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.

We open on Krypton. You don’t see that very often these days. A helpful subtitle explains that it’s twenty years before the planet exploded. Which does make more sense than it being twenty years after.

Major (snicker) Zod and his soldiers are donating their blood as part of some madcap scheme to have their DNA placed in a bottle.

Jor-El, thrillingly not in spaceship or fortress or Brando form, approaches and says “Hey, stop giving blood. I hereby decree this DNA in a bottle scheme too madcap even for the notoriously zany Krypton Science Council.”

Major (snicker) Zod complies. “If the greatest scientist on Krypton says I don’t have to give blood, then my blood I do not have to give (according to Krypton’s greatest scientist).” He follows this empty tautological statement with an order to his soldiers to rejoin the battle. But it’s too late. Because while they were busy snacking on their post-donation Kit-Kat™, Kandor is wiped out.

“Huh,” says Jor-El. “Didn’t see that coming.” Greatest scientist, my ass!

We then cut to Major (snicker) Zod in the present day, rallying his troops, explaining to them that they don’t remember any of this because their blood was taken. Whereas, because he didn’t donate, he does remember. Which seems an addled understanding of how the Red Cross works, but let’s go with it for now.

He works himself into a misguided frenzy not just about Red Cross memory-wiping but also about Jor-El being the Blur™. Old Zod may have his facts all totally muddled up, but he’s one heck of an orator, garnering feverish loyalty from his followers, much like Hitler or Kermit the Frog.

After the opening credits, we’re in TIAC’s little Nerd Office. Superlad zips in.

“Huh, you’re here to see me?” she says. “The ‘I Love Lois’ show must have been pre-empted this week.” She sneers snarkily.

“Lois isn’t here?” says Superlad. He goes to leave, but decides, before he does so, that he’ll make TIAC feel worthless and small. It is, after all one of those days with a ‘Y’ in it. “Y’know, I kissed her last episode,” he says.

“That would explain why she’s scarpered and not appearing in this episode,” says TIAC. “Lois’s response to intimacy has always been to blow out of town.”

“She’s doing what out of town?” says Superlad.

TIAC ignores him. “I’ve tracked down the Kandorians. They’re in Turkey.”

“How did they get in a turkey?” says Superlad. He rubs his chin in thought.

GA shows up and promises to explain it to him on his private jet.

“Maybe it’s a Kryptonian Thanksgiving ceremony,” says Superlad, still rubbing his chin, despite the fact it obviously doesn’t help one iota.

Little Miss Luthor, meanwhile, is chatting with Major (snicker) Zod.

“Sorry I murdered your undercover spy last episode,” she says, in a tone that suggests perhaps she’s not all that sorry after all. “But I won’t be toyed with.”

“Oh,” says Major (snicker) Zod. He slips the Little Miss Luthor action figure into his back pocket.

They agree to team up and stop murdering one another’s underlings. Both of them have their fingers crossed as they shake on it.

Meanwhile, Superlad and GA are now in Turkey, wandering through the desert. GA has heat madness and is babbling nonsensically. “We passed a God damn gas station every 10 yards for 1000 miles, but when you really need one, you end up walking your ass off. This is no way to run a desert!”

“Now you’re just quoting National Lampoon’s Vacation,” says Superlad. “Stop it and man up, we’ve just arrived at the exact co-ordinates that TIAC gave us.”

Superlad, now with inbuilt GPS.

He uses a combination of X-ray vision and superbreath to reveal a giant S symbol in the middle of the desert. He also finds Jor-El’s dog tags.

“My father,” says Superlad. “He’s here on Earth. And he might have brought a dog. Awesome! I’d love to have a dog.”

“Dude, you have a dog,” says GA.

“Do I?” says Superlad.

“Hey,” says GA. “Shouldn’t we be wearing hats?”

But there’s no time for GA’s belated sunsmartness. Because Jor-El has shown up at the Kent farm. So that’s a bit of typical El family miscommunication, surely. Superlad trekking out to Turkey while Jor-El wanders all the way to Smallville. People, clarify your meeting points.

Luckily TIAC’s at the farm. “Hey,” she says. “You’re Superlad’s dad.”

