Mind Candy. Lawrence Watt-Evans

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ a little eccentric—as well as unhygienic. Most of us don’t wear the same underwear day in and day out, and we have good reasons for that. Although we see that Superman does clean his super-suit sometimes—by flying through the sun while wearing it.

      That’s right, he usually doesn’t take it off even to wash it. This guy has it bad. Most people with security blankets at least put them down occasionally.

      But then, Superman does have it rough. His home planet blew up; his species is effectively extinct. Yes, humans look the same, but we know they aren’t—we can’t clean our clothes by flying through the sun. Compared to Superman, we and all our creations are ridiculously fragile; if he ever forgets for even a second just how delicate we are, he could kill dozens of people. He must live his entire life as if he were walking through card houses floored with eggshells. Just cracking his knuckles might shatter windows! He can’t belch, he can’t fart, without worrying about killing innocent bystanders.

      That suit at least gives him something he doesn’t need to worry about damaging!

      And it’s something safe and comforting. Remember that there are other bits of his home planet still around—and they’re trying to kill him. Kryptonite isn’t just a bunch of green meteors to him; it’s his homeland, his ancestral soil, the old country that sent him to America.

      And it’s poisonous.

      This is a man who really can’t go home again; his home is gone, and any souvenir he might find is toxic.

      Any souvenir, that is, except that silly suit he wears.

      And then there’s the way he’s treated by the people around him. He’s an immigrant to our planet, and he’s tried his best to fit in, he’s done everything he can to be a good person, a good man, a good American, and how do people react to him?

      Well, a fair number of the people he meets are trying to kill him. Everyone from street punks to Lex Luthor feels free to take shots at him, with guns and knives and death-rays, and nobody ever takes that seriously. Yes, they go to jail for robbing banks, or trying to conquer the world without a permit, or whatever, but does it ever occur to anyone to file felony assault charges? These guys punch Superman, they shoot at him, stab him, run cars into him, hit him with missiles and energy beams and giant robot fists, and the cops never even ask him if he wants to press charges. Sure, he’s unhurt, but that’s not the point! He was still assaulted. Someone could ask.

      That’s his enemies—but what about his friends? They’re constantly demanding his help, asking to be rescued, inviting him to help out with charity events, but do they ever just suggest a cup of coffee and a chat? Do they respect his privacy? Lois Lane and Lana Lang spend an absurd amount of time and effort trying to find out his “secret identity”—that’s the thanks he gets for saving their lives and admitting to them in the first place that he has a secret identity?

      Let’s face it, for the pre-Crisis Superman, most of his alleged friends aren’t so much friends as sycophants. Lois Lane wants him not because she actually knows him, but because he’s the ultimate trophy male—brains and brawn beyond human ken, all in a well-built package. She spends more time trying to blackmail him or spy on him than she does just talking to him.

      And Jimmy Olsen isn’t so much a friend as his Number One Fan, basking in the admiration of his fellow nerds because he’s buddies with the demi-god in the blue tights.

      The only people who come close to treating Superman as one of their own, rather than as a celebrity, are the other superheroes—and let’s face it, hanging out with a guy who dresses up as a giant bat, or a guy in a Robin Hood costume who puts boxing gloves on arrows, is not exactly a healthy social life. These people are freaks, just as much as Superman himself, even if they can’t juggle asteroids. Clark Kent grew up wanting to fit in, to be the all-American boy; spending time with these weirdos may be better than nothing, but he’s got to feel a little like the captain of the football team forced to eat lunch at the geeks’ table.

      Of course, that’s why he has his Clark Kent identity, so he can pretend to be normal—but even there, he can’t be comfortable. He has to worry constantly about giving himself away. If Superman accidentally leaves a palm-print in solid steel, it’s not a big deal; people will just ooh and ah, and it may wind up as a souvenir somewhere, but it’s of no real consequence. If Clark Kent accidentally puts a finger through a desktop, though, that’s a real problem—someone might put two and two together.

      As the TV show “Smallville” has repeatedly pointed out, any time he’s out there pretending to be an ordinary human, he’s lying. He’s hiding who he is from his alleged closest friends, keeping secrets from the people he claims to love. That’s got to be rough on a guy who wants, more than anything else in the world, to do what’s right and be loved for it.

      So if you ask me, along with everything else, he wears that suit under his clothes to remind him who he is—that he’s never really Clark Kent; he’s the freak, the alien, the Superman, who can’t let himself go for an instant, who can’t trust anyone, who can’t let anyone trust him, who must always be on guard—but who still has the comforting presence of his baby blanket, reminding him that once, as a baby, he did have the unconditional love of a mother, and the calm certainty that he was safe.

      I can’t begrudge him that small comfort, I suppose. After all, he’s saved the world repeatedly, and is doing everything he can to make it a better place.

      But jeez, I wish he washed that thing more often.

      Peter Parker’s Penance

      Originally published in Webslinger

      Consider two boys.

      The first is a lad not yet in his teens who sees his beloved parents gunned down in the street by a petty crook, and who is helpless to do anything to save them.

      The second is a teenager whose beloved uncle is gunned down by a petty crook, and who realizes that he could have prevented this by stopping that same man earlier.

      By lucky chance, both boys have exceptional abilities. Both swear to fight crime, so that other innocents will not suffer as they have. Both youths train themselves, both equip themselves with a miniaturized high-tech arsenal, both put on lurid costumes, and both go out on the streets, taking the fight to the foe.

      Except the first boy becomes a grim avenger, a creature of the night, a humorless, relentless, obsessed crimefighter, so focused on his unending war against evil that even his best friends sometimes doubt his sanity.

      And the second becomes your happy-go-lucky, fun-loving, wisecracking, friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, always ready with a smart remark.

      How does that work?

      Logically, shouldn’t Spider-Man be just as grim and driven as Batman? Or even worse? After all, he really is partly responsible for his uncle’s death, where there was nothing young Bruce Wayne could have done to save his parents, yet there Spidey is, web-swinging happily through the streets and tossing off quips as if he hadn’t a care in the world. Isn’t that a bit, well, heartless of him? What happened to all that guilt, all that angst over his uncle’s death? Is Spider-Man just laughing through his tears?

      Y’know, it really doesn’t look like it. It looks like he’s having a fine ol’ time out there. Oh, maybe not when he’s face to face with Galactus, or having the snot beat out of him by the Hulk, but when he’s tackling the sort of street-level thug who killed Uncle Ben he genuinely seems to be enjoying himself. Webbing guns out СКАЧАТЬ