Ethel, you’re too good for 1959.
Superman’s Girl Friend, Lois Lane #7.
Ewww
superman
“villain attempts to go back in time to kill superman as a small child, gets shot in the face by ma kent, who buries him behind the barn with the others” would probably have niche appeal as a comic but i don’t care, i want it
The first time a man from the future showed up at Martha Kent’s house, Clark Kent was two years old.
According to his birth certificate, anyway. She just kind of accepted that the details were a little fudged. Relativity, and all.
Maybe the stranger would have succeeded in whatever it was he wanted to do, except that he really did just show up. Appeared, like a ghost made flesh, right in the backyard. Clark, thank goodness, was out in the fields with Jonathan. He couldn’t bear to be alone, that boy, and they could never bear to leave him.
Which left Martha free to shoot the ghostly intruder in the face.
Martha had not always considered herself a shoot first, ask questions later sort of a person. But that was before she found a baby in a spaceship where her corn was supposed to be.
They’d switch off, Jonathan and her, who got Clark and who got the shotgun. Martha got the shotgun more often than not. Guns made her husband uncomfortable. She was hardly a fan, but she’d always been a terrible pacifist. Too determined to defend herself.
The sight of all that blood and brain and bone was still nauseating. She compartmentalized, told herself it was no different from slaughtering a cow; didn’t think about riot gear or tear gas or the friends she’d lost or all the things she’d moved away from when her heart couldn’t take it any longer. This was different. This was her son.
She prodded the corpse with her foot. It remained a corpse. A real nasty looking corpse, all big and burly and holding a gun much too large. She didn’t like making assumptions based on appearances, but she didn’t imagine he’d been coming for anything nice. She bent down to search his pockets, found a metal wallet and flipped it open.
Born 2018.
Well, hell. Wasn’t that just a kick in the pants?
Probably she ought to have been a bit more unsettled than she was. But she’d been waiting two years for someone to show up on her doorstep, men in black or UFOs or something. Hell, she’d half expected her sweet little boy to hatch into something worse.
Just because she brought home space babies didn’t mean she was a damn fool.
Jonathan had rejoined her in long strides, was holding Clark in such a way that he couldn’t see the corpse on the ground. “Well, shit,” he said.
“Eyup,” Martha agreed.
“Don’t look government.”
“Nope.”
“We burying him?”
“I’ll bury him,” Martha said, standing up. “You get Clark inside and read him a book or something. I don’t want him seeing any of this, getting him messed up in the head.”
“You sure? Looks heavy.”
“That’s why we have a wheelbarrow. I’ll stick him out behind the barn, might as well keep all our secrets in one place.”
Martha had a long time to think as she dug a time traveler’s grave. There were a lot of reasons someone might travel back in time trying to kill her kid. The first was her instinct as a mother, which was: he was a fucking asshole. Who killed a kid? Fucking assholes, that was who.
Now, it was also possible that her sweet little boy grew up to be some kind of space Hitler. She didn’t think she’d raise that kind of a kid, but she didn’t suppose there was any parent who set out to raise a Hitler.
Still didn’t sit right with her. She didn’t much like the idea of killing baby Hitler, either.
I did not know that I needed 6k of Martha Kent sassing her husband and shooting people in the face, but goddamn, I really did.
This is a fucking brilliant fic.
This is the best thing I have read in AGES.
This is really, really good.
#this is important to me #the things about the suit that ZS wanted to focus on in the movie may have been interesting in another context but I prefer this #it’s the symbol of his genetic origins but made by his chosen mother #and he’s so. proud. #men everywhere are scrambling around to cut any possible symbolic apron strings to their mothers out of fear #of being called un-masculine and having too close a relationship with a non sexualised woman (ewww mummy’s boy!) #whereas Clark? he’s just ‘great huh? my mum made it for me!’ at the smallest opportunity #and see that dean cain one? he’s literally saying it to a villain who’s mocking him #and instead of denying it or even just not mentioning it – he’s just ‘well shows what you know bc MY MOTHER made it for me’ #like that pretty much settles it for him #BLESS.
Wayne Tower & Metropolis City Museum
by Chris Skinner / Facebook
13″ X 19″ giclee prints available individually or as in matching numbered set, numbered editions of 75. On sale from the Bottleneck Gallery HERE.
(no subject)
I saw Man Of Steel today! Four spoilery thoughts beneath the cut:
1) I really really wish that we’d get a superhero film where the hero’s mother was his guiding figure instead of existing just to give birth and then die. See also: the Batman films and the new Spider-Mans. (But not the old Spider-Mans! Hooray!) Not that I didn’t enjoy the stuff with Russell Crowe but what about Lara, Superman’s mother? Can’t she be a ghosty-echoey thing too?
2) I really dig this version of Perry White (having paid him no attention at all before…) I really liked that he stayed behind to help that girl when he could have run to relative safety. And I wondered if he was gonna die then but he lived! Yay!
3) I spotted the trucks marked “Lexcorp”. And in Smallville, a shop marked “Sullivan”, which has gotta be a reference to Chloe.
4) Good grief this film had the highest body-count of any superhero film I’ve ever seen? Not counting the named characters (Jonathan Kent, Jor-El, Lara, Zod, Zod’s henchwoman whose name I forgot…) there was everyone on Krypton plus a ton of soldiers plus thousands and thousands of people in New York Metropolis. Eeeep.
I was feeling bored (and down) so I did an EXPERIMENT. Type ‘[female character] is’ into Google, see what you get in the drop-down box, and then do the same thing with a counterpart male character (same fandom + same alliance/same role, that sort of thing).
As you can see, ladies get negative words coming up a LOT, and they are very frequently either ‘hot’ or ‘ugly’. Much less of any of that for the blokes. They usually get something related to their identity or role in the story (like ‘Clark Kent is dead’ or ‘Ron Weasley is Dumbledore’). And very little comment on their appearance.
Of the 12 female characters I searched for, 8 of them have ‘annoying’ as something they apparently are. None of the men do. Make of that what you will…
[Two notes 1) I’m a very casual and frequently confused viewer of GoT who hasn’t seen Series Three, so I have no idea if Sansa and Robb are still even on the same side, I just know they’re brother and sister 2) I’m really sorry there aren’t any more women of colour or LGBT women on here, can anyone give any suggestions?]
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