“I have no son,” says Jor-El.

“I know what you mean,” says TIAC. “He is a disappointment in many aspects. What with you being the greatest scientist of your superior planet. And him barely able to cobble together a High School education on Earth. Still, he plays football like nobody’s business. But on the other hand, he can’t fly…”

Jor-El tries to interrupt her and explain that he meant it literally. That he’s from a time before he had a son. But TIAC’s away… “Also, this one time,” she says. “Your planet exploded!”

Jor-El tunes her out and reminisces about the time the science council put him on trial in the giant hula hoops from Superman: The Movie

“Hey,” says the council. “You totally ruined our madcap scheme to send a bottle of Kryptonian DNA to Earth. Wassup with that?”

“The Earthlings wouldn’t stand a chance against our awesome powers under the yellow sun,” says Jor-El, revealing himself to be a fan of the evenly-matched fight.

“Enough,” says the council, who prefer severe mismatches. “You have committed treason. The punishment is death.”

Major (snicker) Zod wanders in, looking for the bathroom.

“This is a closed session!” says the council.

“I demand to be heard,” says Major (snicker) Zod

“Treason! Treason!” says the council, in their typical treason-happy way.

But Major (snicker) Zod shouts them down with a typically impassioned and muddle-headed speech of how Jor-El is kickass and wise and gorgeous. So the council change their mind. Hell, it’s almost knock-off time, anyway.

Meanwhile, Superlad and GA are in the plane, flying back to Smallville.

“Why didn’t the SS Jor-El ever tell me the living Jor-El was on Earth?” says Superlad.

“By SS Jor-El you mean the ice fortress in the North Pole?” says GA.

“Yes,” says Superlad. “But he first appeared back in Season Two in the form of a spaceship.”

“Right,” says GA. “And this spaceship was programmed by your father?”

“Yes,” says Superlad. “But he didn’t program it to tell me that he was on Earth. At least, not this time,” he adds, explaining that Jor-El once also visited Earth in an awful episode set in the 1960s.

“So… wait,” says GA, trying to sort it all out and suddenly thankful his father was murdered by that wily sea dog Porthos Luthor. Eventually, confused as a corn cob, GA gets up and wanders into the cockpit to offer the pilots a tequila shot.

Back at the farm, Jor-El and TIAC discuss how awesome the Kents were (“His Pa was a Duke brother!” says TIAC enthusiastically. “And his Ma… well, she’s, uh… she’s interested in politics all right.”) and why Major (snicker) Zod turned out to be such a douche until Little Miss Luthor gets sick of it all and sends in a team of black-ops soldiers to cattle-prod Jor-El and kidnap him.

She locks him in her basement and heads up to her office to find Major (snicker) Zod.

“I see my crack security team is on the ball,” says Little Miss Luthor. And everybody laughs heartily at that.

The two of them quote Shakespeare and drink wine and lie to one another and it’s nicely reminiscent of the good old days with Porthos and Sinead. Heck, Little Miss Luthor and Zod even throw in some simmering sexual tension so, in some ways, it’s even better than the father-son Luthor double play. Although, nobody fences.

So let’s call it even.

Superlad, TIAC and GA have now made their way back to TIAC’s little Nerd Room. Superlad’s got the irrits because TIAC’s just told him she has security cameras set up all around his farm.

“I only put them there to keep an eye on the place after you disappeared after fighting Doomsday,” she lies, pushing the ‘Superlad Shower Footage (Seasons 1-7)’ video tapes into her desk drawer.

The boys buy it. So TIAC quickly shows them the footage of Jor-El being cattle-prodded and kidnapped.

“That looks like the handiwork of The Kansas Cattle Prod Union,” says Superlad. “But why would the KCPU care about Jor-El?”

“Actually, it’s probably Little Miss Luthor,” says TIAC.

“That does make more sense,” says GA, nodding wisely.

So Superlad zips off to face her.

By now, Zod’s found his way into the basement and confronted Jor-El.

“Give us our powers,” says Major (snicker) Zod. “Considering what happened the last time we met, I think it’s the least you could do.”

“That’s your cue for the flashback?” says Jor-El, saddened by Zod’s heavy-handedness.

