I found out my cells had stopped aging. It was at S.T.A.R. Labs, and they told me that, functionally, I hadn't aged for several years, and in fact it appeared like the aging process had partially reversed, so age-related damage that they had previously recorded had healed. And there was a kind of a quiet pause, before the head scientist, whose name escapes me at the moment, um, and I apologize for that, I'm sure it'll come to me, but I know it wasn't Emil Hamilton- he was on the team, but I remember he was preoccupied with Kara at the time- anyway, the lead scientist told me, “we don't know if you'll ever age another day again.”
And Lois actually got really upset; she turned to me, tears in her eyes already, and I excused us quickly before flying us out of the conference room. By the time we touched down in the arctic, she had regained her composure, but she explained, very carefully, why that upset her.
She said she'd always assumed I'd outlive her, that stress or cancer from her mother's side, or a building falling on her or even her own propensity for eating out of The Planet's vending machines would kill her, but the thought that she was just a blip on my radar, just the first ring on a tree that might never stop growing, that her part in my life was going to end up so trivial- it nearly broke her heart. And I told her the first thing that came to my mind, because even though I think faster than a computer she can always tell when I hesitate: that I couldn't imagine outliving her, because I was fairly certain that her dying would kill me. She hasn't had a problem with it since.
But I don't think the reverse is true; I don't think my death will kill her- and not simply because she's had to live through that once already, but because as much as I know she loves me, Lois doesn't need me the way I need her. She loves me, she cares for me and about me, and hard as it is to believe she genuinely likes having me around all the time- but she doesn't need me. There have been times when I've wondered if she wouldn't have been a better reporter, maybe a better person, if it weren't for me. And maybe that's one thing I wish I could hold on to see, the person my wife becomes without me.
ID: Okay. But closure. I know you'll never be happy with the thought of leaving Lois behind- that with her you'll always want one more day, but acknowledging your impending mortality, do you think it's even reasonable to seek closure at this point?
S: Hmm. I don't know. I just hate leaving business unfinished. Take the League- I think the League's in transition now. With all humility, I've been sort of a go-to for a lot of issues, and now that that resource is being taken away, there's been a bit of a scramble to figure out how things work when you can't just fling a Kryptonian at it.
ID: What about Kara?
S: Kara isn't me. There are a lot of things that, physically, she can handle, but there are a lot of other things, having to do with maturity, and experience, or even just rapport that I have, with a lot of world leaders, a lot of communities across the globe- I've been at this a fairly long time, and I've met a lot of people, made a lot of friends. That's something the League is learning to work around, now. And the same goes to an extent for physical threats. I mean, Kara can hold her own, but she hasn't been under a yellow sun for nearly the same amount of time as I have- there was more than one time where I was the weapon of first and last resort- because if I couldn't stop it there was no one else who could, and that's something the League is I think reeling from.
And I'm still healthy enough at the moment to contribute, so don't think I'm down or out. But I've been taking a backseat, trying to let others do things I might have done myself in the past. One person who's really stepped up of course has been Diana. Bruce and I have such conflicting styles of management, and such strong personalities, that people often saw us fight. It made people think we were in charge, that we were the ones running the League. But, and I think Bruce would agree with me, the League lives and dies on two people's shoulders- and that's Diana's and J'onn's. Diana has a quiet authority- like what Bruce always wants, but gets irritated about when you don't read his mind and do what he wants, so he goes with gruff schoolteacher. But Diana and J'onn are the people who soothe bruised egos, who make the calls afterward to make sure follow-up assistance is there if it's necessary, who make sure we haven't accidentally caused India to invade Pakistan, or make sure monitor duty's filled. But what I'm getting at is the League is maturing, I think, into a group that will function rather well in a world without me- and I'd like to live long enough to see that, too.
ID: So what it sounds like is you've made your peace with dying- you'd just like to stay after it happens.
S: Yeah, something like that. You think we could swing it?
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.
