SUPERMAN: WHAT REALLY HAPPENED TO THE MAN OF TOMORROW?

PART 1: We begin with the LexCorp building being swarmed by socialist protestors, led by...SUPERMAN? Except he's younger, leaner, and less imposing, but a lot more aggressive -- almost as though the Superman of 1938-1940 had been plucked out from Hypertime and brought to 1999. hmmm At the Daily Planet, Clark & Lois quickly confer over the best way to deal with this, and they decide to have Clark play both interviewer and negotiator with his mysterious doppelganger, in his guise of reporter Clark Kent. When G.A. Supes sees Clark, he verbally excoriates him and all other aging 90s liberals as impotent hypocrites. Meanwhile, Luthor is hiding out at one of his secret retreats, leaving this situation in the hands of his ruthless, cold-blooded new chief advisor, a Mr. Eliott. At Eliott's command, a LexCorp satellite orbiting Earth bombards the LexCorp building and its closest surroundings with red-star radiation. Once G.A. Supes and Clark both begin to weaken, Eliott orders LexCorp security goons to fire at will on the crowd. At the last second, Clark's last remnants of his super-senses alert him to a sniper specifically targeting him! Luckily, the bullet makes a clean exit through his shoulder. Seconds later, G.A. Supes takes rapid-fire bullets meant for Clark before reluctantly bidding a strategic retreat. Before Clark can do anything else, he is finally overwhelmed by the red-star radiation, and blacks out.

PART 2: At Clark's bedside in the city's best hospital, Jimmy fills him in on what happened in the last several hours -- Lois is calling in favors to get him airlifted to the Kents' farm outside Smallville; G.A. Supes is still missing in action; Luthor, Eliott, and their spin team are turning the whole ugly incident in his favor (while emphasizing that Luthor plans to run for President in 2000.) Later on, at the farm, no sooner do Lois and the Kents start having some soul-baring discussions with Clark, than the farm is attacked by Brainiac's drone ships. Clark valiantly defends his loved ones and his home-of-the-heart, but cannot prevent the Kents and Lois from being threatened. Biting down hard, Clark allows himself to be captured in exchange for Brainiac sparing the lives of his loved ones. Before he's taken from them, Clark promises he shall return. Meanwhile, G.A. Supes, having recovered enough of his powers, ambushes Eliott's car en route to Luthor's retreat. Though Eliott manages to injure him with a Green Kryptonite ring, G.A. Supes prevails, knocking out Eliott with a good right hook. He then threatens to kill the driver if he doesn't drive G.A. Supes and the unconscious Eliott to the retreat. Meanwhile, Clark is taken to Warworld, where he is pitted in gladiatorial combat against yet another look-alike, this one near-omnipotent, yet too toxically smug to reckon with Clark's cunning. Frustrated, Brainiac de-powers "Super-Smug" with Gold Kryptonite before bringing in Clark's ultimate nightmare -- a Clark/Doomsday hybrid!

PART 3: At that moment, who should intervene but Rip Hunter, the renegade Linear Man and self-appointed keeper of Hypertime? But even the formidable double-team of Clark and Rip can just barely keep DoomClark at bay. Reluctantly, the rest of the Linear Men -- Matthew Ryder, Liri Lee, and Waverider -- who have been monitoring everything (of course,) join the fray. In desperation, Rip teleports himself and DoomClark to Vanishing Point, the Linear Men's headquarters -- which turns out to be exactly what Brainiac wanted, as a time-bomb implanted within DoomClark goes off, destroying Vanishing Point in an entropic explosion. To Brainiac's surprise, Clark brazenly attacks him one-on-one, causing the villain to retreat into Hypertime. Meanwhile, once G.A. Supes has gotten past security and into Luthor's compound, he wrecks havoc as he seeks to find Luthor and bring him to justice. Meanwhile, Waverider's powers track Brainiac's trail of tachyon particles to a sub-station orbiting the rim of Hypertime. Clark and the Linear Men breach the station, discovering, to their horror, that Brainiac has a stockpile of infinite Supermen inside stasis tubes. Their first instinct is to free them, but Brainiac threatens to activate the stations self-destruct mode if they don't surrender. The foolhardy Waverider tries to get the jump on Brainiac, but fails, though they fatally wound each other. Meanwhile, G.A. Supes finally breaches Luthor's bunker, only to find that he's been beaten to the punch and Luthor has been shot dead -- by none other than Eliott, who had faked unconsciousness and who knew the secret entrance to the bunker. Then, G.A. Supes is shocked by the revelation that Eliott is actually the Superman who depowered himself and retired to civilian life at the end of Alan Moore's "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?"

THE CONCLUSION: When G.A. Supes asks why Eliott did all of this, Eliott boorishly responds, "Retirement's a bitch," before gloating about how he did to Luthor what the other didn't have the balls to do. G.A. Supes lunges at Eliott, but while G.A. Supes is far stronger than Eliott, his opponent seems to anticipate his every move. Meanwhile, while Clark and Ryder argue about the next course of action while working together at overriding the self-destruct mechanism, Liri jumps into Hypertime, in an effort to procure a successor to Clark, should he need one (she has intuited that he will.) Meanwhile, Lois & Jimmy arrive at Luthor's compound by helicopter and break up the stalemate between G.A. Supes and Eliott -- specifically, Lois shoots Eliott in the kneecap, then jabs him in the solar plexus for good measure. In the interim, Jimmy has discovered that, by killing Luthor, Eliott accidentally set off a hidden command programmed into the LexCorp satellite -- to fire a yellow-star energy beam at the sun, and accelerate its natural cycle. Clark and Ryder witness this on the monitors of Brainiac's sub-station, and a horrified Clark demands that Ryder send him back to the Kents' farm. Ryder complies, then frantically works at sending all the Supermen back to their own timelines just as the countdown to auto-destruction nears the end. The sub-station explodes, and we are left to wonder whether Ryder managed to save any of the Supermen. Meanwhile, Liri has found the one Superman who was not captured by Brainiac -- a Superman from a Krypton which Jor-El and Lara were able to prevent the destruction of, and where Kal-El grew up into a restless spirit dreaming of adventures that the other Kryptonians were too complacent to pursue (any similarities to Marvel's Norrin Radd aka Silver Surfer are fully intentional.) Liri takes Kal to the Kents' farm just as Clark is saying farewell to his adoptive parents and Lois & Jimmy's helicopter, with G.A. Supes in tow, is landing at the farm. Clark officially anoints Kal his successor, shakes hands with G.A. Supes, hugs Jimmy goodbye, and kisses Lois goodbye. Clark flies into the sun, successfully re-stabilizing it and returning its natural cycle to normal.

EPILOGUE: Understandably bereft, Lois, Jimmy, and the Kents ask only that Kal find a different secret identity than Clark Kent, and that he and Liri (who has been left with no choice but to exile herself to this timeline) keep their distance from them for an indefinite period of time. G.A. Supes is determined to make a run for President, as the candidate for a party he plans to form himself. Kal & Liri fly off into the sunset.



COMING SOON TO THIS THREAD: "BATMAN: THE KNIGHT FADES TO BLACK"


Still "Fickles" to my friends.