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.

Well, okay, then. After my own personal writer’s strike of the entire second half of the seventh season of the show, and with the eighth season looming, it’s probably high time I clambered awkwardly back atop the Kryptonian horse that threw me (presumably Comet The Superhorse)

So, gosh. Where were we? I sure as heck don’t remember, but let’s see what we can glean from this particular episode, huh? Maybe we can even work out why it took me six months to get around to filing it.

Starts off, as you’d expect, with TIAC hacking into a computer, ‘intercepting files’. Before she can get too far, however, some hot blonde chick comes in, throwing knives at her. Foolishly, she throws them in slow motion, giving TIAC time to escape to the roof.

There, the hot blonde chick – who we shall call The Black Canary, because she’s neither black nor hails from the Canary Islands – confronts TIAC. “Don’t download illegal files, bitch!” she says. So, apparently she works for the Recording Industry Association of America.

Fortunately, the Green Arrow is a huge fan of illegally downloaded MP3s, so he swoops in, iPod Nano a-blaring, and the two of them scuffle sexily. The Black Canary eventually defeats him with her ‘canary cry’, some kind of hypersonic scream, before stealing TIAC’s Zune™ and leaping off the building into the opening credits.

I dance enthusiastically to the caterwauling of Remy Zero. Oh, lads, how I’ve missed y’all.

Back at the barn, Lana’s still playing housewife to a sulking Superlad. There’s obvious tension in the air. I could probably try and remember why, but I can’t be bothered. I’m going to assume that it has something to do with either a) Lana’s long-forgotten biological father subplot or b) Lana being a bitch.

Leaving those two Sullen Susans for a moment, there’s a new reporter at the Daily Planet. Some ultra-right-wing gossip columnist wearing an awful black wig. Lois bumps into her in the elevator.

Boy, you sure hate Barack Obama!

“Boy, you sure hate Barack Obama!” says Lois.

“I do,” confirms the woman. “Because I’m a Republican. Also, I’m not The Black Canary.”

Lois smiles vacantly.

TIAC, meanwhile, can’t be bothered looking over her shoulder into the elevator, so is instead scouring every Kansan blonde with a criminal record, hoping to find the BC. Superlad comes in and interrupts her with his whining.

“Lana lived with Bizarro-Superlad for the entire time I was trapped in the fortress,” he says. “How could she not know it was me?”

“Lana’s not very bright,” points out TIAC.

“Also, she said she belongs with him!”

TIAC sighs. It was a while back now, but she’s pretty sure that Lana only said that to get Bizarro-Superlad to blow up or something. “Maybe you and Lana belong together,” she says.

“Hey,” says Superlad. “What happened to your face?”

“Did you seriously not notice this small cut on my cheek until now?” says TIAC, hurt by Superlad scaling all-new heights of self-absorption.

“You have a cut on your cheek?!?”

So Superlad zips over to visit GA and they argue about who has the greater right to put TIAC’s life in danger. Superlad’s argument is that he’s known her ‘hella longer’. GA points out that he’s the smokin’ hot guest star all the chicks are swooning over.

Superlad is furious. “I can’t believe you said that!” he says. “Try ‘over whom all the chicks are swooning’!”. He storms out.

Superlad. Grammar Nazi.

Elsewhere, Porthos and Lana are discussing how they can incriminate Sinead for the murder of whatsisname, the cloned baby brother guy.

“I know you have hours and hours of spy footage of Sinead,” says Porthos. “I’m sure there’s some evidence in there of his guilt.”

“Um, yes,” says Lana, choosing not to mention just yet that she taped over most of those with back-to-back episodes of Judge Judy. “What makes you think I’d help you?”

“Gosh,” says Porthos. And he opts to leave her with Luthor Standby Threat #224 – Didn’t You Let A Sick Woman Die And Not Tell Superlad?

Lana puts on her glasses and tries to look intelligent.

Doesn’t work.

Superlad pops in and asks her to help see if the Black Canary is working with Sinead.

“Oh, sure!” says Lana. “Why am I suddenly the go-to person for all the inside Luthor dirt. Huh? What if I just want to sit back and watch me some quality daytime courtroom entertainment?”

“Fine,” says Superlad. “Be like that.” And he goes off to sulk. Again.

Before he can leave, however, Lana decides to come clean. “While you were snowboarding up North–”

“Imprisoned in ice by my dead Kryptonian father.”

Lana sighs. Whatever. “While you were up there, I treated a catatonic woman infected by Spike-iac.”