But he shrugs and flashes back to the day he acceded to the council’s request and built the bottle and put all the DNA samples inside. Major (snicker) Zod strides in, “Kneel”-happy as ever.

“The bottle is ready,” says Jor-El. “I have also included all of the twenty-eight galaxies’ combined wisdom in the form of some really awesome crystals. With them, the Kand–”

“Yeah, whatever,” says Major (snicker) Zod. “Hey, why don’t you include the DNA of my dead son in the bottle. Bring him back to life.” He punches Jor-El on the shoulder in a friendly manner. “Be a pal.”

“Nope,” says Jor-El, who, to be fair, has a racquetball game starting in half an hour.

We return from the flashback to find Major (snicker) Zod punching the bejeezus out of Jor-El in a much less friendly and non-shouldery manner. “Tell me why I don’t have powers,” he says.

“Blue Kryptonite,” says Jor-El. “I infected your cells with it before I put your DNA in the bottle.” And he has the tone of one who finds this, like, the most obvious thing ever.

“Then how come you’re running around, all powered up, being The Blur™?” says Zod, still dangerously addled on this point.

“I’ll never tell,” says Jor-El. Because, heck, that’s a lot easier than making up some convoluted lie. He changes the subject and goes on to explain how he and Zod have been reconstituted here from their DNA, but their original bodies lived on in Krypton, until Zod went batshit and led a coup and destroyed the planet.

“How could you know that?” says Major (snicker) Zod.

“TIAC told me.”

That’s good enough for Zod. But Jor-El can’t shut up. He goes on and on and on and eventually gives Zod enough clues to deduce he (Jor-El) has a son of his own, who he loves and would die for. It was probably the bit in the story where he said ‘and then I rocketed my son to this planet as Krypton exploded around me, so that, even though my life was lost, he could live on, fully superpowered on Earth.’

Major (snicker) Zod orders Jor-El to be released, so they can follow him back to Superlad.

Which is a waste of energy, because in the very next scene Superlad bursts into Little Miss Luthor’s office and starts strangling her to get information on Jor-El’s whereabouts. No more Mr Non-Strangling Guy!

She uses a tracking device to track Jor-El down. “He’s at your farm,” she says.

“Man, I was just there,” says Superlad. This is just getting silly now. He zips back and finds Jor-El beaten to a bloody, dying pulp.

“I’ll get you help,” says Superlad.

“No,” says Jor-El. “Please. I’m doing a death scene.” And he goes on to emote magnificently, while Welling wonders what might be on the craft services table.

Eventually Jor-El dies in Superlad’s hands, after telling him that he was proud of him and urging him to try the blueberry muffins.

Superlad hugs his father’s dead body to him and roars angrily to the sky at the loss of his father. He buries him in the back yard, right beside Stompy The Wonder Horse and heads back to grieve at the farm.

GA shows up to console him. “Sucks about your dead dad,” says GA. “Still, whenever you decide to avenge his death, know that I’ll be right by your side, powerless and almost certainly having forgotten to bring along my arrows.”

“Thank you,” says Superlad. “Because I’m going to need all the help I can get. Y’know, when Bo died after that awesome fist fight with Porthos in the hundredth episode, I could at least console myself with the fact that I’d known him and loved him and got a chance to spend my life with him.” His chest swells with fury and loss and frustration and more fury. “But I barely knew Jor-El. I had so many questions to ask him. And it was taken away from me before I even had a chance to know him. I swear, by the twin moons of Krypton and all that is holy, that Major Dad will pay for this murder.”

“Major Zod,” says GA.

“What’d I say?”

“Major Dad.” And they laugh and laugh and laugh before heading back into the farm to look up Gerald McRaney’s career on IMDB.

Next Week: Nobody explains why Jor-El was going on about conquering the Earth when he first showed up in Season Two.

---

Related Pages

If you hated this, you'll probably also hate:

1. 9.10 Some Things Are Mentor B
2. 9.06 Let The Wacky Win
3. 9.02 Doin’ The Robot
4. 9.09 Don’t Let The Sun Go Red On Me
5. 9.03 The Funk of Forty Thousand Smallville Episodes