Showing posts with label STAR. Show all posts
Showing posts with label STAR. Show all posts
Monday, June 1, 2009
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Metropolis
Ignoble Denomination: I want to discuss something. You grew up in Kansas, in a small town, but you ended up in the biggest, probably most liberal city in the country, living on the East Coast. What fomented that change?
Superman: I think, if I’m honest, that I ended up in Metropolis because of its history. Not because it’s the city of tomorrow, or even because of its beautiful architecture, but because of its past. Metropolis, along with New York and Gotham, was one of the hubs of immigration around the turn of the last century.
But unlike New York, and to a lesser extent, Gotham, Metropolis didn’t fracture into ethnic neighborhoods, didn’t divide along racial lines. Metropolis was the melting pot, the place where any immigrant could go and become part of a city greater than the sum of its parts. As much as I love my parents, and even the small community in Kansas that really nurtured me in my youth, there was something that such a homogenized place simply couldn’t provide for me. In Metropolis I rent from a Greek Cypriot landlord who’s married to a Turkish pianist; my wife and I eat regularly from the little Chinese take-out place across the way, that features a Tibetan flutist. On of the best photographers I work with at The Planet is Indian, and he’s married to a Pakistani woman who owns her own florist franchise, and they’ve actually been discussing adopting one of the war orphans from Afghanistan. And the thing about Metropolis for me is not a one of these relations seems forced or self-conscious; these things all coexist naturally, and what is so abnormal about it is how normal it is.
But what makes Metropolis different I guess from other immigrant cultures is that these people all still hold dearly onto their culture, while at the same time embracing the shared heritage of the city. You know how New York was after 9/11, where every New Yorker felt like their neighbors were family for a while- Metropolis is like that every day.
ID: That’s actually an interesting point. I know Metropolis and New York have always been sister cities (with Gotham often called their ugly stepsister). There have been people who jokingly refer to New York as Metropolis’ alter ego. As a native Metropolitan, how did the city react to 9/11?
S: There was a lot of shock. I think, too, there was a lot of, “We’re next.” But I think at the same time, in Metropolis, there was a little bit less, um, terror, I guess. As much as people in other parts of the country were upset that I wasn’t there to stop what happened on 9/11, I think in Metropolis there was a feeling, and I don’t know if it was justified, but there seemed to be an undercurrent of, “It can’t happen here.” A lot of people stopped me on the streets, for about thee months after it happened, they’d stop me just to thank me; and it was hard, some of those times, for us to keep up decorum. You know, when people express that kind of a sentiment to you, it’s hard for the both of you not to tear up, it’s hard not to just fly over and hug them because the both of you could really use it. But I think that would undermine the trust, and the faith in my strength, that the whole exchange was based around.
But you know, it was different in Gotham; people in Gotham are different than here. New York has a reputation for having some of the hardest people in the country, but Gotham- especially Gotham in its worst days- is like the worst parts of New York stretched across the entire city. So there’s this sense, I guess, that you can’t terrorize Gotham. I mean, if the Joker, if the Scarecrow, if a hundred other homicidal lunatics can’t grind that city to a halt, there’s just not even a point.
ID: I’d heard a, I guess it’s not exactly a joke, because it’s in such poor taste, particularly since it made the rounds during the aftermath of the earthquake, but that you could blow up entire blocks in Gotham, and neither the citizens nor the government would bat an eye.
S: And there really is something to that. I’ll go on record as saying Batman is not the fascist that he’s often portrayed as in popular media; he’s got access to fewer cameras in Gotham than they have in London. But I don’t think he could operate in the same way in Metropolis. I think, just fundamentally, that the entire tone of his approach wouldn’t work. I think there’d be a popular outcry, however misguided, to send Maggie Sawyer and the SCU after him.
ID: That’s the, uh, Special Crimes Unit, right, their superhuman response team, sort of a SuperS.W.A.T.?”
S: You could probably call it that, yeah.
ID: I’m vaguely familiar with the SCU, but they’ve been working in partnership with, uh, S.T.A.R. Labs since their inception, and before the SCU’s creation, Metro PD had been partnered with them.
