Dan Liebke’s Astonishing Tales

We open, as we so often do in this day and age and hemisphere, in a High School science lab. Superlad and Good Ol’ Pete are trying to build a ghetto blaster that is powered by citrus fruit. Strangely, they seem to be succeeding but before we can see how the camera pans off them and follows a strange-looking new kid.

Strange-Looking New Kid immediately gets picked upon by the Science Lab Bullies (whose protractors are steel-edged, I assume). Strange-Looking New Kid retaliates by setting a blackboard on fire with his eyes.

“Wait a moment,” thinks Superlad. “That’s my schtick!”

And he’s right. It is. But he has so many you’d think he’d share something as piddling as heat vision.

While Superlad thinks about sharing, we have the opening credits and when they’re all over, we fade in to see Lana riding around on her horse. Or to be more precise, the horse that used to belong to Dead Whit.

Dead Whit had named the horse ‘Tyson’, after the boxing rapist. As a result of this, Dead Whit’s Mother won’t let the horse stay in the house any more and Lana doesn’t know what to do, because where oh where oh where could somebody as pretty as she keep a horse?? If only there were some kind of farm nearby.

Several seconds pass. Lana wrinkles her nose.

“Hey!!” says Superlad, eventually. “Why don’t you let Tyson stay on our farm.”

“Oh I couldn’t,” says Lana, removing the saddle, leading him to the Kent barn and forming a makeshift stable out of old planks of wood. “Thank you so much.” Then she wrinkles her nose again and leaves.

TIAC shows up to fill us in on plot details - she tells us that Strange-Looking New Kid claims to be an alien. He’s been suspended from school until he decides to be less extra-terrestrial in nature.

“You don’t really think he’s an alien, do you?” says Superlad.

“Nah…” says TIAC. “But if he was, that’d be awesome!”

“It wouldn’t freak you out?”

“No way. Aliens rock!!”

Superlad smiles a goofy Kryptonese grin. Maybe being from another planet isn’t so bad after all.

So he heads over to visit ET, who is not at all pleased to see him.

“Go away, Superlad!” he shouts. “I will not be ridiculed by your kind.”

“I’m not here to make fun of you.”

“Really?”

… what’s a little bit of mocking between fellow aliens anyway …

Superlad takes another look at the big bug eyes and the long pointed fingers and confesses that he may make a little fun, but it will only ever be in good spirits and besides what’s a little bit of mocking between fellow aliens anyway, even if one has casual good looks and the other one is small and misshapen.

So before you can say “Phone home”, ET has taken Superlad into his house to show him all his radio technology that he has cobbled together from discarded Betamax videos and prosthetic limbs. He reveals that he’s going to send a signal to the mothership tomorrow night.

“Yeah, pshaw!” says Superlad and starts to make the gibber-gibber noise by running his finger over his lips until ET reminds him about his non-making-fun-of promise.

Meanwhile, back in the barn, Bo and Boring Old Ma are down having a chat about the spaceship and pregnancy and so forth. Boring Old Ma is scared of headaches (or some damn thing) and so wants to go be examined Dr TotalBabe. Bo expressly forbids this ‘on pain of death’.

Cut to Superlad in The Death Claw reading a book about aliens and how to exist as an alien in Earth society without having to resort to capery. (The book’s author? A certain Mr Jeff Goldblum.)

Sinead pops in. “Superlad,” he says. “I never thought you’d be some kind of alien who has to fit into human society.”

“Hahahahhahaha!” says Superlad. “No, this is for, um, a friend.”

“Yeah, right,” says Sinead, sneering in contempt. “Like you have friends who think they’re aliens.”

“I do!” protests Superlad. “I just promised not to reveal his identity.”

“All right,” says Sinead, sighing. Superlad can’t bear seeing Sinead pout like this so tells him all about ET. After all, he’s already broken his promise about not making fun of him, no point in keeping the rest of his promises, right?

“Besides,” says Sinead. “He’s clearly not an alien. I mean, if you were an alien would you tell anybody about it?”

“Hahahahahahaha!!!!!” Superlad, continuing to lose it. Oh, and then Sinead reveals that Tyson the Evil Boxing Horse had been offered a place in Luthor Mansion rather than the Kent Barn, but Lana had knocked it back. I think this was supposed to make Superlad feel like he was getting somewhere with Lana, but all he can think of is how if Tyson had stayed at Luthor Mansion, then perhaps it wouldn’t be him cleaning out horse shit every other day.

