Dan Liebke's Astonishing Tales

Starring Clark Kent (Tom Welling) as Superlad, Lex Luthor (Michael Rosenbaum) as Sinead, Chloe Sullivan (Allison Mack) as TIAC, Jonathan Kent (John Schneider) as Bo, Martha Kent (Annette O’Toole) as Boring Old Ma, Lionel Luthor (John Glover) as Porthos, Kara Kent (Laura Vandervoort) as SBH and Lana Lang (Kristin Kreuk) as herself. For more information on these people and more, consult the scorecard.

Banned by the powers that be (ie Superlad) from driving like a maniac, Good Ol’ Pete has come up with a new way of surviving the long, tedious nights of Smallville – namely, he rocks up to Teen Crisis Hotlines, answers phones and makes fun of the problems of the person on the other end. I suppose it’s one way to make his own severe emotional problems seem marginally less troubling.

On this particular evening, he’s dragged Superlad along to help. “Iss wicked funny,” assures Good Ol’ Pete. “Some o’ these kids is total gib-dribblers.” Superlad stares at him, baffled.

A phone rings. Good Ol’ Pete answers it. “Yo,” he says to the poor troubled youth on the other end. “Divorce is wack!!” He giggles to himself.

Another phone rings. Superlad answers it. It’s Lana. “Superlad, help me,” she cries.

“What seems to be the problem?” asks Superlad, thinking, y’know, maybe the orphan thing or the running an awful cafe on her own thing or–

“He’s trying to kill me!!” comes Lana’s staticy voice.

–Or, indeed, one of the innumerable Lana murder attempt things.

Superlad sighs. “Who is it this time, Lana? Morph Lass? Bug Boy? TIAC?”

Before Lana can answer, there’s a gun shot. Cut to Lana running through the rain. There’s another gun shot. Pow! Right in the back, down she goes.

But Superlad’s still going through the list. “Rapist hooligans, MUNDL, Underwater Breathing Guy, the giant twister…”

Lana doesn’t answer so Superlad decides to dash on over to The Death Claw and see what’s up. Turns out not much is up at all. Lana and TIAC are simply having a few tequila shots and discussing boys and feminine hygiene products.

So that’s a bit odd. Naturally enough, the Lazy Smallville Cops are called in to investigate. They agree that an evening without a murder attempt on Lana is unusual, but also point out that they can’t be bothered doing anything about it.

Good Ol’ Pete suggests adding a rhythm track, but is sensibly ignored.

Fortunately, Good Ol’ Pete had the good sense to record the phone call for posterity so they upload it to TIAC’s computer, encode it as an mp3 and listen to it carefully. Good Ol’ Pete suggests adding a rhythm track, but is sensibly ignored.

Eventually a set of clues hidden in the background noise of the message (a basketball commentary, a thunderstorm and the voice of the town crier) lead them to conclude that the phone call came from 24 (or so) hours into the future. So there you go.

Oh, also? The murderer? Creepy Physiotherapist. (“Well, I was getting to him,” pouts Superlad.)

Meanwhile, over at Luthorcorp, Sinead is confronting Porthos with a vial of DeathBegone (formerly LiveAgain) Juice™.

“What’s all this raising of the dead about, Porthos?” he says.

“I’m sorry, son,” says Porthos. “Luthorcorp is a vast empire, with literally tens of billions of projects going on at one time. You’ll forgive me if I can’t remember the details of every piddling resurrection scheme.”

Then there’s veiled innuendo and stuff – the kind of things at which the Luthor clan excel. Finally Sinead says he wants to run the Zombie Lab and Porthos agrees.

Which is just as well because Superlad has made his way into the mansion and demanded to know where Creepy Physiotherapist is.

“Don’t take that tone,” suggests Sinead. “Ask nicely.”

Superlad does so and also explains about the message from the future and the predestination of it all.

“Makes perfect sense to me,” says Sinead. “Let’s go.”

And off they trot. But oh no! Creepy Physiotherapist has used his 15th Dan Ju Jitsu to break out of his Zombie Cell and kill everybody.

“This is no good,” says Superlad.

“It certainly isn’t,” says Sinead, contemplating the paradox. If Dr Zombie resurrects those who don’t resurrect themselves, then who resurrects Dr Zombie? Sinead thinks of sharing this mindbender with Superlad, but then wisely thinks better of it.

Also, the cleaning staff are dead, so who is going to clean up the bodies?

Certainly not Superlad, who instead meets up with TIAC who in turn has finagled details of the cell phone from which Lana is destined to make her call. No real details on how she managed to get this information but I can only assume she logged onto the ‘Calls from the future’ section of the local phone company’s web site.