S: These were the days before the SuperMax. Batman could always drop off the Joker in Arkham, and, their nonstellar escape rate notwithstanding, they could at least presumably hold him. But with the Parasite, Brainiac- a lot of the threats we’ve dealt with in Metropolis were just too big to be contained by a normal prison. We were fortunate that S.T.A.R. Labs was in the area, because they had the facilities to effectively contain the threats, and out of it they got the opportunity to do research on unique and extraterrestrial organisms that scientists at WayneTech would have killed to study (and some of the folks at LexCorp actually have). And S.T.A.R., while technically an independent facility, are also big government contractors, and get a lot of their funding from the city, and were of course the source of the SCU’s special weaponry. Overall, it’s been a very symbiotic relationship.
ID: I was going to call it incestuous.
S: I think that potential was there, sure. But I think it helps that S.T.A.R. isn’t governmental- and any patents resulting from their extrahuman examinations are jointly owned by the government. It’s perhaps not ideal, but as opposed to waiting a decade for a funds approval, which, if you’ll recall, was what we did with SuperMax, before deciding to just build it ourselves- it worked out well, organically.
ID: Okay. You mentioned the scenario a moment ago, so I have to ask: do you think the SCU could take down the Batman?
S: No. I think they’re trained to take on an entirely different kind of threat, and Bruce, well, Bruce trains himself to take on all comers. I think the SCU might score some interesting body shots, and against almost any other person, superhuman or otherwise, I’d give them pretty good odds, but against Bruce, well, the only way to stop him is to do it before he figures out how to stop you, and the thing is, for most of us, he’s already figured it out.
ID: Heh. But I’ve pulled us on a tangent, and I want to close with why you love Metropolis, as I think you still very clearly do.
S: Metropolis is my home. Kansas will always be where I grew up, where I met my parents and where I learned how to be the person I am, but Metropolis is the place where I finally got a chance to be myself. It’s something that’s hard to articulate, but living for the first time far removed from everything you’ve known before- it changes fundamentally who you are. And Metropolis is home.
All that stuff I said about immigrants, and this place being the real melting pot at the center of the country’s diversity- I meant it. This place is accepting in a way I never thought possible. I remember the first interview I gave where I finally admitted I was an alien. I was just incredibly nervous, because I thought, God, this could be it. I could have to retire that entire persona, which by that point, I mean, how could I not love getting to be and see the best in people? I mean, when you’re Superman, you get to be smart, and kind, and heroic, and because people only see those shining parts of you for a moment, they really are just happy to be near you. And the prospect of losing that, giving it up just to be honest, about something that shouldn’t matter even if it might- and I remember the way Lois looked at me when I told her the truth, and there was this, this disbelief, and it crushed me. I thought, God, this is going to be the face people show me from now on, like I’m a person on the street trying to sell my newsletter I’ve written on cardboard. And I really, really just wanted to fly away, then and there, go back to Kansas and just live like a hermit.
But I stayed. And as the interview went on, her disbelief, her incredulousness, it gave way, and what was left was a newfound understanding, maybe even a fascination, with my home planet. And really, the write-up Lois gave me for that, and this was years before we started dating, so, there wasn’t too much bias in it, but it was really beautiful. I think she titled it “I Come in Peace.” I’ve told her, many times, it’s my favorite of everything she’s ever written, that more so than for her audience, I felt that she’d written it for me. She’ll never admit it, never; her pride wouldn’t let her tell me on my deathbed, or at least as near to it as I seem to be these days- but from her silence, and the coyness in her eyes and her smile, I’m pretty sure she did.
And I think, in part because the piece really was, for lack of a better word, so very humanizing, the city really accepted me. People really did warm up to me me, in a way they hadn't been able to before. People had always been really nice, really friendly, but there was a formality to it, and now I had this wonderful man named Bibbo calling me his pal Kal, and a hot dog vendor from the Philipines stopping to offer me a comped foot long, from one immigrant to another. This place really has become my home. And really, I credit that really warm reception entirely to the story she wrote, and way she accepted me in it.