“Oh, yes?” says Superlad, impressed that Lana is now not just an astronomer, witch, coffee shop owner and cheerleader, but also a medically trained coma specialist as well. Must be the glasses, he thinks. He wonders where he can get a pair…

“Eventually she passed away.”

“Don’t befuddle me with your high-falutin’ medical jargon,” says Superlad. “Give it to me straight.”

“She died,” says Lana. “Of third degree death.”

“Then what’s the problem?” says Superlad. Tsk. Chicks! He then gazes into the distance while Lana starts yak-yak-yakking about how hard it is to love Superlad, compared to, y’know, an evil replica of him. And how difficult it is to live up to his ridiculously high standards of never killing people or spying on ex-husbands or holding one’s father-in-law hostage or faking one’s own death. And how unfair it is for him to expect her to have a consistent character arc that the viewing audience finds plausible.

“Especially given my limited acting chops!” she concludes.

“Hmmm?” says Superlad, who was rather sure the director yelled ‘Cut’ rather a while ago. He turns to a stagehand. “You can fix that up in post, can’t you?” he says.

If that’s not enough romantic angst, Lois has popped up to visit GA, who has a bold technique for bypassing all the feminita whining. Namely, he stands around with no shirt on.

Staggeringly, it doesn’t work. Lois slaps him and starts ranting at him about how he broke her heart.

He accentuates the point by flexing his tricep.

“Wait, weren’t you, like, in love with Sinead’s cloned little brother just like, last episode?” says GA. He accentuates the point by flexing his tricep.

“Who?” says Lois. They start making out, until Black Canary appears on the balcony. She emits her supersonic canary cry, shattering most of the apartment into thousands of glass shards (including, without a lick of explanation, those pieces of furniture that weren’t even made of glass).

When they regain consciousness, they argue, all tied up, about GA’s secret identity until Black Canary comes along and knocks Lois back out again.

“Thank you,” says GA.

Black Canary heads back to the Luthor mansion. She hasn’t received payment for capturing GA or smacking Lois around, and she’s had enough of Sinead’s implausible lies about being ‘a little short this week’. Why, the man’s exactly the same height as he’s always been.

Intercepting her there is Superlad.

“Let me guess,” says Black Canary. “Your boss is now unconscious, so you’re here to take me down?”

“My boss??” says Superlad. Nuh-uh. He’s not one for working for the man. It’s all about the freedom and the stress-free, be-your-own-boss lifestyle of being a farmer. That’s what Bo taught him, just before he died of a heart attack at the age of forty-five.

Needless to say, there’s a large fight. Black Canary uses her super-sonic screams to try and bring him down. Superlad has been living with Lana for quite some time now, so you’d think high-pitched wailing would no longer have an effect on him. And yet, down he goes.

Black Canary moves on to the next level to confront Sinead. But instead of confronting him about the unpaid invoices, she’s suddenly all ‘hey, maybe this GA dude isn’t the crazed terrorist Sinead makes him out to be’. One assumes this is because she saw him sans shirt.

“Look, Sinead,” she says. “Your auto parts plant doesn’t manufacture auto parts. And your tech warehouse doesn’t distribute computers. Ergo, GA has a right to blow them all up.”

Black Canary. Stickler for labelling.

But Sinead can’t stand label-sticklers! He shoots her. Then GA shows up and they fight. There’s arrow-wielding and gunfire and a suddenly perfectly healthy again Black Canary taking out a henchman. And, finally, in super slo-mo, Superlad zips in and intercepts bullets aimed at GA and BC, but leaves Sinead to get an arrow through the shoulder.

And if an impaled Sinead isn’t a fine place to end an episode, I don’t know what is. And, since I clearly do, it must be.

Well, looking back, I have no idea why I delayed Filing this episode for six months. We end with Lois and GA agreeing to ‘see other people, possibly cloned Luthors, possibly right-wing, leatherclad babes.’ Also, Lana tells Porthos that if there’s one thing she’s learned from Judge Judy, it’s to not sell illegally obtained video footage to a one’s ex-husband criminal billionaire’s father, regardless of whether or not he’s blackmailing her for untrained medical negligence. “Fair enough,” says Porthos.

And, of course, after Lois whines about how one couldn’t possibly ever be expected to be the girlfriend of a superhero, Superlad goes back and tells Lana that he once stole a car (?). She confesses to having been a ‘two-headed hydra lately’.

To which we say ‘two-headed’??

And ‘lately’?!?

Next Time: Hopefully a slightly shorter delay.

Discuss this episode at KryptonSite

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