This leads Superlad off on another merry goose call. Y’know, it it was me trying to stop the predestined murder of Lana and I was, like, buff with the superpowers and that, I’d probably just kick back and hang with Lana for the day and stop Creepy Physiotherapist when he showed up. Y’know, rather than run around the countryside like a loon. But perhaps I’m just lazy.

Regardless, Superlad’s attempt to track down the phone meets with grisly failure. And when I say ‘grisly’ I really just mean ‘ordinary, everyday’. For Creepy Physiotherapist drives off in a truck with the phone just milliseconds before Superlad dashes over there. Oh no!

And then he decides to pop on over to visit Sinead – possibly to get more information on Creepy Physiotherapist, possibly for a quick game on his Xbox. Of course, at this precise moment, the Metropolis Police show up with a search warrant. They demand that nobody go anywhere. They then conduct a thorough search of Sinead’s Xbox.

“But I’ve got a murder to prevent!” says Superlad.

“Don’t give me any of your lip,” says Constable GoodCop.

“Eat the power up pill!!” says Constable BadCop, flailing wildly at the screen.

Meanwhile, Lana’s had the good fortune to be holed up at the barn with an inebriated Bo for a time. Bo has been giving her an episode by episode rundown of The Dukes of Hazzard and ranting unintelligibly about Coy and Vance and how he would have loved to shoot those two upside the head but if he can’t do that, he’ll happily take down any zombie physiotherapists who show up and get me another beer, woman!!

Eventually it’s TIAC who shows up. What the hell, thinks Bo, I’ve never liked her much either and he drunkenly marches out to the car with a shotgun. But uh-oh, TIAC’s been kidnapped by Creepy Physiotherapist who knocks Bo down with a shovel. He steals Bo’s shotgun – the General Loudbang – and throws TIAC onto the ground, scraping her head.

“You come out here Lana,” says CP. “Or I’ll shoot TIAC.”

Lana doesn’t budge.

“Or Bo. Yes, I’ll shoot Bo.”

She’s always had a soft spot for Bo and his drunken rages.

Lana sighs. She’s always had a soft spot for Bo and his drunken rages. So she heads out and CP takes her off to a storeroom where he demands that Lana locates his favourite book.

“What is it?” says Lana.

“Princess Daisy by Judith Krantz.”

Ooo-okay, thinks Lana. They eventually find the book, hidden well beneath the porno mags, and CP opens it up. But there’s no DeathBegone™ juice in there!!

“Well, of course not,” says Lana. “It’s a book!” Duh!

CP has now had enough of Lana’s bitchy attitude and decides that particular wisecrack deserves nothing less than a bullet in the spine. And perhaps fair enough, too.

By this stage, Superlad has got away from the mansion with some lame excuse – something to do with not having a note from his parents – and dashed home to find Boring Old Ma tending to Bo and TIAC.

“CP has taken her somewhere!” says Bo.

Sheesh, thinks Superlad. Thanks for all your help, Bo. He looks to TIAC, but she’s left her script somewhere else. Time for Superlad to call on his, like, brains and that. Always a dangerous ploy and it’s not surprising to find that he eventually concludes that the best thing to do would be to head over to the Teen Crisis Hotline and, um, take the call again.

“Why on Earth would you do that??” says Boring Old Ma.

But it’s too late, because he’s already dashed off. He picks up Lana’s phone call from the startled hand of Good Ol’ Pete who has apparently fulfilled his quota of lines for the episode and says ‘hey, wassup?’ to her.

But then lightning strikes and the telephone pole goes down and it hovers near a, um, kryptonite puddle and– oh, I don’t know. It’s the old Kryptonite phone line message time travel trick. Superlad lifts up the telephone pole, Lana tells him where she is and off he dashes to intercept the bullet with his conveniently bulletproof chest.

And that’s that. Creepy Physiotherapist sees Superlad’s bullet stopping, but dies, so that’s okay. Also, before he dies he reveals that Porthos sent him (CP) to keep an eye on him (Superlad). Nice deathbed revelation, CP. Sleep tight.

Over to the mansion, where the Feds come in, send Constable GoodCop and BadCop home and then listen very intently to Sinead’s offer to bring down Porthos.

And Porthos himself? He’s already hired a replacement for Dr Zombie and revealed that he’s dying of a rare liver ailment, so sits alone in a poorly lit room listening to classical music and sticking a pistol in his mouth. Oh, Porthos, you do know how to spend an evening at home alone, don’t you?

Oh, and Lana? She decides that she’s incapable of comprehending quantum cosmology. Startle me.

A fine, fine episode. I love a good time travel story and, heck, I even liked this one. Furthermore, it looks like we’re about to crank up the Luthor subplots, which has to be a good thing.

Next Week: When fathers clash!

Discuss this episode at KryptonSite

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