So I guess, more than anything, I love Metropolis because it’s where I met and fell in love with my wife, Lois- easily the love of my life.
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.
Superman: I think, if I’m honest, that I ended up in Metropolis because of its history. Not because it’s the city of tomorrow, or even because of its beautiful architecture, but because of its past. Metropolis, along with New York and Gotham, was one of the hubs of immigration around the turn of the last century.
But unlike New York, and to a lesser extent, Gotham, Metropolis didn’t fracture into ethnic neighborhoods, didn’t divide along racial lines. Metropolis was the melting pot, the place where any immigrant could go and become part of a city greater than the sum of its parts. As much as I love my parents, and even the small community in Kansas that really nurtured me in my youth, there was something that such a homogenized place simply couldn’t provide for me. In Metropolis I rent from a Greek Cypriot landlord who’s married to a Turkish pianist; my wife and I eat regularly from the little Chinese take-out place across the way, that features a Tibetan flutist. On of the best photographers I work with at The Planet is Indian, and he’s married to a Pakistani woman who owns her own florist franchise, and they’ve actually been discussing adopting one of the war orphans from Afghanistan. And the thing about Metropolis for me is not a one of these relations seems forced or self-conscious; these things all coexist naturally, and what is so abnormal about it is how normal it is.
But what makes Metropolis different I guess from other immigrant cultures is that these people all still hold dearly onto their culture, while at the same time embracing the shared heritage of the city. You know how New York was after 9/11, where every New Yorker felt like their neighbors were family for a while- Metropolis is like that every day.
ID: That’s actually an interesting point. I know Metropolis and New York have always been sister cities (with Gotham often called their ugly stepsister). There have been people who jokingly refer to New York as Metropolis’ alter ego. As a native Metropolitan, how did the city react to 9/11?
S: There was a lot of shock. I think, too, there was a lot of, “We’re next.” But I think at the same time, in Metropolis, there was a little bit less, um, terror, I guess. As much as people in other parts of the country were upset that I wasn’t there to stop what happened on 9/11, I think in Metropolis there was a feeling, and I don’t know if it was justified, but there seemed to be an undercurrent of, “It can’t happen here.” A lot of people stopped me on the streets, for about thee months after it happened, they’d stop me just to thank me; and it was hard, some of those times, for us to keep up decorum. You know, when people express that kind of a sentiment to you, it’s hard for the both of you not to tear up, it’s hard not to just fly over and hug them because the both of you could really use it. But I think that would undermine the trust, and the faith in my strength, that the whole exchange was based around.
But you know, it was different in Gotham; people in Gotham are different than here. New York has a reputation for having some of the hardest people in the country, but Gotham- especially Gotham in its worst days- is like the worst parts of New York stretched across the entire city. So there’s this sense, I guess, that you can’t terrorize Gotham. I mean, if the Joker, if the Scarecrow, if a hundred other homicidal lunatics can’t grind that city to a halt, there’s just not even a point.
ID: I’d heard a, I guess it’s not exactly a joke, because it’s in such poor taste, particularly since it made the rounds during the aftermath of the earthquake, but that you could blow up entire blocks in Gotham, and neither the citizens nor the government would bat an eye.
S: And there really is something to that. I’ll go on record as saying Batman is not the fascist that he’s often portrayed as in popular media; he’s got access to fewer cameras in Gotham than they have in London. But I don’t think he could operate in the same way in Metropolis. I think, just fundamentally, that the entire tone of his approach wouldn’t work. I think there’d be a popular outcry, however misguided, to send Maggie Sawyer and the SCU after him.
ID: That’s the, uh, Special Crimes Unit, right, their superhuman response team, sort of a SuperS.W.A.T.?”
S: You could probably call it that, yeah.
ID: I’m vaguely familiar with the SCU, but they’ve been working in partnership with, uh, S.T.A.R. Labs since their inception, and before the SCU’s creation, Metro PD had been partnered with them.