But it may not be a problem for much longer because by the time he gets home Tyson is ill. Bo speculates that he may have bitten the ear off another horse. Regardless, things do not look good for Tyson. Happily, ET shows up, points a glowing finger at Tyson’s belly, says ‘ouch’ and heals him.

Hey!! thinks Superlad. No new powers!

Anyway, that’s enough to convince Superlad that ET is from Krypton. Bo and Boring Old Ma poo-poo the idea. Because, for one thing, Superlad doesn’t have healing hands.

“Don’t you think I know it!!” says Superlad, and bursts into tears. He runs off.

Over at Luthor Mansion, Dr TotalBabe has just moved in and is cranky because she has a master key to every single room except one. And she’s almost certain that’s where she’s left her lipstick.

… a combination of sleight of hand, magnesium flares and a well-timed fart.

Superlad doesn’t care about that. He’s back to school where TIAC fills him in on the fact that ET doesn’t have heat vision and that he set the blackboard on fire by a combination of sleight of hand, magnesium flares and a well-timed fart.

“He’s no more extra-terrestrial than you are,” concluded TIAC.

“Haahahahahaha!!”

As everybody no doubt predicted several paragraphs back, Boring Old Ma has flagrantly violated Bo’s command and gone to see Dr TotalBabe. Boring Old Ma is worried that Dr TotalBabe may at some point in the throes of ecstasy yell out secret details of her son’s Kryptonian origin and speculate about the extent of his superhuman powers.

“That doesn’t seem very likely,” says Dr TotalBabe.

“Oh, I do all the time,” admits Boring Old Ma.

“I can assure you,” says Dr TotalBabe. “That whatever you say in this room, stays in this room.”

“I dye my hair!” confesses Boring Old Ma.

So what happens next?

Sinead confronts Superlad and posits his theory that the meteor shower was perfect cover for an alien landing and that therefore he’s ‘extremely interested’ in young ET. Superlad feels a pang of jealousy.

The Evil Science Bullies corner Superlad and ET at the local car park. Superlad burns one of the cars to a cinder, then tries to shift the blame onto ET. ET doesn’t buy it however. “You’re from outer space too!” he says. “No wonder you don’t think I’m crazy.” “Oh, I think you’re crazy all right,” says Superlad. “You’re as mad as masking tape.”

Good Ol’ Pete is completely ’skeezed off’ about Superlad letting ET in on his alien secret. “Thas so whack!!” he says. “I thought Da Petester was yo’ man with the inside plan.” Superlad makes Good Ol’ Pete promise to not smoke horseshit ever again.

ET sends the signal off to the aliens but, alas, only attracts police helicopters and those darn Science Bullies. The Darn Science Bullies try to pull ET’s radio tower over with the aid of their truck, but fail (primarily because Superlad was hiding around the other side, keeping it pulled up). In the process, one of Those Darn Science Bullies breaks their neck. ET abandons his chance to go home with the mothership and heals That Darn Science Bully again. Of course, in the process he is driven totally insane for reasons nobody has the inclination to explain. So, once again, we see how playing around with magnesium flares in a science laboratory inexorably leads to a miracle healer losing his mind.

Oh, and Dr TotalBabe uses her feminine wiles to trick Sinead into opening that locked room in the mansion. “I hope that you don’t think this is eccentric,” says Sinead, unlocking the door. It’s a room completely devoted to Superlad, with representations of him from all angles, re-enactments of the car crash and, in particular, Superlad’s mouth-to-mouth work. There is even a brazen nude sketch. “It is a little queer,” says Dr TotalBabe, backing slowly out of the room and promising never to mention it again. “Oh, by the way,” she says. “Boring Old Ma Kent dyes her hair.”

And that is pretty much that. Bo and Boring Old Ma decided that perhaps ET was somewhat like Superlad, y’know, given that he gave up his one chance at salvation to help some injured dropkick. “You mean caring, helpful to others?” asks Superlad. “Ummm… yes,” says Bo. “That’s what we mean.” They roll their eyes at one another. Strong. Fast. Good-looking. Sure. But not all that bright…

Lana also reveals that if she ever met an alien she’d just about hurl! “Eww!!” she says. “That would be just, like, so totally ewwwwwwwwwwwwww!” Oh, and Tyson signed onto the Don King stable.

A reasonable kind of episode I suppose. I have a sneaking suspicion that Sinead will be due to explain a little bit more about his Superlad Shrine. Not that there’s anything to explain really. The love of a bald man for a superpowered Kryptonian is surely a beautiful thing and not even Dr TotalBabe can come between that.

Next Week: According to the DVD liner notes, Superlad has to do community service. Presumably as a result of some form of Bizarro ray.

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