S: These were the days before the SuperMax. Batman could always drop off the Joker in Arkham, and, their nonstellar escape rate notwithstanding, they could at least presumably hold him. But with the Parasite, Brainiac- a lot of the threats we’ve dealt with in Metropolis were just too big to be contained by a normal prison. We were fortunate that S.T.A.R. Labs was in the area, because they had the facilities to effectively contain the threats, and out of it they got the opportunity to do research on unique and extraterrestrial organisms that scientists at WayneTech would have killed to study (and some of the folks at LexCorp actually have). And S.T.A.R., while technically an independent facility, are also big government contractors, and get a lot of their funding from the city, and were of course the source of the SCU’s special weaponry. Overall, it’s been a very symbiotic relationship.
ID: I was going to call it incestuous.
S: I think that potential was there, sure. But I think it helps that S.T.A.R. isn’t governmental- and any patents resulting from their extrahuman examinations are jointly owned by the government. It’s perhaps not ideal, but as opposed to waiting a decade for a funds approval, which, if you’ll recall, was what we did with SuperMax, before deciding to just build it ourselves- it worked out well, organically.
ID: Okay. You mentioned the scenario a moment ago, so I have to ask: do you think the SCU could take down the Batman?
S: No. I think they’re trained to take on an entirely different kind of threat, and Bruce, well, Bruce trains himself to take on all comers. I think the SCU might score some interesting body shots, and against almost any other person, superhuman or otherwise, I’d give them pretty good odds, but against Bruce, well, the only way to stop him is to do it before he figures out how to stop you, and the thing is, for most of us, he’s already figured it out.
ID: Heh. But I’ve pulled us on a tangent, and I want to close with why you love Metropolis, as I think you still very clearly do.
S: Metropolis is my home. Kansas will always be where I grew up, where I met my parents and where I learned how to be the person I am, but Metropolis is the place where I finally got a chance to be myself. It’s something that’s hard to articulate, but living for the first time far removed from everything you’ve known before- it changes fundamentally who you are. And Metropolis is home.
All that stuff I said about immigrants, and this place being the real melting pot at the center of the country’s diversity- I meant it. This place is accepting in a way I never thought possible. I remember the first interview I gave where I finally admitted I was an alien. I was just incredibly nervous, because I thought, God, this could be it. I could have to retire that entire persona, which by that point, I mean, how could I not love getting to be and see the best in people? I mean, when you’re Superman, you get to be smart, and kind, and heroic, and because people only see those shining parts of you for a moment, they really are just happy to be near you. And the prospect of losing that, giving it up just to be honest, about something that shouldn’t matter even if it might- and I remember the way Lois looked at me when I told her the truth, and there was this, this disbelief, and it crushed me. I thought, God, this is going to be the face people show me from now on, like I’m a person on the street trying to sell my newsletter I’ve written on cardboard. And I really, really just wanted to fly away, then and there, go back to Kansas and just live like a hermit.
But I stayed. And as the interview went on, her disbelief, her incredulousness, it gave way, and what was left was a newfound understanding, maybe even a fascination, with my home planet. And really, the write-up Lois gave me for that, and this was years before we started dating, so, there wasn’t too much bias in it, but it was really beautiful. I think she titled it “I Come in Peace.” I’ve told her, many times, it’s my favorite of everything she’s ever written, that more so than for her audience, I felt that she’d written it for me. She’ll never admit it, never; her pride wouldn’t let her tell me on my deathbed, or at least as near to it as I seem to be these days- but from her silence, and the coyness in her eyes and her smile, I’m pretty sure she did.
And I think, in part because the piece really was, for lack of a better word, so very humanizing, the city really accepted me. People really did warm up to me me, in a way they hadn't been able to before. People had always been really nice, really friendly, but there was a formality to it, and now I had this wonderful man named Bibbo calling me his pal Kal, and a hot dog vendor from the Philipines stopping to offer me a comped foot long, from one immigrant to another. This place really has become my home. And really, I credit that really warm reception entirely to the story she wrote, and way she accepted me in it.
So I guess, more than anything, I love Metropolis because it’s where I met and fell in love with my wife, Lois- easily the love of my life.
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.
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